Sea Mistress

by Candace McCarthy

  “I see,” she said, clearly disappointed with his answer.

  What was luring the two women to the West? Seth wondered. Surely, it wasn’t for lack of opportunities in the East? Rebecca was an attractive lady; it couldn’t be for want of beaus.

  “Gold,” she said dreamily. “Is there lots of it, do you suppose?”

  He smiled indulgently. “I wouldn’t think so. Do you?”

  Her face fell. “Ah, I suppose not.” She paused. “I had hoped to be able to live independently there. Aunt Clara is nice, but-” She abruptly closed her mouth as if regretting what she’d already said.

  “I’m sure you’ll make out fine,” Seth said with a hint of reservation.

  She brightened. “Yes. Yes, I will.”

  The image of Bess’s face haunted Seth, and he found he needed to speak with her. Time was running out. Soon, they would be in California, and Bess would want her annulment. Unless he could change her mind.

  He excused himself to Rebecca and started to go below to his cabin. Their cabin, he thought, enjoying the fact that it was Bess’s, too. Unfortunately, he was stopped twice to deal with a problem, so a half hour or more had passed by the time he actually opened the hatch.

  Seth found Bess sleeping, her beautiful blonde hair still fastened with hair pins, her lovely form still clothed in her blue gown. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed, her golden lashes dark against her cheeks. Her lips were full and slightly parted as she breathed delicately through her mouth; he could hear the little puffs of air.

  Bess had removed her slippers, and her bare feet were white and small, very feminine. Seth had shut the hatch and now he locked it. Then, he turned toward the bunk and approached, aching to touch her . . . those small feet . . . her legs . . . her flat belly and full breasts. But it was the lure of her sweet mouth that won in the end. Seth stood at the head of the bunk, staring down at her, drinking his fill of her beauty. And then he kissed her.

  Eighteen

  Bess thought she was having a lovely dream. Seth was kissing her, his mouth warm and demanding, his calloused hands gentle upon her flesh. “Seth,” she moaned when he’d released her lips.

  “Yes, Lisabeth, it’s me.”

  Her eyes flew open. “Is this a dream?” He stood before her in white linen shirt with billowing sleeves. His black breeches were tight on his muscular thighs, ending at the knees, before tucking into polished black boots.

  Seth chuckled. “No, love. This is real. And we’re alone, finally.”

  “You were angry.” Tears filled her eyes at the memory of his scowling face. His beautiful face wavered before her gaze. His hair was mussed, tossed by the breeze blowing across the upper deck.

  Leaning over the bunk, he caressed her cheek. He smelled of soap and the sea. “I was jealous.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Aye. Of Paul Halloran. Of James Kelley. Of any man who is the object of your smile.”

  Bess was startled by his admission. “You mean that—”

  “That I want you,” he said, interrupting her. “That I’m being eaten up inside with want for you.” He got down on his knees beside the bunk until his face was only inches away from hers.

  “I want to touch you, Lisabeth. To kiss those sweet lips of yours and fondle your breasts until your little nipples blossom into tiny, hard buds.”

  He paused to draw a harsh breath, clearly aroused by the thought. “And then I want to capture those flowers into my mouth and suckle you . . .”

  “Seth.” She reached up to stroke his face.

  “I want to hear you cry out my name,” he continued in a hoarse voice, “begging me for more, pleading with me to take you.”

  Seth’s words sent a jolt of desire coursing through her body until she was trembling and hot. She felt her breasts straining against the bodice of her gown and the most secret feminine core of her moisten with liquid heat.

  “I want us to start over, love. Pretend we were never separated. That I never left Wilmington—to forget all the pain and years in between.”

  Could she do that? Bess knew she wanted him, desired him with a passion unequaled to anything she’d ever known. But was it enough? Could she forgive him enough to give love a second chance?

  The mental image of him worshipping her with his lean, naked body made her shiver with tiny rippling pinpoints of desire. Yes, she wanted him. Yes, she could forget the pain of the lonely past for a new chance at love.

  “Touch me, Seth,” she urged. “Love me. Here. Now.”

  Seth groaned and captured her mouth, deepening the kiss by encouraging her to open her lips for him, then delving inside with his tongue. He loved the honey taste of her, and he told her so over and over both with words and kisses, coming up for air only briefly before lowering his head to her once again.

  Bess clutched his head, her hands tangled in his dark hair, holding him fast to her mouth, loving him back with her lips and tongue. Seth pulled back, gasping, and then he stood and began to undress.

  His actions were slow and provocative, designed to titillate her senses by prolonging the anticipation of what was to come. Bess watched as one by one he undid his shirt buttons, as the white fabric parted to reveal his muscular chest brushed with dark hair.

  She observed the power behind the flex of his arm muscles as he removed his shirt, and then her gaze fastened on his broad chest, on the small dark nipples in the pelt of soft hair, moving down to follow the path of black that formed a triangle and disappeared into the waistband of his breeches. He knelt and his fingers began unfastening the small porcelain buttons on her gown.

  Bess’s breath caught as he undid one and then the next button. She tried to help him, but he wouldn’t let her, gently grasping her hands and lowering them to her sides.

  “Let me,” he said huskily. “I’ve been waiting so long to do this.”

  She nodded, her eyes glistening with desire. Her breasts tingled and swelled as she waited with rapidly beating pulse for Seth to finish undoing her bodice.

  A sound from above them infiltrated Bess’s awareness. A loud rumble, as if someone was moving something heavy across the main deck. Bess experienced a flicker of alarm.

  “What if someone comes?” she asked. She’d hate for them to be interrupted a second time, for if it occurred again she knew she’d have doubts again.

  “They’ll not bother us, I swear it,” Seth said. “I’ve been topside for hours. My men have orders not to disturb me unless it’s an extreme emergency.”

  She drew in a raspy breath. Seth had opened several buttons of her bodice and was untying the ribbon of her chemise.

  He reached inside the undergarment, cupped her left breast, and drew it out for his inspection and loving attention. “So sweet . . .” he murmured, rubbing the pink tip. “So perfect.”

  He took the crest into his mouth, his eyes closing as he sucked her, a strangled sound of pleasure rumbling deep in his throat. Bess felt her abdomen tighten, her womb contract in a plea to be filled, and she raised her hips in an instinctive quest to know him deep inside of her.

  Seth lifted his head. His eyes were glowing like twin blue flames, and his lips appeared wet and red from his homage to her breast.

  “My God,” he rasped. “I’d forgotten how beautiful you are.” He took hold of her other breast, shaping it with his hand. “Do you know how often I’ve remembered these breasts? Their taste? Their feel?”

  She shook her head, shaken by the intensity of his words.

  “I’ve dreamed of kissing them, Bess. Of burying my face between them and loving them with my mouth.” He laughed then, but his laughter rang false. “I even pictured a babe at your breast. My babe.”

  Bess gave an incoherent cry and turned away. He released her breast and grabbed her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why did you do it?” Why had she spurned his love when she’d promised to wait for him?

  “I don’t know!” she cried. “It wasn’t my fault—
not really!”

  Oh, God, Bess thought. He knows of the child. How he died because of me. But how? Who told him?

  Heartbroken by his abandonment, she hadn’t taken proper care of herself. So she had blamed herself when the baby was born dead. Perhaps he would have lived if she’d eaten better and slept more—if she’d wanted to be alive.

  If Seth had returned to her as he’d said he would, she wouldn’t have had cause for unhappiness. She would have taken good care of herself, although considering the way she felt, she’d thought she had looked after herself well.

  But she must have been wrong, for the babe had died. Her fault, she’d decided. And his.

  “You’re to blame, too! It wasn’t just me.”

  Seth looked tortured, and his grip on her jaw tightened enough to make her wince. He released her immediately.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered in agony, his apology for hurting her genuine, “but don’t you think I haven’t thought of that? That I haven’t regretted my decision?”

  He closed his eyes, shuddering. “But God help me, how can I change the past?” His lashes opened and he fixed her with his gaze. “I can’t. I can only influence the future.”

  “Please,” she begged, grabbing his hand. She didn’t want to talk of it anymore. She wanted to love him, to make love to him, to have him loving her.

  “Yes, we can go on from here,” he said. “But I must explain why I left. Why I had to go.”

  “You were honor-bound, I understand that.”

  “But it was more,” he admitted. “Joel had advanced me my wages on the voyage. My sister was ill, and there were debts.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Seth gave her a twisted smile. “And confess that I was a penniless seaman with nothing to offer a lady of your position and wealth?” He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t have done that.”

  He lifted her hand, studying the smooth skin of her wrist, flipping it over to see the back. “Such dainty fingers—so much passion, so much power.” He took her hand then and placed it on the front of his breeches where his desire for her had formed a bulge of cloth and hard flesh.

  “Feel the power, Lisabeth. Feel how you alone can move me like no other woman on this earth.”

  Was it true? She was wide-eyed and full of awe as she touched him and watched the reaction on his face. Had he meant to come back, but couldn’t because he’d felt himself unsuitable?

  The hard pulsating heat of his manhood pushed against his breeches, stretching the fabric to its limit. He had released her hand, but she hadn’t moved it. She kept it on his staff, cupping her fingers around the solid warmth, exploring its length from base to tip through the strained cloth.

  Seth cried out with pleasure as she fondled him. She sat up, anxious to have him naked, to have him lying beside her unfettered by clothes.

  “Take off your breeches,” she said.

  “You,” he gasped. “You do it.”

  Swinging her legs over the side of the bunk, Bess began unfastening his breeches. Soon his manhood burst free and into her hands. She glanced up to gauge his reaction as she stroked the pulsating evidence of his desire and encountered the searing fire of his blue gaze.

  “Now it’s my turn to undress you,” he said with a growl.

  Her bodice was already open, her buttons freed by his hands earlier, her chemise half undone. Seth helped her to her feet and then eased the blue gown away from her shoulders. He tugged the garment down her body, pausing to caress and explore her as he went. He fondled her back, her belly, and her hips until he had traveled the whole length of her.

  The gown pooled about her bare feet, and he assisted her in escaping its folds, then helped her from her petticoats. When she was naked but for her shift, he knelt before her and caressed her legs, stroking her calves and thighs, leaning forward to rest his head against her chemise-clad feminine cleft.

  He looked up and then slowly, deliberately, placed his mouth to the area where cloth covered her curly woman’s nest. He kissed there, breathing air into the linen until she could feel the moist caress.

  “Oh, Seth,” she moaned, holding his head. “Don’t—stop.”

  He withdrew and gazed up at her with a smile. Cupping her breasts, he played with her gently until she thought she would die from the wild pleasure of his touch.

  Then, Seth rose, resembling a naked Greek or Roman god, his man rod proudly evident and hard with desire. He took off her chemise carefully, tenderly, and with reverence for what the garment hid.

  They stood, facing each other, nude but for the physical tension that cloaked them in passion. Seth kissed her lightly and then with demanding pressure. He bore her to the bunk, following her down to cover her with his hardened form.

  “I’m going to love you like you’ve never been loved before,” he told her, thrilling her.

  He began a journey of rediscovery, starting by a kiss on her forehead. His trail of kisses took him to each of her closed eyelids, her cheeks, her nose, and her mouth, where he paused to administer a great deal of loving attention, before moving to her chin.

  Seth worshipped her neck next, the sides of the long slender column, her throat and the throbbing pulse at its base. Bess sighed as he licked and nuzzled her shoulders . . . one to the other, and then his mouth crested the upper swells of her breasts.

  His lips took first one and then the second nipple, enjoying the twin peaks and her wild cries of abandonment and enjoyment. Desire spurred him to continue his path of lovemaking on her belly, her hips, passing her most private area, for her legs.

  Bess whimpered with disappointment when he hesitated over her sensitive area, but then he was kissing her legs as if loving the firmness of her thighs and her smooth, shapely calves. She gasped and reached for him, captured him by the hair, dragging his head upward in her longing to feel him.

  “Please, Seth, touch me.”

  “Yes, I want to touch you,” he whispered, stroking her stomach, before parting her legs.

  She waited with breathless anticipation for him to touch her between the legs, but he didn’t. He caressed her everywhere else, instead. She lay with legs open while he touched her belly and her thighs, his hands hovering over her area of need before settling down somewhere else, but not the pulse point of her desire.

  “Seth!”

  “All right, love,” he said, his voice sounding thick. And then she felt his fingers part her secret opening, his tender caress on her tingling woman’s nub.

  “Yes, Lisabeth, that’s it,” he said, his voice strangled. “Blossom for me. Flower. Show me how much you want me. Tell me how much you want me.”

  His face, she saw through a passionate haze, was taut, as if he were desperately trying to hold himself in check. She wanted to see that passion burst free, to feel the unleashed force of his desire.

  “Seth,” she urged. “Come to me. Come inside me.”

  His fingers on her stilled, and he closed his eyes, gathering his composure. “Not yet, love. I want it to be good, so good that you’ll never be able to forget.”

  And then he was dipping his finger into her moist passageway, rubbing her with a friction that threatened to send her over the edge.

  “Seth, no!” she gasped.

  “Yes, Lisabeth,” he said. “Yes.”

  She cried out and then stiffened, her body convulsing as it sought and found mind-shattering release. She hung high on the cloud of passion, flying higher, shuddering with sensation, and then she was drifting, drifting down from the heavenly plateau.

  Seth began once again to caress her, and Bess gasped as desire returned. Recently satiated, it came back with a hunger more forceful than before.

  “You were made for me, Lisabeth,” he said, bending to kiss her thigh. “See how you love me?” He transferred his attention to her bud of pleasure. “You do love me, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, I love you. I’ve always loved you!”

  “Good,” he growled, and he r
ose up above her, settling himself upon her soft form. He rose up as he readied himself to enter her. Impatient, she grabbed hold of his staff and guided it on its way home.

  “Yes, love,” he said, watching her. “Feel me. Remember me. Remember how I can make you feel.”

  She thrust up against him, bringing him deep inside of her, and he groaned and lost control.

  “Yes, Seth,” she said in a reversal of roles. “Feel me. Remember me. Remember how I can make you feel.”

  She grabbed hold of his buttocks, ground her hips up while contracting her abdomen muscles. Then she too lost control.

  They kissed as they writhed against each other. Then, they cried out at the same time, arching toward one another in that one final bid for release, and the world exploded into a million stars, and the ecstasy of their joining consumed their minds as well as their bodies. Sweet heaven.

  They lay with limbs entwined as their breathing slowed and their heartbeats returned to normal. Then, sated, they slept.

  Bess awoke hours later, aware of an unfamiliar weight about her middle. Memory flooded her as she shifted toward the source of the weight, opening her eyes to study Seth’s sleeping face.

  He looked boyish and extremely appealing in repose. The harsh lines of his face had been smoothed away, and his mouth, which was often firmed in a straight line or lifted in a twisted smile, was parted, his sensual lips relaxed slightly as if begging to be kissed.

  Drawn by the sight, Bess leaned in to kiss him, but then halted, startled by what she was doing— what she had done.

  My God, she thought. Didn’t I learn enough the first time? Terror invaded her breast as she considered the consequences of their lovemaking. Their marriage was now legally consummated. If Seth chose, she would be bound to him forever.

  How could she have been so foolish? Seth was a man whose true mistress was the sea. Why would he want a wife?

  Unless . . . unless he had learned she owned E. Metcalfe Co. Somehow found out and wanted to gain control.

  Nonsense, she thought, admiring his upper bare torso. How would he know this? Who would have told him?

  Not Reeves. Reeves wasn’t speaking to her. His behavior toward Seth was worse, because he mistrusted the captain. He was her friend, and he was worried about her.