by Gaelen Foley
“Are you entertained n-now, my lord?” Eden asked resentfully, her teeth chattering a bit, though the day was warm.
He did not answer at first. He looked at her again, dragged his gaze up from her body and leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. It seemed as though there was something he wanted to say, but no words came.
He locked his fingers loosely before him and just looked at her.
“Stop staring at me,” she said with a plaintive note in her voice.
“Forgive me, Eden.” His voice was husky. “Your body is sublime.”
Truly, she wanted to die of mortification. “Could you at least pass the soap?”
Amusement registered in his eyes at her request, chasing off some of that intimidating, dark intensity. He rose and went to get it for her. When he returned, he handed her an oval of fine, transparent amber soap wrapped in waxed paper.
Eden cautiously took the soap, then dunked herself under the water, holding her nose. Her hair floated around her, but she refused to resurface until she was confident she could simply ignore him. She must try harder to pretend he wasn’t there.
How horrid he was, tormenting her like this.
Coming up again from beneath the water, she rested her head back against the tub’s rim, determined to relax and enjoy her long-needed bath. The tepid, silky water soothed her agitated skin and aching muscles. At length, she began washing with the expensive soap, doing her dead-level best to ignore the hulking, six-foot, muscle-bound pirate sitting less than two feet away, devouring her with his gaze.
“I need to wash my hair,” she announced after several moments. “Do you have any shampoo?”
With a grunt of assent, he got up again, went back into the side closet, and returned to present her with a small bottle containing a luxurious concoction of French shampooing.
Eden accepted it while he stood by the tub; he picked up the barrel and lifted it, nodding at her to indicate he would help her wet her hair. She tilted her head back and waited for the water to descend on her, a man-powered waterfall.
At least there was one good use for all those muscles.
“So,” he said slowly after a time as he poured some water gently on her hair, “you thought you’d stow away. Ignore everything I said.”
“I can explain—”
“Don’t talk to me. I don’t want to hear your excuses.” He doused her, dumping an extra half gallon of water on her head.
She sputtered and glared at him the moment she had wiped the water out of her eyes.
But her thick hair was well soaked through now, so she took a large dollop of the shampoo and began working it into a lather, muttering, “You don’t have to drown a person.”
“You’ll live. Close your eyes before you get soap in ’em.”
“My lord, I know you’re angry—”
“You know nothing. Stop talking,” he grumbled. “I’m trying to think.”
Eden sealed her lips in simmering obedience and looked away while Jack went and sat down again, his expression unreadable.
“Ah, what am I to do with you, girl? Feed you to the fishes? Put you in a lifeboat and let you row the thousand miles back to your father?”
She shot him a worried glance. Suddenly it seemed like a bad idea to irk him in any way. Eden gave up trying to reason with him, at least for the moment. There was no telling what new scheme might be percolating in his inscrutable brain, but arguing would only provoke him and would probably make things worse.
Shrugging off his displeasure with a low huff of indignation, she turned her attention willfully to the pleasanter task of washing her hair.
When a knock sounded on the cabin door, her captor went to answer it. He opened the door only narrowly and returned with a tray of food, which he set on the table. Then he went into the adjoining chamber and came back out with one of his own large white shirts, neatly folded. He set it over the nearby chair back for her to wear when her bath was through.
Seeing that she was done washing her hair, he returned without a word and lifted the barrel again to help her rinse the suds away. He made no attempt to dunk her this time, but carefully doled out more of the water, letting it wash in a steady stream over her hair.
“You were going to England anyway,” she tried again in a calmer tone a few minutes later. “Your refusal was ungallant and completely arbitrary—”
“That’s not true. I offered to take you and the others to Trinidad. Not total obedience to your wishes, but better than nothing.” He set the empty barrel aside. “At least it would’ve gotten you out of there. It was your father who refused.”
“I know.” When she looked up at him, she was suddenly struck by the way the golden sunlight slanting in from the stern windows played along the rugged line of his iron jaw, softening all the harsh planes and angles of his tanned face. She held his stare for a moment, then let out a sigh and leaned back, resting her head against the rim of the tub. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” he replied, startling her with his frank tone. “You got what you wanted. I think you know exactly what you’re doing. Fortunately,” he added as he picked up the soap and began to wash her arm with the utmost care, “so do I.”
She pulled away with a belated flash of angry shock. “Don’t touch me!”
“Easy,” he whispered.
“Stop it!” she cried as his large, deft hand smoothed the oval of soap across her damp chest.
“Relax, Eden—”
“Leave me alone!” She splashed him in her effort to escape his beguiling hands, getting water all over his shirt.
The cloth darkened in big wet spots across his chest and flat belly and on one shoulder. He glanced down at himself, and her fear escalated when he looked at her again with a feverish gleam in his eyes. “You want to play rough, eh?”
Her voice vanished as he lifted his shirt off over his head. The scandalized protest died on her lips as her gaze trailed over his stone-carved body. Oh, God, she thought with a large gulp. For one moment, simply from shock, she allowed herself to look at him—really look at Jack Knight.
His pink, narrow lips were pliant and sensitive in contrast to the dark scruff on his chin—in need, again, of a shave. Her stare descended below the hard, square angle of his jaw to the forward jut of his Adam’s apple, and down his thick neck, to the manly architecture of his collarbones. How solidly he was made, she thought.
How beautifully.
All of a sudden, she wanted to touch him—to trace those strong bones. To stroke the broad, muscled swells of his chest.
His flat, tiny nipples were a brownish pink in color, and a sprinkling of dark hair lightly furred the valley between his chest muscles; this beguiling region narrowed to a sleek groove that continued down the center of his sculpted abdomen.
No, she thought with a shiver of thrill, she dared not touch him or do anything to provoke him. Staring like this was dangerous enough. He was too formidable in size, his massive chest and shoulders forming a veritable wall of muscle before her. His herculean arms were veined like the sleek, glossy hide of a racehorse, and his smooth, bronzed skin bore an array of battle scars.
Once more, he picked up the soap and came after her again, staring into her eyes in sensuous challenge sharpened by a trace of insolence, as though he would prove to her now who was in charge. She held stock-still, keenly recalling the desperate longing that had kept her awake for so many nights, alone in the jungle.
Instinct, deeper than reason, told her to wait.
This time when he touched her, she jumped a bit, but by choice did not fight him. She was not sure it was wise, in any case, to argue with all that muscle: she was intimidated by it, amazed by it, and ever so slightly…aroused.
Closing her eyes, she waited passively, allowing him, just for a moment, to explore her—but ready to battle him again if she felt in any way threatened.
“There,” he breathed, his slow, steady hands warm and gentle as he smoothed small ci
rcles across her chest and up over her shoulders. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
She swallowed hard.
Her heart was slamming about so hard behind her ribs that she was sure he must have felt its wild rhythm, his fingertips gliding over her skin.
After a moment, Lord Jack eased behind her and washed her back, drawing the soap between his fingertips in a sensuous line down her spine. His big hands massaged the lather across her shoulder blades and, slick with soap, molded the curves of her waist. Eden was breathless as he bathed her.
He washed her arms, all the way down to her fingertips, slippery soap between each of her fingers. She could hear his deepened breathing by her ear. He stroked her underarms as though there was no part of her he could not enjoy, and she drew in her breath as his roaming hands brushed the outer curves of her breasts.
Reaching around her, he lathered up her midriff in slow, languid circles until she was shaking. This is madness. But what could she do? There was nowhere on this ship to hide from him; now that she had been discovered, she was completely in his power.
“What are you going to do to me, Jack?” she breathed after a moment, a catch in her voice.
He touched her cheek, his gaze following his hand. “Exactly what I said I’d do, lovely. I’m going to collect.”
“Collect?” Her mouth went dry as she remembered how he’d warned her she’d have to pay with her body if she came aboard his ship. “You would force yourself on me?”
“No, sweet. Never that,” he whispered, quite near her ear. “You’ll be willing when I take you.”
She shuddered. “So, you will seduce me.”
“Mm.”
“I am a virgin, Jack.”
“I know, my love.”
“I-I’m saving myself for my husband.”
“Excellent,” he said hoarsely and then he touched her face again, drawing her head back gently as he sought her lips. “That is excellent news.”
She yielded helplessly.
Having dreamed of his mouth on hers from that day in the jungle, it was beyond her power to deny them both another taste of this reeling heaven.
The memory of his kiss had preoccupied her since she had first tasted it. He claimed her lips now, again, in hungry greed, while his soapy fingertips glided over her hairline and down her cheek.
His light touch eased her head back until it rested on the broad muscle of his arm. She tensed as his other hand slid slowly up her belly and cupped her breast. He let her pause but did not release her from his kiss; he squeezed her nipple between his thumb and finger, rolling it with the most beguiling pressure, both firm and tender. She quivered and let out a restless moan.
He licked her parted lips in time with the rhythm of his fingertip flicking back and forth over her nipple, and her body reacted of its own accord, her back arching, thrusting her breast more fully into his large, warm palm.
His kiss deepened while he rinsed her body with trickling handfuls of water; as he moved smoothly to the side of her, his mouth only left her lips to travel down her chin, her neck, and down into the valley between her breasts, until he claimed her nipple in a kiss as deep as the one he’d drunk from her lips.
Overwhelmed by his passion, she lay back against the tub’s edge and ran her fingers through his dark hair as he suckled her.
The taste of her plump, swollen nipple in his mouth—the feel of her fingers in his hair—had him rock-hard, his blood pumping. He wanted nothing so much as to lay her down atop his nearby desk and take her. He could feel her willingness as she melted under him, but the whole thing was getting out of control.
Jack could hardly believe the ferocity of his desire for her. He knew this had to stop. It was too intense, escalating too swiftly. The girl was a virgin. She was at his mercy, and although she had trusted him enough to let him touch her, she really did not know what she was doing.
He was by no means settled upon marrying her, and if she let him have his way without that vital promise, it meant nothing for her but permanent and total ruin, and maybe a bastard son who would only grow up suffering the cruel slings and arrows of the world’s scorn. He thought of her loneliness back in the jungle, her yearning for any human contact; and, terror of the seas or not, her vulnerability got to him. For all his threats to make her pay her way, he refused to take advantage of this naive, exquisite creature. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had to protect her.
Even from himself.
Through the haze of lust, he released her pert breast from his savoring kiss and trailed his lips back up her throat, grazing her mouth. He was panting.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and caressed his mouth slowly, so sensually with her own. She wanted more, and Jack did, too, agonized by her ardent response.
But he held himself back.
No, he thought, the only way that this could happen was if he married her, and he suddenly wasn’t sure that he wanted to do that.
Her impact on him was too powerful. Eden Farraday was not like other girls. The sheer courage of her stowing away had proved she had the will, strength, and determination to go after what she wanted in life, just like Jack did. By God, this bold young tigress could birth heroic sons for him—but that was just the point.
Everything he had seen of the naturalist’s daughter made him rather sure that she would never be content simply to have his babies and let him carry on about his business in his usual, nomadic, fairly solitary way.
She’d make demands, not the material sort that were so very easy to grant—but the hard kind, demands meant to drag his heart out of hiding. She’d try to change the way he was—they always tried, these women. Try to turn him into someone that he did not want to be.
Problem was, for a girl like her, Jack thought he might actually try it. There was the rub precisely.
She might just be the one who could finally make him stay, and for that reason, he knew he had to be extremely wary. His body burned to possess her, but he had to think this through.
Rational thought, alas, was impossible as she kneaded his shoulders and petted his face, his neck. He stroked her hair and fed off her kisses like the sweetest ambrosial nectar. God, he wanted her. They were both on the verge of getting entirely carried away, but if he didn’t put an end to this, it would soon be too late for regrets.
With a breathy gasp, he found the strength at last to tear his mouth away from hers. He heard her whisper his name as he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.
He closed his eyes, trying to bring his thundering pulse under control.
Her eyes were wide, searching his, as he pulled away without a word. He read uncertainty in their depths, a flicker of hurt at what she took as a possible rejection. She did not understand, of course, why he was stopping; mute with hunger for her, he was unable to explain. He dropped his gaze.
Shaken by the power of what had just passed between them, he rose to his feet and withdrew to the stern gallery, removing himself from the nearness of severe temptation.
When he walked outside, the cool ocean breeze fanned his fevered skin. He braced his hands on the carved railing and stared down blindly at the frothy wake; he ordered his heartbeat to slow back to normal.
Keen for a smoke, he tried to light a cheroot, but gave up with a curse after a moment, his hands still trembling too much to make the task achievable. What the hell was the matter with him? He raked his hand through his hair and spent a few more minutes willing his body into submission.
At length, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly as sanity finally began to trickle back in. Very well, then. He would resist her allure for the sake of self-preservation—but she didn’t have to know that his threat to bed her was an empty one. A shade of sensual intimidation would help to make the unruly creature mind. When he was satisfied that he had brought his raging want of her under control, he turned around and prowled back guardedly into the cabin.
Upon his return, he saw that she had used his brief absence to get out
of the tub and dry off, and had donned the clean white shirt he had left on the chair for her. It hung nearly to her knees, and though she had rolled up the voluminous sleeves, the V of the neckline plunged almost to her navel. It did not fit her properly at all, but Jack found himself savoring the sight of her wrapped in his garment; it filled him with a most peculiar glow of possessive satisfaction.
Holding the oversized shirt closed with one hand, she was roughly combing the tangles out of her wet hair with the other. The process looked painful, but as he watched, she averted her gaze, obviously embarrassed after their little adventure together just now. The chit was bright pink beneath her freckles.
Her virginal blush pleased him, too, but he hid his delight behind a stern exterior, lest they get caught up again. “Does your father know where you are?”
“I left him a letter.” She bit her lip and eyed him uncertainly, filial guilt written all over her face.
“Don’t worry,” Jack advised in a gentle murmur. “He’s a grown man. He’ll be fine.”
Her quick, shy glance bespoke thanks for his reassurance. As she finished combing out her hair, Jack swept an inviting gesture toward the waiting food on the table. Eden nodded and approached it cautiously, like some wary forest doe.
“Who was that other fellow that day in the jungle? The one with the rifle?”
“Oh—my father’s assistant. Connor O’Keefe.” She picked up a small plate and surveyed the selection while Jack filed the name away in the back of his mind. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t like him.”
“I don’t think he likes you, either, Jack.”
“But he certainly seems to like you.”
She dropped her gaze and fell silent for a moment. “Is it my turn to ask you a question now?”
“Depends on what it is.”
She finished arranging her plate with a meditative look, then sat down slowly, watching him. “Are you on the rebels’ side or were you up at Angostura plotting against them?”
He arched one eyebrow, admittedly taken aback by her choice of subjects.