The Devil and the Deep

by Amy Andrews

  ‘Thanks,’ Rick said, relieving her of the tray and quickly shrugging into the jacket.

  She could see water droplets clinging to his eyelashes and spattering his bronzed chest. Just as the shower spray had done last night.

  She dragged her eyes away. Must not think about the shower.

  ‘Hmm, this is good,’ Rick said, watching her face as two pink spots appeared on her pale cheeks. ‘I think I’ll keep you.’

  Stella’s gaze flicked to his, to the teasing light in his pirate eyes. Two could play at that game. ‘I think I’ll let you,’ she murmured.

  Rick cocked an eyebrow, surprised at her easy comeback, then chuckled. He warmed his hands around the mug, taking another sip of the rich, fragrant pea and ham soup. ‘Weather’s easing up.’

  Stella looked out at the lurching ocean. ‘It is?’

  He chuckled some more. ‘You’ve become such a landlubber. Can’t you feel it beneath your soles?’

  Stella felt the laugh reach right inside her and warm her from the inside out. She guessed she had. ‘No, Captain Ahab, I can’t.’

  ‘Ah, Moby Dick, my favourite book,’ he teased, because he knew how much Stella hated it.

  She rolled her eyes at him. ‘You’ve never read it.’

  ‘I have,’ he protested.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you dared me to,’ he said.

  Stella frowned at him, thinking back through the mists of time to that long-ago summer dare. ‘I was twelve.’

  She’d been going through a classics phase and also trying to read anything nautical to connect with her father, to try and understand why he’d loved the sea more than her mother.

  It hadn’t helped.

  ‘I never back down on a dare. Besides, I liked it.’

  Not as much as the hot pirate sex in Pleasure Hunt...

  They had a discussion about its merits while they finished off their lunch and even Stella felt the sea was calmer by the time she reloaded their tray. The wind had definitely dropped. The sprinkling rain had stopped and they shrugged out of their jackets. A bare bicep brushed against her shoulder as he threw his jacket over the back of his chair and she shut her eyes briefly as heat licked at the point of contact.

  ‘I’ll get rid of these,’ she said briskly, pulling away from him.

  Rick watched her go, her hips full and round and swinging enticingly as her gait compensated for the lurch of the boat. Hips that had appeared one summer along with the bra and, no matter how much he’d tried to ignore them in his day-to-day dealings with her, they’d been right there in his fevered teenage dreams.

  A sudden gust of wind caused the boat to roll to the side and he watched as she shimmied to counteract the swell. He smiled, admiring the move until he realised she’d overbalanced and was going down.

  ‘Stella!’ he called as he sprang from his chair.

  Too late. The boat had thrown her sideways and Stella hit the deck hard on her left upper arm, the tray flying as she extended her other hand to buffer the impact, skidding as she grabbed at the wood for purchase.

  ‘Stella,’ Rick called again as he threw himself down beside her inert crumpled body, his heart hammering. ‘Stella? Are you okay?’

  Stella groaned. She couldn’t think for the pain in her left arm.

  Rick touched her arm, trying to roll her over. ‘Stella?’

  She moaned and he stopped. ‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ she panted. ‘Just give me a second.’

  ‘Where are you hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘Arm,’ she said after a moment. ‘Hand.’ She looked up at him through her fringe. ‘Dignity.’

  Rick laughed, relieved that she couldn’t be too badly hurt if her sense of humour was still intact. ‘Do you think anything’s broken?’

  Stella zeroed in on the pain in her upper arm where she’d fallen the hardest. It had initially been excruciating but the intensity had eased quickly. It only felt as if a brick had fallen on it now as opposed to a cement column.

  ‘Let me help you up,’ he offered.

  Stella acquiesced with a brief nod of her head. With both arms hurting like blazes, she had no idea how she was even going to get up. Rick grabbed her around the waist and gently pulled her into a sitting position. His big warm body was behind hers and for a moment she was so relieved she wasn’t destined to spend for ever spread on the deck like a stranded beetle she sagged against him and shut her eyes.

  Rick rubbed his cheek against her hair, the scent of coconuts filling his nostrils. He picked up her right hand. The knuckles were grazed and the middle three finger pads were bleeding with splinters embedded in each one.

  He tried really hard not to think about Lady Mary and her splinter, but with Stella all warm and pliant against him, smelling like a pina colada, it was hard not to go there.

  ‘Nasty,’ he murmured, anticipation already building in his gut, knowing that he was the one who would take them out. Kiss those fingers better just as Vasco had. ‘How’s your arm? Can you move it?’

  Stella gingerly rotated her shoulder. ‘Bloody sore,’ she bitched.

  He smiled into her hair. ‘What about your dignity?’

  Her arm throbbed and she couldn’t even rub it with her opposite hand because it throbbed as well. And was bleeding to boot. ‘Unrecoverable, I should imagine.’

  He chuckled. ‘Nah. You really fell very gracefully.’

  ‘Oh, goody,’ she said dryly. ‘A critique.’

  He laughed again. ‘Come on. Let’s get you down below and have a look at you.’

  ‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she muttered.

  Stella blinked as the snappy rejoinder loaded with innuendo slipped from her mouth. What the?

  He laughed some more. ‘Just the ones who fall at my feet.’

  Rick helped her up. The boat rolled again slightly and he grabbed her waist and her good arm to steady her as she wobbled against him. He sucked in a breath as, for a moment, every part of her from her soft breasts to her round hips was pressed against him.

  He took a step back as his body leapt to life. ‘You’ve got your sea legs?’ he asked.

  Stella nodded. ‘Sorry ’bout that.’

  ‘No worries.’ He shrugged. ‘Why don’t you go on down? I’ll fix a few things up here and then I’ll join you.’

  Stella, despite the throb in her arm and the sting in her fingers, was still stuck back in that moment.

  She nodded her head dumbly.

  No dignity anywhere in sight!

  * * *

  When Rick joined her half an hour later she’d recovered sufficiently to have taken some painkillers, located the first-aid kit, washed her hand in the sink and was sitting at the table valiantly trying to dig the splinters out. But trying to do it left-handed was a slow enough process without being hampered by a restricted range of movement from the soft tissue damage inflicted by the fall up higher, near her shoulder.

  Rick shoved his hands on his hips. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  Stella, who had made more of a mess through pricking herself, was not in the best of moods. It really didn’t help that he looked all hot and sexy in that shirtless way of his.

  ‘What do you think?’ she demanded. ‘I’m trying to get the splinters out.’

  Rick smiled down at the petulant set to her mouth. Oh, goody, this was going to be fun.

  ‘Here,’ he said, scooting her along the bench seat as he moved in beside her. ‘Let me.’ Rick held out his hand. When she didn’t comply he gave her an impatient look. ‘Stella?’

  Stella was in a quandary as the scene she’d written for Pleasure Hunt looked as if it too was about to play out. Well, the G-rated version of it anyway.

  She couldn’t imagine Rick sucking her fingers into his mouth. Well
...she could. And she had. She’d even written it down.

  But that was Vasco.

  Rick could almost read the thoughts in her very expressive eyes. She was torn between medical necessity and curiosity. ‘You don’t want them to fester, do you?’ he asked innocently.

  Stella swallowed as she offered him her palm, hoping that she was submitting purely on medical grounds but knowing there were other less sensible, less pure reasons.

  She just prayed he never read her book.

  Her palm was warm in his as Rick took an antiseptic swab and cleaned up the site so he had a clearer field of vision. This close, like Vasco, he could see Stella’s mouth and the way her teeth dug into her bottom lip.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You ready for this?’ he asked.

  Stella doubted she’d ever be ready for Rick being this close, his sea-salt-and-ocean-spray aroma wrapping her in a hundred childhood memories that warred with the very adult visions of him naked beneath a shower.

  ‘I promise I’ll be gentle,’ he murmured.

  Stella rolled her eyes at the amused glitter in his tropical gaze. The only way she was going to survive being the sole focus of his stymied flirting reflex was to give as good as she got. ‘Maybe I don’t like it gentle.’

  Rick’s heart thunked hard in his chest as he pulled back a little in surprise. She had her eyebrow raised and a small smile playing on her lips.

  She was flirting back.

  He chuckled. It had been a long time since they’d traded banter like this. It made his plan that much more enticing.

  As Vasco had, he ducked his head and leaned over her hand. Given that his deck was much more polished than that of a pirate ship from the seventeen hundreds, the splinters were much smaller than the one Mary had embedded in her finger. Certainly they were not removable by his teeth and it took some time digging them out.

  She didn’t whimper or complain although Rick looked up at one stage and she had her eyes shut and face screwed up. Their legs brushed intermittently beneath the table, their upper bodies were almost touching, his head was level with her cleavage and he wondered what she’d do if he claimed that long-awaited kiss early.

  Find out if her mouth tasted as sweet as it looked. If it really did taste like coconuts.

  Stella opened her eyes and caught him looking at her. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘What?’ she asked.

  Rick took a moment or two to answer. Then he shook his head and said, ‘Nothing,’ and returned to his ministration, his hand not quite as steady.

  Another ten minutes saw the job done. ‘There now,’ he announced to her closed eyes. ‘Isn’t that better?’

  Stella looked down at her hand, the splinters gone from the pads of her fingers, his thumb lightly brushing her palm—just as Vasco’s had done. The instinct to shut her eyes and allow her body to feel the caress everywhere warred with her guilt about indulging another Vasco fantasy with an unsuspecting Rick.

  It made her crazy.

  And the pain made her bitchy.

  ‘No,’ she said testily. ‘It bloody hurts, actually.’

  Rick felt her trying to withdraw her hand from his but he resisted her attempt, knowing it was too good an opportunity to pass up. ‘Fine,’ he sighed, ‘I’ll just have to kiss them better.’

  It took a moment for his intention to register and another moment for Stella to open her mouth and lodge a protest. But by then it was too late. He was lifting her fingers to his mouth, holding her gaze as he did so. Her protest stuttered to an inarticulate gurgle as his lips briefly brushed over first one fingertip, then the next. When he got to the third her eyes widened as she felt his tongue press against the pad, laving the wound gently before his lips met then slowly withdrew.

  She made some noise at the back of her throat that sounded foreign in the charged atmosphere between them.

  It might have been a whimper.

  ‘There,’ he said huskily, her dilated pupils not only doing funny things to his groin, but deep inside his chest too. ‘Is that better?’

  She wanted to shake her head, tell him no. That they burned. That he’d set them on fire. But she was only capable of a nod. A very weak nod.

  ‘Good,’ Rick said with difficulty as her mouth hovered so very close and that line became even hazier.

  My pleasure.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lady Mary sat awkwardly on the chair placed in the middle of the sun-drenched deck, conscious of the crew’s barely concealed curiosity.

  ‘You’ll have to lean back,’ Vasco said from behind her.

  Mary turned slightly, catching him in her peripheral vision. ‘Really, I don’t think this is necessary,’ she protested primly, her hands folded in her lap.

  Vasco placed his hand on her shoulder, urging her back. ‘The lady wishes to wash her hair. What the lady wants, the lady gets.’

  Mary submitted to the pressure of his hand and turned to face the front again. ‘I am perfectly capable of washing my own hair, Captain Ramirez.’

  Vasco leaned down, his lips near her ear, inhaling the floral scent of her, so utterly female in this all-male environment. ‘Ah, but where would the fun be in that, Mary?’

  He smiled at her slight intake of breath at his familiarity. ‘Undo your hair,’ he ordered in a low whisper. ‘Lie back.’

  Mary felt her nipples pebble against the fabric of her chemise at the deep vein of risqué in the low command. Another protest rose to her lips but she stifled it. In her week on the ship she’d learned that the Spanish captain always got what he wanted.

  And her hair really did need a wash.

  Her fingers trembled as she pulled out the pins that secured her hair in an elaborate up do, one by one. She could hear her own breath loud in her ears as he towered above her. When it was all released she shook it out, then furrowed her fingers into the back of the curly mass to loosen any recalcitrant strands.

  She became aware that the low chatter from the crew had stopped and she was the object of their blatant attention. ‘Captain,’ she said, feeling suddenly breathless, ‘your men are staring.’

  Vasco couldn’t blame them. Her hair was like a Titan masterpiece, a flaming torch beneath the blazing sun burnishing the highlights into strands of golden thread.

  He gently picked up a long spiral curl from her shoulder and pulled it out to its full length before letting it go, watching it recoil against the scarlet fabric of her frock.

  ‘It’s not often they see a woman of such beauty, madam.’

  ‘I would prefer they did not,’ she said, reaching for just the right amount of haughty as the low, almost reverent compliment unsettled her.

  Vasco preferred they did not as well and he barked some orders at them, more than satisfied with the immediate response.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mary murmured as a dozen or so crew got back to their jobs.

  ‘What the lady wants...’

  He looked down at her crowning glory and imagined how it would look spread over the milky skin of her breasts. What would she want when he was looking at her like that?

  For she would soon be his.

  ‘Tip your head back.’

  The command was betrayed by the roughness of his voice and he expected her to object yet again. When she acquiesced without dissent, her hair falling over the back of the chair in a soft red wave, his anticipation built another notch. It had been many months since he’d last had a woman. And never in all his eight and twenty years had he ever had a creature so stunningly beautiful.

  He picked up the bucket and poured the water slowly onto her hair, distributing it evenly, watching as the curls became drenched and the whole glorious mass darkened into a lustrous sheath of the finest satin. The excess pooled around his boots but didn’t register as an errant droplet captured his gaze. It tric
kled onto her forehead and began a slow descent down her face, running over a closed eyelid, down one creamy cheek until it reached her mouth, where her tongue darted out, sipping it up.

  Vasco almost threw the bucket down and lowered his mouth to claim those moist, upturned lips on the spot. The desire to kiss her, to ravage that tempting mouth, had been building for days. But even through the savage haze of lust that had set a raging inferno in his loins he knew that she wasn’t ready. That the dance wasn’t yet complete.

  So he picked up the soap and rubbed it over the sodden silky layers. Then he dropped it into the bucket and let his hands take over.

  Mary almost moaned as Vasco’s hands furrowed into her hair, the pads of his fingers rubbing with sensual ease against her scalp. Her nipples and belly tightened. Goose flesh broke out everywhere. Quite why she had no idea, given she was hotter than she’d ever been.

  The sun no doubt.

  Nothing to do with his gaze, which she knew without having to open her eyes lay heavily on the pulse drumming a frantic tattoo at the base of her neck.

  ‘How’s that?’ he murmured.

  At some level, Mary knew she should be contained in her reply but the drugging magic of his touch, the aroma of lavender and chives and the warmth of the sun were addling her senses. ‘Amazing,’ she breathed and Vasco chuckled.

  At home this would have been her maid’s job, and it would never have felt this...decadent.

  And Vasco certainly was nobody’s servant.

  Her aunt would have an attack of the vapours if she could see the pirate laying his hands on her niece in such a familiar fashion. But Mary, for one, was giving herself up to the experience as she angled her head down to allow him access to where hair met nape.

  Vasco’s soapy fingers massaged her hairline, dipping down to rub the back of her neck, and he swallowed as a sigh escaped her lips. He noticed how her hands clenched and unclenched the fabric at her lap, the agitated press of her cleavage against the prison of her neckline, and sensed she was feeling things she’d never before experienced.

  He worked his way back up to her temples, slowly stroking her there, working his way down to the shell of her ear, drifting his thumb across its ridges, smiling as he heard the rough inward drag of her breath.