He said not a word. Instead, he lifted his thumb to her jaw line and smoothed away the charcoal smudge. At first, she appeared confused. But as the silence stretched between them and he stroked her soft skin more and more, her eyes widened in understanding.
A glow spread across her cheeks. Her breathing slowed, deepened.
“Sit,” she bade him.
A tremor wracked him before he dropped back into the armchair and waited.
CHAPTER 14
Holly maintained a distance from her husband, breath trapped in her throat. A part of her had expected his outright refusal at her proposal. Another part of her had hoped . . .
Well, she had her wish. A real kiss.
The pressure on her lungs was so great, she finally released a long, measured breath. Her heart thumped, deafening drumbeats in her ears. The room warmed with unbearable heat, and she removed her leather apron. Still flushed, she pulled the fasteners from her knotted hair, allowing the tresses to tumble free.
Quincy watched her every movement, his eyes dark pools of swirling emotions, and his riveting stare twisted the already tight muscles in her belly. Raking her bottom lip with her teeth, she wondered what she should do next, but he offered her no guidance, remaining silent and unmoving in the chair.
Her gaze flitted toward his hands, his fingers digging into the armrests, and she felt the same restless energy, the same nervous want.
She took a bold step toward him and heard his quickened breath. As her own pulse pounded, she approached him again and nestled between his splayed thighs.
The man’s hot breath now bathed her, and she closed her eyes, reveling in the intimacy. She loved to feel his presence, to just listen to his fevered intake and exhale of air. She only missed his touch.
Holly remembered the night she’d held her husband in her arms, after his disturbing dream had departed and only peaceful rest remained, their hearts beating in unison. She would have that moment again, she thought with shivering delight. And this time, he would share the erotic moment with her.
Her eyes fluttered opened and she met his still fiery stare. Heavens, he was beautiful. Blood swelled in her veins as she slowly lowered herself into his lap.
His muscular legs flinched, as if she’d scorched him, and she gasped at the almost electric spark that snapped between them. Her quivering hand went to his chest, cradled the muscle above his rampant heart, and she matched the thundering beats.
His hand clamped hard over hers, and the smoldering look in his eyes now held an air of uncertainty. Quickly, before he reneged on their agreement, she wrapped her arms around his neck and took his mouth between her lips with savage hunger.
Sweet heaven!
Holly moaned like a wanton wench. A kiss from him was every bit as wonderful as she remembered, but her nerves still thrummed with violent need.
“Touch me,” she begged in a hoarse whisper, breaking from the kiss for one desperate breath.
He flexed his muscles in resistance.
“Touch me. Please.” She skimmed her tongue over his sensuous lips. “Just one touch.”
His guttural groan vibrated down her throat. It wasn’t long before trembling fingers stroked her spine and fingernails scraped the back of her head, pressing her deeper into the kiss.
Yes, she cried in her soul, rolling her lips in ravenous want. Her skin burst with gooseflesh, and as her husband met her fervor thrust for thrust, as their bodies moistened with sweat and undulated in a harmonious rhythm, she knew one kiss would never be enough.
An inconsolable pain suddenly ripped through her. The ache swelled inside her and screamed for satisfaction, an unimaginable longing for more, and tears filled her eyes. The briny drops spilled down her cheeks and into her mouth, into his mouth.
“Jesus, Holly.”
His prayer sounded so sincere, beseeching the strength to resist her. Why couldn’t he forgive her? Why couldn’t he let go of the past and seize the future? Seize her?
He pushed her away.
“Are you satisfied?” he gasped, his chest heaving, his body shuddering.
She grazed his mussed hair with her fingertips. How she yearned to hear him call her “sweet” again, to feel him breathe the endearment against her naked flesh as he tasted her body like a husband should. “I will never be satisfied until I have you inside me.”
Another groan. A plaintive, even painful groan as his erection throbbed against her thigh.
“I want you,” she whispered into his downturned ear. “I will always want you—and no other.”
She nipped his earlobe with her teeth, smothered his temple with another sultry buss before she moved off his lap.
A pang of regret squeezed her breast the moment she separated from him, and an impotent want filled her. She should not have asked for the kiss without the assurance of real fulfillment. One kiss from her husband was not enough. It would never be enough.
But she had learned that lesson too late.
“A promise is a promise,” she said, breathless, meeting his haggard gaze. “Your sister.”
He stared at her, bemused. “What?”
“Your sister is my source. She told me about your past as a pirate.”
And with that revelation, Holly headed for the door, her steps faltering.
~ * ~
His sister?
His bleedin’ sister?
Quincy shut his eyes. He was stiff, suffering from unslaked lust. And for what? He had discovered his sister was a bloody gossip!
What the hell had he done? Holly had left her mark on him with her lips, her teeth, her salacious tongue. She had explored and pillaged and branded him hers, renting from him every ounce of resistance. He had no fight left in him. His body raged for satisfaction. And he knew no other woman would gratify him like his wife. He also realized the next time he confronted her, he would give in to her wiles. He would give her her blasted wedding night.
Quincy reeled as he left the chair. He could smell her on him, taste her tears in his mouth. Tears? Why had she cried? She had begged for his touch. Had he hurt her?
I will never be satisfied until I have you inside me.
Aye, he had hurt her. His body hurt, too, demanded release. He had struggled against her for far too long, allowing his desire for her to grow stronger. He had approached the matter all wrong. He understood now that time wouldn’t lessen a thing. If he wanted to untangle himself from his wife’s bewitching grip, he had to surrender to his lust.
“Shit.”
He hated to lose.
The charcoal sketch on the easel suddenly captured his notice. As he neared the dark, whirling strokes, a remarkable image appeared. He dropped in the stool and stared at the portrait of Holly. Was this how she saw herself?
His fingers traced the lines of her face. She had reproduced her aesthetics, her proportions and symmetries. But the work was more than an anatomical study. There was a wild beauty about her. There was also an unmistakable melancholy. The shadows behind her loomed and threatened her. Her eyes looked off the canvas, as if searching for someone . . .
Quincy pulled his hand away. Was she looking for him?
His heart thudded at the notion that she both wanted and needed him, and he stumbled away from the stool as if he’d witnessed a wraith. He found his head spinning with the thought of giving her everything she asked for, and of taking everything she offered him.
I can give in return.
Could she? Could she give him . . . ?
No, it was a stupid dream. He would never find peace. Not with Holly.
Quincy stormed from the studio and headed for his room. He turned up the gaslight and ransacked the chest at the foot of his bed, searching for the satchel of opium. When he found it, he tore apart the drawstrings and dumped all the sugar-coated capsules into his palm.
He crushed the capsules in his trembling fist. His soul screamed for the drug. His heart begged him not to take it, to take the offer Holly had made him instead.
; But he was sweating, his heart pounding, and the paste in his hand promised him an immediate remedy from the demons that would never be exorcised.
Quincy swallowed all the capsules. It wasn’t long before a heavy, blissful sleep draped over him and he collapsed on the bed, blacking out . . .
He opened his eyes as morning light entered the room and spread across the bed. The white light formed a fine line over a woman’s slumbering profile. It caressed her throat and travelled down her chest and across the peaks of her naked breasts.
She stirred under the warm light, turned her head away from it. Her lashes fluttered, her dreamy green eyes appeared—and she smiled.
His chest ached under the spell of her brilliant smile, more brilliant than the white light. A hand reached for him and stroked his temple, his cheek, and he sighed at the soothing touch. But when a finger traced the contours of his mouth, a simmering heat stirred in his belly.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
He was strapped for breath, for words. She rolled over him, her red hair spilling around him, sheltering him. Her smile never weakened. She brushed his chin with her thumb before her mouth covered his in a sensual kiss.
When he opened his eyes again, her beautiful smile remained. Beams of light pierced her hair and flashed across her brow and nose. He wrapped his arms around her back, holding her tight.
“Don’t wake up,” she said. “Don’t ever wake up.”
Quincy leaned over the side of the bed and retched into the chamber pot. He gasped for air, his lungs cramped and starved. His body spasmed, contorted with pain. He pulled in breath after torturous breath. The room rocked back and forth, and he retched again. Finally, he groaned, and rolled back onto the bed, slinging an arm over his pounding brow.
He had stopped breathing. Why?
Opium. He had taken opium, he remembered. A lot of opium. If he had taken a capsule more, he’d be dead.
Don’t ever wake up.
He had missed his chance to be at peace. He would have stayed in that moment, in that light.
Forever.
With her.
“Quincy!”
A voice hollered. A door burst open. Hands grabbed his shirt collar, shaking him.
“Wake up!”
Quincy choked, “I’m awake.”
The hands loosened, then released him. He rolled to the side of the bed and sat up, rubbing his burning eyes, then gasped and sputtered when water knocked him in the face. Hard.
“Get up!” screamed the voice. “I need you.”
“I said I was awake!” he roared and opened his groggy eyes. His heart almost stopped again when he found Holly standing a few feet away from him in her night rail, the whites of her eyes filled with tiny red veins, a pitcher in her hands—her bloody hands.
He went numb.
“Holly.” He bounded to his feet, reeled, then steadied. He rent the pitcher from her trembling grip, setting it aside, then grabbed her blood-soaked fingers, searching for the injury. “Where are you hurt?” he demanded. “Tell me.”
“It isn’t me,” she cried. “It’s Emma. She’s dying.”
“What?” he rasped, his mind twisting and turning in disorientation.
“Hurry!” she shouted, then bolted from the room.
He staggered after her.
CHAPTER 15
Quincy trailed his wife by a few meters. When she reached her sister’s bedroom door and released a wretched sob, a knowing dread entered his belly.
He quickly followed her inside the chamber—and his heart seized. Air swirled in his lungs with nowhere to escape.
Emma was on the bed, pale, shivering and moaning, holding her midriff in obvious pain, but the pool of blood around her was enormous; it filled the bed.
Quincy was unprepared for the vomit in his belly. It climbed up his windpipe, making him choke, and he swallowed the bile before stumbling closer to the bed.
Holly rushed to her sibling’s side and grasped the girl’s hand. “Do something,” she pleaded with him. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”
His mind filled with gruesome memories of the night his own sister had suffered through childbirth, and a pressure came over his chest, squeezing his lungs, until he finally released the breath he was holding.
“Summon a doctor,” he ordered.
“She’ll bleed to death by the time he arrives,” cried Holly. “You’re a ship’s surgeon. Can’t you stop the hemorrhage?”
Aye, he was a ship’s surgeon, and he could sew a gash or even amputate a leg, but stop a woman from hemorrhaging? He just didn’t know how to do that.
“Quincy!”
Her holler jostled him. He rubbed his burning eyes and shook his head, still wet with water, before he approached the bed and leaned forward, palpating Emma’s belly.
The girl groaned when he touched her lower abdomen. He frowned.
“What is it?” asked Holly. “Is she having her menses? No, of course not. There’s too much blood.”
“Aye,” he whispered, thoughtful. “Too much blood.” There was only one other cause for her bleeding, he reasoned. Softly he stroked the girl’s temple. “Emma, can you hear me?”
Teeth chattering, Emma nodded.
“What did you take, Emma?” he probed, his voice calm.
“Take what?” demanded his wife, her features contorted in anguish. “What’s happening to her, Quincy? Tell me!”
He met her wide-eyed gaze. “She’s having an abortion.”
Holly’s jaw dropped. “That’s . . . impossible. She’s never been with a man. She doesn’t know anything about procreation. You’re wrong.”
“I don’t think I’m wrong, Holly.”
“You’re wrong,” she insisted.
She wasn’t prepared to accept the truth, but she was right about one thing: her sister would bleed to death if he didn’t do something.
Quincy shut off his emotions like the turn of a switch. He had learned how to do that long ago when in the heat of battle, displacing his fears and doubts, warring with skill and instinct alone.
“I need hot water,” he instructed. “Clean towels. And shepherd’s purse.”
Gathering her flustered features, Holly bobbed her head. “There’s some in the culinary garden.”
“Good. And fetch my medical books. They’re in my room, along with my surgical bag.”
Holly wiped her tear-stained face with the back of her hand, smearing a bit of blood across her cheek, before hurrying toward the door.
Quincy overheard her issuing orders to the servants who’d gathered in the passageway, likely having caught the commotion.
Alone in the room with Emma, he repeated softly, “What did you take, Emma?”
“P-pennyroyal.”
He chilled. “Oh, Emma, how much did you take?”
The herb had been used for centuries as an abortifacient, but if too much was ingested, or if the essential oil was downed, the herb became toxic, even poisonous.
“I-I don’t know,” she stuttered.
Quincy cursed under his breath. If the blood loss didn’t end her life, the pennyroyal might.
He ran his fingers through his mussed hair and shut his still fevered eyes, taking a fortifying breath. He couldn’t let her die like his sister had almost died, like his mother had died. He had to improvise, and he rummaged through his muddled memories, searching for a solution.
Soon Holly returned with her maid. The two women set everything on the writing desk.
Quincy pushed aside his remaining reservation and approached the table. He opened his anatomy text to the female form and laid out the page on reproductive organs. He then dipped his hands in the bowl of hot water and dried them in a clean towel.
He had also studied pagan herbal medicine and had learned hot water, for whatever reason, increased a patient’s chance of survival. He would use every bit of knowledge he possessed, superstitious and all, to try and save the girl.
“Open my surgical bag,” he instructed Hol
ly.
Her fingers trembling, she unstrapped the leather buckles.
Quincy sifted through the instruments and retrieved the clamp forceps. He placed the tweezers-like implement into the water, as well, before he stripped a few leaves from the shepherd’s purse.
“Here.” He handed Holly the herb. “Have her swallow these.”
Holly rushed to her sister’s bedside and coaxed her to open her mouth. “There now, Emma. Swallow. That’s a good dear.”
As Holly fed her sister the leaves, Quincy stripped the rest of the shepherd’s purse, an idea having formed in his mind, and balled the herb into a cork-size bundle, tying it together with a piece of the stem. He retrieved the clamp forceps from the bowl of water and gripped the herbal cluster between the pinchers.
Holly wondered, “What will that do?”
“Stop the bleeding, I hope.”
“But how?”
“The herb constricts the veins. I’ve used it to stop bleeding wounds in the past.”
If a skin injury wouldn’t clot, the shepherd’s purse, laid over the wound, stemmed the blood flow, and while Emma didn’t have a laceration, he prayed the herb would still work and restrict the bleeding.
He briefly studied the page on a woman’s uterus, heaved a giant breath, then walked toward the bed. “I need to insert the herb.”
Holly’s cheeks, moist from tears, turned bright red, but she quickly nodded and crawled onto the blood-stained bed, wrapping her arms around her sister’s quivering shoulders.
The old maid stepped forward. “I’ve delivered a babe or two in my time,” she quipped. “I’ll hold the girl’s legs.”
“Thank you,” he said, relieved for the help.
Holly averted her eyes and pressed her lips to her sister’s brow, murmuring soothing words. The old maid removed a blood-soaked towel from under Emma’s night rail, then positioned the girl’s legs as if preparing her for a birthing.
Emma sobbed in pain or fright or mortification, Quincy wasn’t sure, and he swiftly set to work, slipping the herbal concoction inside her.
The girl cried out and clamped her muscles, stymieing his progress. He could feel the sweat across his brow. His own fingers trembled as he forced the shepherd’s purse deeper toward her womb. Reaching the clamp forceps’s limit, he released the herb and withdrew the instrument.
How To Seduce A Pirate (The Hawkins Brothers Series) Page 9
