Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  Imogene flinched as he tore off his smallclothes so that he stood before her, a naked giant, lean and sinewy and purposeful. She slid back nervously in the bunk as he advanced upon her, striding across the room in the moonlight cast through the long bank of windows in the stern. Almost in one rippling gesture he flung his lithe muscular body across her on the bed, rose on one knee and seized the neck of her gown and her chemise in his powerful right hand and ripped both of them from her body in a single violent gesture.

  “Van Ryker—no!” she gasped, her blue eyes wide and dark. There was a lively interest in them now, he noted with satisfaction as he insolently cupped one of her bared breasts in his hands—brushing aside her swift attempts to cover them with her hands. He gave her a sardonic look and bent to kiss it, to nuzzle its rosy crest with his tongue.

  “No!” Imogene made an abortive effort to free herself from him but he dashed her hands aside and kept one arm around her in a steely grip.

  He was nuzzling her other breast now and a dangerous feeling of warmth was trickling through her, warming her cold flesh. She had the sensation of the approach of an impending storm. It was moving forward inexorably, a storm from which she could not escape—that would sweep all before it.

  Screaming, she knew, would do no good—this was a buccaneer’s ship, and this man whose hot breath fanned her face was its captain. Imogene closed her eyes and groaned.

  Van Ryker lifted his head and laughed. “You have forgotten how to be a woman,” he mocked her. “I will remind you!” He buried his head in her bosom and in response she clawed at his face. He seized her hands, held them negligently above her head and let his gaze rove meaningfully up and down her naked body. She flinched as he studied her naked breasts and he smiled down at her. “I deem it an honor to be marked by you,” he said pleasantly. “My crew will see the scratches on my face and be green with envy.”

  Imogene hastily balled her hands into fists. “I will not mark you so that you may brag about it!” she choked.

  “So there’s life in you after all?” He sounded surprised. “Faith, who’d have thought it?”

  “Van Ryker, release me! What good—”

  Abruptly his lips closed down on hers, silencing her angry protests. She stiffened as his mouth slid luxuriously over her own, as his tongue probed impudently, teasing, promising... Once again she felt that dangerous warmth rising inside her. A wayward pulse throbbed somewhere in her throat. Her head felt dizzy, swimming with strange disjointed thoughts, unbidden memories of the nights she had flirted with him aboard this very ship. She had thought she had forgotten her “damned pirate” who had deserted her the night of the Governor’s Ball and sailed away. Resolutely she had put him behind her, but now, now ...

  He lifted his head, allowing her to gulp in air. “What good, you say? I do not know about you, Imogene, but this will do me a world of good. It has been a long time since I’ve held a woman in my arms—I’ve been too busy ministering to the sick!” Even as he spoke his hands were busy, sliding along her shrinking form, causing her to gasp as he fingered a nipple here, caressed a hip there, intimately probing, teasing.

  “Damn you, damn you,” came her sobbing whisper. “May you burn in hell, van Ryker!”

  “Undoubtedly I will!” he said with aplomb. “But not just yet!” With an abruptness that made her catch her breath, he brought her hips up against his in a gesture so abandoned and sensuous that her very senses seemed to melt before the onslaught. Laughing now, he turned her about to suit his convenience. Imogene struggled—but her struggles were weakening. The summer storm that was raging just outside her consciousness was nearly upon her—the floodgates of summer rain were about to burst through.

  She fought it, but his bare leg rasped along her thigh and she trembled. His male hardness brushed that downy golden triangle at the base of her hips and in spite of herself her stomach muscles contracted violently. Van Ryker chuckled and hot shame coursed through her. In this hour of her grief, when already she had consigned herself to death, her rebellious body was betraying her by responding to the lust of this—this damned pirate!

  A sudden deft thrust and he had entered her and all her feelings converged into one white-hot passion—was it rage or pent-up desire? She was swept away by longings she thought she had forgotten, langorous, sensuous feelings that had to do with this tropical sea so far from any port. About her the storm burst suddenly and Imogene let it happen. With a sob, she forgot the world, forgot all the dreadful things that had happened and clung to van Ryker. Here was a man whose lean body understood her every thought, her every desire, a man who melded his own long length to her silken softness, who probed, who tempted, who teased, who caressed—and incited her to molten unbridled joy.

  All her defenses were down now, swept away in a raging tide of feeling. In sudden wild abandon she flung herself against him and van Ryker, swept along on his own storm, was touched and felt a great tenderness stealing over him.

  He loved her so much. And her love affairs had been so—paltry to his way of thinking. Abandoned by Linnington. mistreated by van Rappard. He would show her what it was like to be loved by a man who thought the world of her, who wanted to give her pleasure even more than he desired to pleasure himself. He had waited so long, so long for this moment, and now that it was at last at hand he found himself climbing the heights with great delicacy and he handled the frail woman in his arms with compassion and artistry and aching tenderness, bringing to her sweet magic and earthly delights.

  But the storm that raged round them could not be gainsaid. It would not let them pause. Onward and upward it swept them, like gods, to high peaks where jagged lightning lit their inward skies, down damp rainwashed valleys it plunged them, their bodies bound together in eternal longing, caught up in time, rising to infinite bliss—until with a last crashing crescendo of such magnitude that it shook them both, they became mortal again, a man and a woman who fell apart from sheer exhaustion.

  Drowned by her desire, sated by fulfillment, washed clean at last of everything save overwhelming fatigue, Imogene slept.

  After a time during which he listened while her troubled breathing become steady and even, van Ryker got up and ordered food and wine brought to the cabin. When he returned, Imogene had risen, too. She stood naked with her back to him, holding her torn chemise in her hand.

  “No need for that,” he said calmly, studying her lovely conformation, the perfect curve of her back and buttocks, the daintiness of her legs. “Dawn will break soon. ’Tis a warm day and ye can have breakfast in bed. ’Twill be along shortly.”

  She did not turn. “Van Ryker, how could you?” she whispered.

  He moved toward her, frowning. She flinched as his hands closed over her shoulders. “You had no right!” she flared.

  “I had every right.” His voice had a rich depth that surprised her. “Someone had to save you from yourself.”

  She spun around in his arms and looked up at him with a tight twisted little smile. “And you think you have done that?” she asked him scornfully. “By using me thus, taking me against my will?” Her short laugh was brittle as breaking glass.

  “And was it against you will?” that rich voice asked caressingly. One of his hands left her shoulder and roved down her arm, leaving a trail of fire that made her stiffen.

  A rosy flush spread over her face and down over her white body, turning her pearly breasts pink and changing her whole delicate form from white to rose. He was speaking of her wild surrender in his arms. “How dare you remind me of that?” she asked in a low furious voice and jerked away from him.

  His hands dropped to his sides and he made no move to bring her back into the circle of his arms. A lean naked giant, he stood and contemplated her for some time. So she did not wish to remember the bliss she had known briefly as she lay beneath his heaving body... Very well then, he would try some other tack. His hand snaked out and encircled her wrist.

  “Come.” He drew her unwilling form back to the
bed. “You should know more about this monster who has ravished you.” His tone was mocking but his eyes were wary. She must not know he loved her—God, what power that would give her over him! His very soul cringed at the thought.

  “I know enough,” she said savagely. “I know that you are lustful and violent and lost to shame.”

  “Doubtless I am all of those things—and more,” he agreed cheerfully, inducing her by the power of his grip to join him on the bed. “But I am also a man who has suffered—as you are suffering.”

  Her scornful look of disbelief was answer enough.

  “There should be truth between us, Imogene,” he said quietly. “Van Ryker is not my real name, nor am I Dutch.”

  “So you are a renegade Englishman after all?” She gave a mirthless laugh. “My instinct about you was sure!”

  “My real name is—”

  “I do not want to know it,” she interrupted. “And no matter what it is—Smith, Jones, Warburton—I shall always call you van Ryker and think of you as a damned pirate, a ravisher of women!”

  Well, he had wanted to jolt her from her lethargy, her self-pity. Why should he now feel such pain at her words?

  “Think of me as you will,” he said lightly. “So long as you warm my bed!”

  “And that will not last long either!”

  “You would wager on it?”

  “Even a pirate cannot always lie about!”

  Idly he caressed her body, feeling her tense and pull away, seeing her nipples harden beneath his expert touch.

  “Stop that!” she cried.

  He gave her a dangerous smile. “Well, if you will not let me talk, I must do something to while away the time!”

  “Talk, then,” she said hastily, pushing his hands away. “I will listen.”

  “Good. I will tell you about myself—not my name since you do not wish to hear it, but something of my story, the events that shaped me.” He smiled into her stormy eyes. “I grew up in Devon.”

  Devon ... Stephen had grown up in Devon and in Imogene’s fevered imagination it seemed to her that he had died twice. Stephen had almost reached sainthood in her eyes; she could not quite see his halo but it was surely there. He was all that was good and this—this pirate was all that was bad. A very devil!

  “So you grew up in Devon,” she muttered.

  He was looking beyond her now, remembering, and his grip on her loosened a little. “My father was a merchant trader and when he made a voyage to the West Indies his ship was seized by the Spanish and he was made a prisoner. My mother sold all that we owned to raise a ransom for him. He was returning to us when he died. He had been too harshly treated in the dungeons of the Spanish dons and he died of that...” His face was formidable to look upon now, and in spite of her still pulsing body and her personal disaster, lmogene found herself carried along by his words. “My mother died of heartbreak and the family was left destitute. It fostered in me a deep anger against Spain. I swore a great oath that I would wreak vengeance upon the Spanish for my parents’ deaths and—” the wolfish gleam in his gray eyes held her fascinated—“I have done so. In Plymouth I found some lads of like mind and we stole a boat—since returned to its rightful owners with Spanish gold to boot. ’Twas but a small boat but we rowed her right up under the guns of a Spanish caravel and took her with small arms fire. It was a night attack.” Imogene shivered at the temerity of that encounter, imagining the shots and the darkness and the unknown terrors that waited on a slippery Spanish deck. ‘‘With the caravel we moved on to larger prey until at last I had the ship I wanted—El Cruzado. I refitted her, made her faster, renamed her the Sea Rover, and with her roamed the Spanish Main. Her forty guns I call the ‘widowmakers,’ and when they speak they resound all the way to Spain as I lift her treasure and humble her captains. Many times my sword has tasted Spanish blood.”

  “Do you not tire of all this killing?” she asked tonelessly. He answered her dreamily. “I am not a madman, Imogene. I do not kill for sport. And those who surrender to me are ransomed back to Spain or returned to Havana or some other Spanish port after they have worked out their ransom in labor. But when I see the Spanish colors flying I remember how my father came to die. I was told of the rats in the Spanish prison that gnawed off his toes as he lay chained, and of the hot irons they—”

  “Enough.” She flinched away from him. “I can see you have reason to hate the Spanish. I would hate them, too. But what has that to do with me?”

  He turned to her in some surprise. “You do not understand? No, I suppose you are too wrapped up in your own troubles to give it thought. I was like you, Imogene. The night my mother died I went down to the shore and swam out into the ocean, intending to swim until fatigue overcame me and I drowned. All night I swam and when the dawn was breaking I came upon a derelict hulk floating in the water. One of her ratlines trailed down in the water and I used it to climb aboard her. Lying there, exhausted, I realized that finding this rotting abandoned hulk was a sign. I had it in my power to strike back. Once I had meant to be a scholar. I had always sailed for pleasure, but now I turned my face toward the sea as a profession and set my sails for the Spanish Main—and toward Spain for my vengeance.” He turned to smile deep into her eyes. “I have had some success, Imogene.”

  “And have you ravished their women as well?” she asked rudely. She did not know what made her ask that.

  “No,” he said on a sardonic note. “ ’Tis their men I have slaughtered—and in battle, a far better way than my father died. Their women I leave to die of heartbreak—as my mother did.”

  Imogene looked into that cold, implacable face as if hypnotized. Who was he to claim heartbreak above hers? Had not her parents been killed by a volley of shot that had echoed through their pleasant Penzance garden? Had he had a child and a lover and a friend who was almost a second mother all wrested from him at the same time? No, he had not! Her hands clenched as his fingers ran lightly down her arm, moved impudently over her smooth naked torso. At that moment she hated him.

  “Come,” he said lazily, falling back upon the bed and dragging her down toward him. “Compensate me for all those Spanish ladies I might have ravished and did not.”

  Was he laughing at her? She could not tell. She tried to strike at him and found her hand caught negligently in midair, her body pulled inexorably toward his until her tingling breasts were grazing the lightly furred hairs of his deep chest.

  “I do not want to hear your stories,” she cried, her voice muffled in his thick dark hair as he buried his head in the hollow of her throat and drew her to him. “I want to die!”

  “Still death-bound?” he mocked. “Well, I’ll give you yet another reason for living!” His lean body tensed and he felt rather than heard her sob as his male hardness thrust into her shivering body again.

  Frantically she fought him—fought not only the man but life itself and all the wild ardor that coursed unbidden through her veins. Her hatred of herself for this response to him assumed wild proportions. She felt herself a murderess—she deserved to be punished, not caressed.

  She would die!

  And so when it was over and van Ryker tossed her a dressing gown and let the cabin boy bring in a sumptuous breakfast to set before her, she turned her face steadfastly away and refused to leave the bed.

  Annoyed, van Ryker hauled her to the table and set her down firmly in a chair, lmogene closed her teeth and refused to eat or speak to him.

  Hoping to induce her to hunger, he ate with gusto, smacking his lips and waving a chicken leg under her nose that she might smell its tempting aroma. She turned away as if sickened.

  “There is more than one way to die,” she told him in a flat, toneless voice.

  Watching her uneasily, van Ryker finished his meal and carried her back to the bunk. For a moment he frowned down at her. Her mind might stand like a stone wall against him but her body was his pliant captive!

  He made love to her again and after it was over—because he was afrai
d he would go to sleep and she would do herself some harm while he slept—he tied her hands to the bunk with a scarf. So exhausted was she that she hardly moved or protested.

  It hurt him to do it but—his tender expression hardened. He would save his valiant lady—yes, even from herself he would save her! lmogene was a sensual woman, a woman who took deep delight in the things of the flesh. She could not escape her heritage. By God, he would make love to her every hour of every day if that was what was necessary to instill in her a will to live!

  He lay down beside her on the bunk and slept—deeply, silently, dreamlessly. All that he dreamed of, forever to have and hold, lay asleep beside him in the sunlight as it streamed down over the shimmering ocean.

  He waked to a vicious kick in the shins.

  “Untie me!” lmogene hissed. “How dare you tie me up like this, van Ryker?”

  Van Ryker came awake instantly and in full possession of his faculties. It was the way he always woke-—heritage from a life spent in dangerous places. “You look better this afternoon,” he said critically. “Your eyes are brighter. I’ll order us a bite to eat.”

  Her blue eyes flashed dangerously. “Untie me! I’ve no desire to eat!”

  “Indeed? Then you must be of a mind to make love—and so am I.” He rolled over lazily and toyed with one of her ankles, caressed her shapely calf.

  She kicked out at him. “Untie me this instant!”

  “In a moment,” he told her maddeningly. “When I am better settled upon what you women choose to call your 'female form divine.’ ”

  As she struggled he rolled over upon her, laughing, and tickled her until she was gasping, laughing uncontrollably and choked with fury at the same time. Her fists were clenched and she was tearing so at her bonds that he was afraid she would hurt herself and with a flick of his fingers he untied her wrists. Immediately her hands came up and she tried to drive her sharp nails into his eyes, but he caught both wrists in one big hand and smiled down at her dangerously. “If you try that again. I’ll tie you hand and foot.”