But she and he weren’t strangers. Jeopard conceded silently. He doubted they’d ever been strangers, not even in the first moments when she stood below his bow as he docked the yacht, gazing up at him with amused disgust because of his tacky come-ons.
It was getting too easy to overlook every insinuation in the royal report from the Duke of Kara. What was the duke’s idea of promiscuous, anyway? A few lovers—hell. Jeopard thought, he’d had more than a few lovers himself, starting in the tenth grade with a college girl.
Jeopard didn’t buy the idea that women ought to be less active than men; he’d known too many strong, intelligent women with the highest moral standards who also, incidentally, loved sex. Two years ago such a woman had died to save his life during an assignment in East Germany.
Jeopard was distracted from his brooding when a redheaded young man with the shoulders of a body builder and the tan of a George Hamilton hopped off a sailboat and swaggered his way down the dock toward them, grinning at Tess. He wore nothing but a bikini-cut piece of blue material masquerading as a decent swimsuit.
Tess smiled at him. “Good afternoon, Timothy.”
“Hiya, gorgeous.”
“Timothy, this is Jeopard Surprise. He’s got the yacht next to me. Jeopard, this is Timothy Taylor. He works for the marina. I hire him to keep the Lady’s rigging shipshape.”
Timothy shook Jeopard’s hand, then winked at Tess and strolled on past.
“He needs to check his own rigging,” Jeopard remarked. “He’s a sail or two short. You ought to tell him that the kind of swimsuit he’s wearing makes people wonder if he’s trolling for boyfriends.” “
“Jeopard!” She looked at him in astonishment. “You don’t have to worry about Timothy. He’s extremely heterosexual.”
He gazed down at her with a carefully neutral expression while disgust and anger grew inside him. He wasn’t going to ask how she knew so much about the kid’s sex life.
Hell, he could stand her having a lot of lovers, but he couldn’t stand the realization that she might have several at once, and that he was only that evening’s entertainment.
Suddenly he was furious at Tess, furious that he’d met his Waterloo in a pair of silver-blue eyes set in a face that belonged in a painter’s portrait of a Cherokee princess. She’d reduced him to making petty, mean, comments and competing for her attention.
For the first time he understood exactly how much she had fouled up his work, his concentration, and his dignity, because he hadn’t turned his emotions off.
Jeopard took a deep breath, focused on a cloud drifting over the sun, and cleared his conscience for what lay ahead.
TESS SAT IN Jeopard’s lap, one arm draped around his neck, her free hand steering the yacht, the salty ocean wind streaking her hair back and whipping tears from her eyes.
He curled his arm more tightly around her waist, took another swallow from a glass of iced tea, and whenever she looked at him, demonstrated a heart-stopping combination of blond hair, sexy sunglasses, and a perfect masculine smile.
She was sublimely happy.
Finally she bent her head close to his ear and told him. “We’ve gone far enough from the marina! We don’t want anyone to come tearing along the open sea and smash us!”
He nodded and cut the yacht’s engine. The yacht began to slow. Tess took her hand off the wheel and circled Jeopard’s neck with both arms. She was amazed that she could give him rational instructions about sailing.
The ocean made slapping sounds against the yacht, creating a provocative background of wet rhythms. Jeopard set his tea on a ledge by the control console and removed his sunglasses, then lifted his hand to her own sunglasses, huge lenses with tortoiseshell frames.
He carefully tugged them off her face, laid them beside his tea glass, then cupped her chin with his fingers.
“Well, here we are,” he said pleasantly, as if it were an ordinary thing.
Tess’s heart thudded roughly. “If you don’t drop your anchor it will be there we go,” she warned.
“Hmmm. Right.” He led her downstairs to the main deck, kissed her lightly on the mouth, then went about anchoring the yacht.
The sun was setting behind him, and the sky framed him in deep shades of gold and magenta. Sunlight made a halo around his hair and outlined his body. He was still wearing his polo shirt and khaki trousers, but the outline couldn’t have been more enticing had he been naked.
Tess watched him solemnly, her hands clasped behind her back, her knees weak. Privacy—that was what his suggestion to move the yacht had concerned. Neither of them had voiced such a thought, but it had lain between them, nonetheless. It wouldn’t have done to stay at the marina, where curious tourists sometimes climbed aboard the boats.
She felt a languid loosening between her thighs, and looked around with breathless amusement for a place to sit.
“I don’t know what kind of show I’m putting on, but I’m glad you like it,” he called.
Tess looked at him quickly, and realized that she was smiling.
“You drop anchor very well, Sundance.”
“You should see how I cook.”
“Is it a dramatic performance?”
“It’s been known to draw applause.”
Much like your other performances, I’ll bet, she thought rakishly. She wondered about his past women. Oddly enough, he didn’t act the part of a flirt, except with her. She didn’t get the impression that he went around bedàing just any woman who looked at him.
Good heavens, if he did that he’d have no time for eating or sleeping. Watching other women gape at Jeopard would have provoked her jealousy except that he never noticed their attention, much less returned it.
Her first impression about his vanity had been entirely wrong. He was the least vain person she’d ever known; she even sensed a certain embarrassment on his part, as if he wished he were more average-looking.
A grand no way to that, my boy, she told him mentally.
He came toward her, pulling his blue polo shirt off as he did. He tossed it on the deck and spread his arms wide, eyes gleaming with invitation, the sunset making him look like an earthbound angel walking out of heaven. Her heart in her throat, Tess ran to him, and he put his arms around her snugly.
Tess looked up at him with devotion. His eyes became very serious, and he lifted her against him slightly, so that she stood on tiptoe.
“I think you wouldn’t mind falling in love with me, Tess.” He touched his lips to the tip of her nose and whispered hoarsely, “Even though we don’t know each other very well. Tell me you’re falling in love with me.”
She gasped softly at his desire for this new and very important intimacy. Tess curled her fingers into his chest hair and bent her forehead to his shoulder while she took deep, shuddering breaths.
Finally she tilted her head back and looked at him. “I am. I don’t care if we’ve just met. I’ve never felt anything like this before.”
“Good.” Again, he gave her a perfect, tender smile. “Not even for your husband?”
Tears rose in her eyes. Jeopard seemed to want to extract a commitment out of her in the most painful way possible. But then, she reasoned, it was only because it meant so much to him.
“I did love Royce,” she murmured. “We had a beautiful relationship. But it was a mentor-student relationship in some ways—there was no way we could have a typical romance, not with the difference in our ages.”
“And he was sick. Physically, he—”
“Jeopard.” She grasped his shoulders firmly and looked up at him with pain shimmering in her eyes. “I know that you can do things for me that my husband was too ill to do very well. But I can’t tell you that I didn’t love or desire him, or that I wasn’t happy with him.”
“Sssh.” He kissed her slowly, deepened the kiss with the erotic exploration of his tongue, then drew back and looked at her. “Say it again for me, Tess. That you’re falling in love with me.”
She swayed in his
embrace, amazed at what had happened to her in the course of two days. “I’m falling in love with you,” she whispered.
“There. That came to you as if you said it all the time, see?” He hugged her, nibbled her ear, and slid his hands down her colorful tank top to her white slacks.
He cupped her hips and rubbed slowly. Tess groaned against his bare shoulder and licked his skin with the tip of her tongue. He was delicious, tasting of ocean wind and masculine musk combined with a fading trace of good cologne.
“Does love mean so much to you?” She smiled into his skin.
“Yes.” He curved his hands over her waist and drew them up and down her sides, touching her breasts with his thumbs each time. “I want to know everything about you. About your work, your past, about Royce. I want you to trust me and tell me everything.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” she answered, and put her arms tightly around his neck. “I feel that way about you too. Do you think you’re falling in love with me, then?” She laughed sheepishly. “I’m just hinting for you to say so.”
His hands tightened on her sides, his grip almost painful. “Oh, yes,” he whispered. “I’ve been falling for you.”
Tess looked up at him and lost what remained of her defenses. “I’ve wanted someone to share with for so long. I’ve been so lonely.”
“Lonely?” He looked a little troubled. “Tess, I don’t believe in sexual martyrdom. Please tell me you haven’t been celibate since Royce died.”
“Oh, of course not,” she blurted out. Tess burned with embarrassment. She didn’t want to appear foolish in Jeopard’s worldly eyes. She managed a sly, teasing look and added, “Now, really, Mr. Surprise. Do I look that prim?”
He laughed, and for a moment she thought she heard a distressing undertone of sarcasm in it. But then he turned one of his mind-boggling smiles on her and she forgot everything except that she was gloriously happy.
“Are you hungry?” she whispered.
His blue eyes glittered with intensity. “The standard reply to that has to be, ‘Not for food.’ ”
“I see.” Her knees would turn to Swedish jelly any second now. She’d best take them below, where they could rest on Jeopard’s bed. “Then we’ll eat dinner later.”
They went to his cabin, holding each other so close that their feet kept colliding and they nearly stumbled. “I’m glad we’re just going to make love,” he teased in a gruff voice. “If we were about to dance, I’d be worried.”
So he thought of it as making love. Tess was certain that he could hear her purring.
He opened his cabin door, and she stepped into the small, sumptuously furnished room. He closed the door behind them with a soft click. Tess stood in the shadowy room, her heart racing, listening to him move toward a tiny brass wall lamp.
There was another click, and gentle light turned the cabin into a cosy haven. “Ah, I remember it well,” she said, pointing toward the gold-framed mirror on a door at one end of the cabin.
Jeopard stepped up close behind her and grasped her shoulders, pressing himself to her from shoulder to hips. His breath was hot against her neck. “Turnabout is fair play. I’d like to be the audience this time.”
She barely recognized her own voice. “That can be arranged.”
Tess walked away from him, stopped in front of the mirror, and smiled back over her shoulder. He stood very still, and she knew his gaze was riveted to her. Tess rebuked herself for the twinge of boarding-school-induced modesty that held her back for a second.
Royce had seen her naked, of course, but she’d never stripped for him.
“You’re beautiful,” Jeopard said softly, as if encouraging her.
She relaxed then. Stripping was no more than shedding a few bothersome clothes. Tess removed her watch and laid it on a small table by the door. She caught her tank top with both hands and raised it over her head, then dropped it with a motion of one jaunty, gracefully curved arm.
He chuckled happily. “You’ve done this before.”
Oh, every day, she thought wryly.
Tess ran her palms over the front of her delicate white bra. The chain bearing the antler amulet hung between her breasts; she cupped the amulet lovingly in her hand.
Her great-great-grandparents, Katlanicha Blue Song and Justis Gallatin, had found each other across two different worlds. Her great-grandfather, Silas Gallatin, had loved Genevieve Walking Light, the madam, despite her troubled past.
Tess didn’t know anything about the relationship between their son and his wife—her grandparents—but she did know that her father had loved her mother. It was obvious by the reverent and frequent way he had mentioned her over the years.
She came from a series of great loves, she thought with awe. And now she hoped she had found her own.
She took off the necklace and carefully placed it beside her watch. Then she latched her fingers into the front clasp of her bra and snapped it open. Tess raised her eyes and looked into the mirror, seeing her own flushed skin and gleaming eyes first, then Jeopard’s face.
The coldness in it startled her so much that her hands rose to her mouth in alarm. He looked just as he had the other day when he was chasing an unknown intruder on his boat. He looked incapable of emotion.
“What is it?” she murmured. “What’s wrong? Do I remind you of someone?”
He blinked in shock. Suddenly his expression was alive again. “My Lord, Tess, did I scare you?”
“Yes.”
She cupped her hands over her exposed breasts and turned to face him. He came quickly to her and took her in his arms, cursing himself viciously under his breath.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. He shook his head. “I don’t blame you for being afraid of that face, Tess. But I swear it doesn’t mean anything. It’s an old habit from my military training. A bad habit. Don’t let it unnerve you.”
She chuckled ruefully, but felt herself relaxing because of his sincerity. “If all our troops could be trained to look at the enemy that way, we wouldn’t need any other weapons.”
He stroked her dark hair gently. “You’re not my enemy, Tess.”
“For a second, there, I wasn’t sure.”
His voice was practically an aphrodisiac. “Honey, that’s the last way I’d ever feel about you.”
Honey. With a low moan, Tess leaned against his chest. She laughed. “You might be descended from some Wild West Indian fighter. Those Indian-fighting genes could be hard to ignore.”
“No, I’m descended from a Frenchman, remember? In fact, a French pirate who retired to Florida about 1835. He may have fought a few Seminole Indians, though, I admit.”
“I forgive him,” she said solemnly. “I’m sure the Cherokees fought a few Frenchmen along the way.”
Jeopard’s laugh was cut short when she raised her mouth to his and kissed him intimately. He shuddered, picked her up, and carried her to his bed.
Tess was overwhelmed by the quickness with which he undressed her and himself.
“Tess,” he whispered, drawing the backs of his fingers over her full, firm breasts. “You’re fantastic.”
Whimpering softly at his words, she raised a hand to stroke his chest. He intercepted it, kissed the palm, then pressed it down beside her on the bed.
“My treat,” he murmured hoarsely. “Lie still and let me touch you.”
She ached to run her hands over his body, but she was lost in such a daze of emotion and desire that she did as he told her.
He made it worth her while.
His expert touch mesmerized her. He squeezed her breasts rhythmically, raising the nipples so that his incredible mouth could do things to them that made her back arch. He smoothed his hand up and down her stomach, teasing her by almost but not quite reaching the apex of her thighs.
When she was panting and a fine mist of dusky pink colored her skin, he finally slid his fingers into the dark hair between her legs.
“You fit my hand perfectly,” he murmured into her ear, then bent his head to
nibble her neck.
The sound she made was almost a wail of pleasure. Tess grasped his forearm and stroked the corded muscles quickly, lightly, her touch conveying gratitude for the unforgettable sensations he gave her.
“Sssh, lie still now,” he reminded her. He put her hand back on the bed.
“But I want to touch you so much,” she murmured plaintively. Tess raised her head and tried to catch his mouth in a kiss.
He drew back, smiling tightly. She read the control in every line of his face. Oh, he was so dear, to give her pleasure this way when she felt the throbbing, hard evidence of his own need against her thigh.
“Now, honey, give me a chance,” he said in a low, teasing tone. “I’m not an overanxious kid. I know the value of holding back.”
Tess smiled quizzically at his odd words, then shut her eyes and sighed, the sound ragged. “Do with me what you want,” she said in an airy, dramatic voice. “I’m yours.”
He put his mouth against her quivering stomach and sucked for a moment. As she rose under him, crying out with delight, he murmured, “Good.” He moved his magnificently tormenting mouth to another spot. “Mine.”
As he placed slow, sucking kisses up her torso he reached for a shelf above the bed and retrieved something.
Tess made a small sound of protest when he stopped kissing her and edged away from her. He held up a small package that she recognized immediately.
He winked at her. “You won’t have to worry about anything when you’re with me. I believe in responsibility.”
She reached out. Her voice was hoarse with desire. “Please. Let me. Just let me do that much for you.”
He hesitated, and she watched with dismay as his jaw tightened. “Jeopard? Do you not want me to touch you?”
Quickly his expression softened. “Honey, of course I do.” He laughed low in his throat, but it was a strained sound.
Tess propped herself on one elbow. “What is it?” she said wistfully. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head in mild rebuke. “This couldn’t be the first time you’ve driven a man too close to the edge too soon.”
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