Forbidden Jewel of India

‘I told you not to make me laugh,’ Nick said with a gasp.

‘Oh, I am sorry. I complain about that woman and all the while you are hurt and in pain.’ He made no answer, but his eyes closed slowly, as though they were too heavy to keep open. His breathing deepened and she realised he was asleep, or perhaps in a faint, tried beyond endurance by the doctor’s probing and finally able to let go.

Repentant, she fell on her knees beside the bed. ‘I wish I could do something. Are you warm enough?’ Foolish question, she told herself. He cannot hear me.

Nick was flat on his back under a single sheet pulled up to his armpits, his arms outside. Above the sheet the bandaging was stark white on his left shoulder, and down to his chest. The other shoulder was bare. Anusha

laid her palm on the right side. ‘You feel all right,’ she murmured. ‘Warm, but no fever.’ His eyes moved beneath the shielding lids and he tensed under her hand. ‘Now I have hurt you! I am so clumsy.’

He muttered something.

‘What did you say?’ She leaned closer to catch the words he had hissed between clenched teeth. Her plait slid over her shoulder on to his chest and she could feel his breath on her lips. ‘Tell me what you need, Nick.’

‘This,’ he murmured, eyes still closed. His right hand slid up to her shoulder, all that was needed to tip her down, breast to breast. Their lips met. For a heartbeat neither of them moved, then his palm was cupping the back of her head and his lips parted.

He is kissing me. This was not like that careful touch of the lips after he had killed the snake. Nick hardly stirred, only his lips against hers spoke, not with words but with sensation, warm and firm and tasting of the spirits they must have given him to dull the pain.

She expected to be alarmed and found she was not, only excited and shy. None of the texts she had read spoke of kissing and, when she had imagined it, she thought the man would be on top. But Nick was controlling things perfectly well, Anusha thought hazily. Who would have thought that one hand and a pair of lips could tie her to the spot, unable to move, hardly able to breathe?

And why did this touch, this exchange of breath, of heat, make her whole body tingle? Her breasts, tight under her man’s coat and shirt, ached as though they had suddenly become larger. There was a restless tingle down the inside of her thighs and an insistent pulse low down.

Anusha spread her hand on the naked skin of Nick’s shoulder and leaned closer into the kiss. She wanted to see him, she realised, look at him while he made love to her mouth. As her eyes opened so did his, deep and green. Slowly, they focused.

There was not much room for him to recoil, but his convulsive movement was as violent a rejection as a slap. Anusha jumped back and fell on her bottom with a thump. ‘Ouch! Nick, what—?’

‘Get out. Just get out of here, Anusha.’

She scrabbled to her feet, stumbled, her legs uncertain and her vision blurred with anger and humiliation. ‘With pleasure,’ she spat at him. ‘I only kissed you because I was sorry for you—not because I wanted to.’

Chapter Ten

Blood loss, shock, a potent slug of spirits and virtually no sleep the night before were as good as a blow to the head for knocking the sense out of a man, Nick thought muzzily as he fought his way back to consciousness. It was morning to judge by the light and the lack of noise, so he had slept the night through.

He knew where he was and how he had got there. That was a relief. The last time he’d been wounded it had taken a day to get his memory back clearly and this time he could not afford the luxury of lying about, not with a boat to organise and Anusha—

Anusha. He sat up with a jerk and swore as the pain knifed through his shoulder and his head swam with dizziness. Anusha. Hell, had he kissed her or had he dreamt it? It had seemed all too real, both the delicious feel of her body, soft and curved, the cool of her hand on his bare skin, the untutored sensuality of her lips on his. The taste of her. And the words she had flung at him as she had backed out of the room: those where exactly what he would have expected her to say.

And yet he would not have kissed her, he could not have been that dazed, that unable to control his impulses, surely? No, it was a dream, he was almost certain. A delicious, arousing dream that left an ache of emptiness on waking.

Almost was not as reassuring as it might be. Nick threw back the sheet and swung his feet off the bed, hissing when his feet thumped on to the matting and jarred his shoulder.