by Susan Ward
Smiling, Merry lifted her face upward and when she did her caught sight of Morgan still seated on the hill. That black gaze, burning and intense, was unwaveringly fixed upon her.
There was instant reaction all through her body, a pulsing and running of blood, as she wondered how long he’d been staring at her. Color ran her cheeks as his eyes did a slow roam over her and then lifted to hold hers again.
Someone shoved a tankard into her hand, the sudden intrusion welcomed to Merry. She shifted the goblet to hide her face, to hide the flush she knew would be too telling, and took a hearty drink of the wine.
The glass was gone from her fingers as though by magic, and the rebel had both her hands again, dragging her along with him into the press of heated bodies.
She tilted her head so she could see if Morgan were still watching, not knowing what possessed her to do so since she had left the pit angry with him.
Fire shot through her as his gaze met hers again. She tilted her head back, her long curls dancing behind her. Even that added to the odd vividness in her flesh. The pattern of the dance went on, from partner to partner, and back to Shay.
Carefully, she slanted another look at Morgan. He was still watching her, and his long finger began to run the rim of his glass. Almost as if he were willing it, her flesh began to tingle. She could feel Morgan, as though he were touching her, when he was only touching her with his eyes.
Someone grabbed her around the waist, spinning her away from Shay. She tossed her head and made a silly little move with her hip, then look back at Morgan as sharp currents shot all through her.
Quivering, excited, and not knowing why, she moved her body boldly into the rebel, oddly wanting to know if it would irritate Morgan. Then, she looked, the trembling heightened as she searched his face to see if there were a change in him. Nothing could be picked up by her eyes, but it was there in her keener senses. The heat in her body and the trembling of her flesh grew fiercer. She was dancing with Shay, but it was Morgan who held captive all her senses.
Breathless, her cells popping inside her like the crackling embers from wood in flames, her head spinning because she realized she was a little light headed. From the wine, the laughter, the music, the wildness, and the way Morgan had watched her. Merry leaned into Shay and told him she needed to stop for a moment to rest.
Shay was laughing, praising her dancing in his booming voice, as he led her back to the pit.
Merry’s laughter died because Morgan was no longer on the sable by the fire. She was about to sink down, when Shay tugged her hand and guided her up the hill.
It was then she took note of the figure in the darkness, long legs curled around a boulder, the posture letting her know who it was, though the man was only a shadow.
“Thank ye for the dance, Merry lass,” Shay said. All at once, she was left with Morgan in the shadows on the hills.
Merry became aware of each detail in slow degrees. They were alone, and the sound she heard was his breathing. The warmth, with the chill of the air against her damp flesh, came from his body. She was standing between his powerful legs, only a hair separating her body from his trim hips and his chest. The fine-boned elegant features of his face were lost in the darkness, but she could feel the burn of his eyes, and a strange sort of tension from him.
She became aware of her own body, just as slowly. She was so hot, pulsing, and charged in every fiber. It was so unlike any feeling she had ever known. She hadn’t been touched by him. How was it possible to be claimed by a brilliant awareness of him without even his touch? Bracing herself, her lashes danced opened and she met his tempting gaze. The blood rose like steam over her body. An ache formed in her stomach.
“Are you enjoying Ireland?” he inquired softly. His voice was little more than a husky displacement of air.
She tossed her curls back over her shoulders and lifted his wine glass from his fingers to her flushed face. The heat of his gaze roamed her body like a fire poker, stirring the flames everywhere it touched.
Breathless, she slanted Morgan a look under her lashes. Then, a little silly, a little giddy, and very proud, she said, “I danced in Ireland with a rebel band. Did you see me?”
Cupping her face and tilting it up toward him, Morgan said, “I did not see anything else, Little One. Or, did you not notice that I could see nothing but you?”
What was in his voice made Merry tremble, and the smile to slip from her face. Somehow, her body had come into full contact with his, his face only inches from her, his warm arms around her, his breath a caress against her cheeks.
With shock and desperate eagerness, Merry realized, he is going to kiss me, in front of all these men and I want him to. God help me, I want him to.
As his lips slowly lowered toward hers, she felt herself ease upward to meet him. It was like drinking fire. Every cell in her body began to burn. The contact of his lips was light, subtly erotic, the play of his tongue unhurried and sure, but his hands where another thing, moving with ruthless skill in free exploration.
Everywhere he touched made the blood in her body work harder through her veins. Gentle and pressureless, his fingers played. On her face, her neck, lower, and under the press of his hard chest easing down against her breasts. As he deepened the possession of his mouth, the world around her became a hazy void of blurry shapes and shadows. The only thing focused and real was Morgan.
His palms pressed her urgently closer, his fingers spread like star points, fanning her backside, easing her upward into him, until she was pressed into that most intimate part of him. The shock of it made her sway, though she didn’t pull away. His mouth wandered over the inner curve of her throat, and then his face lifted.
Keeping her body collected against him, he murmured. “Kiss me, Merry.”
His husky words made her heart pound in the depths of her body with such force. All she knew was a desperate need to have the taste of his kisses running down her throat, his hands roaming her, to twist into that hardness where they touched and she ached.
“Kiss me,” Morgan said, running a thumb gently along her blistering lips. The sweet yield of her flesh sent a rocketing shiver along his nerve tips. Whatever small interference his conscience had managed, before today, was now lost in his burgeoning desire for her.
She floated in graceful sureness into him, her lips rolling softly back and forth across his, her finger curled on his shoulders, drawing him to her. The breath quickened in his throat as he drank in the taste of her surrender. They began to deepen and expand the exchange, until the kiss became a flurry of hungrily seeking lips and wandering caresses.
She tried to protect herself with her thoughts, that she had consumed too much wine, the wildness of the dancing she had done combined with the strange eroticism of the play around her had weakened her and left her pliant and willing in his arms for this. But the thoughts could find no strength within her.
The pressure of Morgan’s mouth never eased from her. It was slow, erotic, and careful, ebbing and intensifying in disarming waves as she melted to meet each move.
His hands fanning her breasts began to circle in more thorough strokes. Losing herself in the sudden piercing sensation, her eyes drifted closed. As she curved into him, tilting her head into his kisses, and pushing forward her hips, the most intimate part of her moved there. Shuddering with each tease, she felt warm fingers on the bare flesh of her thighs, and the strangely supple mold of her flesh being tucked into the intimate hard angles of his limbs.
“Please stop. I have had too much to drink,” she said. Merry didn’t even recognize that thin breathless voice as her own. It was almost a whimper.
She protested again as he made to move her, but he lifted her in spite of it, the coldness of the rock a shocking presence, pinning her to him. She had a sudden vivid image of where Morgan was taking her with this, if she didn’t stop him.
In a movement made strong by panic and shame, she broke contact, pushing him back, and her away from the dangerous closene
ss of Morgan’s body. It took a moment to speak, the blood was gushing through her veins, and the air coming into her lungs sharp, choking spurts.
“You and your smug games,” she screamed, breathing rapidly. “I can’t even imagine that I am modestly in your style, as men say. Or that you would be interested in me, at all, if you weren’t obviously in need of a woman. You want to take from me, out of manly need, the only thing I have on this earth to give. Myself.”
Merry curled her fingers over the sharp edge of a granite ridge and stared at him with moisture-blurred eyes, trying not to show fear. Surely, his reaction would come and it would be brutal. The sudden quiet in Morgan was a frightening thing.
He stopped himself. The girl understood little about men, but she understood this with knifepoint accuracy. Whatever he decided to do with this doe-eyed creature, she deserved better than losing her innocence propped against a rock like a Covent Garden whore.
Morgan made a step back and said, “I should take you back to the others.”
He took her fingers in the lightest of clasps and walked silently beside her, back to the fire pit. He assisted her to sit on the sable before he crouched ahead of her, instead of sitting next to her. His breathing came to her, soft and even, while she could barely pull air in and out of her lungs.
Wide-eyed, Merry watched as he reached for his wine. He took a sip and put the glass to her trembling lips, forcing her to drink. The wine dribbled onto her lips, and with a gentle finger he brushed it from her, the touch of his fingers burning against her flesh. She made quick contact with his eyes and then looked away.
Morgan’s laughter was quiet and enticing. “I think you’ve had enough of Ireland for one night, Little One.”
She watched him ease up and toss a key to Tom Craven.
“Take her back to the ship and lock her in my cabin. I will kill you if she’s not there in the morning, and emasculate any man who dares to touch, so much as, a single hair on her head.”
Pulsing and confused, Merry could only watch as Morgan’s even strides carried him away from her. She followed him with her eyes, until she became aware of a woman on horseback. Her gaze strained through the soft glow of firelight to focus on her face.
Now, with the unsettling mix in her warmly liquid cells, was something harsh and cold. She recognized Christina Wythford slipping from the saddle into Morgan’s arms, a welcoming smile on her lips as she lowered her face to kiss him.
She was never his hostage, Merry. She is his lover.
She felt the heat of Indy’s gaze watching her. When she met it, the boy broke contact first. She didn’t see Indy rise, didn’t see his harshly warning glare as he took the key from a stunned Tom Craven. She was not aware of him at all, until his hands gently lifted her from the ground, wrapped in the sable skin, to be carried, shaking in his arms as they passed the men on the hills, to the ship.
All Merry’s thoughts were floating, disconnected, random, and mercifully so. But when the door clicked behind Indy, they came together, an unfriendly pattern, too quickly formed to deny. Indy had put her to sleep in Morgan’s bed. The boy would not have done this if he expected the captain’s return.
Reality came, an unwanted intruder to her already raw senses.
Morgan had kissed her. She had wanted him to. Burying her face into his pillows, Merry let herself cry. There was no point in fighting the tears. She would pass this night alone with no one to see, but the strange agony of her body was something she had never expected, a misery never suffered before.
It was cruelly in her stomach, like a heavy rock that turned, over and over, impossible to stop, better left undefined, ignored but bringing tears.
~~~
Christina Wythford eased forward in the bed, her arms slipping around Morgan, her full breasts a pleasant caress against his back. Kissing his shoulder, she lay her cheek where her lips had touched, the gesture quiet, thoughtful as she had been all morning.
“After that miserable Channel crossing and rugged ride to this nowhere in Ireland, why are you leaving me so quickly?” she whispered softly. “I deserve more than one night for all my bother, Varian. Especially, since it passed without you ever being here with me.”
Morgan turned in her arms until he faced her. Christina was a vision in the morning. At thirty-six she had moved into her looks from pretty into beautiful.
They had known each other since birth, had been lovers for two years, and carried each other’s secrets with the trust of lifelong friendship. She was his lover and his friend, a combination few men ever found in a woman. It had never been quite been enough for either of them.
He ran a knuckle down her cheek. “Camden should have warned you I would not stay this time.”
She sat back, pulling up the blankets to cover herself. “He did warn me. I chose not to believe him. Usually I am correct, in all this. However, you’re leaving has nothing to do with an urgent need to get back to sea, and everything to do with whatever hovered between us last night.”
Morgan’s lips softened just a touch. “I am sorry, my dear, especially after you braved the wilds of Ireland. I know how you hate the Irish.”
She wouldn’t let him divert her. “I don’t hate the Irish. I simply fail to understand your affection for them. Really, Varian, giving the rebels supplies to fight England? What has become of you these years? And you don’t even allow them to pay you for them. Pirates are not supposed to be philanthropists, a misguided, disloyal, anti-monarchal philanthropist at that.”
“I am not anti-monarchal. There has been no organized rebellion in Ireland since the death of Emmet in ‘03. It is a political movement non-violent. Nothing more.”
She ran her fingers through her stylish, short blond curls. “I won’t let you waylay me with a discussion on Irish politics. Who was it in your mind last night, while you made such desperate use of my body?”
Christina was direct. She was honest. Two qualities he had always admired in women. He reached to pull on his boots and decided to be direct and honest as well.
“I have a little bird who sleeps on my window bench, who would rather die than share my bed.”
Christine’s laughter was a soft, pleasant purr. “So, you bed me, not to bed the bird,” she stated simply. She kicked him playfully with a leg. “I would be furious if you hadn’t been magnificent last night. I hope you don’t catch your bird, and keep coming to my bed. Being denied brings out the best in you, Varian. Some woman should have done it sooner. ”
Christina never failed to maintain her posture in all circumstance. Even now.
His eyes softening with his affection for her, he took her chin and said, “The little bird is part temptress and part lunatic. You might as well have your full enjoyment over this, my dear, since I can see the pleasure you’re getting at the expense of what’s left of my ego.”
Christina smiled. “You could feed the continent of Europe with what’s left of your ego, Varian. Why are men such idiots? If you want her, she yours. You know that. You could seduce the Virgin Mother, if you had the whim and access to her. What is she? Young? Common? Pretty?” Her eyes began to sparkle. “Irish? What’s wrong with her that you want her, but won’t let yourself have her?”
“Young. Gently born. Beautiful. British,” he said succinctly.
A long pause followed only by, “Aha.”
Those black eyes began to glitter. “I know what you are thinking, and I have no patience left for that discussion today. This one has worn me out.”
Her brow knit, puzzling. “Who is this girl?”
Amused, “Indy put her in my bed. She’s the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, I have no idea who she is, or what I will do with her. There, that is everything. Are your curiosities satisfied, my dear?”
Varian was annoyed. Not with her. Only himself. Christina hid her smile.
She went back to him then, and gave him a long, thorough kiss. “You will never be at peace with what you’ve become, because it is only surface, and we both
know that. You try to convince yourself otherwise, to make it tolerable to you. Yet you’re unsure it hasn’t taken too much of a possession of you. That is why you keep the bird, why you let yourself be tortured by all she reminds you of, and why you want her. You are a wonderful man, complicated as you are, and I will miss you.”
She sprang from the bed and began to gather her clothes.
“Go chase your little bird, Varian. I hope you catch her. I have a feeling, when this is through, it will be her who’s taught you a thing or two about yourself.”
~~~
Merry was curled in his chair, a quilt high and tight around her shoulders. She had all the appeal of a small, aggravated house cat when Morgan returned to his cabin. She was not crying, but clearly she had been. Her face had lost a great deal of its natural beauty beneath the residue.
Morgan settled at his desk. Watching the neat strokes of his pen, he tried to concentrate beneath the heavy stare he could feel on his back.
At his meeting with Camden, he had received the departure schedule and routes of the Hampstead. The heightened fighting on the seas with America had caused a delay. He was getting closer to finally closing the trap on Rensdale, and he had no tolerance for another delay.
But, the delay would leave enough time to return to the Caribbean. To hunt for a good prize for the men, and visit his home, before he would have to return to intercept the Hampstead. Before Rensdale’s raiders destroyed it.
When he was finished, Morgan pushed up and left without a word.
Indy came, saw Merry in the chair she hadn’t moved from since the prior night, and set her noon meal on the table.
“You should get dressed, Merry. We are lifting anchor and Shay is looking for you, knowing if he spends the afternoon amusing you, he gets out of doing his work.”