by Julia Kelly
“How the hell does this come off?” he said, his hands searching for the seam between her bodice and her skirt.
She shook her head. “It’s all one piece. The latest fashion.”
“I don’t care what it is,” he said. “It looks good enough on you that you need to not be wearing it.”
She laughed at the contradiction and kissed him swiftly. “Where’s the bed?”
Rather than responding, he swept her up off her feet in one smooth motion. Her hands flew to his shoulders to steady herself. Wark had carried her like this earlier that evening, and everything about it had felt oppressive and territorial. With Andrew, however, she couldn’t help but feel a little bit cherished.
Don’t make this into anything other than it is, she chastised herself. This was sex and longing and familiarity. That was all.
He clambered up two flights of stairs as though the weight of her was nothing and edged open a door with his shoulder. She could just make out the lines of a bed in the moonlight slipping through the cracks of a set of drawn drapes. The fire was banked in the grate and the room was cold, but none of that mattered. Being near Andrew made her warm enough.
Rather than lay her down on the bed, he set her upright and spun her around. His breath tickled the back of her neck as he leaned down to concentrate on the hooks on the back of her dress. One by one he worked them free, and she had to hold her bodice up against her chest to keep the whole thing from falling down over his hands.
“There,” he announced when the last hook was undone, clearly proud of himself.
“You’re an acceptable substitute for a lady’s maid, Captain Colter,” she said, as he helped her step out of her dress.
He slipped his hands down her sides and traced the steel bones of her corset. “If that meant helping you undress every night, I’m not sure I would mind. Lord but you’re beautiful.”
The words didn’t mean anything, but they brought a blush to her cheeks nonetheless. This was just one night. There was no point in thinking about the “every nights” to come. Here in this room, he was a man and she was a woman, and that was all that there was between them. No broken engagement or angry thoughts. There was no room for dreams dashed that evening.
Raising her hands to her corset, she undid the row of hooks along the long basque and let it fall away before pushing her chemise off her shoulders. Stockings and drawers followed quickly, and all at once she was standing naked before the first man she’d lost her heart to.
He sucked in a breath and raised a hand to cautiously, gently trace the line of her collarbone back and forth before circling each breast. When the pad of his thumb glanced over her peaked nipple, she hissed.
“You always liked that,” he said with a rueful smile.
“I still do,” she said, pushing her chest forward. Clever man that he was, he spread his palm and cupped her breast, thumb stroking over her sensitive areola. She moaned, and he shook his head.
“The sweetest sound,” he murmured. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, using his free hand to draw her to him by her hip. He closed his lips around her nipple and sucked.
Her head fell forward, her hands sinking into his curls. He swirled his tongue around her once, twice, and then pulled gently with his lips. Her hips pressed forward. She needed friction and pressure to relieve the ache between her legs.
Stepping wide, she eased forward, her clit brushing his thigh. Desire shot through her, and her knees nearly buckled, pressing her harder against his leg. She moved again, rocking with the rhythm of Andrew’s sucking. His fingers found her other nipple and squeezed hard enough to make her cry out at the delicious pinch of pain.
This wasn’t enough. Determined not to squander a moment, she tore at the last button of his waistcoat, pushing it down his arms. His lips let go of her breast with a pop, and he tossed the garment aside. Gaze fixed on her, he pulled at his shirt next, exposing the bronzed, sinewy chest of a man who’d spent years working alongside his men out in the sun of the seas.
He dragged her down to the bed, his kiss lingering before he flipped to undo the placket of his trousers and shed the rest of his clothes. His cock sprang free, hard and ready, and when she wrapped her hand around him and tested him with a stroke, he moaned.
With a smile, she opened her legs for him, pushing up on her elbows as he settled between them. She wanted to watch when he slid into her. It had always been her favorite part, the shock of connection and satisfaction of moving together toward their pleasure.
The head of his cock bumped against her slit, and he braced one hand on the bed while cupping her cheek with the other. His lips caught hers up, and then he thrust.
Lavinia gasped against his mouth, her body arching to meet him.
“I want to see,” she said, breaking away, and he edged up a little, thrusting into her again and again to satisfy her own fascination.
She’d never be as flexible as she’d been when they’d first done this, but she dropped her knees a little farther to take him to the root. He moaned when he hit home, his head falling forward on her shoulder. Only then did she let her head fall back, swept away by the incredible sensation of being stretched and pushed and taken by this man.
This could’ve been every night if only things had gone differently.
But they hadn’t. Her life hadn’t been that of a charmed lady as her mother had hoped. It hadn’t been as Andrew’s wife as she’d wanted, loved and cherished whether he was on shore leave or at sea. Nothing had turned out the way it was supposed to, but it had been her life and she wouldn’t change any of it.
Andrew slowed and her head popped up.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
He laughed even as he pulled out of her. “Stand up.”
With a curious look, she did as he asked.
“Bend over the bed.”
Oh. She knew exactly what he was about.
Bracing her hands on the mattress, she bent with her head hanging down, opening herself up to him. He slid slowly into the slickness of her, filling her even more than before.
“I remember how you liked this,” he growled in her ear. “How you would beg for more.”
Her body shivered with anticipation as he drew out slowly and slammed back into her. His hand twined in her hair, pulling her head back gently and causing her the slightest hint of pain. Yes, she did like this. She liked it almost too much, for the heat that had been building in her was now a full-fledged fire, burning out of control.
He thrust into her deeper, their bodies racing to the edge. The muscles of her legs shook, and she pressed hard into the mattress to push back even harder against him. Then, all at once, her pleasure broke and she cried out, bucking up and wrapping her hand around the back of his neck for purchase. He clasped her hand, his other braced over her stomach, pressing her back to his chest, as he thrust faster, pulling her along until he pulled out with a groan, spilling his seed on the bed linens next to them.
Exhausted, her legs finally gave out, pitching them onto the bed, their right hands still twined together.
Chapter Thirteen
AUTUMN MEANT THAT the nights were beginning to grow longer and the dawn broke late after a reluctant awakening. And that evening it also meant longer in bed, wrapped around Lavinia.
If someone had told Andrew a week ago that he’d be in digs over a coffeehouse, cradling her head on his shoulder, he would’ve laughed in disbelief. Yet that’s exactly what he was doing.
A few days ago, when he’d lost control of his senses and dragged her down to her workshop floor, she’d told him that sex had never been the thing that was broken between them. She’d always been sharper than him, and naturally, she’d been right again this time, but nothing had prepared him for what it would actually be like. Yes, there was the familiarity of an old lover, but they were different now. Lavinia had been married and he . . . well, he’d taken care of his needs when he could find a willing partner who would enjoy a brief affair while
he was in port waiting for orders for his next assignment.
It wasn’t just the accumulation of their experience, however. He’d never felt the raw, unfiltered need for a woman the way he did with her. Whether he wanted to admit it not, he’d quietly burned for her all those years, and now he couldn’t ignore the flames.
Despite the late hour and the exhaustion of worrying about Lavinia while she was at the dinner party, he hadn’t hesitated when she’d lifted her kiss-swollen lips to his and tempted him once again. The second time they’d had sex, it had been slower but no less passionate, each of them rediscovering every inch of skin to find those spots that made their bodies sing. She’d taken his cock in her mouth, sucking until he could hardly think, and he’d returned the favor, burying his tongue between her folds to lap at her until she raked her nails across his shoulders.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, casting a look up his chest now that their breathing had finally steadied.
He brushed back a strand of her mahogany hair. “That you’ve left me a broken man.”
She laughed, and he could’ve lost himself in that sound for an eternity. Lavinia had always laughed with her whole body, the emotion spilling out of her like water sloshing over the side of a glass. Her mother had tried to rein in that part of her, and he was glad to see that Mrs. Malcolm hadn’t been successful in at least that one area.
“I’m old now,” he said.
“Hardly,” she said with a nudge of her elbow.
“Sometimes I feel it,” he said, rubbing at the still-new scar tissue over the slash he’d gotten in Constantinople.
“Do I want to know the story behind that one?” she asked.
“Probably not.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore,” he said.
“And the man who gave it to you?”
“Got the worse end of the fight,” he said. In truth, he didn’t know what had happened to the man, but the extent of the wounds the Russian agent had suffered made him doubtful his foe would’ve survived.
“Does it ever become easier?” she asked.
He shut his eyes for a moment, letting the wash of casualties—some whose names he knew and others who were simply anonymous enemies—spill over him.
“No.”
He paused, wondering how much he wanted to share with her. By telling her more, he risked letting her wedge her toe into the gap of the iron-banded door behind which he hid the deepest parts of himself, but holding back felt wrong. Even after all of the heartbreak she’d caused, he still felt compelled to spill every one of his secrets to her the way he once had.
“I told you this is my last mission for the War Office,” he said. “After we stop Wark’s plot, I’ll be finished.”
“You were serious about no longer sailing?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The fingers that had been stroking over his chest in wide, lazy circles stilled. “Andrew Colter, no longer a man of the sea. It’s been so long since you were just a boy gazing out at the horizon.”
“I’ve seen enough,” he said, pushing a hand through his hair.
“How did you start with the War Office?” she asked.
“After I came back to Eyemouth and found out you were married, there was nothing keeping me in Scotland. I traveled to Liverpool and signed on as first mate for a ship sailing to New Orleans. The day before we were due out of port, I was pulled off the ship and marched into a hotel. A man named Admiral Perry and another named Rickman told me my travels made me an ideal man for some work that needed doing.”
He must’ve shuddered at the memory, because she quietly asked, “What happened?”
“I was meant to pass a message to an agent working in New Orleans, but a French agent intercepted me.” He rolled onto his side slightly and pointed at a raised white scar that ran over the ribs on his right side. “He dealt me that.”
He watched as she traced over the scar through the air as though she didn’t dare touch it. “That one truly doesn’t hurt any longer,” he said with a chuckle.
“But it hurt at the time,” she said.
“Exactly as much as you think a dagger in the side would.”
“What about this one?” she asked, pointing to a puckered scar.
“I was shot by an agent for the Orange Free State in Cape Town. I was fortunate that the bullet went clean through my shoulder.”
“And where did you get this?” she asked, picking up his left hand and turning it in the light to see the ragged cut along the back of it.
He flexed his fingers, the skin there still tight. “Slashed with a knife in Indonesia. That was just poor luck. Wrong place, wrong time.”
“You’ve been injured so many times,” she said.
And yet none of them hurt as much as what she’d done to him.
“It’s all over now anyway,” he said, letting his head fall back against the pillow. “The condition of my service was the freedom to name when I left.”
“What happened that day, Andrew?”
“What day?” he asked, even though he knew what she meant.
“The day your ship wrecked.”
He sucked in a breath. “Disaster.”
“Will you tell me?” she asked, her head shifting on his chest as she was looking up at him.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
She was silent a moment, but then, in a voice that cracked slightly, she said, “Because that day changed both of our lives.”
Changed. Altered. Ruined.
He hugged her a little closer, pulling strength from the simple fact that she was there. “I’d been named the first mate on the Andraste when we left São Luís in Brazil, but I was still green.”
“What happened to the old first mate?” she asked.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “It’s not fit for a lady . . .” She began to protest. “But since you keep insisting that you’re not a lady, he and a woman from the port were making feet for children’s stockings and—”
She burst out laughing. “ ‘Making feet for children’s stockings’? Is that what you sailors call it?”
“Among other things.”
“Enlighten me,” she said.
“You can shake out the sheets or dance the Paphian jig. Or perhaps you’d prefer to have your corn ground?”
“Oh Lord,” she groaned between laughs. “That’s particularly awful.”
He was grinning like an idiot now. “It is, isn’t it?”
“So this first mate was caught in the midst and . . . ?”
“The story goes that he leapt out a window to avoid an angry husband with a pistol,” said Andrew. “I was promoted to replace him, and we sailed out that evening with a full ship.”
The memory of what happened next drove all of the humor from him, and his voice sobered. “We were two weeks out of São Luís with a good wind when a storm hit. They aren’t supposed to be that big at that time of year, but for whatever reason we were caught right in the middle of it. I’d sailed through nor’easters and squalls, but I’d never seen anything like this.
“We brought the sails down as fast as we could, but it hardly mattered. The wind whipped up the waves, and they started smashing the deck like a hammer. Two men were swept overboard in the first ten minutes, and we would’ve lost more if we hadn’t been quick with rigging up a grid of ropes across the deck to act as guidelines.
“In the end, the hull was breached—I still don’t know how—and she started to take on water. We did what we could to try to save her, but we couldn’t pump fast enough to clear the water out. The storm ripped the Andraste apart like it was nothing more than a piece of balsa wood. We didn’t stand a chance.”
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Abandoned ship and hoped for the best. A sinking ship can cause a vacuum that sucks down anything in its path. I jumped and managed to get away from the worst of it by holding on to the galley door. A few
weeks before, we’d rigged it with a rope to keep it shut when it was too swollen in the tropical heat, and I wrapped the line around my wrist to keep myself tethered to it. I reasoned that if I were to die, at least my body might wash up when the door reached the shore.”
He’d wanted Lavinia to stand a chance of knowing what had happened to him if he died. They hadn’t married yet, but as his fiancée she should have an answer—to know that he hadn’t gone the way of so many sailors before him, jumping ship on a far-flung island where the weather was always hot and the living was easier than on the deck of a merchant vessel. Yet for all those fatalistic thoughts, getting back to her—surviving for her—had been everything. She’d been the reason he’d kicked his legs when he’d jumped overboard into the churning sea. She’d been the reason he’d held on when his fingers had bled from the scraping and scrabbling it took to stay clinging to his float when the waves thrashed at him.
“The storm finally stopped, and by some miracle I was still alive and on that door,” he said. “I couldn’t see the ship’s debris any longer, and I didn’t know how far I’d been carried. All I knew was that I had to hang on with everything I had.”
“How long were you like that?” she asked quietly.
“Maybe three days? I can’t be sure. Quenching your thirst is the only thing you can think about when you’re a castaway. It’s torture. You’re surrounded by water all day and night, and you can’t drink a drop of it.
“But I was fortunate,” he said with a rueful smile. “The storm tossed me near the coast of Suriname. At some point I spotted land and, after convincing myself it wasn’t a hallucination, I swam as hard as I could for it. Somehow I made it to the shallows off a tiny fishing village. A fisherman and his son pulled me out of the water and took me to their home. They nursed me and treated my saltwater blisters. It took weeks for me to get any strength back, but as soon as I had enough to sit up I began to make a plan for the next time the traders came through.”