Payton could not remember ever having been quite so happy. Oh, she supposed that back when she’d been younger, roaming the decks of her father’s boats in her bare feet and pigtails, she’d been happy enough. And in the days before Miss Whitby, when it had been enough for her simply to sit next to Connor Drake, now and again, at mealtimes, she’d been happy, too.
But not since she’d become a woman—and she considered that this momentous occasion occurred sometime after her seventeenth birthday, when Mei-Ling had announced that she was returning to her own family, her job being done—had she ever felt this content, this calm, this … well, happy.
She probably hadn’t any right to feel so self-satisfied. After all, they were still in mortal danger. The Rebecca or the Nassau Queen could come into view on the horizon any minute. They still had to hide their evening campfires, and stay off the beach as much as possible. But what did that matter? She was marooned on an island with the man she’d been in love with since she was fourteen years old. What was more, he loved her. She was solidly convinced of his love. Besides the fact that he freely admitted it—and at the oddest moments, too, like when she’d just washed her face and was stumbling around, looking for something to dry it with—he proved it a
thousand different ways, every single day. She had only to utter the slightest wish—a fancy for lobster for supper, for instance—and he granted it. She was the luckiest girl alive, and she knew it. She had even made a truce with God, and forgiven Him, at long last, for robbing her of her mother. She felt that, in making Drake love her, God had more than made up for any injuries done to her in the past.
And yet, happy as she was, she had to admit to a certain wariness, where Drake was concerned. Not that she felt she had anything to fear—for instance, that should they ever be rescued, he’d leave her for someone else, someone who wouldn’t so easily be mistaken for a boy, or who actually knew what in the hell had happened to her maidenhead—but because of something Georgiana had said once, when Payton had asked her why she’d married Ross. She had naively supposed that Georgiana was marrying her brother because she loved him, and now, of course, she knew that her sister-in-law really did love Ross … at least, in her own way, which wasn’t in the least the way Payton loved Drake.
Anyway, Georgiana, who was several years older than Payton, had taken the opportunity to offer her husband’s sister a little advice: “It’s always better,” she’d said, “for a woman to marry a man who loves her just a little more than she loves him. That way, she can always be certain of having the upper hand.”
Payton had never forgotten this piece of advice. She had no idea whether or not it was accurate, though she did rather suspect that in Ross and Georgiana’s case, it might be. And she had to admit it was causing her some worry, since she knew good and well that she loved Drake with every fiber of her being, with all the fervor and fierceness of a first love. She was not at all convinced that he loved her more than she did. In fact, she couldn’t see how he could: he was, after all, a man of the world. He’d surely met dozens of women who were far more worldly and exotic than Payton. If, after they were rescued—and she was quite certain they would be, some day—he stayed with her, how was Payton to know whether he was
staying with her because he really loved her, or staying with her because, after everything they’d done together, her brothers would kill him if he didn’t?
It was a dilemma. Not one that bothered her hourly, or even daily, but one that occurred to her sometimes late at night, when she lay in his arms, looking up at the stars. Drake was hardly one of those poetic types of lovers—he rarely told her that he loved her without employing an expletive in the sentence (he loved her like hell, or like the devil) and he had certainly never sung the praises of her beauty (except to observe, once, that her feet were shockingly small, compared to his own). But still, she felt that he really was attached to her, in his way. She gathered this not so much through the way he made love to her—which was often, and generally quite emphatic—but from the subtle clues he dropped here and there, most likely not even realizing he’d revealed them.
Take, for instance, the fact that they were trapped together on this island. They could hardly get away from one another. In fact, when she wanted to be alone, she had to wait until he was asleep, or was fully occupied stalking some small beast for supper. The rest of the time, he was talking to her, or making love to her, or simply staring at her, something he did with irritating regularity, to the point that now, when she caught him at it, she heaved a coconut in his direction, if one was handy.
But despite the fact that they were hardly ever out of one another’s sight, it seemed as if Drake could not stand to be without her company. Even when she was sleeping, he did his level best to wake her. Head-over-heels in love with him as she was, Payton was still firmly aware of the fact that Drake had faults, and one of the most irritating was his tendency to wake very early in the morning. Since there wasn’t a great deal to do on San Rafael, Drake occupied these early morning hours devising ways to wake her. He didn’t dare, after their first few mornings together, simply shake her awake. He’d tried that, and nearly had his head bitten off for his trouble. Nor could he try more erotic methods of rousing her—she had
wakened, plenty of mornings, to find his face buried between her thighs, and had generally responded by placing a foot on his shoulder and shoving him away.
So Drake had taken to “accidentally” waking her. Some of these “accidents” had included the very loud blaring of a conch shell (he’d had to blow on it, he claimed, to make sure there wasn’t a conch inside; she liked conch for breakfast, didn’t she?); a shower of spring water from an overturned gourd (he claimed to have tripped); and, Payton’s favorite, a butterfly that just happened to perch on her nose as she slept (he stridently denied having sprinkled pollen anywhere near her face, though when she’d rubbed it, telltale yellow had come off on her hand).
What was most infuriating of all was that every morning, after waking her with these preposterous excuses, Drake took no more time explaining them away than it took him to unlace her shirt. And then, next thing she knew, he was kissing her, and she forgot all about how furiously angry she was at being roused with the dawn, and actually proceeded to kiss him back! It was extremely hard to stay angry at someone who was capable, with the merest kiss, of rendering you senseless. Payton feared Georgiana wouldn’t think very much of her, had she been aware of how she was conducting herself in this, her very first love affair.
And if Georgiana had happened to witness her behavior one particular evening, after a delicious supper of roast parrot—she’ d quickly gotten over her soft-heartedness—and mangoes, she’d have probably disowned her. Having tied off the final knot in a hammock she’d spent, quite literally, days creating out of vines, Payton urged Drake to hang it between two palm trees, down on the beach. Since it was evening, and there was no chance of them being spotted from beyond the shoals, he agreed, and they set off, Drake observing dryly that, considering the amount of time she’d put into the creation, she might have woven something more useful than a hammock. A fishnet, he said, was what they wanted, so he wouldn’t have to spend all his time trying to will the fish to come to him: he
could just spread out his net and wham! Dinner.
Payton, skipping along behind him, ignored him. It was a beautiful evening—like all the evenings they’d experienced on San Rafael—and she was looking forward to enjoying it from the cradle of the hammock she’d made—if it proved strong enough to support her weight. She wasn’t at all certain it would. Which was where Drake came in. She fully intended to make him try it first. If it did not break under his superior weight, she knew it would be safe enough for her.
How Drake might have liked it, had he known she’d required his presence merely as a test subject, she never knew, since she wisely kept it from him. But once he’d strung the hammock up, he didn’t even ask her if she wanted to try it first. Instead, he lowered himself onto it, gingerly at first, then with growing confidence.
“I say, Payton,” he declared, giving the crude netting beneath him an experimental bounce. “This thing’s perfect.”
Then, lifting his feet from the sand, he stretched out in the hammock, which groaned only a little bit beneath his weight. “This,” he said, to the moonless sky. “This is the way to live. What have we been thinking, sleeping on the ground? We must have been mad. Come here, Payton, and try this.”
But Payton, who’d been standing to one side, watching him, had another idea. She never could say how it occurred to her, or what made her think of it. Maybe it was the way Drake had lifted his arms above his head, revealing the pale skin and silken hair of his underarms. In any case, instead of joining him, Payton reached out and, using a bit of vine she’d had left over, she tied Drake’s wrists to the sides of the hammock.
“Payton,” he said, sounding only mildly curious. “What are you doing?”
Making sure he was well and truly secured—she pulled on each of his arms to be certain of it—Payton started to remove her trousers. “Remember,” she said, “when you were chained to the wall in the hold of the Rebecca?”
“I’m not likely to forget it.”
“Well, this is what I wanted to do you while you were in there.” She pulled off her shirt. “Only you would never have let me. Not then.”
His eyes, which were normally so light in color that they still occasionally unnerved her, went dark, the pupils wide as pennies, as he gazed at her. “Payton,” he said, his deep voice rich with amusement. “What are you up to?”
Standing by the side of the hammock, she leaned down, her bare breasts pressing up against his arm. Ordinarily, he’d have reached for them. He was inordinately fascinated by her breasts—so much so that she no longer considered them abnormally small, but rather the absolute perfect size for Connor Drake’s palms. But he couldn’t touch them this time, couldn’t play with them, as he was fond of doing, bringing first one, then the other of her nipples to his mouth, because his wrists were securely bound.
“Payton,” he said, in a different tone of voice. She felt the muscles in his arm leap beneath her breasts. She ignored them, and reached for the buttons on the front of his trousers.
Now he tried to break the bonds that were tying his arms up over his head. “Payton,” he said, when he found he couldn’t, not without causing the rough fibers to cut into his skin. “This isn’t funny.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the lips. “I know,” she said. “And don’t worry. I’ll cut you loose.” She slid her mouth down the side of his prickly face—his beard was something to see, it was so bushy and wild—placing her lips against the place in his throat where his pulse beat. “I’ll cut you loose,” she assured him again, in a husky whisper. “When I’m ready.”
Then she ran her fingers lightly over his chest, feeling the raised imprints of old scars, the flat nubs of his own nipples, which were brown and for the most part lost in a field of golden hair. She found one, and pinched it gently between a thumb and forefinger. “Does that feel good?” she asked him.
“It does not,” he said. “I want you to go and get the knife right now, Payton, and cut me loose.”
“Do you?” She raised a leg and slipped it over him, then
raised the other, until she was sitting astride him in the hammock. The vines groaned a little, but held, to her relief. She looked down at him triumphantly. “Do you still?” she asked, leaning down to nip, with her teeth, what she’d pinched between her fingers before.
She knew perfectly well what his answer was going to be. She could feel him growing hard beneath her. She let go of his nipple and licked it gently, instead.
“Well,” Drake said, in a different tone of voice. “Maybe …”
She moved her head, raining small kisses down his rib cage; past the scar from an old knife wound; toward the place where the tawny hair that covered him all over grew thickest.
“Payton,” he gasped out, as she moved aside the front piece of his breeches.
She didn’t reply. Instead, she took hold of his penis—which was really quite outrageously hard, for someone who’d claimed not to like her touching his nipples—and, with extreme delicacy, tasted the tip of it with her tongue—the way he rather regularly tasted her.
A frantic thrashing followed as Drake tried once again to break his hands free. Payton had to raise her head and say sharply, “If you don’t stop that I’m going to leave you here all night, exactly as you are.”
“Payton,” he ground out, as angrily as if it were a curse word and not her name. But she noticed he’d grown quite still.
She turned her attention back to the enormous appendage she held. It seemed to her that if he reacted so intensely to the merest touch of her tongue there, he might have an even more interesting reaction should she slip her entire mouth around the engorged head—if it would fit. Well, there was only one way to find out.
This time, he inhaled, so sharply that she thought she might have caused him an injury. But he didn’t try to throw her off, which he certainly could have, if what she was doing was in some way painful. In fact, quite the opposite. He grew perfectly still, hardly even seeming to dare to breathe. So she
obligingly slid her lips as far around his phallus as she could. Curling her fingers round it, too, she attempted to simulate what she thought it must be like to him when he was inside of her.
Apparently she succeeded, because she noticed that his breathing grew quite irregular, and that his chest had gotten slick with perspiration, despite the cool night air around them. But he was far too big, and her mouth too small, to continue the experiment. Besides, his blatant excitement was contagious. She’d begun to feel a familiar throbbing between her own legs, a longing to be filled. So she positioned herself over him, and, watching him carefully, lowered herself onto that pulsating shaft, still slick with moisture from her mouth.
He groaned. It was quite a loud groan, too. Payton herself had groaned a little—he had never seemed so big as he did that night, despite the fact that she was more than ready for him; apparently, her kissing him there had caused some kind of correlating reaction that swelled his erection to even greater proportions than usual—but his groan drowned hers out. She began to think tying him up had been rather a good idea. Now she had perfect control over their movements, and could time everything exactly how she pleased …
Except that, astride him as she was, she felt rather more of a sense of urgency than usual. That throbbing tenderness between her legs was more easily satisfied, what with that hard wall of muscle that made up his abdomen to rub against. She forgot all about the clinical observations she’d been intending to make, and started moving rapidly up and down the length of his shaft, her hands splayed across his chest. He was moving, too—not to break his bonds, this time, but to plunge himself more deeply into her. She wouldn’t let him, this time. Halfway in was as much as she’d allow. This seemed to drive him mad, but there was nothing he could do about it. Without the use of his hands, he couldn’t force her to stay still. Intoxicated with her sense of power, Payton rode him with giddy energy, until suddenly, a familiar tingling started in the soles of her feet …
And then a celestial hurricane erupted. All around her, a magnificent display of fireworks shimmered and twinkled. It was like that night on the deck of the Virago that summer he’d offered her his pillow, only this time, she wasn’t lying on the hard wood of the forecastle, but flying above it, in her own chariot of flame. She shuddered all over with the pure joy of it, and collapsed, smiling, onto Drake’s damply furred chest.
Only he was still twisting beneath her, trying to find the same release she’d already experienced. Opening her eyes, she saw that his face was tightly contorted, as if in pain. Lethargic in the afterglow of her orgasm, she nevertheless took pity on him and reached up to pull lightly on the vine that had anchored his hands above his head.
His wrists came free at once. She’d always been rather good at slip knots.
Shocked, Drake opened his eyes and stared up at her. She smiled smugly down at him—but only for a second. Because an instant later, she was gasping as he drove himself, with unexpected force, deeply into her. Both his hands had gone to her buttocks, keeping her hips motionless as he plundered what lay between them. He ground himself into her, like a man who’d gone without lovemaking for a good deal longer than she knew, for a fact, he had.
My goodness, she thought. I shall certainly tie him up more often.
Then she felt him explode within her. He did it with such violence that she had to hold onto him rather tenaciously to keep from being thrown out of the hammock.
But he was instantly contrite afterward, reaching up to pull her down against him until her cheek rested against his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, fast as a hummingbird’s wings at first, then slowing down to a more moderate thud, thud, thud, as his breathing became even again.
“Don’t you ever,” he said into her hair, “do that again.”
She smiled against his chest. “Which part?” She reached out, and laid a finger over one of his nipples. “This part?” Then she dipped her hand lower, to take hold of his now
considerably less engorged genitalia. “Or this part?”
He took some time to consider the question. “The tying-up part.”
She lifted her head to look at him. “That was the best part.”
“Oh, ho,” he said. “We’ll do it to you next time, and see how much you like it.”
She sat up eagerly. “Could we? Could we really?”
“Good Lord.” He reached out, and pulled her back down against him. “Go to sleep, Payton.”
“But next time, could we—”
“Yes, he said. He said it as if he were exasperated, but Payton saw, before she closed her eyes, that he was smiling.