by Angel Payne
She’d started to drip for him.
Hell.
Tsunami, please say hello to hurricane.
“Golden…my maddening little hellion. Do you know how you make me feel?”
She moaned in reply, setting her hands free over his shoulders and chest. Her touch was a torment of sweetness, curiosity and heat. “All I feel…is you.”
“And how do I feel?”
“Interesting.”
He cocked both brows and looked at her. “Interesting?”
She gave him an adorable, beautiful smile. Her teeth caught her lower lip as she slid a hand beneath his shirt and brushed her fingers along his collar bone. “Aye. Very interesting. Like a hard, carved totem god.”
She delved her other hand into the thick, dark waves of his hair. As her fingernails scraped his scalp, Mast dipped his lips to her neck again. She was moist and soft there, as pliant as the rest of her body. He loved feeling the vibrations of her mewl as he eased his thigh between her legs, giving her sweet, sensual torture as he gently rocked his leg.
“Ohhh…C-Captain!”
He tilted his face to look at her profile. “Feels good, hellion?” When she responded with nothing but gasps, he dug his teeth into her neck again—hard this time. “I asked you a question, Golden.”
“Yes!” she cried. “Yes, it feels…ahhh…” Her head fell back. “Blissful. Wonderful.”
He pulled his head back again, letting himself drink greedily of her flushed beauty, her awakening consciousness of so many new things as he stroked her, aroused her, brought her sexuality to life. With every pull of his hands, every press of his thigh and every brush of his lips, she surrendered to another shivering tarantism, another flush of desire.
Retribution. It was all he’d wanted; to teach her what a gown like this on a body like hers did to a man. So he’d grabbed her brazenly—hell, damn near awkwardly, it had been so long since he’d held a woman like this—and braced himself for the incensed slap that would have ended it all at last. He’d finally be out of the morass into which she’d pitched him since the moment they met. He’d be free of the abyss of hot desire, untangled from the web she’d so innocently, expertly woven around his senses.
But she wasn’t that merciful.
She was simply everything else. Soft. Close. And open…so breathtakingly free and honest. Everything she was feeling was painted across the classic angles of her face.
“Golden.” He murmured the sparkling word, but inside he screamed. He was tumbling just as hard as she.
Nay. Retribution. That was all this was supposed to be. All it could be.
“Golden.” He finally moved away. As he did, he pried her fingers loose from him too, constrained them in the air with both his hands.
Her stare glittered at him over their shaking handclasp. “What is it? Don’t—don’t I feel good, too?”
“Christ.” Wry laughter spiked the word despite his best intentions. “Hellion, don’t you know what you do to a man when you dress like this? When you look like this?”
The last traces of passion faded from her face. In its place was a wince of pain. “You don’t have to be so blunt about it. I wasn’t such a mess until you insulted me. My hair would’ve stayed if you hadn’t forced me to run down here. And the dress—”
“You make him want to touch you where he shouldn’t.”
Her mouth hung open for ten seconds more. Then she formed it into a little pout he was helpless to resist. He yanked her close again, letting her feel the heat she kindled in his blood, the flames she swirled through his whole damn body.
Who the hell was he fooling?
This wasn’t about retribution. It never was.
“Aye, Golden,” he said, letting his breath fan her cheek. “You make him want to touch you…like this.”
He pressed a hand over the graceful curve of her other cheek. He was a man lost, conquered by a force beyond his understanding or control. Near the back of his mind, a voice still struggled to scream out—this isn’t right—but it was pounded by the mass of heat, craving, desire, and demand his body had become.
This is right. God, this is so right.
“You make him want to embrace you, Golden. Like this…”
He dipped both arms so he could bracket her hips with his hands. Then he pulled her legs apart, and seated her mound directly against the bulge in his crotch.
Golden gasped. She smiled shakily at him, her breath mating with his, her gaze burning into him with the force of her passion.
“Mast?”
“What?” The reply was more his breath than his voice.
“What does the man want to do after this?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Her voice, sweet as honey yet pure as rain, washed over those secret ramparts inside him…those battlements he’d thought as impenetrable. She moved him.
She terrified him.
And the tenderness in her eyes said she knew that, too.
With that understanding spreading across her face, she reached up. Her fingers traced the crescent of his scar first. She explored her way up to his lips, running her nail along the slightly parted seam of them.
“Golden—” he entreated.
“Show me,” she implored back.
“Golden—”
“Please.”
“Dear God save me.”
He crushed his lips to hers.
Perhaps God really did need to save him. His lungs seized and his body ignited, searing away any gates of constraint or composure. He dug one hand into her hair and twisted hard, commanding her mouth to widen for him. When she did, he stabbed his tongue into her, taking her mouth with one aim alone. To really show her what the goddamn dress, and her body in it, made him want to do.
In response, she coiled her arms around his neck, gripping him tight. They stayed there even after he dragged his mouth from hers, and they gazed at each other while gulping on air. He nearly choked with the incredible sight of her. Her eyes were glazed over in lusty astonishment. Her hair was everywhere now.
And her lips. Christ, her lips.
He took her mouth again, engulfing it with more hungry urgency this time.
He wanted to be inside her.
She whined with sexier urgency as he backed her to the wall and started rolling his body against hers.
He wanted to be inside her.
As exigent as the mantra became, he yanked his head back to look at her. He had to remember where she’d come from. Until three years ago, she’d been a sheltered Arawak girl, living simply in the jungle. Now here he was, rutting at her like an ape. An ape with aching coconuts for balls at the moment…
Who was captivated anew by her open, sweet smile.
Her eyes twinkled with sexy mischief as she ventured, “So…after this…do we get to kiss?”
He blinked and pulled back a little more. “Hellion, ahhh…”
The delight dropped from her gaze. “Damn. I’ve rummed it up again, haven’t I?”
He stopped her by cupping both sides of her face. “Golden.” As he touched his lips to hers, he couldn’t hold back the chuckle that shook him. “You know kissing.”
Puzzlement quirked her face. It made her even more adorable. And his breeches feel even tighter.
“This—that—” she stammered. “All of that lip-pressing…that’s kissing?”
“Mmmhmm.” Mast fought to keep his mirth locked behind his lips.
“Even the tongue part?”
“Oh, yes. Even the tongue part.”
He expected a little hmmph of feminine embarrassment. Maybe a flustered pout, which he was fully prepared to kiss away into desire again.
He didn’t expect the wider smile that she beamed.
“Well, that’s not the way a body does it in the rainforest.”
No, she wasn’t embarrassed at all. Certainly not as she trailed her fingertips along his chest, then around to his back. Especially not as she circled around to face him again, and her touch trail
ed deeper into the V of his shirt.
Mast’s breath erupted with shaking intensity. He couldn’t help that any more than he could the question that formed on his lips.
“So…how does a body kiss in the rainforest?”
She sighed then, too. It radiated warmth into his chest. “Can’t you feel me showing you?”
I am a doomed man.
He allowed her to remove his vest and shirt with nothing more than a deep swallow and a labored breath. Through every moment there were her hands, long and curious and free, as she explored every inch of him. Her touch was first gliding and tentative, then kneading and more possessive. She traveled up and down his ribs, across his chest then down his arms, even making an intricate study of his hands and fingers before she circled behind him. There, she outlined each contour of his back. A primitive, sensual little mewl emanated from her throat as she finished with each part of him, as if learning him…memorizing him.
It was pure torture. It was exquisite ecstasy. All the practiced seductions of London, the ardent embraces of Paris, the deep-tongued come-hithers of every port he’d known in his life…they had no right to be called kisses. Not after this. His body opened to her ministrations. His skin hungered for them. Each nerve was an inspired individual of light and sensation, of fire and need…
“Close your eyes,” she instructed gently, now standing in front of him again. “Close your eyes, and open your senses. Feel me kissing you, beautiful man.”
He wanted to scream. He groaned instead. He moved to protest her motions but she murmured a huskier repeat of her directions and all he could do was but obey, praying for deliverance even as he yearned for the delivering damnation of her touch.
Sweet sin came with her lips. A shudder claimed him as he felt the first wet nip at his shoulder. Her mouth was warm, soft, suckling. He clenched his hands as he felt her continue up to his neck. With every inch, she sniffed like an inquisitive kitten, breathing in his scent, at last licking him too. She never stopped that erotic, enticing moan. It echoed from deep inside her, a sound that was pure, primeval, instinctual…a treasured, secret part of her.
He pulled his fists tighter. His cock felt like another part of him, surging against his will, utterly lost to the rhythms of her exploration. It was a slight, very slight, relief when her hands took the place of her lips again.
Until her palms flattened against his nipples.
“Fuck,” he grated. “Golden…that’s…”
His head fell back. His knees started to puddle. His erection stretched beyond salvation. The tension grew even worse as he looked to see Golden examining one hardened half of his chest, then the other. A soft, bewildered look adorned her face.
“Our way of kissing pleases you.”
“Uhhh…aye.”
“I wonder what it would be like if we took your way of kissing, and blended the two.”
Before Mast could deduce what she was about, she dipped her head and formed her velvety mouth to his nipple.
His knees liquefied. His groan was a primitive eruption as he grabbed Golden, taking her down with him. Once on the floor, he rolled her beneath him, mating his lips and tongue with hers, taking her with all the heat in his body and hunger in his soul. When he lifted to shove the hair from her face, her lips were parted and swollen and pleading to be kissed again. Passionate flecks of bronze darkened the gold alloy of her eyes.
She wanted him. It was clear as a signal fire in every radiant inch of her face, though he doubted she was capable of recognizing it for what it was. Christ. She held nothing back. Her honesty stunned him.
And sobered him.
What the hell was he doing? Where was his proud disdain for this kind of stupidity, this game of tease and tantalize? Where was the terror of losing his treasured self-control, the dread of sacrificing every scrap of self-worth and honor he’d attained despite his nonexistent heritage?
“Mast…”
Her pleading whisper suddenly sounded like the swish of the Grim Reaper’s scythe.
“Kiss me again.”
“I…can’t.”
“Yes. Please. You can…”
She was incredible. Her hair was a shining spectrum against the floor; her skin glowed with vibrancy and warmth. She was as beautiful as a sea siren and as stubborn as a bull. She wasn’t Wayland’s blood daughter, but she might as well have been.
Hell. Wayland. He’d shut the man out of his mind on purpose. His mind had been filled with branding Golden as his, solely his. He’d been so obsessed with stamping his possession on every inch of her, nothing existed that would connect her to anything or anyone else.
You bloody fool.
The truth was the truth. And the truth of this moment was, he lay half-clothed on his cabin floor with the daughter of the man who had taken him in, mentored him, damn near fathered him. The man who had taught him the very honor he was supposed to be exercising.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I’m so sorry, Golden.”
The next half hour passed like he dreamed it. He remembered shoving up from the floor but not being able to leave. He yearned for her to jump up and lay into him with one of her infuriated slaps, but she didn’t move, didn’t speak. She looked up from the floor with a stare she must have learned from some wounded forest creature.
He’d finally slammed his arms back into his shirt. Then like a larger idiot, got morose and defensive. This wasn’t his fault, for God’s sake. He wasn’t the one who’d sidled up to the main deck in a gown that would stop a rampaging elephant. At least thinking of it that way gave him the strength to finally get back to the main deck without glancing back.
But in his mind, he glanced back again and again. His heart, damn the traitor, followed every time. And every time, he experienced it all again. The wings that carried his senses with her smile. The heat that claimed his sex with her touch. The freedom that filled his being with her kisses, her kind or his.
It wasn’t long before he turned his gaze up to the vast night sky, and realized he might as well have been looking in a mirror. He didn’t know how it happened, but it had. This hellion, this goddess, this woman had ripped open a hole inside him the size of a Caribbean sky. She’d blown into his life like the wildest wind and cleared away the clouds of his world, letting the stars in his sky glimmer again.
Aye, she’d shown him the stars. And all he had given her was pain. She’d opened herself to him, almost literally, and all he could offer her was rejection.
It was all he’d ever be able to offer.
His constellation was not for navigating, and the sooner Golden Gaverly comprehended that, the better. Lady Golden Gaverly, he corrected to himself. The same lady dear “Papa” probably had a line of suitors dreaming about this very moment.
Conjuring that image sent his fist flying back into the pile of canvas upon which he lay.
“You owe me, Wayland,” he muttered into the silent, cool night air. “You owe me for this ungodly torment.”
Chapter Eleven
Golden finally found the best word for it.
Torment.
Her head felt like a smashed mango. Her eyes fared no better, little helped by the scrap of sleep she’d managed to get in some dim hour just before sunrise. It even hurt to smile, returning the men’s banter over the morning soup pot with a lightheartedness she couldn’t be further from feeling.
That was only the beginning. The real torment sliced much deeper; agonized much more. To petrifying depths of her soul.
Mast didn’t want anything to do with her, even as a woman. He’d made himself perfectly clear this time, whether she liked it or not And now from the way he sat in the longboat across the deck, eyes resolutely fixed out over the ocean, she deduced he never wanted to look at her, either.
“Fine!” she spat.
If that was the way he wanted it, she’d not look at him, either. She wrenched her gaze back to the simmering pot and threw her concentration into the thick turtle stew.
But with
in a minute, the warm moisture that dewed on her skin felt just like the heat he’d seared into her neck, her face, and her lips last night. And lower, too…oh dear stars, how he’d made her feel his presence there. Her heartbeat tingled beneath her breasts with the memory of it. Liquid fire pooled all over again in that soft, secret place between her thighs.
“Mighty Puntan,” she pleaded in a whisper. “What on earth happened?”
What kind of a trap had she fallen into? She had set out to vanquish the man but had ended up the humbled instead, lost in a sea of wonderment and awakening, longing and need, all at once. She should be exulting over the remains of that frowning wall she’d set out to crumble, but this morning, Mast Stafford and all his secrets were still locked up tighter than a murderer in Newgate.
His closed expression confirmed her miserable view. His face was a mask of dark detachment, making her ache for the moments when she’d stroked heat, hunger, and need there, instead. She struggled not to remember how he’d fanned the same incredible fires in her…
Right before she found herself alone on the cabin’s floor of the cabin, watching his boots disappear up the stairwell with the remnants of her hope smashed across their soles.
Aye. Torment. This pain was nothing less.
She didn’t realize what a death grip she had on the soup ladle until Maya appeared by her side, gently prying her fingers loose.
“Sister, maybe you rest a moment.”
She looked into the deep-brown strength of the native’s eyes. “No, Maya. Thank you, but I’m fine. Truly. I just—”
“Goll-denn….”
“I. Am. Fine. Now if you don’t mind, the soup’s settling and these men are still…”
Whatever the men were, she forgot it the next moment.
Despite her earlier resolution, her gaze rose and locked to the longboat again. Mast wasn’t studying the horizon any more. His eyes were leveled on her. He didn’t smile but his traditional scowl wasn’t in place, either—which perturbed her even more.
