by Angel Payne
“Damn it!” His fingers were like ten iron belaying pins on her shoulders. He shook her, forcing her stare to raise up at him. Rico’s blanket slid down to her elbows. She tried to shrug it back up. “Leave it,” he growled. “I don’t want you comfortable right now.”
The command should have her incensed. Heat certainly blasted her, of that there was no doubt—but Golden swayed, trying to find her breath as her senses responded to him in ways she didn’t understand. As her body melted for him like a pool of molten lava.
“You’re—” she stuttered. “This is—insane.”
“Aye,” he snarled. He dipped his face nearer to hers, filling her vision with the dark, beautiful fury of his face. “Insane is a perfect fucking word. What you did was insane, Golden. And reckless. And completely stupid.” His voice lowered, too. It vibrated through his body then passed into hers, a rumble that passed through her skin and muscles, then settled its power in the very marrow of her bones “You could have gotten yourself killed. Does that make any sense to you? Killed as in dead. Gone. Forever.”
She swayed harder. She’d just battled the tumult of the sea but only now felt like she was drowning and lost, so lost…in the ocean of him. Her corset hung on the dressing screen but it might as well be squeezing her ribs again. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. What he said, and how he was saying it, didn’t make any sense. “Why are you so mad about that?” she demanded in a rasp. “I don’t understand.”
He dragged in a deep breath. Another. Each time, the air moved up his huge body in a shaking wave. Her own body answered him in its way. She shivered uncontrollably, his sodden shirt now feeling like an icy cage on her skin—just like her confusion locked in her heart.
“I. Don’t. Understand.” She repeated it in desperation this time. The longing in her voice cracked open the dam in her heart, making it unbearable to be so close to him anymore. She shoved past him, her pain detonating. Her arms flew into the air in a depiction of what her feelings were doing in her chest. “How am I supposed to understand? What am I supposed to understand? That constant glower on your face? That commanding hardness in your walk? That stiffness in your stance? It’s all you’ve given me to understand, Stafford—so forgive me if I question why my death would mean anything to you except a massive relief.”
His arms coiled at his sides to the texture of anchor chains. “None of that has nothing to do with this.”
“It—” She blinked, trying to excavate her brain out of the iceberg of shock he’d smashed on it. “It has everything to do with it!” She whirled back at him. “You hardheaded ass. How dare you tell me I threw myself into that nest of vipers for nothing! How dare you think that one word, one look of thanks, one gentle touch from you wouldn’t have returned my deed a hundred times over!” She grimaced as the burning sting behind her eyes became a painful assault. “How dare you afford your bird the smile you won’t spare me. And save my life—twice!—then fret about your damn shirt more than my existence. Worse of all, Captain Stubborn Shit, how dare you teach me about kissing. And touching. And opening myself in all the bloody ways I’ve done to you, only to turn around and then—”
“Then what?” He met her in the middle of the cabin, shifting his hands to his hips now. His jaw was harder than a brick. “Then what, Golden? Ravish you? Promise you the oceans and the stars and my heart? All right. Take it from here, my lady. What happens after that?”
She floundered for a moment, though she kept her head jutted high at him. “Well—then—”
“I’ll tell you what then. Then we get to Abaco. And you wipe my blood off your pretty little dagger and traipse off to Papa without a parting glance. That’s what happens.”
He was using the image as a symbol, like the fancy European writers did, but she stomped closer to him and retorted, “I don’t own a dagger.”
“The bloody hell you don’t.”
His eyes darkened so much, they were the black of midnight instead of the blue. Not that he even saw her with them. As she watched, Mast’s gaze departed from her, from even the walls of the cabin. He was lost in someplace different. A world that stamped his whole face in loss and loneliness.
“Every woman on this earth has the kind of dagger I speak of,” he uttered. “Daggers that gleam at a man from behind lowered lashes, sway at him from low-cut bodices, seduce him until the poor sot is powerless to resist. Then”—he turned to fall into the burgundy chair that had been his bed for the week—“they kill him. They kill his beliefs. His will. His soul.”
It took a long moment before all of his words penetrated Golden—and all the pain that had produced them. The pain of loss and betrayal which had turned a huge chunk of his heart into hate. And the agony of living with that hate every day.
Dear God, how she knew that feeling.
She suddenly beheld each crease, crinkle, and angle of his face in a startling new light. After a full minute of gazing at all of them, she went to him.
Her touch was but a feather on his knee but it penetrated Mast’s agony, draping him like a comforting blanket. She moved him even more by the way she curled at his feet, so soft and gentle, then lifted a gaze more potent than Scottish brandy.
Christ, how he could get used to her like this.
He stretched his hand out, running the tips of his fingers along her cheek. “Mum had skin just like yours,” he murmured. “Smooth and fine, like the Irish mist.” A ragged sigh came from deep in his throat. “She was beautiful.”
“Is that where you lived before you sailed?” she asked. “Ireland?”
He pulled his hand away. The wave of anger was violent and piercing, and he didn’t want to risk hurting her. “If living is what you’d call it.”
“It couldn’t have been that awful.”
“It was that hell-damned awful.”
Her eyes widened with a wounded animal sheen. He tried to check his voice to a calmer manner, but the words just weren’t made for polite conversation. “You see, sweet, I was what they call a mongrel. To the children of my village, a catch-colt. To their parents, a baseborn. Would you like an historical slant? A by-blow. I could bore you for hours on the hundreds of ways to say bastard.”
He rose as all the old instincts flooded back, unwanted, but inevitable. It was as if he were standing in the middle of the village commons again, about to square off against Sean O’Rooney, the boy who made his sixth through eleventh years on earth more like hell.
“Oh aye, how quickly one grows by the hand of ridicule,” he said. “So at twelve, I was more than ready when Mum packed me up and out to Dublin. ‘Go to the city,’ she said. ‘Go to the docks and find work. Go to school and find knowledge. Show them what my gossoon can really do.’” He smiled then; as he always did when remembering the brogue he’d loved so well. His heart swelled when he looked to see Golden smiling, as well.
“So I went,” he continued. “I was determined to march back to that village one day a rich man. I got my job on the docks. But it didn’t take me half a shilling’s time to see it was on the sea where a man’s fortune lay, not next to it. I signed aboard my first voyage ten days later.”
It was there that his smile faded. The memories turned to pain. He swallowed heavily before willing himself to keep talking. “I came home from that journey wearing a new suit and bearing a new gown for Mum. It was lavender.” His jaw clenched painfully. His throat and chest were stuffed with stones. “Lavender was her favorite color.”
“Then she loved the gown?”
“She never tried it on. She was too weak by then. Pneumonia had taken her lungs—and her will.”
He could feel his voice darken beneath the foreboding Irish rain clouds in his memory. “I bribed the physician to come,” he grated. “I stayed by her side. God, I pleaded with her, threatened her…but she’d already given up on me. She died in my arms two days later, in the hut we’d shared just outside town.”
He was vaguely aware of Golden’s hand upon him again. She squeezed hi
m, somehow knowing trite words of sympathy weren’t what he needed right now. Hell, he didn’t even want to spew any words himself anymore—but now they had a will of their own and he could no more stop them than the pain.
He pulled free from her touch and went on.
“I made a vow on the pauper’s grave where we buried her.” His voice came now as a husky grate. “I’d never, never die like that. I’d never be laughed at again. By God, when I died, they’d mourn an honorable man, a trusted friend. They’d pay their respects to Mast Stafford, not their pity.”
He jerked a book out from the shelf next to the bunk. Opened it; slammed it. “I threw myself back into my life at sea, determined to work my way to the top as hard and as fast as I could.”
“And you did.”
“And I did. My captainship came when I was seventeen.” He couldn’t help the unsmiling laugh that escaped him then. “God, I was a cocky blighter. I strutted from port to port like the peacock with the world at his arse.”
“You?” Golden almost echoed his chuckle. “But you’re not like that now.”
“I should hope to hell not.”
“What happened?”
Mast raised an eyebrow at her. It was a tiny sign of the real discomfort shooting through him. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does so matter.”
She moved toward him again, shirking Rico’s blanket completely now. He was jolted out of his reminisces and into the present with the moist, beguiling sight of her. Heaven save him, he could see every curve of her body beneath his drenched shirt. Her steps were sure. And damn it, her gaze was fearless.
“It matters to me. You matter to me, Mast Stafford.”
Damn.
He shut his eyes and twisted his head but she was before him again when he opened them. “Golden. I don’t think—”
“You matter because you understand.” She inched closer, now sliding her graceful hands up his forearms, her touch a smooth balm on his raw and angry senses. “I thought nobody could know the kind of pain I’d been through, but I was wrong. You even tried to tell me but I was so stubborn. I wouldn’t listen.”
Her waist was so close, it was nothing but a pressure of his hands to secure her in his hold. “Golden…” She was moist and warm there. Damply erotic. A soft invitation, shivering beneath his touch.
Her hands flattened on his chest. “You understand this, too, don’t you?” she whispered.
“Understand…what?”
“This feeling I get when we’re next to each other…when we touch each other. You feel it, too. I know you do.”
She raised tentative fingers to his face. Mast couldn’t help but respond to the supplication, looking down into her gaze. A sun-colored spectrum was his remuneration. Sparkles of uninhibited desire twirled in the amber skies beneath her eyelashes. He’d seen an infinity of sunscapes upon the seas he’d traveled, but none took his breath away as this one did. She burned the very core of him. The very heart.
He should have looked away.
He couldn’t.
Golden moved her fingers from his skin to her own—to the dark place where his shirt closed between her breasts.
“Does it make you ache?” she rasped. “It makes me ache, Mast…right here.” She twisted the button out of its loop, slowly drawing the material aside until nearly all of her sweet, tawny breast was bared. “And here…”
“No.” He managed to stop her just before she exposed the whole peak. What was he allowing her to do? Wasn’t it enough that her breasts defied him through the fabric like that? Wasn’t the sight too breathtaking already, the deep-rose tips of her arousal puckered around the linen-covered nubs that screamed to be thumbed and caressed and suckled…
“But you understand, don’t you, Mast?” She transferred her touch to his chest as she went on so simply and openly, as if she didn’t know the way she was dragging his senses and his world to the edge of destruction.
“Aye,” she agreed with herself. “The thumping beneath your skin tells me so. And the way your chest feels…the way it felt beneath my mouth last night…” She again sought the sensitive place she spoke of, rubbing his nipple to the same excruciating need as before. “They’re just like mine, aren’t they?”
He could only release a fierce hiss. He was speechless. Terrified. And utterly humbled by the honesty of this animal-woman before him. Her wonder was mesmerizing…her absence of anything coy or even awkward about the mysteries of her body—and his. He was bare before her in more than a physical way, vulnerable as he’d never been to anyone…and she to him.
This was the way it was meant to be all along. The openness Adam and Eve must have sought before time corrupted that communion. Now this island Eve sought him out for the same…this natural, unaffected woman he’d needed for so long, not the “cargo” he’d been commissioned for, not the “Lady” of anything. Only the soul who longed to explore with him, to share with him.
He felt as if he were stepping out of shackles as he pressed forward. “Aye,” he replied roughly, kissing her forehead. “Just like yours, sweet.”
Golden lifted her head. Her gaze darted over his face, recognizing the new, darker way Mast spoke and looked back at her. “It aches in other places, too,” she whispered.
He took in a deep breath. “I know.”
“Do you…want me to show you where?”
“No.” He smiled. “I’m going to find them myself.”
Golden’s heart stopped with his words. Then burst into a thousand shards of joyful anticipation. She closed her eyes, reeling from the sensation, savoring it. She had to blink once when she opened them, for it was as if she still dreamed, watching Mast’s face unfold in masculine longing as he unfastened the rest of the shirt then peeled it from her shoulders. His eyes didn’t leave hers as he ferociously yanked at the hooks of his own shirt and vest then stripped free of them.
The dark majesty of his body had never taken her breath away more. He stood before her, offering himself to her gaze…opening himself, she knew, in more ways than just clothing coming off of skin. It was succulent torture to acknowledge his gift with no more than her eyes.
Mast fast relieved her of the torment. He folded his arms around her body as the blue tapestry of his stare wrapped around her mind. The action brought her hands directly to his flesh. With a sigh, she glided her hands up the molded planes of his chest and around the taut column of his neck. His caress moved the opposite direction, cupping her buttocks with bold strokes of his big hands. They meshed themselves in shimmering discovery, fusing all the heat they’d been denying themselves since their gazes had first locked.
“Here.” He said it against her cheek as his fingers parted her bottom, sneaking into the tight valley between. “Is this where it aches, sweet?”
“Yes!” She gasped it as he drew her against the hardest part of him, rocking her cleft along the stiff ridge in his breeches with a steady, sensual rhythm. Golden arched her neck and let her breathing match the primal pulse. It was the beat of night wind and high seas, a cadence old as time yet perfect as new passion. Her body came alive with it. Her blood sang. Her skin sizzled. Her desire flowed. Her world was filled with nothing but the heavy, huge feel of him.
“And…here?” His ragged whisper vibrated against her neck. “Does it hurt here, too?”
She nodded the yes her lips couldn’t form. She cried out in wordless wonder as he scraped his mouth lower, marking the cord of her neck with his teeth and tongue, feathering kisses and into the valley of her throat, and finally bringing his mouth to one of the peaks that stiffened and tingled for him. She tangled her fingers in his thick, damp hair as he teased around her nipple, licking around it, making it pucker even more for him.
“Please,” she finally begged. “Oh yes…please!”
A bite of pain spread through her breast. Mast licked away the burn from his digging teeth as he growled, “Greedy girl. I know what you want. Patience, hellion.”
“Patience? When—wh
en you’re making me feel like this?”
“Especially when I’m making you feel like this.”
He sank his teeth into her flesh again as he brought his other hand up to lightly tease her other nipple. Golden was certain her eyeballs literally rolled to the back of her head. “Mast!” she mewled. “Ahhh!”
A rumbling sound of pleasure came from his chest. “You sound beautiful. And you taste so good.”
“Ohhh!” she exclaimed. “Oh yes! Mast, please!”
She saw and felt her words take effect on him. His mouth widened to at last claim her reddened bud of desire. Golden tightened her fingers on his scalp, urging him closer. What a magical feeling it was to watch him. So many feelings surged her. Tenderness and joy, supplication and surrender, awakening and arousal…and deep, naughty need.
She sighed. Mast moaned. He suckled her nipple deeper. Her fingers nearly tore the hair from his head. He finally tore himself away, only to retrace his lips’ original trail until his journey brought his mouth to hers again. “Here…” he murmured, just skimming his lips across hers. “How much does it ache here?”
Her response was wild and whimpering, resounding from the back of her throat. She pulled on his head to bring his mouth down harder on hers, thrusting her tongue up to meet his, loving the rough masculine taste of him. They kissed in wet, plundering dives. They devoured in frantic, feverish abandon. They sucked and licked, nipped and fondled until their air came in gulps and their bodies vibrated instinctively against each other.
Golden had only to look in Mast’s eyes to know what he wanted then. She let him wrap both her legs around him before he crossed the cabin and lowered her into the haven of his bunk. She stretched into the soft, spicy sheets as she watched him yank off his boots. When he was done, she extended her hand, beckoning him to return to her.
He didn’t take her fingers. She almost let them go limp with fear. That was the moment before he bypassed her hand completely, and descended over her in a full sweep of passion.
He was everywhere. Sliding against her. Molding his body into hers. Raking his hands along every inch of her body. Kissing her. Clutching her. Learning her. Claiming her.