“I’m sound. I swear to you,” she soothed, stammering. “I’ve never known anything like it.” She reached out two placating hands to touch his chest. “I was tumbling and tumb—”
He seized both her wrists in one hand before she could touch him and raised them roughly high over her head, walking her backward, pinning her to the wall. He studied her ferociously, as if picturing her manacled to a dungeon wall and liking the image.
“How could you be so bloody stupid? If you were a man, I would have you flogged for disobeying orders. Tied to the rigging. Thrown in a dungeon. I still might order it.”
She’d never seen such scorching fury. Every word seemed to have been plucked with tongs fresh off a blacksmith’s forge. He held her fast for a second longer. He released her hands abruptly.
She brought them slowly back down to her waist, lest a sudden move inspire him to snap them off. She rubbed at her wrists, and blue glare met blue glare, and their angry breathing mocked the storm outside. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. Breathing roughly.
She stared at him in silence, shivering.
“Take off your dress,” he said flatly.
She froze.
“I beg your pardon?” Her teeth chattered out the words.
“Take off your dress.”
“I—”
Like lightning striking, his hand darted behind her and snatched loose the laces that bound it up.
She was stunned breathless. She tried to speak; her voice seemed to have congealed.
“Finish,” he ordered calmly. “Otherwise I will finish the job for you.”
His tone left her no doubt that she didn’t want to choose the latter option.
He stood back from her, giving her enough room to follow his orders. And then waited, the bloody arrogant man, as though he had all the faith in the world that she would. But the furious heat of his body cloaked her, began to warm her, and his knee shifted slightly to press against the join of her legs, a wicked, dangerous pressure she would shy from if she could. That she should shy from.
But now it was all she could think about: that knee, his body heat, her fear, his command.
I can take you whenever I please.
“I don’t wa—”
“Do. It. Now,” he said far too calmly. Making it abundantly clear his patience was frayed to breaking.
Her hands flew behind her neck. Her heartbeat sped, nearly choking her. Clumsily she managed to finish what he’d begun, loosening the laces enough to spread them, so that the bodice of her dress began to sag. He watched like a sentry. She reached up and dragged down one sleeve, exposing a bare shoulder, the top of one breast.
She stopped, realizing what she was doing.
“The other sleeve.”
She hesitated. “If you would just turn ar—”
“The other—” And then he swore a quiet oath and yanked the other sleeve down.
And the dress, loose to begin with, sagged as if suddenly shot and slid down the length of her, catching at her hips. It was wet; it needed an extra push, so she gave it a push until it crumpled and pooled at her ankles. She stepped out of it, and her groin moved against his knee, and again, that delicious catch of danger-laced pleasure. He watched her, his eyes black, inscrutable.
Cruelly, he kicked the dress out of the way, no doubt knowing he might as well as be kicking her, given how she felt about her clothes.
She stood now in front-lacing stays and stockings and a chemise.
“The stays.”
“My lord…”
“The stays,” he repeated. Sounding incredulous she’d deign to speak after he’d issued an order.
She obeyed. Her hands reached up to between her breasts, to the laces of her stays. He watched her like a gaoler as her fingers unthreaded them. Spread them loose. Peeled them from her arms. Her breasts, lately caged and lifted up, were loosed now behind the fine, near-transparency of her chemise.
He stared unabashedly as she was slowly revealed to him, dark erect nipples pushing against the dampened fabric.
“The chemise.”
“I can’t…” she whispered.
“Lest you want it torn from you, you’ll remove the chemise,” he explained, each word measured with terrifying precision.
She clutched at the fine, wet fabric of her chemise, heart slamming. Searching for a way in past that white-hot fury, for a sign that he was bluffing, for anything, anything that would give her a foothold on his mood, a way to regain control.
He gave her back nothing but searing, black, carnal intent. His anger had a momentum, an objective.
And she understood now what a child she’d been, and what a formidable enemy he could be.
He drew in a sharp impatient breath and shifted warningly toward her.
She yanked the chemise up and away from her body, released it from her fingers; it floated to the floor like a ghost.
He gave it a kick.
She stood in stocking and garters, and covered her nudity, arms crossed like bandoliers across her breasts.
“Hands down, Miss Redmond.”
Swallowing in anticipation, she slowly lowered her hands, so her breasts were entirely bare to his view.
And then suddenly he reached behind him, seized the blanket from his bed and dropped it over her head like a shroud, pushed it back from her face, and then proceeded to gently, briskly rub dry her chilled flesh, dragging it testingly down her arms, beneath her sodden hair, over her torso, her breasts, gently along her ribs, her hands and fingers, dropping to his knees, rubbing each of her legs, along the way his skillful hands pressing muscles, tendons, ascertaining for himself that she was indeed unharmed. He would have elicited squeaks if she’d been injured.
Hardly a seduction. She’d seen her brother dry off a wet dog in just that way.
“Does anything hurt?” he said kneeling from the floor, where he had a view of her pale thighs and two very wet satin garters. The blanket in hand, he peeled each stocking down from her cold thighs, then from her clammy feet, and tossed them aside.
“No,” she said, subdued and now thoroughly embarrassed.
Finally he was satisfied the roses were back in her skin and her lips weren’t blue and that nothing was broken. She tingled everywhere from the ministrations, shy, shocked, ashamed, and woefully, woefully aroused.
And then he stood back from her, stripped off his own shirt, and scrubbed his own beautiful torso hard with the blanket, rubbed it through his hair. And watching this was warming, too. And then losing patience, he flung both blanket and shirt aside with an oath.
They stood inches from each other, each breathing hard from a tangle of emotions. The storm, losing its fury, gently seesawed the ship now. She heard the poor chess pieces rattling around on the floor, taking cover beneath the bed.
Violet pushed a lank strand of damp hair from her face, tucked it behind her ear. She wrapped one arm across her chest to cover her nudity.
“You’re bleeding,” she insisted softly. She tried again, touching her cheek to show him where.
This time he allowed it.
But his voice was slow and hard and cold. “It’s your blood, you bloody…little…fool.”
To prove it to her, his thumb swiftly, lightly touched her cheek; it stung. He held his hand up to show her: blood.
She stared, astounded. Touched her fingers to her cheek. Her fingers came away with blood, too. Odd that it hadn’t been washed away.
“It’s a scrape. You won’t need to be stitched up by the surgeon like a sail or a net. You won’t be at all marred.” Still curt. And ironic. “You could have been killed, but at least you won’t have any scars.”
She brought her hand down.
And for long silent seconds they stood, one entirely nude, one semi nude, inches but a universe apart, his knee all but wedged between hers. The force of his desire and his fury and whatever other enigmatic emotion had him in its grip unnerved her. But she’d never wanted anything more in her life than to melt into him. To soothe him, to take and give comfort.
She wanted it as much as she feared it.
He knew. And something shifted when he moved that knee infinitesimally closer, and pleasure burned through her like that whiskey.
“Where do you want me to touch you?” he demanded, voice low and taut.
Everywhere.
“I don’t want you to touch me,” she whispered.
“Stop lying to me.”
“I’m not—”
He lifted his hands up abruptly, as a pair. She flinched.
But he held them there, like someone handing off his weapons in surrender. Offering them to her for her own use. His eyes were glitteringly furious, eyebrows sardonically arched. He stared at her white nudity with arrogant confidence, as if it had always been his right to do exactly that. As if she were a banquet and he the sole guest.
She felt beautiful.
And she felt like a whore.
She hated him in that instant. He was punishing her for her rashness with her own nature, the nature he’d uncovered. It was a positively brilliant punishment. She wanted to sob out the unfairness of it, to thump him with a fist. Unfair that he should know her so well, so much better than anyone else ever had, should continually strip her of subterfuges until she was without defenses of any kind.
She wanted him.
She knew one swift sharp hike of the knee into his sensitives would really solve this.
For a few minutes, anyway. Until he caught up with her.
The ship tipped gently to the side, and then to the other, groaning softly.
“Show me, Violet,” he whispered, coaxing now like the devil himself, his tone so, so…sympathetic, so infuriatingly knowing. It lulled like a mesmerist. And his knee shifted just the slightest between her legs again, and her breath caught as hot shards of pleasure pierced. She swallowed. “Show me. Or tell me again to go to the devil, and I will go.”
He knew, he knew, what she would sell her soul for in this moment. He could surely see the heart beating in her throat, the flush in her skin, and feel her breath, rough as his, against his skin. All of these things gave her away.
She turned her head away from him with some effort. Knowing his eyes still followed her every move.
But even as her head turned, her hands came up, as though they could now do precisely as they wished now that she was no longer watching them.
And they rose until her palms lightly touched his.
When she turned slowly back to look at him, his expression had changed. For a moment they both seemed mesmerized by the contrast of her white fingers against his long brown hands, the relative smoothness of hers against the roughness of his. She avoided his eyes, watched her own hand carefully, as she drew her fingertips slowly down from the tops of his, a caress that felt stolen, an attempt to sooth him, that revealed a deeper, more complicated truth beneath the fury of the moment.
And as though he couldn’t help it, he gently laced the fingers of one of his hands through hers. Reassuring her. Then unlaced them slowly, but kept his palms against hers. He would not release her from her punishment.
Or from her reward.
Their eyes met. The moment stretched. She gathered courage. She inhaled shakily, and breathed out shakily. And she felt his breath hot against her skin, as though he were helping her breathe.
She closed her eyes, and gripped his hands, and drew him slowly toward her, and his body all but melted against her, covering her protectively, warming her, almost an apology for exposing her.
And she settled his hands over her breasts.
Here.
She was certain she would see triumph in his eyes. But he sighed, a shuddering sound. He ducked his head into her throat, as though all along he’d believed her decision was in question, and that if she’d done otherwise he might have died.
“Here?” His voice was a hoarse whisper into her ear, and his voice too was a caress. The very air around them was sensually charged, erotic against her skin. His palms shifted to reverently to savor the weight of her breasts.
“And shall I do this?” His thumbs ran over her nipples, already ruched to painful tightness.
Pleasure howled through her, jerking her head back.
“Yes.” She could hardly choke out the word. “Please, yes.”
She shifted restlessly to accommodate the rush of sensation, encountered that knee, and ground her body against it. Bliss again spiked. Her head tipped back against the wall, her eyes half-closed, exposing her throat to him, and he kissed her there. Not a tentative kiss. The hot, tender brand of his mouth, the scrape of whiskers, the delicate touch of tongue against her pulse. Thorough, carnal, possessive. A kiss he’d likely thought about, planned for days. His hands kneaded, skillfully stroked her breasts until she writhed beneath his hands, rippling with the waves of pleasure sent everywhere through her.
His bare flesh against hers was glorious. He was, as usual, radiating heat like a human sun.
“Violet,” he whispered against her mouth, just before he kissed her there.
She met his mouth with nearly a sob of relief, as though years and not days had separated their lips. His tongue dove greedily, tangling with hers, and her hands slid down, down over his chest, found his trousers, found and cupped his hard cock, and she slid her hands over his slim hips and pulled him against her.
Please.
He arced back, dodging her touch, denying her that pleasure now. Denying himself that pleasure.
He took his mouth away from hers and slid his hard body down, and arced her backward in his arms to take a nipple into his mouth.
He bit gently.
Sweet Mother of…
He sucked.
Shocking and exquisite, the sensation too much and not enough, and filaments of hot pleasure lit her veins. She was aflame. Her hands tangled in his wet hair, guiding him, encouraging him.
But still she wanted more, though she couldn’t say what that might be. She felt doomed to want like this. Her knees began to give way; she clung to him, her hands gripping his shoulders.
“Flint…” It was a plea.
“I know,” he soothed hoarsely, and there was promise and torment and triumph in the tone, for she’d just revealed to him he could torture her for as long as he pleased, because he alone was the means of her deliverance.
His hands slid from her breasts and following a trail dictated by the curves of her body, cupped her arse, squeezed.
“Shall I show you?”
“I don’t know…” She choked on the words. Her entire body seemed dedicated to enjoying the progress of his hands.
“Shall I show you what you want?” he whispered insistently.
“No,” she whispered.
And yet his hands never stopped moving over her body, never stopped lightly stroking, never stopped lighting fires everywhere in her until she burned, burned for him, and she would have protested had he stopped for even a moment.
They paused to cover the curls between her legs. She pressed her body up against his big palm.
Yes, yes, yes.
“No,” is what she whispered aloud. But the word emerged sounding like its enthusiastic opposite.
“No?” he disputed softly. And then his finger slid lightly along the crease between her wet curls.
“Dear God,” she managed hoarsely. “I meant…”
“You meant ‘again’? Go right ahead and nod if this is true.”
Bastard sounded amused. Even as his voice shook with his own suppressed need.
She nodded. Pride be damned.
Only his touch and what he could do for her mattered now.
She didn’t want to wonder how he knew where and how to touch her. She only cared now that he did and that he didn’t stop.
And his fingers slid between her legs, and she parted them for him.
“Oh God.” Could bliss be unbearable? This nearly was.
She sensed still there was more to be had. Instinctively, she slipped her hands into his trousers, covering his hard cock, stroking, and then greedily pushed them down, down away from his hips. She wanted him.
He hissed out shocked pleasure. His voice was a raw groan.
“Violet…you’d best not…”
I can take you whenever I please. Oh, he likely could. He was likely capable of it. He wanted to.
But he wouldn’t. She realized then he was protecting her from himself. And from herself.
Or he was trying to. She was making it difficult for him.
And still, his body rigid with desire, he suddenly, his body shaking, dragged his cock along her wet crease, tormenting both of them. She pressed against him, and yet she felt how hard and implacable he was, how enormous. She was afraid, and somehow she knew she wouldn’t stop him if he chose to take her.
How could she want something she should never want? She wanted to scream from the injustice of it.
He lifted up her thigh with one hand and thrust forward again, to lightly, lightly drag his cock against her. So close, but never really breaching her.
She pulsed, and arced toward him.
This time a groan was torn from him.
“Please,” she choked out.
But he stopped. His breathing wracked him. “Enough. Violet, I beg you, have a care.” It was a warning and threat.
She was coated in sweat now, and so was he.
Flint was begging. It was sobering. She was greedy for pleasure, for whatever it meant, but it was hell for him, because he was withholding his own.
For her sake. She should have known he would.
“Trust me,” he whispered. And he stood back from her, but he still supported her thigh so he could slip a finger deep into her.
She gasped at the invasion, tensing around him. But then his finger slipped out again, and expertly stroked her until an exquisite wash of sparks began to rain over her skin, then slipped in again.
“Yes…”
She tried to watch his face, fixed her eyes on his blue eyes, but her head thrashed back, and her breathing was ragged as she moved her body in time with his hand, asking for more, showing him how to touch her. He knew.
“Flint…” It was a question. She heard the trepidation in her voice. The need for reassurance.
The need for more.
“I’m here,” he murmured.
She wanted him to stop, because everything in her was hurtling toward something glorious, terrifying and inexorable, but something she needed. She wanted to know.
“God, Flint…”
“I have you.” His voice was a gasp in her ear. “I have you. Just let go.”
“Don’t stop.”
The most important command she had ever in her life uttered.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he murmured.
He didn’t stop. And now her breath was sawing, and need banking and banking until at last she bucked fiercely, shamelessly, beneath his swift, knowing fingers, her nails digging into the hard muscles of his arms. Surely she was hurting him. She didn’t care.
And he was there, he was there, as he’d been on the deck just minutes earlier, to save her, to give her what he needed.
Her release came at her like that wave, as total and shocking merciless, nearly blacking her consciousness, shattering her into a million glittering fragments. At last free her to float on an indescribable, longed-for bliss.
The storm had abated.
The ship rocked only slightly now; it had entirely ceased sliding the furniture about. The chess pieces still rattled around the floor of the cabin. A book skidded from the place it had lodged when thrown from the bookcase.
Motion. Everything always in motion.
He held her loosely. She buried her face in his furred chest. Humbled and amazed, limp and sated.
Embarrassed and very pleased.
“It’s…” she murmured.
Again, like the sea, like her first sight there were no words for what had just happened. Unless they were, “I should very much like to do more of that.”
“Isn’t it?” he agreed ironically.
And therein contained a warning.
Damn.
At last she truly understood what he’d wanted her to understand. This was in part why he’d done this for her. So she would know why men would kill each other over women, why men and women upended lives for each other.
She understood fully why. And she understood how dangerous it truly was to toy with it. As she had been toying with it. He’d tried to warn her.
She felt abashed now.
She knew what she needed to say. Or what he would likely next say.
But she didn’t want to say it just yet.
“You ought to take your wet trousers off,” she murmured.
She felt his smile curve against the top of her head. And then just as quickly it vanished, and she felt him go rigid as anger revisited him.
He stood back from her. “Why, Violet?”
She looked up. “Why? What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “I gave you a command. I know you heard it. I know you understood it. And yet you went up on the deck anyway. I know what’s best for everyone in these circumstances. Why did you do it? Do you respect me so very little?”
“No!” She was stunned “How can you think that?”
“I told you what to do. How can I not think that? You test me at every turn. I know how to keep you safe. I’ve been a commander of a ship for nearly twenty years. I gave you a command because I knew it would keep you alive. And if you were in danger I would come for you. Will you promise to obey my commands for as long as you’re on board my ship? Will stay below decks if you’ve any reason to believe there’s danger above?”
“I’ll obey your commands on board the ship. I’ll stay below decks if you feel it’s dangerous to be above.” She repeated as if taking an oath. To soothe him. “I trust you.”
He stood even farther back from her. She regretted the loss of his heat.
But his coat was hanging over the back of a chair, and he reached for it and settled it over her shoulders. It was huge and dry and smelled of him. She slid her arms into it. Proving yet again he knew how to keep her safe, how to protect her.
“Then why did you do it, Violet?” he pressed quietly. Relentlessly. A strange tension in his voice.
As though he knew the answer and waited breathlessly to hear it from her.
She faltered. She only knew the answer as she spoke it. “I…couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t stand knowing—I needed to know if you were—I needed to know that you would be…”
He was absolutely motionless. Eyes hot. Almost a warning not to say it.
“…safe.”
The word was already on its way out of her mouth. It dropped softly into an absolute silence.
Some other compelling force had driven her out on deck to look for him. It hadn’t been her mind.
She thought of her scrupulously genteel brother Miles punching Lord Argosy in the face over Cynthia Brightly.
The gently heaving ship sent that book sliding toward them from where she’d hidden it under the bed.
The earl stared at it. He went absolutely motionless. As though it were a poisonous spider. He glanced furtively up at her.
She understood immediately that her expression told him she knew precisely what was pressed in Miles’s book on Lacao.
Resigned, he slowly bent to pick it up. He held it, looking down.
And a long quiet ensued.
“Violet…” he began. She watched that beautiful chest fill and sink with a long breath. Gathering courage.
It was a moment before he had the courage to meet her eyes.
And then he did, and his face was subdued.
“Violet…” he said carefully, dryly. “I would have known much more than a twinge of regret if you had been washed overboard.”
She closed her eyes briefly. He’d quoted her again, from the very first real conversation.
She thought of the jasmine blossom. And now she knew he likely collected images of her the way he did that blossom.
The way she hoarded impressions of him.
He gave a short rueful laugh at his own expense. It sounded very like pain.
Their words seemed to hang and echo in the cabin. Seemingly innocuous. Impossibly fraught.
And when she said nothing, he seized the now damp blanket and wrapped it around his waist. And then he sat down on the bed, and disappointingly, with alacrity, got his trousers off from beneath it without a rampant display of nudity then strode over in all his gorgeous, battered glory to his wardrobe press to choose another shirt and a pair of trousers. But he did nothing so bold as to dress in front of her.
He turned instead, holding his clothes in his arms. He seemed to be waiting for her to do or say something.
She was still unnerved. She buttoned up his coat around her and gathered up her sodden, ruined clothing. She glanced down at her feet.
“My slippers have gone to sea,” she said ridiculously.
He still wasn’t ready to smile about her nearly being washed overboard.
She buried her hands deep in the pockets of the coat that smelled so like him she might as well have been wrapped in his arms. She thought her heart may very well burst from her chest.
“Violet…this…” He paused, though they both knew precisely what he meant by “this.” Their tempestuous carnal contest, in other words. “…must end.”
She heard herself make a sound. As though he’d swiftly drawn a splinter from her skin.
“You know it as well as I do,” he insisted softly.
She breathed into the silence. Another sort of wave came crashing down on her then, and she knew a moment of dark endless disorientation, which in a way was a peculiar rescue.
She might have accused him of being afraid again if a peculiar relief hadn’t lurked within her devastation.
He was right, of course. They both knew that “this” could only end in betrayal—for one of them would need to unforgivably betray the other when it came to Lyon Redmond. And then there was the little matter of her almost certain ruin and his plans that had naught to do with her.
What point was there in continuing anything that could only end badly? And she really couldn’t envision any other kind of ending.
So much for adventure.
Still, she could not find her voice.
He didn’t look any livelier, either, really.
“Of course,” she said finally after a moment. Her own voice surprised her. It was faint but steady. She heard it as if it were coming from underwater, appropriately enough. “Of course it must. We shall…keep our distance.”
She looked up at him for confirmation.
He nodded, bleakly, agreeing to the wisdom of that plan. “Distance,” he repeated.
And so the pot and the kettle parted ways, Violet to the vole hole. And something dully occurred to her as she marched for her quarters:
Lyon had likely been sailing in the very same storm.
But she hadn’t thought about his safety until now.