His chest moved hard against hers. She sucked in air, gulping from the delectable shock of his release within her. Nothing had prepared her for this, for him. The laughter of sheer euphoria bubbled up in her. And song, but her throat was parched and she cradled a pirate between her thighs, so singing seemed not quite right. She had never known it could be like this. Or that reclining on a canvas sail on a companionway could prove so uncomfortable after a time.
He pulled away. She drew her knees together and opened her eyes, and made herself drunker yet on the sight of him. Rivulets of moisture ran along his jaw, another droplet clinging to his taut collarbone, then sliding down his chest to be lost beneath his shirt. The linen clung, revealing every contour, every perfect detail of man.
He fastened his trousers and extended his hand. She stared up at him.
“Come.” He curled his fingers in a gesture of encouragement, not insisting, but his gaze scanned her, peculiarly bright.
Viola’s throat was like parchment, possibly from all the moaning.
“Where? What do you want?” she croaked.
He leaned down to her and curved his hand around her face. He passed the pad of his thumb over her tender lower lip and spoke close, his breath a whisper across her flesh.
“What do you think I want?”
She swallowed hard. Holy Magdalene, she wanted it too. Again. Immediately. She felt wonderfully satisfied, yet hunger still ground deep in her simply from looking at him.
His fingers curled around hers and he grasped her hand. “Come now.” He backed off and her knees shook like canvas letting fly. Now, after all her gyrations beneath him, she could not move.
A crease formed between his brows. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. No, perhaps.”
His jaw tensed, a flash of alarm darting across his handsome features.
“You-” He took a hard breath. “You have done this before? That is to say, I did not-?”
“No.” Her face flooded with heat. “You did not. And yes, I have.” She wished she were wearing breeches, pistol, and knife. She felt utterly exposed, utterly foolish, and utterly at a disadvantage. “Only not for some time now. And not quite like that.” Not by far. How could she have made love several times with the man she had adored for years, and yet doing it once on stairs with this man drove the memory of everything that had come before clear out of her head?
A slow grin curved his perfect lips. “No?”
She frowned. That he might very well have done this plenty of times before did not sit well with her.
“A little unsteady, are we?”
“Don’t laugh at me, Seton.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Because if you do, I’ll stick you through with my-”
“I am flattered.”
“Don’t be. I meant I have never done it on stairs. My legs have gone all pins and needles.”
“Of course they have.” He didn’t believe her. With good reason. “Still flattered.”
“You are beyond arrogant.”
His smile flashed quick, utterly disarming, and of course stars sparkled across her vision. She was an idiot.
“Can’t help but be. Now come.” He drew her up until he held her waist. “I am of a mind to merit more flattery before the night is out.”
Her body hummed in his hold. He really intended to do it again. She gripped his arms to remain standing. Her legs felt more like jam than pins.
“Need some assistance getting there?” he murmured.
“Yes, in fact.”
His mouth quirked up at one side. “You absolutely do not want me to carry you.”
“Absolutely not.” She would rather die. “We could remain here?”
He laughed outright. Then he drew her arms around his neck, turned, and reached to the backs of her thighs. “Up you go, then.”
Viola jumped onto his back and laughter spilled from her throat as she clenched her knees to his sides and hooked her arms around his shoulders.
“I am offering you perfect opportunity to strangle me now, of course,” he said, moving toward her cabin.
“Perhaps later. I have need of your services at the present.”
It was not a long walk, a mere ten yards. But in the corridor leading to her cabin, where he had first looked at her as though he would kiss her, then had not, Viola’s patience disintegrated. She nuzzled his neck, then reached for his face, his jaw. The flavor of his skin, the rough texture of the day’s whiskers, sent pleasure rushing about her midsection again. She turned his face to her and nearly climbed over his shoulder to meet his lips, perfect lips she wanted attached to hers again without delay. He gave her what she wanted for far too short a time. Then he pulled her around off his back and set her on her feet before her cabin.
She went inside and sat to remove her shoes. Peeling off her stockings, she glanced up. He stood in the doorway, his gaze fixed on her writing table. On it sat one item: the spyglass he had borrowed that day that seemed ages ago, that she taunted him about, teasing that he had stolen it. And he had replied that he did not take that which was not his by right.
Finally he lifted his gaze to her. The heated look of the lover was gone. Now the cool crystals were pensive, sober. And oddly assessing.
Chill skittered down Viola’s spine. So many times during their journey he had looked at her so from across the deck. Never when they spoke, though, and never when he stood so close. Because it was a gaze of distance-not of feet or yards, but of a much more profound distance. When he looked at her like this, the loneliness within her blew like the wind off a Maine whaler.
“Tomorrow’s interview with the harbormaster is bound to be uncomfortable,” she said to break the silence and chase that distance from his light eyes. “I don’t have one hundred and fifty pounds.”
He moved into the cabin. “Here, or at all?”
“Here and at all.”
“I have assets on Tobago. I will lend the sum to you.”
“You have one hundred and fifty pounds? On Tobago? Whatever for?”
“Moments such as this.”
Which recalled them quite abruptly to this actual moment in which their intent had nothing to do with pounds and port officers, only with each other.
Viola tried to speak. Her throat clogged. She made a second somewhat more successful attempt.
“Jin, I cannot accept-”
He pulled her off the chair into his arms and bent his head. “It is nothing.”
“But one hundred and fifty-”
“It is nothing.” And then their lips met again, despite the distance and the money and her astonishment, or perhaps because of them. They kissed as though they had not before, and then as though they could not cease, hands and mouths lost in a need both sublime and violent. Clothes were swiftly discarded-her gown, his shirt, her petticoat. But the removal of her stays proved too much for them both. He put his hands on her unconfined breasts, she moaned as he caressed her through her shift, and quite abruptly there seemed no more leisure for dithering with garments. He dragged her to the bed beneath him, hungry on her mouth as though he had not already satisfied himself in her tonight. But this need pressed inside her as well, and she did not wonder at it.
She ran her palms up his back, smooth, damp skin and muscle, and flattened her body to his-breasts, belly, hips-to feel him everywhere on her. He wanted her, clearly, as she had never known a man could want a woman in a single night.
But she had wept in front of him, because of Aidan.
She broke her lips free, sweeping her fingers through his hair and holding him away. Dear Lord, he was beautiful, his eyes liquid with desire, his perfect mouth hers if she wished it.
“Are you doing this from pity? Because of my tears earlier on the veranda?”
He covered her mouth, parting her lips and making her want him inside again so fiercely. He was hot and unbelievably skilled, and tasted like danger and deliverance at once.
She pushed him away. “Are
you?”
“What do you think?” His hand came around her breast, his fingers sure.
She moved into him. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Then, yes.” He bent and through the thin fabric of her shift took the peak of her breast into his mouth.
“O-oh, God.” Her whole body shuddered. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, I did not want you like this before tonight.” He pushed her shift to her waist, dragged her thigh around his hip, and came intimately against her. “This is about pity.” He pressed her into the mattress. His thumb stroked across her nipple, then around it, driving her mad and desperate for more of him. “I pity you, Viola Carlyle, and wish only to give you comfort.”
She clutched his waist and arched against him, fed by the hard heat of his arousal. A sound of pleasure came from his chest, deep and powerful. Her power over him.
“I think you are lying,” she barely managed to utter, her flesh caught between his and heaven. He captured her hand.
“Of course I am lying.” He guided her between their stretched bellies to his shaft and wrapped her fingers around him. It was satin and rock and more heat than she had ever dreamed. He moved her hand on him, his eyes closed, his jaw taut, and she quivered in every corridor of her being. Then, with the greatest reluctance it seemed, he released her hand and sank his fingers into her hair.
“Viola?” He sounded hoarse.
“What?” she whispered, alone now to caress him as she wished, frightened and dizzy with it.
“Make this happen.”
A breath shot out of her. “I-”
“On your terms. When you will.” His brow strained, the muscles in his arms and shoulders stripped with tension. “But I pray you, do not be long about it.”
She trembled in a mingling of anticipation and bliss. “My terms? Entirely my terms?”
“Yes.”
She released him. “Onto your back, sailor.”
Eyes cracking open, he rolled to his shoulder, and his perfect lips curved into a perfectly breathtaking half smile.
“Aye aye, Captain.” Then he did as he was bid.
She had him then-again-this time on her terms.
Her terms seemed to suit him quite well. But she was his captain, after all, and he owed her obedience. Like the excellent lieutenant he had been in matters pertaining to the ship, he proved his exceptional capabilities in this as well; at some point amid the heated touches and kisses, her terms clearly became his. Or perhaps they had been all along.
When eventually she arose from the daze of pleasure to once more find herself straddling a scoundrel, her body limp with satisfaction, the slight smile again slipped over his mouth, and the stars were no less bright though perhaps a bit hazier.
She snuggled into the crook of his arm, her cheek pressed to his ribs, the scents of cane smoke and salt and man filling her senses and holding at bay the sleep behind her eyes. His breathing seemed to slow, his chest rising evenly. But his hand was splayed against the small of her back and his arm holding her did not relax.
Aidan had never held her. He always left right after.
“You are holding me. You are not leaving.”
His voice came forth as a low rumble. “Too exhausted to move.”
He had not shown any exhaustion minutes earlier when he threw her onto the companionway, then the bed. But men could rouse themselves from the tomb for sex, and the pull of their bodies for each other was extraordinary. Which explained why since meeting Jin Seton she had forgotten to think of Aidan every hour. Whatever lies polite society fed a girl, at least men knew the truth of it: the rutting urge proved more powerful than reason or civility. Thus her mother and father.
She told herself this in no uncertain terms. But within her, mistrust of her own thoughts wound its way about her heart. She smoothed her palm across his flat, hard belly damp with sweat. He seemed to hold his breath, then release it gradually. Viola felt life beneath his skin, the thrum of fiber and flesh, and her heart fluttered.
She swallowed around the prickly sensation in her throat, steeling her voice. “You should leave, you know.”
“I should.” A pause. “Are you ordering me out of this cabin or off the ship?”
The shutter creaked in a finger of hot, tropical air, the nighttime calls of Kabrit bwa thick in the trees reaching out into the harbor, mingling with the gentle lap of water.
“I am winning,” she whispered. “You are falling in love with me.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“But I am winning. And when I do, I will have your new boat and you will go back to wherever you came from and leave me alone.”
He pulled from under her and reversed their positions so swiftly she stared wide-eyed up at him, no time to mask her surprise from the moonlight. His hands surrounded her face; big hands, strong. He spoke looking into her eyes.
“Get this through your hard head now, Viola Carlyle. I will not leave without you.”
Her heart lodged in her throat. “You will be obliged to.”
“I will take you home whether you wish it or not.”
“You will lose, Seton. You are losing already.”
He regarded her for a long moment. Then he did the entirely unexpected. He bent and kissed her, a warm, wonderful kiss intended to please, as though the wager were reversed and he was trying to make her fall in love with him. And it did please.
He drew away, gazed at her for another moment, then released her and lay back.
“Now go to sleep, harpy.”
“Don’t give me orders.”
He chuckled quietly.
He did not hold her now. But he did not leave.
Chapter 15
“Blast!”
The drawing-knife clattered to the dock. Jin snatched his hand from the small boat’s gudgeon and slid off its overturned hull. Blood welled from his palm, a long, thin line corner to corner. “Blast.” But it served him right for allowing a sleepless night.
Allowing.
Little Billy sent him a curious glance from the yawl’s bow.
“Take care, Cap’n. She’s a sharp ’un.”
Jin passed his good hand over his face, then gripped his neck, staring at the crimson on the other as it gathered in the indent, barely feeling the pain. Late-morning sun shone sultry upon the wharf and water slapping at the sides of the vessel before them. Weeks earlier, just as now, he had looked up at the April Storm and made a terrible mistake imagining he could easily corral a woman like Viola Carlyle. She was not a female to go placidly. Even her lovemaking shouted defiance.
The night’s heavy heat had dissipated upon a northerly wind. Caps of white tipped the swells far beyond the docks and the breeze grabbed at furled sails, jingling lines. If this wind held through the week, they would set a good pace toward England.
One more day. He believed her honest if not entirely sane. However reluctantly, she would leave this when he told her she must-when he told her what he must to secure his goal of returning a lady home. A lady he’d had no business making love to.
A carroty head appeared at his elbow.
“Best patch that up, sir.” The cabin boy glanced down at the droplets of blood staining the dock.
“Thank you, Gui. I shall.”
The lad’s face lacked its typical animation. Sailors had straggled back to the ship all morning, tails between their legs. Chastened dogs that had displeased their master.
The back of Jin’s neck was hot. Men should not be reduced to this. Damn it, they were on furlough, yet each had apologized to him for allowing the arsonists to escape. The spell she held over them was bewitchment. Now they all worked at minor tasks as though they were priming the April Storm for sea rather than simply moving her to anchor in the harbor. While Jin stood with his feet braced wide on the planking of the dock, and bled.
He swiped off his neck cloth and bound it about his hand.
“Sure’s a nasty scrape,” Gui piped.
“Cap’n ain’t normally
clumsy,” Billy supplied with his usual good humor. “Reckon he didn’t get no sleep last night, what with the excitement and all.” He broke a toothy grin. “Never catch a wink myself after a battle.”
Jin gripped his fist around the linen. He should not have succumbed to her. Not to a strong-willed armful of heat and determination. But also a woman with a wounded heart, and he had taken advantage of that.
Not his finest hour.
She had imagined he pitied her. He tugged the cloth tight, giving himself pain now and gritting his teeth against it. No pity involved, not toward that hellion harpy. Only the need to erase the hurt and confusion from her wide violet eyes. And lust. Barrels of it, not slaked even now. Her mouth, her hands, her strong shapely legs… The very thought of her primed his body. And her voice, her rich, soft cries of pleasure…
He swallowed and blinked hard.
“Cap’n? You all right there?”
“Fix that rudder into the gudgeon,” he barked.
He wished he were merely bewitched. But this was something more, much more that he did not wish to consider-could not consider. A man whose wrists bore scars from iron shackles was no match for a lady who by her blood and birth belonged in London ballrooms, however far she had fallen from that state. He would see her restored to that life, and see his debt repaid. Nothing-not her stubbornness nor his desire-would stand in the way of that.
He bent to their task anew, but blood saturated the cravat and his hand slipped again. “Damn and blast.”
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