A delicate shiver worked through her. Her fingers trembled as she unknotted the laces of her bodice. Beneath the simple gown of navy cambric, she wore naught but a single petticoat with her smock and corset. When her bodice gaped wide to reveal the swell of her white breasts, thrust high and straining against the tight cage of her corset, Calyx’s breath hissed between his teeth.
Her own breath came short and fast as her gown slid to the worn floorboards. Swiftly she unhooked the whalebone husk of her farthingale and stepped out of her petticoat. Now she stood before him in corset and stockings, her smock of fine cambric so thin it was nearly transparent. She lowered her eyes demurely like the shy virgin he knew she wasn’t and dropped the pins in her coiffure one by one. At last her curtain of hair swirled, loose and heavy, around her shoulders.
Her heart pounded like a hammer against her lungs. The secret place between her thighs quivered with tiny spasms of anticipation.
When she tried to speak, her mouth was dry. She managed the merest whisper, barely audible over the muted hum of masculine conversation from the taproom below.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to unlace me.”
A husky groan escaped his lips.
“You’ll be the death of me, Jayne Boleyn. Por Dios, I’ll die a happy man.”
Firing into motion, he strode around the steaming tub, muscles lithe and rippling beneath his sodden garments. Modestly she gave him her back, enjoying their little game of maid and master. Never had she imagined a man would disport in her bed like a player on a theater stage, and entice her to play her own roles.
He made quick work of her stays and tossed her corset aside, leaving her barely clad in smock and stockings. His lips burned a path across her bare shoulder. Warm hands slid around her waist and closed intimately around her tingling breasts. At once her nipples tightened and peaked against his palms. He chuckled in her ear like a demon as he teased the taut buds.
“Did you dream of this, amante, while you played spy and savior for England? Did you burn for me to do this?” His wicked fingers pinched her nipples, bringing a gasp to her lips.
“Most assuredly.” Her hands slid up his muscled thighs and curved over the tight globes of his buttocks. Hot and hard, his manhood rose against her bottom. “And what of you, señor? Did you burn for me?”
“I suffered the torments of Hell, belleza,” he said roughly. Nimbly his fingers worked the sheer cambric over her body, until cool night air kissed her thighs above her garters. His low laugh rumbled in her ear.
“You’ve spent hours crouching on a rocky beach, waiting for the Spaniards to descend. Yet beneath that sedate gown, I find you clad in silk stockings and ribboned garters?”
“I am the Comtesse de Boulaine,” she murmured, languid with pleasure. “One must be a la mode.”
“I like you better naked and begging for me.” He tugged her smock higher, baring her hips and buttocks to his gaze. Color rose to her cheeks and she struggled for breath. “We must get you into your bath, my beauty.”
“I drew the bath for you,” she pointed out, fingers curling into his supple flanks. “We must get you into it.”
“You first.” Deftly he pulled the smock over her head and tossed it aside. Behind her, he sank to his knees, sea-roughened palms skimming the curves of her body, leaving trails of fire and yearning in his wake.
“Jayne, belleza, mi amante...” His warm breath washed over her skin as he nuzzled the tender hollow at the base of her spine, deposited tiny stinging nips on the soft flesh of her derriere. “How I’ve burned for you.”
He nudged her toward the hip-high basin. When she gripped it to steady herself, clouds of steam misting against her face, he bent her at the waist and nudged her ankles wide. The shocking pose spread her open to his gaze, an embarrassment to any proper lady. But he made her wanton, as he’d always done.
Instead of hiding her charms, she arched her spine and tilted her bottom up, stretching like a cat to invite his attentions.
When a groan scraped from his lungs, her lips curved. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched him tear off his ruined shirt and breeches. Her breath snared in her throat as firelight danced over the gilded planes of chest and shoulders, the sinewed column of his thighs, the rampant manhood jutting like a lance before him.
“No codpiece?” she murmured, one brow arching.
“They’re convenient at sea, but hopelessly passé in the fashionable world.” His eyes gleamed with dark promise. “A Frenchwoman like you should know that, condesa.”
He sank to his knees behind her. Callused hands slid between her thighs and coaxed her wide. Recognizing his intent, she felt her pulse quicken.
“Calyx,” she whispered, tongue tracing her dry lips.
His tongue swept the hot, pulsing flesh of her quim, already wet and aching for his touch. Ripples of exquisite pleasure quivered through her. Squeezing her eyes closed, she turned her face into her shoulder and struggled to contain a cry.
She was on fire for him, aroused beyond bearing by the wanton display of her own body, the utter submission his dominance demanded. As his wicked tongue circled her pleasure pearl, around and around the swollen nubbin, the sweet ache of yearning throbbed and built. The dew of passion coated her channel. When he eased a finger inside, her flesh convulsed around him. A small cry escaped her lips.
“That’s it, belleza,” he murmured against her flesh, the slide of his lips against her nubbin nearly sending her over the edge. “I want you moaning for me. I want every man in this tavern and this village and this whole bloody isle to know you belong to me.”
Shocked and titillated, she gasped, “It’s—indecent—Body of God, Calyx!”
When he slid a second finger inside her pulsing channel, widening her, the first powerful spasms of climax raced toward her. Desperately she fought for decorum, to keep her breathless cries from the common room below, even as she rocked her hips helplessly against the friction, wanting more, needing more of this ruthless consummation.
When a third finger joined the others, the first climax tossed her high. She flung back her head and cried out for him, just as he’d demanded—a woman in a common tavern, bent over naked with legs spread and breasts bobbing as she thrust without shame into a man’s touch.
The tremors of pleasure were still shuddering through her when he gripped her hips and thrust into her. His hoarse groan made her thrill with feminine satisfaction. His cock plunged deep, prolonging the paroxysms of her climax. The slap of flesh on flesh filled the air as he gasped endearments in Spanish.
She clutched the basin, scented steam rising from the water, and met his thrusts with her own wild passion, glorying in his strength and his savagery and his sensual possession. God save her, she would never have enough of him—
“Díme que me amas,” he gasped in her ear.
Tell me you love me.
The vortex of passion swirling around them seemed to slow, as though the world itself paused in its blind hurtling through the heavens. It was the last of her secrets, the one that made her the most vulnerable.
Yet she’d promised him honesty, had she not? She’d promised him no more secrets. Even if their fleeting liaison ended tomorrow, if the Spanish broke through and England drowned in blood and fire, even if this was no more than another skirmish in the war of passion between them, she wanted him to know.
“Te amo,” she whispered, feeling her chest split wide to reveal her beating heart. I love you. “What else do you imagine this could be? You are an impossible rogue and a tyrant. But I love you.”
His body tightened against hers. A tremor swept through him as his arms closed around her. He clung to her like a drowning man, as though only she could save him, while the avalanche of climax roared through them.
* * *
“I suppose you realize,” Jayne asked drowsily, awash in languid pleasure after that soul-shattering climax, “that I did not, in fact, sabotage the Arcángel?”
“Si, querida.” Immersed t
o the chest in soapy water, Calyx snugged her intimately back against him. The powerful muscles in his arms, wet and shimmering, flexed as they tightened around her. “I owe you an apology for that. Even at the time, it didn’t feel right. When Nicanor said you’d betrayed me, I lost my mind. Later, when you spoke of your captive son, I understood a great deal. Even if you had betrayed me, how could I blame you?”
“Aye,” she sighed. “My son. Cousin Elizabeth has grudgingly allowed me back on English soil, but I’m expressly forbidden to contact Ryder or his guardian Dudley.”
“Those orders won’t stand,” he said confidently. “I’ll make your reunion a condition of my aid.”
Jayne rested her head against his damp shoulder and smiled sadly. He did not know her royal cousin if he believed he could compel Elizabeth Tudor to do anything, especially when Robert Dudley was involved. Nor would she allow Calyx to spoil his chance for a good life in England on her behalf.
Not even if he’d said naught to her declaration of love. Had it been merely another game, one more way to demand her submission?
She opted to change the subject.
“Tell me how your primero plans to deal with Nicanor.”
“The same way Nicanor dealt with me.” He bent to press a kiss against her temple. “Sabotage.”
“Indeed?” She turned to study his pagan profile, bold as a Roman Caesar’s against the flickering fire.
“My master gunners and artilleros will arrange a small surprise for Señor Nicanor.” His lip curled in a cold smile. “An explosion in the powder room that will seemingly cripple the ship. Nicanor and his tercio will disperse to the other galleons, and Mordred will go with them. He won’t wish to risk being trapped on a crippled ship while the Hagas come through at Dunkirk.”
“Once your passengers have disembarked and the fleet has sailed,” she murmured, “your crew will put about, lower her Spanish colors and drop anchor in an English harbor. Can it truly be so simple?”
“It’s not simple at all,” he said darkly. A tangible eddy of tension rippled through his body. “A hundred things can still go wrong. Don Alonso will never abandon the only English race-built galleon in the Spanish fleet. He’ll have to leave a ship behind, possibly more than one, to guard her from your English pirates—”
A fist hammered against the closed door.
“Lady Boleyn?” a gruff voice called. “Are you within?”
In a single fluid motion, Calyx uncoiled to his feet and reached for his saber.
“I don’t believe you’ll need that.” Jayne raised her voice. “I am afraid I’m indisposed at present, Lord Thomas. Can you return shortly?”
“You’ll want to hear this, my lady.” The Lord Sheriff’s voice was tight with suppressed excitement. “A Spanish galleon has just sailed into harbor, towing a crippled galleass in her wake. She has an angel blowing a trumpet on her figurehead—I’ve seen her myself. In all likelihood, my nephew is aboard.”
“It seems,” Jayne murmured to Calyx as she reached for her gown, “your uncle Thomas is in for a minor surprise.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Three days later
Off the coast of Calais
Jayne stood alone in the bow of the Arcángel, one hand gripping the wooden archangel that spread his gilded wings over the ink-black sea, as they bobbed among the cobbled-together collection of ships, barks and merchantmen that comprised the English fleet. Barely an English mile away, bunched tight in its defensive crescent, the vast array of Spanish galleons with their floating turrets and castles wallowed at anchor outside the harbor of Calais.
Somewhere beyond the distant lights of the French city, the Duke of Parma waited to board with his Spanish mercenaries. Somewhere in the night, she sensed, the misty Veil swirled and pulsed with magick. One word from Mordred when he reached those shores would bring the Hagas through.
Why the two forces had not yet joined was a matter that perplexed the English command. Calyx had advanced one explanation earlier that day during their council with the seadogs, as ships strained at their anchors in the powerful currents of the narrow strait.
“It’s a defecto—a flaw in the Spanish plan,” Calyx said curtly, his liquid Spanish accent sliding through the crisp English voices of the Queen’s officers. “From the start, Philip’s strategy has hinged on constant communication between Parma in the Netherlands and Don Alonso at sea. Either Parma never received his missives—in which case he has no idea his transport has arrived—or there’s some problem on land that’s blocked him from rowing out to meet them.”
Seated among the intelligencers at the crowded table, Jayne had studied the wary faces of England’s weathered seadogs. Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Martin Frobisher—legendary explorers and fighters all. Clearly, they did not trust this renegade Spaniard.
The Lord High Admiral, Charles Howard—another Tudor kinsman and Jayne’s distant cousin—stroked his snowy beard. “If their plan hinges on steady contact, why would that link be allowed to fail?”
Calyx shrugged his big shoulders. Impatience glittered in his dark eyes, but he kept his voice level. “Señor, you know as well as I what poor fortune can befall a lone messenger at sea. Between a plague of pirates, the civil war in France and the worst storms the Bay of Biscay has seen in decades, anything can happen.”
Sir Francis Drake, captain of the Revenge, leaned forward and spoke with his Devon burr. “Ye didn’t share yer famous luck with yer compadres, did ye, lad? How were Spain’s stars and planets, then?”
The man the Spaniards called El Draque clearly shared Calyx’s fascination with astrological matters. Jayne watched the faces around them shift between sharp interest and superstitious dread. Among the stouthearted English seamen, the Scourge of the Spanish Main was notorious for more than his maritime exploits.
Winning their trust would be no small matter.
“I cast their stars before we sailed,” Calyx said calmly. “Scarcely have I seen more ill omens in a horoscope. Mercury’s been Retrograde since we left Corunna. It’s a periodic and temporary astrological phenomenon by which a planet appears to be moving backward in its course compared to our place in the heavens. A Retrograde Mercury signals misinformation, crossed signals and confusion. You can turn that to your advantage.”
“Astrological bibble-babble!” Grizzled Sir Martin Frobisher, captain of the Triumph, thumped a broad fist among the clutter of maps and charts. “Why the Devil should we trust you, man, to tell us what we must do? You’re present by the Queen’s command, but half the men at this table have crossed swords with you and your pirates.”
An angry mutter rose around the table. The bluff old salt had merely voiced what they were all thinking. Jayne’s stomach knotted with nerves. Beneath the table, she gripped her brother’s arm.
Kin Carey sat beside her, quill poised over parchment, scribbling notes for the absent Walsingham. Preoccupied, he patted her hand, blue eyes moving alertly around the table.
Calyx leaned back and crossed brawny arms across his chest. In the swaying light of the whale-oil lantern, the hard lines of his face could have been carved from stone. He looked stern and unyielding as Michael must have done when the Angel of War cast the rebel Lucifer from Heaven.
To her, his divine origins had always been obvious. He was larger than life. He was Nephilim. He was the secret son of an Archangel, and he shared her bed. A delicate tremor slid over her skin, sexual fascination mixed with love and awe.
“For weeks,” he said flatly, “Don Alonso has striven to reach the Duke of Parma. Our wayward Mercury resumed its accustomed course six hours ago. The energy of the heavens is shifting. Any astrologer worth his salt will tell you the odds of a rendezvous between the two have markedly shifted in Spanish favor. Once Parma’s men are aboard those galleons, they’ll make Dover in six hours with the right wind.
“Señors, you must act tonight.”
An unspoken sense of foreboding rippled through the assembly. While they hovered
uncertainly around the flanks of that deadly Spanish crescent, their time was running out.
“Look,” Calyx said into the silence, “you’re all sailing men. You know these shores as well as I. The currents are strong, the bottom too soft to hold an anchor for long, and the moon is full tomorrow. For our purpose, the tides will never be better. If we can make those ships slip their anchors and harry them hard from the west, the flood tide alone may well be enough to ground their fleet in the shallows. There you can pick them off one by one.”
“A gutsy plan—but a gamble, aye?” Sir Francis Drake rapped battered knuckles against the map. “Ye’re gambling ye’ll have the wind from the southwest. If it blows against us, they’ll use sail to come about. Ye can read the stars, Zamorra, I’ll grant ye that. But can ye command the wind?”
Across the table, Calyx’s gaze shifted to Jayne. His brows hoisted.
She was hardly prepared to rise and announce her Faerie magick to this salt-of-the-earth assembly. But she held his dark gaze and smiled.
“I have a presentiment, señors,” he said softly, “that the wind will favor us. The question is, can we muster enough firepower to slip their anchors? They outnumber and outgun us. We’ll have to surprise them, cause chaos and scatter their defenses.”
A commotion near the door sent a wave of heads turning as a broad-shouldered, tawny-haired figure muscled through the crowd. A flash of recognition widened her eyes as Lord Beltran Nemesto shouldered to the table. She hadn’t seen Beltran since Corunna. She’d believed him to be in France, with Linnet and Zamiel, negotiating with la Fée.
God’s Breath, if la Fée had agreed to help, there would never be a better time.
She eagerly searched the clustered ranks behind him, but glimpsed no sign of the Fair Folk’s elegant ice-sharp beauty. Judging by his sand-scuffed jerkin, rumpled hair and the tawny stubble sprouting from jaw, Beltran had been hard pressed.
Her stomach sank to her shoes. If their mission to la Fée had failed, how would they ever keep the Hagas from coming through?
Beltran nodded curtly at the Lord High Admiral. Lamplight flashed on the cross-hilted broadsword jutting over his shoulder and gleamed on his breastplate. Her cousin blinked, clearly startled, but recognition flickered in his lined features.
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