Mistress by Magick

by Laura Navarre

  She’d thought herself past this madness, the sweet delirium of desire he roused in her so easily. But her heart had known one stolen night in his arms could never be enough. She opened to the hungry demand of his kiss, arms twining around his neck as his quicksilver tongue plundered and conquered.

  Her body unfurled like a flower under the elemental sun and storm of passion. His hands swept down her spine and closed around her derriere as though he owned her. When his codpiece nudged her belly, molten heat kindled between her thighs.

  Desperately she struggled to withstand this sensual onslaught. Last night she’d needed to distract him. Or so she’d told herself to justify her surrender. Tonight it would earn her, what, an hour’s respite from the interrogation he was determined to extract? Another night’s respite at best?

  God in Heaven, another night with him.

  “Wait,” she mumbled into the drugging warmth of his kisses. “Calyx, this is—ill-advised.”

  “It’s bloody lunacy.” Bending her back over the strong bulwark of his arm, he swept his tongue down her throat, leaving a trail of liquid heat in his wake. “You think I don’t know you’re either a spy or a saboteur, quite possibly both?”

  And there it was—all her deceptions laid bare.

  “I—I am not—”

  But her half-formed tactics dissolved when he nuzzled the upper slopes of her breasts, bare above the too-snug bodice.

  “You are,” he said huskily, “the most remarkable woman. Take this off.”

  Her heart beat wildly beneath his palm as he caressed the swell of her breast. Her nipple tightened against the thin holland.

  She struggled to speak. “Take...off...?”

  “The gown.” His voice smoked. His thumb circled the hard bud of her nipple. Inside her Moroccan slippers, her toes curled. “I want you naked.”

  A tidal wave of desire shuddered through her. She gripped his shirt in both fists and held on for dear life.

  Surely this was a spectacularly bad idea. She opened her mouth to say so.

  Instead she said, “I shall want you to take off more than your codpiece this time, capitán. I’m not a doxy you can hire for sixpence.”

  His arm tightened around her waist, sending another frisson through her breathless body.

  “You think I can’t satisfy you?” His voice was silken, consonants liquid with Spanish heat. One finger eased beneath her snug neckline to stroke her tender skin, raising a whimper to her lips. “Fair warning, Lady Jayne. I want to see your gorgeous breasts naked in my hands. Take off this blasted gown or I’ll take it off you myself.”

  He wanted her to strip for him like a courtesan. The shocking notion turned her knees to water. If she didn’t stand her ground, he’d have her backed against the wall in a twinkling.

  Somehow she managed to wiggle free from his arms. His dark eyes seared her as they slid over her, pale blond hair falling over his brow, breath rasping from his lips—as aroused as she.

  The knowledge emboldened her. She toyed with the knotted laces that strained over her bosom.

  “Do you want to see me?” she said throatily, hardly knowing where the words came from. “Do you want to see my breasts in my hands?”

  A hoarse chuckle gusted out. “If you’re offering, I won’t stop you. It’s never wise to refuse a lady.”

  “I shall show you that and more.” Deliberately she provoked him, the daring words rising from a place she hadn’t known she possessed. She unraveled the knot at her bodice. “But I intend to see you naked as well. I like to know what I am getting into. To look before I leap.”

  “You have no idea what you’re getting into,” he countered, low and rough. “And if you wanted to exercise caution, you should never have boarded my bloody ship.”

  No doubt.

  She arched a coy brow and drew one lace slowly through the eyelet. “You will not oblige me?”

  “Oh, I’ll oblige you, Jayne Boleyn. I want you to know precisely what you’re getting.”

  With a suddenness that made her gasp, he peeled the shirt over his head and tossed it aside. The rising moon streamed through the porthole to gild a body that rippled with masculine grace. The shocking bulk of his shoulders flowed seamlessly to the hard bulge of biceps and flat planes of pectoral muscle, nipples ruddy as wine against satin skin. A supple column of sinew snaked down his abdomen to plunge beneath his breeches.

  As he unbuckled his sword-belt, he moved like a racehorse, crackling with contained energy.

  God’s Eyes, she thought dizzily. He is magnificent.

  Jayne realized she was holding her breath. Her head swirled as her breath escaped in a quivering rush.

  “You’re staring, mi amante,” he rumbled. Tremors skittered down her spine. “And you’re still laced tight.”

  Belatedly recalling her own part in this devil’s bargain, she fumbled with trembling fingers to loosen her laces. Her borrowed gown opened down the front, breasts tumbling free above the satin-and-whalebone cage of her corset.

  “Si,” he rasped, lids hooding the dark smolder of his gaze. “Now do what you promised. Touch yourself.”

  A strange fever bubbled through her blood. Her skin seemed to smoke as she cupped her bare breasts, nipples peaking beneath his heated gaze, and circled the tingling crests. Her breath quickened as the slow pulse of passion throbbed between her thighs.

  “Is this enough for you?” she breathed.

  “Never.” His sword-belt hit the floor with a thud. “Tease them for me, Jayne. Show me how you like to be touched.”

  The breath shuddered from her lungs as she brushed the aching peaks, pinched them, toyed with the sensitive nubs until slick heat coated the soft folds between her legs.

  “Cristo,” he groaned. “I can smell you. Show me.”

  Her cheeks burned and her eyes lowered, no longer able to maintain the searing contact. She felt helpless to resist him, swept along by this strange compulsion to surrender everything, all her best-kept secrets, to cast aside ten years of rigid restraint and behave like the perfect wanton he’d made her.

  Her hands slipped beneath the weight of skirt and petticoat to unhook the farthingale that held the entire structure aloft. The heavy layers slithered to the floor, leaving her clad only in corset and stockings gartered at the thighs. Somehow, that seemed even wickeder than utter nudity. The garments framed her tingling breasts and Venus mound in a manner that would be unbearable if she weren’t so frankly aroused.

  “I do believe ’tis your turn,” she murmured.

  The breath caught in her throat as he peeled out of his breeches, with a sailor’s unconcern for his impact on a lady’s delicate senses.

  Magnificent.

  Again the word floated through her mind. Shyly she gazed at the turgid length jutting between his sinewed thighs. There could be no doubt he wanted her.

  She felt a different woman altogether, a bold and naughty vixen, who spoke in a seductive whisper. “Why don’t you show me how you like to be touched?”

  He uttered a sound that mingled laughter and despair. “You’ll be the death of me. But what a way to go!”

  His voice lowered an octave.

  “I’ll show you as much as you show me. Lie back on the bed, belleza.”

  Her blood heated to steam, because she knew exactly what he wanted. Like a woman in a dream, she backed away until her thighs brushed the bunk, then sank into the decadent softness of fur—the dappled gold of leopard, the midnight velvet of sable, the black-and-tawny richness of tiger.

  Closing her eyes, she breathed in the dark spice of his body. Then she drew up her legs and let her knees fall wide, showing him every inch of the slick, hot valley he was so determined to see. He was crooning in Spanish, but her brain was too fevered to bother with language. Instead she dipped one finger into the pool of moisture at her core and spread it along her flushed and swollen folds in a languid sweep.

  The pulse of pleasure rippled through her. She could barely voice the words.
/>   “Have you seen enough?”

  “Never.” He sounded as though he were strangling. She lifted heavy lids to find him looming over the bed, face smoldering, his jutting length gripped in one big hand.

  Jayne moaned and swept her finger across her throbbing pearl. She knew precisely how to do it, thanks to those lonely nights in her bed while Antoine wheezed in the next room. God’s mercy, she was already so aroused, so close! She dug her heels into the furs and rocked her hips shamelessly against her stroking finger.

  His chiseled face tightened as though the sight of her damaged him in some essential way. His hand tightened around his manhood, doing what he’d promised. She watched greedily, hungry for any insight into what gave him pleasure.

  He was an exotic animal from a distant land, wild and dangerous. She could have watched him pleasure himself all night. But neither of them possessed the patience for that.

  As her climax reared over her, so close yet tantalizingly out of reach, he stepped between her spread thighs and captured her hand. She whimpered her frustration.

  “Wait for me, belleza,” he rasped.

  Her hand slid along the muscled column of his thigh. “Pray do not make me wait too long.”

  His skin was hot silk, stretched tight over taut sinew. For a fighting man, he was marvelously perfect, with none of the scars or ravages of violence she would expect. He must be a fast healer.

  I’m a freak. Harsh with self-loathing, his words echoed through her brain. My mother believed angels roamed the earth and spoke to her.

  Moonlight flashed on the heavy silver key with its Hebrew sigils against his chest. The foreign symbols floated in the heated darkness.

  Filled with a tingling restlessness, still aroused beyond bearing, she banished the half-formed theories swirling through her mind. His hand had fallen away when she touched him, leaving his shaft violently erect. A pearl of moisture gleamed at the tip—a lure no red-blooded woman could resist.

  She’d never touched a man this way before. With Dudley, God knew, the thought had never crossed her virgin mind. And her staunchly Catholic husband would hardly have been receptive. Now, here, with Calyx, there was nothing she wanted more.

  Her fingers glided along his pulsing length. His shaft jerked beneath her touch.

  “Madre de Dios, mi amante.” He shuddered and closed his eyes, brow furrowed like a man in agony.

  My love. Nothing more than a careless endearment. Why did her heart contract with such sweet, poignant pain?

  Breath suspended, she explored him, from the sensitive knob that wept with pleasure at her touch to the heavy sac beneath, skin fragile as tissue, swollen and pulsing and potent. When her fingers tightened around the rigid column and stroked, he arched into her hand, face tilted upward as though he heard voices from Heaven.

  Body of God, she wondered dimly. Can I make him—?

  “No, belleza.” His hand closed over hers. “We finish this journey together, or not at all.”

  She wondered about the greater journey they’d embarked upon, beyond a night’s fleeting pleasure in his fur-piled bed. But there was no point thinking about that. They were captor and captive, Spanish and English, ruthless pirate and reluctant spy. There could be no shared journey for the two of them.

  There was only tonight. Then they were enemies once more.

  Again her heart contracted with a queer pang of longing.

  “Together, then,” she murmured, her throat aching. She stretched her arms over her head, fingers curling into the rich pelts, and gazed up at him.

  Dark and smoking with passion, his eyes devoured her. He crawled onto the bed and crouched over her like the hunter he was, hot lips and callused hands staking his claim inch by heated inch. Tendrils of fire licked over her quivering form, his teeth grazing her nipples, waves of pleasure lapping at her core. She was drowning in an ocean of pleasure, her breathless moans mingling with the Spanish endearments he breathed against her skin.

  When she reached for him, he pinned her wrists overhead and gazed down at her. His straining shaft nudged her wet core. Holding his gaze, she twined her legs around his hips and pulled him toward her in brazen invitation.

  “Jayne, tell me truly,” he said, low and intense. “Do you want this?”

  “Is that not obvious?” she gasped, slick flesh sliding against potent heat.

  Jaw knotting, he shook his head. “I mean all of it. All of me. Because the two of us, like this? It’s going to get complicated.”

  “Tomorrow will be complicated.” Shameless as any courtesan, she arched into him and banished the stubborn voice of caution. “Tonight seems very simple.”

  “Simple?” Teeth clenched with the effort at restraint, he pushed out a laugh. “We’re sailing into the storm, amante. Nothing about the days to come is going to be simple. Except—perhaps—this.”

  He sheathed his length in her slick channel, wringing a cry from both of them. His length slid home as though she’d been fashioned just for him. Desire spiraled through her. She was a cork spinning in a millrace, tide rising swiftly beneath her, sweeping her toward the vortex. She tightened her legs around him and matched his driving rhythm. Each thrust lit starbursts of pleasure behind her closed lids.

  At the last moment, she pried her lids open and met his gaze. As the force of shared climax thundered toward them, the golden sparks in his irises brightened, lighting his eyes to amber, then topaz. Some trick of the light, surely, but it riveted her.

  Then his eyes ignited to molten gold—a light so bright it nearly blinded her. Dazed beyond reason, she closed her light-blasted eyes. Miniature suns danced against her closed lids as the sucking maelstrom of shared passion pulled her under.

  Chapter Ten

  Calyx sprawled in his bunk, the familiar cradle of the Arcángel rocking beneath him, and brooded. He crooked one arm beneath his head and wrapped the other possessively around Jayne’s naked shoulders.

  She was precisely the bloody problem that confounded him. The presence in his bed of a woman who was almost certainly an English spy and now a would-be saboteur as well, in addition to whatever else she was.

  He hadn’t found the evidence to convict her. At least nothing he could bring before his pious Catholic peers.

  For he was hardly about to confess he could see the magickal energies that swirled around her when she’d summoned the storm.

  He could do naught to draw attention to his own oddities, to deepen the unsavory rumors of the occult that shadowed him, those dangerous whispers he was always so careful to dismiss with a laugh. Least of all now, with the Armada launched at last and his secret rendezvous looming with Lord Thomas Knyvett.

  Even if he could condemn Jayne without damning himself in the process, he wasn’t certain he wanted to.

  And that was a bigger damn problem than all the rest.

  As he scowled at the ceiling, Jayne stirred in his arms. Beneath the warm furs, one satiny thigh brushed his. Despite their recent loveplay, he hardened instantly, more than ready for an encore.

  And why not? We’re already in the soup. Might as well enjoy it while we can.

  “You’re brooding, capitán,” she murmured in her throaty voice, languid with sensual fulfillment.

  “I think we can dispense with formal address,” he said wryly. “Don’t you?”

  She seemed to ponder this. “We have only just become acquainted, though somehow it seems as though I have known you for longer. I suppose ’tis not entirely out of bounds to use your Christian name, as I am supposed to be your mistress.”

  “Supposed to be?” A dart of annoyance shot through him. “In point of fact, if you haven’t noticed, you actually are my mistress.”

  A subtle tension rippled through her. She eased her thigh away from his.

  “In point of fact, Calyx, I am your captive. Clearly you knew I was still aboard when you launched this ship. What I would like to understand is why.”

  “I’m not the man calling the shots in this great and n
oble Enterprise. The admiral—the selfsame man I found panting into your neck—issued that order. I could hardly dally about for God knew how long while you laced into that charming gown and arranged your hair.”

  She slid away from him, but he was far from ready to let her escape. His arm tightened, holding her where she belonged.

  “You could have easily flagged down a wherry to row me ashore,” she said crisply. “As for my hair and laces, I would have gone naked rather than risk being trapped aboard this pirate ship with you and your scurrilous crew.”

  “That would have caused quite the sensation,” he drawled. “My crew would have loved it. I hate to belabor the obvious, but you’re far from reluctant in my bed. Unless it’s all part of your disguise, condesa, like your French antecedents and the deadly blade you conceal in your fan?”

  He didn’t believe that for a moment. Jayne Boleyn might be a mistress of disguise, but he knew when a woman enjoyed herself in his bed. Particularly when his cock was buried to the hilt inside her. Not even Lady Jayne was such a flawless liar as that.

  That was precisely why he’d sailed with this Jezebel still aboard. The way she’d come apart in his arms, along with too many unanswered questions. She intrigued him. That was the long and short of it. He itched to decipher the enigma of her.

  Now there’d be hell to pay.

  “I thought we’d decided to dispense with formal address,” she said lightly. “I shan’t pretend I was not a willing participant in what occurred tonight—”

  “And last night,” he pointed out. “And tomorrow night as well, if I have my way, which I customarily do.”

  Clearly uncomfortable with this line of thinking, she squirmed in his arms.

  “That seems far from prudent. You said it yourself, Calyx. My reputation to the contrary, I am not normally prone to indulge in casual dalliance. There are too many complications, particularly for a woman.”

  Here was another thorn in his rosebush. He’d made a lifelong habit of protecting his casual partners from any consequences nine months later. His bad blood and all that. The uncomfortable fact that he’d neglected—not once, but twice!—to take care of business with Jayne was another demon he was wrestling.