ROMANCE: CLEAN ROMANCE: Summer Splash! (Sweet Inspirational Contemporary Romance) (New Adult Clean Fantasy Short Stories) (131 page)

              She threw herself in a most unladylike fashion backwards on the bed and snuggled deeply into the gold-embossed pillows that littered her sleeping chamber like so many errant puppy dogs. She had stripped nude of the chemise seconds after the ama had left, and was luxuriating in the feel of the fabrics against her bare skin. They were the exact right shade to complement her skin, and India drew a finger across the organ, delighting in the raised bumps that followed it. Her hands sailed over her collarbone, massaging her muscles there, and pressed into the tender areas on her scalp that had been pulled at the entire evening long.

              Her fingers transformed in her mind into the fingers of a man. She was laying on his naked belly, her dark curls overlaid atop the snake of black hair leading to his sex. He was watching her face contort in rapture as he rubbed her head. India focused the mind picture into a magically different position where the man was now delicately drawing a line in between her breasts, down her taut abdomen, and down the long line of her finely sculpted thighs and calves to gather her heels in his hand and lift a leg onto his shoulder. She smiled as he looked at her, faceless, but dark-haired and keenly masculine, and he smiled back, both of them caught in the eternal seductive dance. For there was something most delicious about this moment in particular. She knew that in bedchambers across London town, prim English ladies of exactly her breeding and age were stuffing themselves into frilly bedclothes and laying their cold bodies down into cold beds. They would stir fitfully in the night, captured by a restlessness they could not quite voice or express in any way, hardly daring to think about the fact that release might be just at the end of their fingertips.

              The imaginary man's face shifted uncomfortably into the familiar for just a moment, then swung out of focus again. He was kissing her neck, licking in tiny circles of varying pressure until India felt her own gasp pierce the night air. This, this is what it meant to claim your birthright as a woman! She looked down to see the sight of her sumptuously pink nipples against the slight dusk of her skin, wicked in the glow of candlelight. How many other ladies would feast upon the sight of their own bodies tonight? She imagined her lower slipping his hand between her legs, intoxicated with her own prowess and power and laughed aloud at how little they all knew of what could be theirs.

              Her hips bucked into the air as India writhed on the sensation of her own stroking fingers. The man was slipping his cock across the crevice of her womanhood, his breath hot and heavy against her neck, the hair on his chest tickling her bare tits and that on his face scratching the delicate skin of her jaw until it was raw. Over and over again, he was groaning, moaning something in her ear that was just barely discernible, but driving India to madness. She wanted to hear it, so she wrapped a hand around the base of his cock, stilling him for a moment.

              “What?” she breathed, her voice masterful.

              “You are a woman,” she heard in the far-off recesses of her fantasy.

              “What?” she cried, wrenching his head off of her. The face she held in her hands was slightly lined, with heavy dark brows and a fighter's expression. And it had the ice-blue eyes of Robert Cooper. Robert Cooper was telling her:

              “They are girls. You are a woman.”

              When he slipped his cock inside of her, he looked her straight in the eyes and held her hands bound at the wrist above her head. India had never before felt so vulnerable, as if her body was being used, but she had been the one to issue the invitation. His maleness blended with her unusual sensuality in a heady combination and she rose against him, finally tethered to his solidity like a mythological princess clinging to a rocky boulder for salvation. But he was the sea, morphing into it endlessly, crashing into her until she bobbed against him, helpless, wet, and lost forever. Tethered together, she felt an old familiar feeling build up in between her legs until it exploded over them both, shattering into a million delicious pieces of sexual pleasure, leaving her and her imaginary lover completely and utterly breathless.

              When India's head finally collapsed back against her pillows and her sharp gasps stilled, she stroked through the curls at her sex lazily, wondering at her mind's latest development. It appeared that God forsaken rake Robert Cooper had infiltrated the most intimate corners of her mind and brought her more pleasure than she could have imagined. She tried to shake off the thought that right now, he could be draping his powerful body across the bed beside her, the heavy muscles in his legs wrapping around her smooth lean ones in the gesture of the most total surrender—a post-coital moment. Like a lion after the hunt, sated by the kill.

              What was it about Robert Cooper that had captivated her so? Was it because no other pasty English gentleman would ever allow himself to speak so frankly to her? Certainly, they all stood on ceremony with her not because they ceased to undress her with their eyes but simply because while they wanted to fuck her, they were also scared of her, and that was a fact their impoverished masculinity simply could not handle.

              But Robert Cooper...

              India rose from her bed and slipped into a jade dressing gown, wrapping it around her body firmly, so that her nipples, still pointed from her candlelit exertions, stood out from the silk in a very appealing manner. She brushed the hair off of her face and enjoyed the look of herself as a woman who had just been ravished in a most satisfying way. Aside from her mind's traitorous foray, what she enjoyed most was the knowledge that it was she herself who could bring her body to such heights without requiring the use of a man. Although from what she gathered during those moments when the ladies of the ton allowed each other to slip into their real selves and share whispers of indecent encounters with certain gentlemen, those moments left something to be desired.

              She glanced down on the book which had been the prequel to her erotic fantasy that night; its cover was covered in Hindi script and depicted a man and woman locked in an amorous embrace. She had discovered the book in her mother's chambers after she had left for India and discerned that her mother's fascination with the country had been alive and well under the cover of propriety for many years. As she flipped through the pages of the Kama Sutra, she imagined her mother picturing one face, over and over again for a length of almost two decades, a face that was no more a pasty English gentleman's than India's own had been that night.

              On the page before her, the little picture of the man had him place a pillow under the lower back of the woman and lift her legs up high until they were on his shoulders. India tilted her head to try and discern what the pink organ extending between them was and was amused to realize that in the picture the man's tongue had reached a most unusual size. Another face flashed over the skin of her mind, and the idea of what the tongue coming from that man could do to her if she was bent like the woman in the picture, as if she were a ripe bowl from which to drink, almost aroused her all over again.

              Shaking off the image, India Augustina realized that something would need to be done about Duke Cooper. He did not appear to be leaving anytime soon, and for the time being, would entertain—or hound—her thoughts for the entire evening.

              It all depended on your perspective.

*              *              *

             
To the quickest, the brightest, the smartest Lady—

Honor me tonight with your presence. The coach will come for you at eight. You will try my tea.

-RC

              India placed the thick placard onto the polished veneer of her dining room table and folded her knees up onto the chair. She tucked her tongue into a corner of her mouth as she tilted her head and inspected the note her butler had just delivered from every conceivable angle. What was his game?

              Her ama came into the dining room to run over the schedule of the day and her gaze snared on the invitation before her. No doubt recalling a turbulent time from her other troubled charge's life, she sucked in a breath and began to shake her head furiously, muttering so fast in Hindi that it finally caught India's attention.

              “This man, this man is no good,” muttered the woman, plumped by age and heritage, and very appropriately wrinkled.

              India's ama had a point. What manner of man issued so bold—and exciting a proposition to a girl barely out of the schoolroom? India chuckled to herself, thinking that had anyone known of her nightly exploits and general thoughts, they would hardly dare consider her a child of any sort, except for that belonging to a little man with red horns and a trident.

              “He is perfectly eligible,” replied India, putting her feet back down on the ground and slipping them into the warm comfort of her slippers.

              “He is not serious,” replied the ama sternly, clearing away the breakfast things. “He will not make an honest woman out of you.”

              “Perhaps I do not wish to be an honest anything,” said India, and at the stunned look on the woman's face, regretted it instantly. The one person she had had after her mother's sudden departure happened to be the foreign woman before her, whose face had melded into a thousand sobbing nights where she held her tightly and told her repeatedly that her mother leaving had had nothing at all to do with her. Now her ama's shock settled into a pained expression, and India pulled a chair open so that the woman could settle down. She wrung her hands over again and again, and there was clear heartbreak on her face.

              “I want you to understand something,” her ama began, and India, forsaking social convention, plopped down on the ground to put her head in the woman's lap. “I have seen men ruin the lives of women, women like your mother, good girls who wanted more.” Out of long habit, the ama's fingers fell immediately to stroking her hair, and a strange feeling that India did not often experience lodged sharply in her throat; she felt no mockery for the woman, only a comfort she sought in her jokes and cynicism. “In the village where I grew up, we did not have a choice; we married the man our parents chose because they knew who would provide for their daughters. It was a simple life; I was a simple woman until I met your mother.”

              India knew what her ama was insinuating. The concealment of the pregnancy until her mother had met Lord Davenport, the decades of deceit. Her mother had been a complicated woman from the start, but her ama was not condemning her choice. She was simply hoping India would make a better one.

              But who knew if Robert Cooper was the right choice or the wrong one? Was choosing a man who was not making her any decent propositions any more wrong than choosing one to cover your mistakes and then leaving that life behind anyway? At least this time, there was only herself to answer to.

              His man was prompt, as she expected. It felt right to finally meet a man who would take care of her the way she wanted to. She chuckled to herself as the last thought crossed her mind, thinking that perhaps even manly Robert Cooper would not be able to take care of her exactly the way she wanted him to. Perhaps because that way involved a series of corporal punishments that left her nude and panting.

              The carriage arrived at his secluded home a short ride later. It loomed before her, doing its best to be intimidating, but India Augustina Davenport was not a woman to be dwarfed by an impressive dwelling. Straightening her gown around her hips, she threw back her shoulders and raised the heavy knocker to come down on the door. The housekeeper who opened led her through an array of rooms that called to mind the tale of a man with a blue beard who simply could not keep any of his wives alive; India often thought that Bluebeard contained within himself a poor study of human nature, and perhaps had he allowed for the fallacy of humankind, would have enjoyed goodly company to this very day in his mythical land of paper and blood.

              India was led into his study, where she sat nestled in a chair opposite a dark wood desk that was glossed within an inch of its life. The second hand of the clock ticked incessantly, but her patience was unruffled. She knew that Robert Cooper would not keep her waiting for long; he was not a man to trifle with the time of others. After five minutes had passed, she was aware of a presence at the door frame, but refused to give him the satisfaction of turning to see him. It was a supplication he had not yet earned.             

              “I am glad to see you this evening, Lady Davenport,” he told her, and then she was forced to turn her head to look at him. It was a well-played move, not standing in front of her, not taking the seat opposite her so that they could look upon each other as equals.

              “A visit at this hour requires no such formality, Robert,” she told him coolly, rising from her chair. “You may call me India.”

              The look in his piercing blue eyes was amused and impressed simultaneously. “Very well, India,” he replied, and then offered her his hand. “Would you care to accompany me to see what I have designed to show you this evening?”

              She looked at his hand, knowing that by taking it, she would be aiding in stripping aside the conventions that bound them both to conventionally good behavior. She reached out and grasped it firmly in hers, enjoying the solidity beneath her delicate palm. “Lead the way,” she told him.