She knew now her marriage to James would be one long, unending series of humiliations. Had she only herself to consider, she’d book passage back to England the same day the Linx reached anchorage in the West Indies. She’d rather be hauled before a London magistrate and serve time in debtors’ prison than tie herself to a man who would use her as James wanted to.
There was the rub, though. She couldn’t consider only herself. James, damn him, still held the notes he’d collected on her father and brother. He’d promised to pay them off, but hadn’t. For all her faults, Sarah loved her father and brother with the deep, uncritical affection of one who shared their reckless nature and hopeless irresponsibility when it came to financial matters.
Now she was well and truly snared in a trap of her own making. Try as she would, she saw no way out except to do as James had directed and seduce the American—despite the sick feeling the mere idea left in her stomach. Not to mention Maude’s vociferous protests. The maid hadn’t ceased haranguing Sarah since they’d returned to the cabin.
“You can’t do it,” she protested once again. “For all you loved to thumb yer nose at those London biddies what tried to tell you how to go on, you’ve not a treacherous bone in yer body.”
“It’s not treachery to assist in quelling a mutiny aboard one of his majesty’s ship,” Sarah returned, trying to convince herself as much as her maid.
“Ha! I’ll wager Salome said something of the same sort when they talked her into luring John the Baptist into her bed. And that’s another thing.”
Planting her fists on her ample hips, the maid directed a fierce glare at the mistress.
“I’ve been tending to you since we was both in pinafores. I know you went to Sir Cedric a virgin and held true to yer marriage vows whilst he lived. I know, too, you’ve taken no man into yer bed since he died. It was just yer high spirits—and stubborn pride—that set tongues to wagging and rumors to flying about you the way they did.”
“There’s no need to list my many failings. I’m well aware of them.”
“Then ye know you cannot do this!”
“I can and I must. No! No more arguments.”
Sarah pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead in a futile attempt to relieve the pounding ache that had begun just above her brows. She had to think, had to prepare for…
A sudden rap on the cabin door stopped her breath in her lungs. She tried to speak, couldn’t, finally forced out a husky command.
“Enter.”
The moment Richard Blake ducked his head under the deck timbers and stood before her, Sarah experienced the same strange, unsettling phenomenon as when he’d left her such a short time ago. Then, his departure had seemed to take some vital aura from the cabin. Now his presence filled the room, as if infusing it with a vibrant life force.
Perhaps it was his size. He was so tall. So broad of shoulder. His white knit pants clung to muscular calves and thighs. His blue uniform jacket with its standing collar, white facings, and gold epaulets only emphasized his physique. Resisting the effort to swipe her damp palms down the sides of her skirts, Sarah tipped her chin and met his gaze head-on.
The glint in his blue eyes promised nothing.
And everything.
“Need I remind you of the terms and conditions of our agreement?” she asked coolly.
“I think I have them.”
“Then…Then let us proceed.”
His mouth quirked. “As you wish.”
“Maude, you may leave us.”
The plump maid threw a last, imploring look at her mistress. “M’lady, I beg of you. Think on what you do here.”
“You may leave us!”
The American stepped aside to reveal a tall, spare sailor waiting in the passageway. He looked vaguely familiar to Sarah, but Maude seemed to recognize him instantly.
“Mr. Jenkins! A bluidy mutineer, are you?”
“No, ma’am. As I told you that day we spoke at the rail, I’m an American seaman pressed into service aboard this ship against my will.”
“Huh! A pirate, more like!”
“Perhaps you and Mr. Jenkins could continue this discussion topside,” Blake suggested. “Jenkins, you’ll stay with Mistress Maude and see to her safety.”
“Aye, cap’n.”
The contrast between the American’s concern for her maid and Sir James’s casually brutal treatment of Maude almost—almost!—undid Sarah. Her resolve weakened, and she came within a breath of telling Blake their bargain was off.
She might have done just that, if he hadn’t bolted the door, strolled into the cabin and pulled his pistol from his belt. Her throat closing, she watched him casually deposit the weapon on the fold-down dressing table. It lay there amid her brushes and combs and pots of powder and paint. The silver scrollwork on its handle gleamed dully.
Just as casually, Blake removed his sword belt and hooked it over the back of the desk chair. Unarmed, he closed the distance between them.
“All right, lass. As you so eloquently phrased it, let us proceed.”
He folded his arms. Stood with legs spread. Surveyed her with a look of polite anticipation.
Taken aback, Sarah realized he was waiting for her to initiate matters. She stared at him blankly for a moment, her mind whirling. The Notorious Lady S. would know how to proceed at this point. Sarah was somewhat at a loss.
Men had always pursued her. They’d whispered outrageous compliments into her ear. Held her closer than they should have in the waltz. Tried to steal a kiss on a darkened balcony. She was far more skilled at laughing and turning aside her more persistent admirers’ advances than in initiating them.
Impatiently, she shook her head. She’d been married for three years, after all. Her infrequent beddings with Ceddie had been rather clumsy affairs at best, but she was no silly, untried virgin. She knew well enough what brought a man to passion.
Shutting her mind to everything but the pistol lying just out of reach, she stepped forward, slid her palms up the lapels of the American’s uniform and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Still he stood impassive, unbending.
Slowly, the sick feeling in Sarah’s stomach gave way to a simmering indignation. She was prepared to endure his kisses, to remain stoic while he undressed her. She was not prepared for him to stand like a lump of oven-baked clay while she seduced him.
“You’ll have to bend your head if you wish me to kiss you,” she ground out. “Unless, of course, you prefer to dispense with such boring preliminaries.”
Richard couldn’t help himself. He’d intended to play the game out, to discover what scheme the lady had hatched with Sir James, but the farce proved too much for him. Laughter rumbling in his chest, he wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her hard against him.
“Oh, no, lass. Such preliminaries never bore me. You may kiss away.”
Eyes dancing, he grinned down at her. He fully expected her to vent the temper that flared hot and quick in her eyes. He thought for sure she’d try to clout him on the side of the head or kick back a foot to whack him in the shins. To his intense disappointment, she attempted neither.
“This may be a matter of levity to you,” she said, her voice quivering with fury. “It is not to me.”
His grin took a crooked bent. “No, I can see it is not. Rest easy, sweeting. I’m not about to let you sacrifice your honor for a fouled oyster like Sir James.”
The high color in her cheeks leached away. “You swore…You promised…”
“I promised I wouldn’t harm anyone aboard this ship. The thing is,” he said apologetically, “I never intended to. Not if I could help it, leastways. Why do you think I had my men break into the surgeon’s stores and drug the crew of the Linx if not to minimize the chance of injury to all aboard?”
“But—but…” She sputtered, almost incoherent. “You threatened to hang James from the yardarm!”
“Yes, well, my blood was up. A man tends to let loose with a bit of bombast after b
oarding an enemy ship.”
Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. “That’s all the threat was?” she got out after a stunned moment. “A bit of bombast?”
“That’s all it was.”
The rueful admission left Sarah breathless with astonishment, with indignation, with fury. At that moment, she would have snatched up the man’s pistol and put a bullet through his heart without the least qualm.
In the space of an hour or two, he’d sent her whirling through a maelstrom of emotion. First by scaring her near witless. Then by forcing James to reveal his true nature and Sarah to recognize her own.
Now…
Now he dared to keep her body pinned against his! To smile down at her like some big, besotted dolt! To make her wish, despite her anger, despite her despair, that they could finish what they’d begun here.
It took her some moments to realize he felt the same biting regret. Slowly, his grin faded. The roguish laughter left his eyes.
“It must be the full moon,” he said on a rueful note. “It makes wild dogs howl and even the most civilized men suspend rational thought. But I’ve never fallen so completely under its spell until tonight.”
She wanted to weep with the irony of it. Of all the men and all the times to feel this wild, furious racing of her blood! Swallowing the lump in her throat, she admitted the humiliating truth.
“Nor have I.”
“One kiss, lass. One kiss and we’ll call this bargain done.”
“One kiss,” she agreed in a moment of breathless insanity.
CHAPTER FOUR
ONE KISS. That’s all Richard intended to take. All he would have taken if the damned moon hadn’t cast such a spell over him.
Or was it the delectable Lady Sarah?
She bedazzled him. Bewitched him. Stirred a fierce, unrelenting need with just the slow, soft glide of her lips over his. Hunger leaped inside him, instant and greedy, and he deepened the kiss.
Tongue met tongue. A searing heat danced along his skin. Hers, as well. Richard could feel it under the hand he curled around her nape. The smooth skin fired to his touch. With an inarticulate growl, he widened his stance, roped an arm around her waist and dragged her up against him.
Sarah had never felt the slightest patience with the fainting, die-away airs displayed by the more delicate of her sex. Yet the crush of Blake’s body against hers made her senses reel. She felt breathless, dizzy, as though she tumbled head for heels, swept toward some distant shore on a rushing, crashing wave.
She knew she could end the kiss. For all his bone-squeezing hold, Blake wouldn’t force her to give more than they’d agreed upon. She’d taken enough of his measure by now to know she could jerk her head back, push out of his arms and call the matter done.
She should do just that. A tenuous thread of common sense told her clinging to him like this was dangerous. Yet everything that was female in her gloried in the feel of him, the hardness of him.
His heart pounded beneath her palm. His muscles corded as taut as an anchor cable. His shaft rose to strain against her hip, thick and round and stiff as a ship’s mast behind the flap of his trousers. In response, a liquid heat swirled low in Sarah’s belly. She ached to let the fires burn out of control once, just this once.
And why should she not?
The question speared through the swirling mists and lanced into her heart. James had sent her to seduce this man. Why not take what pleasure she could, whilst she could? Why not give substance to the reputation she’d woven for herself over the years with her reckless daring and disdain for the conventions?
Why not taste passion, just this once?
Blake must have sensed something of her tumultuous thought. Slowly, inexorably, he did what Sarah could not bring herself to. Raising his head, he broke the spell.
Or so she thought, until she looked into his eyes. They blazed down at her, lit with the same hunger that gripped her. In that one reckless moment, she committed herself to the flames.
“Don’t speak,” she whispered. “Please! Just…Just take what I offer.”
Pinpoints of blue sparked in his eyes as anger crowded aside desire. “I’ve already told you,” he snapped. “You aren’t required to sacrifice yourself for Sir James.”
It took every ounce of courage she possessed to admit the truth. “This would not be for James. It…It would be for me.”
The whispered admission stunned Richard. Had Carpenter’s Mate Jenkins spoken the truth? Were the shipboard rumors true? Was the lady indeed no better than a waterfront whore?
His instincts said no, that there were forces at work he didn’t understand. Yet here she was, offering herself to him like a two-penny slut. Damned if he wouldn’t show her how close he was to taking what she offered. Tightening his arm, he canted her hips and pressed her belly hard against his.
“You can feel how much I want you. If we start again, know that I won’t stop at a kiss.”
“Nor will I.”
The husky promise dragged hard on the sea anchor Richard had tried to throw out. The naked need in her face snapped its cable right in half.
He didn’t begin to understand the dark currents swirling between this glorious creature and Lowell. At this point, he didn’t want to understand them. All he knew, all he cared about, was that the lady burned as hot for him as he did for her.
More than willing to accommodate her, Richard swooped down and captured her mouth with his once more. She arched against him, supple as a swan and every bit as sleek. Arms twined around his neck, body straining against his, she made no attempt to hide the hunger that mounted with every breath, every slide of breast against chest, belly against hip.
They were both panting when he dragged down her arms and turned her around. His body screamed at him to lift her skirts, unbutton his trousers and give them both the release they craved. They had not much time.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to simply bend her over the table and rut with her. Despite the doubts Jenkins had planted, despite the fact Richard was already sweating with the effort of holding back, he would take her with some attempt at finesse.
A few quick fumbles freed her hair from its pins. It spilled over her shoulders and down her back, a river of gold-tipped red. Brushing aside the silky mane, he bent to nuzzle the warm skin of her nape. All the while his busy fingers worked the buttons on the back of her dress.
Straining against his breeches, he dropped kisses on her bare shoulder. Her skin was as warm and sweet as a sun-ripe peach. He savored the taste of her as he finished with the last button and peeled the emerald silk down her arms. One glimpse of the lush, perfect breasts plumped up by her corset and covered only by the thin lawn of her shift was like a cannonball straight to his gut. He might have been some untried, pimple-faced midshipman, Richard thought in disgust, almost doubled over with the lust that gripped him.
The corset strings tangled under his clumsy fingers. The resulting knots would defeat the most patient sailor, and Richard didn’t lay claim to that particular virtue at the best of times. With a muttered curse, he reached for the dirk strapped to his calf just below his boot top.
She glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes went wide when she caught sight of the gleaming blade.
“What are you doing?”
“Freeing you. Be still.”
He dug the tip of the dirk under the first lace. A quick upward tug and the stiffened fabric fell away.
Sarah gulped at his ruthless efficiency. With one slice, the American had freed her from the same laces Maude had been struggling with when his ship had first swept across the stern of the Linx.
If only he could free her from the master of the Linx as easily.
No! She wouldn’t think of James now. Nor of her father or her brother or even Maude. This moment was hers. Hers alone. To savor. To smile privately over at some distant date, in some distant place.
A dank prison cell, most likely.
So be it! Whatever came, she would have the memory of h
is calloused hands raising shivers on her skin as they nudged down the straps of her shift. Of those same hands cupping her bared breasts. Kneading the tender flesh. Teasing her nipples into stiff, aching points. With a low moan, Sarah let her head drop back against his shoulder. He pushed her shift down until it puddled around her waist. The straps caught at her elbows, harnessing them.
Blake had no such restraints to impede his movement. His hands continued their torment. One caressed her breast. The other dipped lower, skimming her belly, tugging up the hem of her shift, parting her legs to find the slit in her drawers. All the while he put his lips and teeth and tongue to wicked use.
She was wet and gushing into his palm when he let go of her long enough to yank off his uniform jacket and toss it to the floor. Freed of its constriction, he swept her into his arms and carried her across the cabin. The bed was little more than a cupboard cut into the bulkhead. Sarah could barely stretch out in the cramped space. She couldn’t imagine how a man as tall and well-muscled as Blake would fit in with her.
He made no attempt to do so. Instead, he dropped into a sitting position on the bed and settled her so she straddled his lap. Her knees folded back on the edge of the bunk, allowing her just enough leverage to lift up when he went to free himself from his trousers.
She expected him to flex his thighs and drive into her. To plant his hands on her hips and hold her so she would take his thrust. What she didn’t expect—almost couldn’t bear—was the gruff tenderness in his voice when she tensed at the first probe.
“Easy, lass. We’ll take this slow and easy. I’ll not hurt you.”
The taut angles of his cheeks and chin told Sarah what it cost him to make that promise. Grateful for his restraint and embarrassed that he would sense her inexperience in such matters, she linked her arms around his neck and forced her muscles to relax.
He pushed in gently, letting her get the feel of him, the size of him. The first moves were slow, as he’d promised, easy. Then deeper. Surer. Faster.
Sarah caught the rhythm, almost lost it again when he dipped his head and fastened his mouth over hers. He pushed his a hand through her hair, held her steady, and pleasure curled low and tight in her belly.
April Moon Page 4
