She nodded, swallowing hard. "More or less."
"Charming," he drawled, "but it isn't a reason."
She glanced up to find him staring at her, his dark gaze resting on the soft swelling curves of her breasts most tantalizingly revealed by the draping of the tulle at the neckline of her gown. She felt a slow heat move along her veins. She threw down the pen. With a catch in her voice she asked, "Must there be one?"
He came to his feet so quickly that his chair skidded backward. "Don't play me for a fool, Lorna. Two weeks ago you turned me out of your room. Since then, you have been keeping Peter on a string. Not two hours ago, I left you in his arms in the dark. What happened? Did you mistake the Lorelei for the Bonny Girl?"
"Of course not!" she cried, springing up with color flooding into her face. "How can you suggest such a thing?"
"Easily! It springs to mind full-blown, with visions I would as soon not describe, when I think of the two of you together."
"It was nothing like that. I…I'm not sure why I came. It was an impulse, that's all! I sailed with you once; why not again?"
"If you don't know the answer to that one…" he began, then stopped. He took a step toward her, skirting the table. "But, maybe you do? Maybe that is, in fact, what you came for?"
He reached out to close his fingers around her forearm, drawing her to him. She wanted to protest, but could not find the words, could gather no strength with which to resist him. With parted lips and wide eyes, she watched as he lowered his head, blotting out the light.
His mouth touched hers, teasing the sensitive contours. She felt the warm flick of his tongue along the moist inner surfaces before he pulled her closer, increasing the pressure, probing deeper. Languor welled within her, and she closed her hands on the material of his uniform jacket, feeling its roughness beneath her palms. Her lips softened, burning, and she tasted the honeyed warmth of his desire. Swaying, she clung to him, intoxicated with the promise of surcease long denied, knowing that she was lost, unable to care.
A sigh shuddered through him, and he lifted his head, pressing a kiss between her brows, brushing her eyelids. He lifted his hand to cup her cheek, smoothing the tender shape of her mouth with his thumb, easing her lips apart and swooping to try that vulnerable sweetness.
His hand strayed to her hair, where he pushed his fingers into the massed curls, searching for and finding the pins that held the coronet with its tiny golden moon, discarding it as he sought those that also supported the weight of her hair. He scattered them so that they fell to the floor with small, musical sounds, and her hair slipped, cascading over his hand and arm, failing down her back in a pale gold shimmer. He brushed his hand down the silken length, closing his fingers in it, wrapping it around his fist, before he released it, letting it tumble to her waist once more.
Drawing her with him, he returned to the chair on which he had been sitting, guiding her onto his lap. With a delicate touch, he ran his fingers over her shoulders and along the exposed curves of her breasts. He traced their contours through the tulle of her gown, finding the top edge of her corset that pressed them upward, gently cupping them, flicking the sensitive nipples with intimate, knowing care. Moving to the valley between them, he slipped his fingers inside her décolletage, stroking, fondling.
His mouth seared a trail along the plane of her cheek and down the delicate angle of her jaw. He pressed his face into the curve of her neck, breathing deep of the lily fragrance concentrated there, rising from her hair. He shifted his free hand to her waist, and let his lips slide with warm kisses to the enticing hollow he had quitted. Behind her back, under the fall of her hair, he began to loosen, one by one, the hooks that held her gown. With the easing of the strain across her chest, the bodice slipped lower. He took full advantage of that relaxation, drawing aside the narrow sleeve of her camisole to bare the thrust of a breast, teasing the peak to tautness with the moist surface of his tongue.
So exquisite were the sensations he aroused in her, so compelling was his spell, that Lorna hardly knew when he released the last hook, when he slipped free the bow that held the tapes of her crinoline-and petticoats. She only became aware as he drew the sleeves of her gown down her arms and pushed her heavy skirts over her hips, lifting her from them as he stripped them down and kicked them away. For the first time, too, she felt the brass buttons of his uniform digging into her. She shifted, and with lowered lashes, reached to undo the first of them. With only the fine linen of her pantaloons cushioning her body from his, she was forced to recognize for the first time, too, the vibrant rigidity of his manhood beneath her.
He paid no attention to what she was doing, still less to the urgency of his need. Like a man entranced, he explored, through the thin linen, the warm curves and hollows he had unsheathed, closing his hand on the roundness of her hip, stretching the fingers of one hand to span more than half of the narrow turn of her waist in its confining corset. The sleeves of her camisole trailed down her arms, and he peeled the fine cloth from the swelling thrusts of her breasts, baring them in the lamplight. They gleamed with the soft luster of fine satin, the veins a fine tracery of blue under the skin, the rose-pink of the aureoles and raspberry contractions of the nipples an enticement he made no effort to resist.
Her hands trembled slightly as she pushed them inside his jacket, removing the utilitarian buttons of his uniform shirt from their holes with more haste than care. She spread the edges of the open front wide, pressing her palms to his chest. The roughness of the curling hair that grew there tickled between her fingers, and a smile, tentative with dreams, curved her mouth. She brushed his paps with the pad of her thumbs, and felt the tensing of the hard muscles of his thighs under her. Felt also the slide of his hand between her legs, and the insinuating twist of his fingers as he found the open crotch of her pantaloons.
The flat expanse of her abdomen rippled at his first caress, then tightened to board hardness. She caught her breath as her senses expanded. Her heartbeat increased, and heat suffused her. With spread fingers she held to him, her grip slowly compressing. Her loins ached with fullness, yet deep inside she was empty, so very empty.
A fantasy in shadow images crossed her mind of the guitarist from the garden, wearing Ramon's face, climbing up to the veranda outside her bedroom as she slept, entering, coming to her as she lay unprotected. It was brief, that drift into unreality, yet the surge of wantonness was so great that she made a soft sound in the back of her throat, turning her face into the strong curve of his neck.
He reached to unbuckle his belt, releasing the buttons of his trousers. He stripped them down, prizing off his boots, pushing both trousers and boots from him. At the same time, he put his thumb under the garter that held her rolled silk stockings, loosening them at the knee one at a time, removing them as he swept her slippers from her feet. She smoothed his jacket and shirt from the broad expanse of his shoulders, freeing his arms as he straightened. Blindly, she drew him to her, pressing her bare breasts against him, so that they were flattened upon the unyielding hardness of his chest. As he leaned forward to wrap his arms about her, she eased the jacket and shirt from behind him and dropped them to the floor.
"Lorna, ma chérie," he whispered. "Mon Dieu, how I have missed you."
"And I you, oh, and I you."
The need she felt to have him inside of her, a part of her being, grew. She pushed her fingers through the soft, curling hair that grew low on the nape of his neck, clenching her hand upon it. Parting her lips, she brushed them over the lobe of his ear, touching it with the tip of her tongue and breathing with quick pants as he slid his hand once more inside the slit opening of her pantaloons. Her heart thudded against her ribs. She could hear the singing race of her blood in her head, feel its pulsing where his fingers touched with warm and relentless persistence. Her skin glowed with moist heat. The depth of her longing was amazing; she had not known herself to be so sensual a creature. So alive was she that her every nerve ending felt exquisitely sensitive. At the same
time, she was aware of being boundlessly vulnerable, as if she had abandoned her defenses and would be unable to regain them.
She trailed her fingers down his chest to the flat tautness of his belly with its narrow line of dark hair, following it to where it widened to a triangular mat. His body, with its hard planes and resilient, jutting firmness satisfied some deep, questing expectation. His chest swelled at her touch, and he turned his head, finding her lips, his mouth hard with the force of his ardor.
He slid his hand under her thigh, drawing her higher, spreading her legs, so that she straddled him. Gently, he parted her heated flesh and, positioning himself, eased into her. He brought her closer with both hands on her hips, pushing deeper. She caught his shoulders, and with a twist of her body, took him farther inside, bearing down upon him.
He held her then, smoothing the tumbling waves of her hair down her back, whispering her name against her lips as the movement of the ship, rising and failing, pressing and receding brought them slowly to feverish arousal. Their mouths clung, devouring, bruising. The pressure of his arms tightened until she could hardly breathe. She raked his shoulders with her nails, lightly scraping with the tips only, so that he shuddered in the grip of desire held tenuously at bay. The movement set up a vibration deep inside her, and she felt the hot concentration of her very being, the dark, engulfing moment of pleasure bordering on pain, the jolting contractions of release.
She moaned, pressing herself to him, entwining her tongue with his. He held her in that moment of paralyzed need, then gathering his feet under him, he surged upward. Stepping to the bunk, he put a knee on the sheeted surface, sinking to one elbow with controlled strength, carrying her with him without withdrawal. He turned with her, raising himself above her, plunging into her warm moistness with hard, powerful strokes.
She felt the leaping return of desire, more vivid, more overwhelming than before. She raised herself against him, swept by dark frenzy. Her hands clutched at his arms, feeling their trembling as he sought to stretch the boundaries of their passion, sliding on the dew of perspiration that enveloped them both. She spread her fingers wide, running the sensitive palms over the corded muscles and sinews of his forearms. She was soaring, sinking, flying, failing, towering, tumbling, rising, dropping. She was drowning in ecstasy beyond bearing, but neither could she bear for it to end.
It exploded with piercing, heart-stopping grandeur, a violent crescendo that burst upon them, spreading outward in waves of molten joy. Pure, magnificently carnal, it was an ancient upheaval, wondrous. It ended their striving, stilling movement at the last, deep thrust. They reveled in its magic power, bewitched, voluptuous, clinging, their chests heaving with effort: their eyes, black and gray, locked, glances mingling, close; as near to the touching of souls as they were allowed to be.
She was in love with Ramon. She had known it for some time, but would not allow herself to accept it. It could be denied no longer. Not that it was a piece of knowledge she intended to share. Ramon's attraction toward her, while undeniable, was physical. He had no use for a more vital emotion. He would see it as an attempt to fetter him, and pride would not allow her to give even the appearance of such a tactic.
"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked, watching the play of expressions across her face.
"Nothing," she said at once, but he was already tugging at the wild silk strands of her hair that were caught under them both, easing the tension on her scalp that she had scarcely noticed. His searching hands brushed the corset constricting her waist, and he cursed softly.
"I should have known better," he said with remorse. Heaving himself up, he began to unfasten the steel hooks that held the front of the undergarment, the backs of his fingers brushing the curves of her breasts. "I can't begin to see how you breathe in this thing in normal times, much less-"
"It's all right," she protested, but he paid no attention.
"Why do women wear gear like this. It distorts your natural shape, cuts off your air, and compresses your organs, as any doctor will tell you, besides being damnably inconvenient."
"I can see your concern is entirely for my health." She sent him a glance from under lowered lashes, doing her best to prevent him from seeing the relief it was to be released from that whalebone prison.
"Entirely," he said, whipping off her corset and flinging it to one side, then in the same movement, dragging her camisole off over her head. Gently, he began to massage the long red marks where her stays had compressed the skin.
His touch was soothing, and she did not think she had reason to be wary of his motives, not so soon. Despite the length of time it had been since she had lain nude before him, she had no consciousness of it at that moment. She relaxed, inhaling deeply as she had needed to do for some time. He snorted in what might have been sardonic amusement for her pretenses, or satisfaction that she had abandoned them.
A languid feeling crept over her. She watched him through narrowed eyes, her gaze following the movements of his smooth gliding muscles as his hands swept along her sides. Her attention drifted to the flat sheathing of brown skin over his abdomen, the sculpting of the muscles there, and the sharp line of demarcation where the bronze of his upper body met the ivory paleness of the lower. And yet, his skin tones were not so white as her own, due to the olive skin of his Creole ancestors. The faint mantling of perspiration from his exertions and the tropical night gave a gilded sheen to his body in the lamplight. Almost unconsciously, she reached out to touch him, then followed the musculature of his belly upward to the planes of his chest, stopping with her fingertips just over his heart. Its beat was strong and steady, pulsing under her hand, throbbing through her nerves until it combined with the race of her own blood.
She allowed her touch to drift a fraction lower. Swallowing with difficulty, she said, "It healed all right, your rib?"
"Fine."
"I'm glad."
"Your concern, of course, being solely for my health?"
"Solely," she answered, but could not prevent the smile that flickered like silver lightning across the gray of her eyes.
"I was afraid of that." He had found the tapes that held her pantaloons and slipped the bowknot. His fingers smoothing the red line left around her waist, he brushed the fine linen lower, and lower still. When it bunched under her, he shook his head in mock annoyance, and slowly drew the material down over her hips, his gaze dropping to the taut surface of her belly as the wheat-straw gold triangle at the apex of her legs appeared.
Under his warm appraisal, she felt naked indeed now. "I-my nightgown. It's in the other cabin with the rest of my clothes."
He came to his feet, and, swinging in rampant, aroused maleness, moved to extinguish the lamp. There was a hint of laughter in his voice as he came toward her in the darkness. "Don't worry," he said, "you won't need it-or them."
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Chapter 13
Ramon was right. She did not need either nightgown or clothing until far into the next morning, well after they had left the protection of the channel between the islands 'and moved into the open sea. It was then that a federal cruiser was sighted. Ramon threw on his clothes and went above, grudgingly giving the order for Cupid to transfer her trunk from the ladies' cabin to his own. By the time she had dressed, put up her hair in a coil on top of her head against the force of the wind, and followed him topside, they had run into a squall. Taking advantage of the rain and low-lying cloud bank, they had changed course, leaving the cruiser behind.
It was a rough trip. The Lorelei's engine labored as she rolled in the waves. The decks stayed wet and slippery, and lines were left up both topside and along the corridors for handholds. It was the safest kind of weather, according to the men. Poor visibility for the federal frigates on the lookout for runners, and therefore good for making time, since they did not have to be constantly turning tail and running from the Yankees. It was not the best for comfort, however. Lorna did not feel truly seasick from the pitching, but neither did s
he feel at her best. She spent much of the time in the bunk, reading by the fitful light of the swinging lamps during the gray days when a light could be shone; staring at the ceiling, thinking, after dark.
She had for company in the cabin stacks of bonnet boxes. She had not paid them much attention that first night, but as the ship pitched, the lightweight boxes, made of thin wood covered with paper painted in floral scenes, had a tendency to slide back and forth across the floor, tumbling from their stacks, rolling about the cabin. The tissue-wrapped bonnets spilled out, shining in their rich satin and taffeta and lace, with trims of feathers and gilt cord and silk flowers. Lorna had picked them up, holding them in her hands for a moment before thrusting them carelessly back into their boxes. The more she saw of them, the more her anger with Ramon grew. What use were bonnets for fighting the Yankees or feeding hungry people? The extra space in the cabin could have been much better utilized for transporting cloth for uniforms and good leather boots, or cotton cards to remove the seeds from the cotton, so it could be turned into thread on the spinning wheels being brought from the attics all over the South-anything except bonnets to please the vanity of the few women who could still afford such luxury.
It was true that he was performing a great service by shipping the gunpowder so badly needed by Confederate forces, but his reason was purely monetary. What could be admirable about endangering his life, and that of his men, for gain? That flaw in his character troubled Lorna as she lay alone in the bunk, but when he stepped into the cabin, on those few occasions when he could leave his duties, and came toward her with his dark eyes alight with desire, she put aside her misgivings.
Toward the evening of the third day, the sky cleared. The rose-pink light of sunset lay across the water, turning it to an opalescent purple, on the horizon and giving a rose tinge to the ship's gray paint. It outlined a ship, small due to distance making headway on their right.
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