“You know, I believe I have finally identified what I find so appealing in you, dearest Alex.” Jason stood, fastened his breeches, and speared his fingers through his hair. “You give of yourself without reservation or inhibition. Rather, you possess a generosity of spirit that is unrivaled by any other woman I have known. Given what you risked for Cara, how you have assumed a vast deal of Molly’s chores, the way you extended friendship to a cook-maid, and your willingness to share your body with me, you are, perhaps, the most munificent lady of my acquaintance.”
Something in his tone disturbed her, as she gathered the dirty plates and conveyed them to the basin. After filling the kettle with water to boil for washing the dishes, she considered her next move. It was now or never, so she cast her lot on love.
“By the by, I neglected to mention that I have decided to send for my coach. If you will post my missive, on your way to work, tomorrow, the hired rig should arrive in the evening.” The future she desperately desired played a series of magical vignettes, and she stiffened her back. “After all, I came here to set things right, and I have achieved my goal, so it is time I return to London.”
Silence blanketed the cottage, interrupted by the occasional echoing thunder. Conscious of nothing save the beat of her heart, as she awaited Jason’s response, Alex prayed for a betrothal. With her most fervent dreams hanging in the balance, she wrung a drying cloth.
“A storm approaches.” Jason strolled toward his chamber, and her hopes dwindled with each successive step. At last, he turned and faced her. “I should be happy to dispatch your correspondence. Goodnight, Alex.”
Inside her, something fractured. She would cry, but not until he closed his door and set the bolt. “Goodnight, Captain of my heart.”
#
A brilliant flash of lightning brought Jason alert from a deep sleep, and he sat upright at the ensuing thunderous roar. Rubbing his tired eyes, he yawned. The wind howled, and rain beat a rapid salvo on the window. He rolled on his side and envisioned Alex, bucking in his lap, and her effuse cries of release filled his ears in licentious accompaniment.
“Bloody everlasting hell.” In the dark, he shot from his bed, walked to the washstand, poured water into the basin, and splashed his face. But nothing could soothe the ache that burned in his chest, as he pondered Lady Seymour’s departure. How he longed for her to stay, yet she never should have journeyed to Plymouth, and he never should have permitted her to share the cottage, so he would suffer her absence in silence.
The room had grown cold, so he added a couple of logs to the fire and stoked the blaze. At the footboard, he grabbed the extra blanket and unfolded it. Just as he was about to slip between the covers, he noted a thread of gold light emanating from beneath the door.
“Alex, are you awake?” He shrugged into his robe and cinched the belt at his waist. “Are you all right, love?”
No response.
After unlocking the bolt, he set the oak panel wide and shuddered, as the great room was bone-chilling cold. A single taper illuminated the living space, as the fire had long since extinguished. But what troubled him was the empty sofa.
“Alex.” Could she have gone outside, in the torrential downpour, for some unfathomable reason? Jason crossed the floor in a handful of strides, twisted the key at the front entry, pulled open the door, and peered into the gale. “Alex.”
Sheets of rain pounded the earth, and the mighty oaks twisted and turned in the wind, amid the staccato flashes of nature’s tempest, and he fought to close the portal. Convinced she had not ventured into the vicious winter storm, he scanned the immediate vicinity.
The modest frock she had worn at dinner, and as she had sat in his lap as a most sumptuous dessert, had been draped over the large chair. And then it occurred to Jason that he had yet to glimpse his lady in her nightgown. If only he could find her.
“Alex?” And then he heard it, a whisper of breath followed by a ghost of a whimper. He held high the candle and turned. “Answer me, now.”
“I am here.” She sobbed.
“Where are you?” He glanced to the left. In the dining area, he squatted, searched beneath the table, and his gut seized. “Darling Alex, what happened?”
Huddled against the wall, with legs bent, arms wrapped about her shins, and her forehead pressed to her knees, Alex shivered. Jason reached and touched her, and her flesh was clammy. He had to warm her before she caught her death.
Setting the candlestick on the floor, he first attempted to join her under the small table, as if his six-foot frame would fit. Cursing himself a fool, he stood and wrenched the small piece of furniture away from the window. Then he retrieved and blew out the taper.
In one fail swoop, he scooped Alex into his arms, carried her into his chamber, kicked the door shut behind him, and settled her on the mattress. After tucking the blankets about her, he tended the fire. When Jason returned to his lady, it dawned on him that the one woman he most wanted to find warming his sheets sat, albeit weeping, in the middle of the bed.
While a gentleman would offer support and comfort, he doubted his ability to resist the irresistible debutante, as she wore nothing more than a diaphanous silk confection, which had caught the attention of the cannon in his crotch. Primed for a voluptuous battle, and restrained only by his flimsy satin robe, Jason swallowed hard, stared at the ceiling, and prayed for strength.
“Alex, please, talk to me.” He shook her shoulder and retreated to a safe distance. “Why are you crying, love?”
“You left me.” She emitted a plaintive wail.
“What?” Without thought of the hazard, he sat on the edge of the bed.
“I could not find you.” She peered at him, and terror invested her lovely features.
“Nonsense, darling.” He caressed the gentle curve of her cheek. “I am right here.”
“You were gone.” And then his society miss once again behaved completely out of character for a gently bred virgin. Before he could stop her, she climbed into his lap, slipped her arms about his waist, and hugged him as if her life depended on him. “And I was alone.”
“It must have been a dream, sweetheart, as I have never abandoned you.” Jason gritted his teeth when she wiggled her hips, and her bottom teased his wickedly exuberant Jolly Roger, which ached to weigh anchor in her harbor. Summoning unimpassioned thoughts, he focused on the flickering flames in the hearth, which reminded him of the fire raging below his belly button. “Would you not be more comfortable—”
“Hold me, please.” She rubbed her nose to his neck, framed his face with her delicate hands, and covered his mouth with hers.
Now that was his dream—Alex loving him, initiating the seduction, yet it was no illusion. When the truth struck Jason as the icy waters of the Baltic, molten heat poured through his veins and pooled in his loins. Grasping at the last vestiges of self-control, he tried to set her apart from him, but Lady Seymour evaded his maneuvers and seized the advantage. Dropping her knees to either side of his thighs, she straddled him and scooted close, until she nudged the swell of his healthy erection.
“Oh.” Gazing into his eyes, she inclined her head and suckled his lower lip.
Everything inside him roared at once, as he was ravenous for her. Would his lady laugh at him, if he apprised her of the fact that he had been with no other woman since the night they met? Would she mock his devotion? Would it frighten her to know that he desired her, above all else, given he was no nobleman and adhered not to the strictures governing the peerage?
“Alex, we should stop, as you know not what danger you court.” Despite warnings to the contrary, he slipped his hands inside the slits of her nightgown, rested his palms to the twin swells of her succulent bottom, and schooled her in an erotic massage. “I am a man, not a saint.”
She moaned low in her throat and thrust her hips.
And Jason was undone.
In a flash of lightning, which portended the ruination of her maidenhead, he toppled Alex on her back and cov
ered her. Yes, there would be hell to pay, and he would gladly compensate the ferryman—tomorrow.
Because tonight, consequences be damned, he would take Lady Seymour.
CAPTAIN OF HER HEART
CHAPTER FIVE
As the storm waged war beyond the walls, a tempest of an altogether different sort raged within the tiny cottage. Safe, warm, and stretched long in Jason’s bed, Alex admired her sea captain, as he hovered above her. In the dim light from the fireplace, his haunting countenance grew far more intoxicating with each successive flash of lightning. And when he doffed his robe, she feared she might melt into the down mattress, as there was nothing so magnificent or fascinating as his naked form.
Then he skimmed her thighs, inched her nightgown to her waist, and she shifted, until he whisked the silk garment over her head. The gossamer material seemed to float in the air, as a corporeal remnant of maidenhood, which she longed to relinquish to her knight.
“You are beautiful, Alex.” Jason circled each breast with his finger, before resting his palm to her belly. “Never could my fantasies have conjured the magnitude of your splendor.”
“Jason.” Bared for his delectation, a society miss should have been embarrassed, yet Alex could muster no shame. Instead, she cupped his cheek and traced his lower lip with her thumb. “Make me yours.”
“My lady, your wish is my command.” In that instant, he gave her his full weight, as he nudged her legs wide and settled his hips to hers. “But you are already mine.”
And then he covered her mouth with his, and the race commenced. With his tongue as a decadent lure, he licked and suckled, tempted and taunted, as nothing escaped his attention, and she answered his call.
In a naughty maneuver she would never have foreseen, he kissed and nibbled a path to her navel, then moved lower, and his head bobbed and weaved between her thighs. “What sweet curls you have, darling.”
When he turned her on her stomach, and spared nary an inch of her bottom, pressing on her licentious caresses that defied the limits of polite society, she almost swooned. And then he flipped her onto her back and retraced his decadent path.
“Captain of my heart, please.” Molten heat smoldered beneath her skin, excitement and anticipation charged every nerve, and her muscles flexed with some unknown but altogether tortuous desire. She squeezed his shoulders and squirmed. “I can take no more.”
“All right, sweet Alex.” Propped on an elbow, Jason chuckled and grasped her thigh. “Lift your heels for me, love.”
Following his direction, she abided his request, and he rewarded her with a far more intimate connection than she ever thought possible. A blush burned in her cheeks, as he probed her, and she closed her eyes when he slipped inside her.
Strange sensations assailed her faculties, and she clung to reality, even as the dizzy heights of passion beckoned. Foreign tension built at her core, as he pressed on her a tender invasion, which evoked happy tears. Être aux anges, she soared to a heretofore-inexpressible precipice of bliss—until excruciating pain threatened to split her in two, and Alex screamed.
“Stop.” Gasping in shock, she pounded his back with her fists. “You are hurting me.”
“Alex, hold still.” Jason planted her wrists at either side of her head. “Calm down, darling. It will pass.”
“I am calm.” She winced. “And I am still.”
“You most certainly are not.” He rested his forehead to hers. “Virgin’s discomfit, which occurs only once, is unavoidable and brief, and it will ease when you relax.”
“I am relaxed.” With a deep breath, she gazed at her captain and adjusted her legs.
“Only you would argue with me, mid-coitus. Yet, had I done my job properly, you should not retain the ability to think, much less speak. So I may have failed you, in my haste to have you, sweetheart.” With his teeth he nipped her nose. “Allow me to rectify said deficiency. Kiss me.”
Again, Alex applied herself in obeisance of his request, and when Jason flexed his spine, withdrew from her, and then reversed course, she braced for the agony, until he seated his flesh deep within hers. To her amazement, a new, pleasant, and overpowering enticement captured her senses.
To her unutterable delight, Jason repeated the succulent slip and slide, carrying her to a place where she existed as something more than herself, often altering his cadence to grind his hips to hers in maddening, illicit rotations. The incomparable voluptuous attachment, more emotional than physical, and far more arresting than she could have fathomed, left her reeling, and Alex surrendered to the all-encompassing sensual tide.
But she wrenched to the mortal plane, as panic danced a jig down her spine, when her knight reared up, hooked his arms behind her knees, and lifted her legs into the air. Exposed and vulnerable, she stared at her conqueror, and he winked. For a scarce second, she smiled, and then he thrust. Oh, what she felt, as she no longer knew where she ended and he began. She screamed his name, but it came to her in an echo, as if from afar.
Just as Alex thought she could bear no more, everything inside her twisted and turned to accommodate her captain. Then the world tilted, and the now familiar delicious spasms provoked another shriek of exultation. And there it was—that mystical realm where she separated from her corporal self and drifted on an imaginary cloud of ecstasy.
#
In the faint light that signaled the dawn of a new day, in more ways than one, Jason slipped from Alex’s side, much to his regret. At the washstand, he splashed cold water on his face, shaved, and then cleaned his teeth. As he brushed his hair, he paused, leaned on the edge of the basin, gazed at his reflection in the mirror, and frowned. “Collingwood, what have you done?”
With her hair in a tangled mess, the woman of his dreams slept the sleep of the sated. In a flash, he closed his eyes and revisited cherished memories of the stormy night and his questionable endeavors, which had resulted in the salacious education and utter debauchery of the highborn daughter of a duke.
In the closet, he stepped into a pair of buckskin breeches, shrugged into a lawn shirt and a grey waistcoat, and then tugged on his Hessians. As he tied his cravat in a precise mathematical, a lilting tapestry of feminine sighs and achingly sweet cries echoed in his ears, along with a bold request he would treasure until he died: May we do it again, Jason?
To his credit, he had given her what she wanted—thrice.
With a chuckle, he shook his head. The brazen wench, with a body made for sin and a voluptuous appetite to rival his own, had kept pace and loved him well into the wee hours. Indeed, for a barely ex-virgin, his Alex manifested irresistible temptation that could make a grown man weep and drive him mad as a March hare for want of her.
After retrieving his coat from a peg, he returned to admire the inimitable society miss. Heaven on earth rested beneath wrinkled sheets and a mountain of blankets, which presented a far cry from the woman who had woken him with a bawdy massage of his oh-so-reliable morning erection and then proceeded to feed his hunger with his most favored fare. With her cheek cupped in her palm, she evoked a familiar comparison to Botticelli’s angels. Given the events of last night, Aphrodite better suited Alex.
The fire had guttered, and the room had grown cold, so he situated three logs in the rack and tended the hearth, until he had stoked a roaring blaze. Cradling his head in his hands, he groaned. “Enough of this insanity.”
Invested with unswerving determination, by which she might have been intimidated were she compos mentis, he stalked his vulnerable, incognizant lady. At bedside, he leaned over her and pressed his lips to her forehead. “I have wronged you, Alex. And I pray that, some day, you will forgive me.”
Despite mental warnings to the contrary, Jason claimed a kiss from his sleeping siren. If not for his duties to the Crown, he would forgo the shipyard and spend a sennight in her arms. Yet more pressing matters held his attention and calmed his Jolly Roger.
In slumber, Alex gave vent to a sultry moan, cast a feminine smile, and shifted, barin
g a creamy shoulder. Had he thought her temptation personified? The woman was downright lethal.
“Rest well, sweetheart. God knows you earned it.” Averting his gaze, he stood and drew the blanket to her chin. “I should not have taken you, as we cannot marry amid war, so I vow never to weigh anchor in your harbor again.”
Given their nocturnal activities, she had not written the summons for her coach, and he would encourage her to compose that missive tonight, as he had to send her home. Donning his coat, he walked to the door. With his hand on the knob, he stopped and glanced at his lady. Without doubt, he would break his newly sworn oath the second he returned to the cottage.
#
With a healthy yawn and a robust stretch, Alex flinched, as she ached in places she had not known she could ache. Cocooned in warm blankets, which were supplemented by a roaring blaze in the fireplace, she rubbed her eyes and sniffed. It took her a few minutes to discern where she had slept and, more importantly, with whom she had shared a bed. As recognition dawned, a virile melody of male grunts and groans serenaded her, salacious images from the glorious tryst with Jason danced in her brain, and she bolted upright, hugged herself, and squealed in delight. “Hallelujah.”
Clutching the covers to her chest, Alex scanned her immediate vicinity, wiggled her toes, and giggled. Had she known her chivalrous knight would find a nightmare so inspiring, she would have conjured all manner of nocturnal demons, a long time ago. At last, she had got her captain to pounce and, oh, had he pounced. Of course, he had licked, suckled, nibbled, and caressed every inch of her body, as well, and she had no complaints.
Now if only he would propose.
With that thought weighing heavy on her heart and mind, she flung back the blankets, leaped from the bed, and snatched from the floor the lawn shirt Jason had worn yesterday. When she donned the simple garment, her nautionnier knight’s signature sandalwood scent wreathed her.
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