The Lord's Inconvenient Vow

The rhythm stuttered a bit, but then fell back into a soothing ebb and flow. She was dozing when he stopped and she mumbled an objection, but it was lost to the brush of his mouth on hers. He’d probably only meant to give her a quick salute, but one shouldn’t give a sip of wine to a sot and expect them to tamely hand back the bottle. She threaded her hands into his hair, parted her lips beneath his and kissed him.

* * *

Never kiss a siren in the dark—that should be inscribed on his tombstone.

Every time he kissed her in the dark he stepped further down the plank—under the desert sky, in the tent, in this floating torture chamber...

Whatever defences he’d constructed to cope with this hellish voyage went overboard like a drunken sailor the moment her fingers slipped against his nape, her lips parting against his with a small sigh of pleasure, that plump lower lip she’d been sucking on warm and damp between his.

He hadn’t meant to kiss her. He’d meant to show her how to use the blasted hammock and then go find his for another tortured, sleepless night. For two weeks he’d lain in his hammock surrounded by snoring sailors and tried not to think of Sam curled up in that little cubby-like cot, her hair in a dark plait over her shoulder and her cotton nightshift covering her like a dusting of fine snow over hills and valleys waiting to be melted. Just at that point when sleep overcame discomfort and frustration he’d finally allow himself to imagine precisely that—the fabric fading like a film of dew on the desert planes, shimmering away and leaving just...Sam.

That night in Cairo had been a mistake. He would have been wiser to wait until they reached England to consummate their marriage. Because one night of volcanic lovemaking after a year of abstinence, only to be followed by weeks of a hammock while his wife flirted with two rosy-cheeked naval innocents while ignoring him...

It didn’t help that she looked as lovely every day as if she’d slept ten hours in a cloud. It didn’t help that that body-searing night kept playing through his mind like a popular tune that refused to be chased away. Playing through his body and with his body until he ached.

He’d forgotten about aching. It had nothing to do with abstinence, apparently. Trying to sleep in a hammock with a persistent erection and a bubbling temper was not a combination he was accustomed to and he didn’t wish to become accustomed to it.

But there was nothing he could do to stop fantasising about their marriage night. About the feather-soft skin of her inner thighs under his fingers or how she rubbed herself against him...those soft, half-embarrassed moans as she began giving away to pleasure. And her scent...orange blossom and...and butter biscuits.

Hell and damnation. He was frustrated and tired, and still a little in shock that they were married.

And now she’d spiked every one of his guns with her admission she’d been sleeping on the floor this whole time and said nothing... God, he wanted to climb into the hammock with her and do something about this ache.

‘Sam...’ He tried to pull back, but her hands tightened in his hair, sending fire down his back.

‘Your hair is so silky and warm. I love touching it,’ she murmured against his mouth. It should have meant nothing, but a groan exploded in his head like cymbals. He managed to keep hold of the hammock and not fall on top of her, but his arms shook with the effort as her teeth grazed his lip before licking it.

‘And you taste of Aziza’s honey cake,’ she whispered and another cymbal crash rang through his body. That didn’t even make sense, he wanted to say and gave up. He dug his arm under her and hauled her out of the hammock and into his arms. Her breath left her in a surprised whoosh and then she laughed, pushing back at the deflated hammock that was swinging wildly and batting them in the dark.

‘All your good work undone. I’ll never manage to get in again.’

He moved forward until he bumped into the table and set her down there, securing his hands in her hair and finally, finally kissed her the way he had in all those aggravating dreams that had plagued him the past two weeks.

In the dark her muffled whimpers and moans were a thousand times more intoxicating and he couldn’t stop touching, tasting, his fingertips singing with awareness of the shifting textures of her skin, this silk, that satin, the roughness of her elbow—he lingered over that, remembering her bent over her drawings, her sleeves hitched up, that line between her brows as sharp as a spear. And then the mother-of-pearl sweep of the inside of her elbow...he turned it over and breathed it in, open-mouthed, brushing it with his lips to the rhythm of her pulse and heard the soft thunk as her head fell back against the wooden wall, the rasp of her breath, the way her legs clamped about his hips. He hadn’t even realised he’d come to stand between her legs.