“No,” Summer moaned, no longer able to doubt what he meant to do. “Please don’t!”
“Why should you care? Once you sell yourself, one man’s as good as another,” Brent said brutally. His hands audaciously explored her body through the thin gown that covered her.
“You have no right,” she protested, trying to protect herself from his ravaging hands, trying to deny that her body was responding eagerly to his nearness.
“I’m a lot younger than Gowan,” he whispered seductively in her ear. “I can offer you a vigorous, virile body, and I promise I won’t turn over and go to sleep immediately afterward.” He started to tug her gown toward her head.
“Don’t!” she cried out, but again he was too strong for her, and he steadily raised the gown until he slipped it over her head and dropped it to the floor. She lay still, too mortified to move, her hands over her breasts and her body twisted toward the wall.
Brent forced her to turn toward him. He cupped her face in his hands, but Summer kept her eyes tightly closed. “I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind all day,” he said, his voice husky with passion. “The thought of you has been driving me out of my senses.”
He brushed her cheeks with his lips and then took her mouth with a hungry kiss. Summer had never been kissed, and the feel of his firm, hungry mouth on hers nearly paralyzed her. He cupped her firm breasts in his hands and gently massaged their rosy peaks; she tried to turn away, but he held her fast. Summer wanted to hate what Brent was doing when his straying lips began to tease and tantalize her breasts, but arcs of pleasure raced about her body like sparks from exploding fireworks. This unexpected response confused her so, she was hardly able to resist, and Brent pressed his attack with increased intensity.
His hands roamed over her at will, going where no hands had ever gone, doing what she had never imagined hands were meant to do. Her mind was stunned, but an answering chord sounded within her body, and the arcs of pleasure became more frequent, her resistance less determined.
She continued to struggle against him, but she felt the heat of him against her skin, burning into it with white-hot intensity and destroying her will to resist. She knew she should fight for her honor, she thought she wanted to, but it was becoming harder and harder.
“Let me go,” she begged, but there was an urgency in her plea. Brent was too wrought up to pay any heed to her. His lips found hers as his arms enfolded her in a crushing embrace, and his tongue raked her mouth, bruising it and searching out every morsel of her sweetness. Their long limbs entwined, bringing Brent to a point of almost uncontrollable urgency. She felt his knee go between her legs, exposing the entrance to the very soul of her to his persuasion. Fear caused her to struggle harder, but her cries of protest were blocked by his lips; her strength was no match for his. Her thighs were forced apart and she felt him search for her, find her, and explore her.
Summer felt as if the whole cosmos were exploding about her. Her body was no longer obedient to her will; it seemed to take on a life of its own, ignoring every restraint she tried to put upon it. “Please don’t!” she cried desperately as Brent’s hot shaft of desire began to enter her, but tendrils of intense heat and pleasure spread through her loins, and her body accepted, even welcomed his entrance.
Brent had passed beyond the boundaries of restraint and he pressed deeper, moaning with barely contained passion. However, when he encountered an unexpected barrier, he drew in his breath in a gasp of surprise. Summer lay rigid and frightened beneath him, expecting some unnamed terror; she felt the taut, rigidly contained energy of his body and sensed that something explosive was about to happen. Instead he continued to torture her breasts with his lips, to tease her citadel with his hot shaft, until she was sure she would scream in agony. Waves of unnamed desire surged through her as she squirmed beneath him, pressing herself against him, instinctively inviting the release her mind didn’t even suspect existed.
She felt Brent tense, gather himself, and then he thrust into her with brutal force. She uttered a long, shuddering moan of agony and her body sought to repel his next attack. She felt betrayed, lulled into a false sense of safety; if she must suffer such pain and disgrace, she’d rather be dead.
Brent paused to allow the pain to recede, but Summer’s loveliness stoked his passion and it was impossible for him to think of anything but his urgent need to fulfill his desire. He held her in his arms and covered her face with passionate kisses before entering her slowly, fully, and then with greater force and deeper penetration.
Summer felt she would burst with the size of him. As the wall of pain and shock began to recede, she was aware of a deep-seated need to respond to him, to match his need with her own. Tentatively, and then with greater urgency, she responded to his measured strokes, finally rising to meet him and falling away when he withdrew. Her responses, limited and unskilled as they were, drove Brent beyond touch with anything but his own tumultuous senses, and his overheated blood raged through his veins, blurring his reason. He drove into Summer with increasing rapidity until his breath was coming in short, hot gasps. She struggled to keep up with his movements, caught between the shock of what was happening to her and the kaleidoscope of sensations blasting her body into nothingness.
Finally, with an incredible moan of exquisite pleasure, Brent flung himself at her and Summer felt the release of his heat deep within her. Her own half-born passion withered and died as he collapsed at her side, spent by the violence of his own release.
Brent lay without speaking until his breathing resumed a comfortable rhythm. Summer didn’t attempt to cover herself or turn away from him. She was too shaken to cry.
“You’re a virgin,” he said unnecessarily.
“Not anymore.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?” she asked, a splinter of anger in her voice.
“You’re Gowan’s wife. How did you escape being bedded by him?”
“I’ve never met the Earl of Heatherstone,” she said in a flat, dull voice. “I was as close to Scotland as I’ve ever been when you took me off the Sea Otter.”
“You can’t expect me to believe you’ve never even seen Gowan, or set foot in Scotland!” said Brent, sitting bolt upright in the bed.
“I was married by proxy. Brinklow was escorting me to Edinburgh.”
“Why did you agree to marry a man twice your age, especially one you’d never seen?”
“My father forced me,” Summer said, tears beginning to flow at last. “He had gambling debts and the earl was willing to pay a lot for me.” She tried to wipe some of the tears away with the sheet.
“There’s no end to the evil that man does,” said Brent grinding his teeth.
“I begged Father not to make me marry him, but he wouldn’t listen. He just kept on drinking until he couldn’t hear anything I said.”
“Then why in the name of hell and all the demons that toil there didn’t you tell me?” demanded Brent in a long, whispered snarl. “Why did you let me go on thinking you’d sold yourself to that devil like some high-priced harlot?”
“I told you over and over again that I wasn’t any of those things you thought,” she reminded him.
“But you never said anything about not having been in Scotland.”
“Would you have believed me?”
“Probably not, but I do now.”
“Thank you, but it’s already too late,” she said miserably. “You can’t give back what you’ve just taken, I can’t say it was all a big mistake and then forget it. Oh, God,” she wailed, “what am I going to do? What am I going to say to the earl?”
“You don’t have to go to Scotland,” Brent said, as uncertain of what he meant as he was certain he didn’t want to hand her over to Gowan.
“I have nowhere else to go. My father won’t take me back. Even the earl probably wouldn’t want me if he knew.”
“I can take you to Havana with me.”
“What for? I will not become your mistress.
Besides, I know the earl will come after me. You said he always gets what he wants; I’m his wife so I’ll have to go with him. What will I tell him? How will I make him believe that it wasn’t my fault?”
Brent tried to comfort her, but she fought him, pounding on his chest with her balled-up fists. “Beast!” she sobbed. “You’ve ruined me with your hate and your lust!” Her grief overwhelmed her and she collapsed into Brent’s arms. She held tight to him, responding readily to the strength of his embrace. Holding her close as she poured out her sorrow, Brent kissed her gently, tenderly, wiping away her tears with his fingertips, tasting their salt with his lips.
Summer found herself responding to the warmth of his body, the strength of his arms, the security of his embrace. Against the fear of an unknown and threatening future, she clung to him, igniting once again the fires of his passion. Flames cooled momentarily by exhaustion leaped to white heat and engulfed them both, bearing them along on an ever-widening circle of surging energy. This time Summer responded immediately. Deep within her, she knew a compelling ache, an urgent need that demanded fulfillment; and she moved to meet Brent as he entered her again.
Her response electrified him and he moved more and more rapidly within her, teasing, tantalizing, coaxing her to his level of pulsating intensity. Suddenly Summer felt a burst of energy pick her up. She clung to Brent, greedily drawing on his energy, demanding that he give her even more. Then, with one final blinding surge, the world seemed to explode around them and a new sense of fulfillment and release claimed her.
Chapter 7
The sun had been up two hours when Summer woke. She almost purred as she stretched, enjoying the contact of her flesh and crisp, cool sheets, indulging in a luxurious yawn before she abandoned herself to the equally delicious feeling that something wonderful had happened. Then her eyes fell on the trunks piled against the wall and memory flooded back, bringing with it bitter shame.
Summer sat up with a jerk. She could barely accept the actuality of her deflowering, and she was incapable of facing Brent. She quickly scanned the room, but he had disappeared.
The soreness in her loins confirmed last night’s events, and Summer dropped her face into her hands and then uttered a small groan as the full enormity of her humiliation sank in. There was no turning back now; her life would never be the same.
But hadn’t it changed already? Was she any more adrift now than when her father had forced her to marry a stranger and go thousands of miles from her home? If the earl was as cruel as Brent had said, would she be any better off as his wife? Would he care what happened to her now?
It was useless to cry or smash her few belongings, yet Summer longed to hurt something as much as she had been hurt. A huge ache expanded like a bubble to fill her chest; it threatened to explode and take her last shred of self-control with it. She had been exploited by a father who should have loved and protected her, had been left to the mercy of pirates by a husband who should have treated her as his most precious possession, and she was now on her own. Her situation was much too desperate for tears; crying was only for people who could dry their eyes and find that everything was all right.
She stood up with a sigh of grim resignation. What was done was done; now she had to concentrate on what to do next. It was going to be impossible to avoid the consequences of the past night, but she promised herself that Brent would pay dearly for what he had done.
Yet a nagging voice inside her kept saying that she was almost as much to blame as he, that she had accepted him, that she had been a willing participant. Summer didn’t want to listen to this voice, didn’t want to acknowledge anything about last night except her pain and humiliation; but she knew she was going to have to admit her own responsibility for what had happened someday. Not now, however. Terrible things had happened to her in the last few weeks, and she needed to blame everything on Brent just to keep her sanity.
With dawdling steps Summer walked over to the washstand; there was still some water in the pitcher. When she had washed her face and carefully removed every trace of last night’s tears, she turned her attention to her bloodstained thighs. Refusing to think of how the blood came to be there, she resolutely finished bathing herself, then turned a pair of expressionless eyes toward the mirror.
As her gaze focused on her naked body, she wondered at its power to attract two such different men as the earl and the captain. Surely there should be something she could see, but Summer found nothing that hadn’t been the same for weeks and months, even years. With a fatalistic shrug she picked up her discarded nightgown and folded it into a small square. “I didn’t get much chance to use that,” she said savagely as she tossed the garment into a drawer and slammed it shut.
She was in no hurry to dress; she had no place to go, nothing to do, and no one to see. Yet she unconsciously took extra care with details she had formerly given scant attention. A lock of hair wouldn’t behave as it should, and she spent additional minutes coaxing it into place. She didn’t like the line of her lashes, the color of her cheeks didn’t seem quite right, and weren’t her lips a little too pale? For the first time she wished she could add a little color to her skin. She gave her face a last critical look, then turned to the problem of choosing a dress.
Summer didn’t own a single dress that she hadn’t already worn so many times she was ashamed to put it on again, so she turned hopefully to the dazzling wardrobe that the earl had sent as a wedding gift, but the weather was much too hot for silks and satins, quilted brocades or fine wools. She picked up a soft chemise and held it next to her. It was certainly thin enough, but even the petticoats were made of layer upon layer of stiff material. She would have to be content with one of her old gowns. She barely had time to put on her dress and tie up her hair before a knock sounded at the door.
“May we come in, milady?” an unfamiliar voice called. “We have the captain’s bath.” Summer was startled out of her composure. Where were they going to put a bath? It was unthinkable that they would bring it into her cabin. But before she could protest, two young boys, straining under the weight of a large copper tub, staggered into the room and deposited their burden in the middle of the floor.
“I hope we didn’t wake you, milady,” said the youth with sandy hair and freckles.
“No, you didn’t wake me,” Summer replied numbly.
“The captain likes to get started powerful early,” the boy said, staring at Summer with open admiration, “but it doesn’t suit everybody to be up and about at such hours.”
“Th-th-that’s all right,” she stammered, wondering how to escape before Brent came back. In her agitation she failed to hear approaching footsteps, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when Brent’s voice roared from the open doorway.
“The captain particularly likes his crew to go about their business without useless chatter. That water won’t jump into the copper by itself, so you’d better give it some help.”
Brent’s displeasure reduced the youths to quaking incoherence, and they hurried from the room. “I begin to wonder if either of those lads will ever amount to anything,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the retreating boys. “Show them a pretty face and everything goes out of their heads.” He waited expectantly for Summer to respond, but when she said nothing he moved impatiently about the cabin collecting what he needed for a bath. “They were supposed to have the tub filled by eight o’clock, but the fools were afraid to come in with you in here.”
“Do you have a bath every morning?” Summer couldn’t believe she had just asked such an improper question.
“Yes, but not always here. Sometimes I swim in the ocean, and at other times we rig up a shower on deck. But the sea is cold, even in summer, and I look forward to an occasional warm bath in front of a fire.”
“How do you build a fire on a ship?” she asked, curiosity battling her shame.
“We use small oil burners with reflectors. They’re not as good as a log fire, but they serve the purpose.”
; The boys returned, straining under their load of hot water.
“Don’t slop it on the floor,” Brent barked. “I don’t want to slip and break my head because you don’t know how to pour water out of a bucket.”
The boys hurried away, to return again and again until the huge copper was filled with steaming water.
“That’s enough for now,” Brent said, finally. “Remember to have it ready on time tomorrow.”
“Yes, Captain,” was all they dared say before effacing themselves and escaping as quickly as they could.
“I’m forgetting my manners,” Brent said, as he placed a chair and towel within reach of the tub. “Would you like a bath?” Summer shook her head vigorously. “Are you sure? It’s no trouble to have more water brought in.”
“Thank you, but I don’t want a bath,” she insisted.
“Suit yourself.” He stripped quickly and stepped into the tub. Summer was no longer shocked that he would undress in front of her, but she still hid her eyes. This time, however, she used her hands instead of a pillow.
With an appreciative sigh, Brent settled down into the water until it was right under his chin. “Will you hand me the soap?”
“What?”
“The soap. I can’t reach it.”
“Where is it?” she asked, being careful to keep her eyes averted. The knowledge that he was naked beneath all that water made her feel weak.
“Next to the basin.” The force of her attraction to him was pulling at her, but she was determined to overcome it.
“Here,” she said, handing him the soap, her eyes directed at the ceiling.
“I forgot my sponge, too.”
She dropped the sponge into the water.
“Thanks,” he said, and she retreated to a chair in the far corner. She meant to keep her eyes in her lap, but they kept straying back to his head of luxuriant, short-cropped hair. Brent washed his feet, raising one after another out of the water. She was so mesmerized by the power of those muscular limbs that she was caught off guard when he stood up unexpectedly. She blushed again and hid her face in her hands.
The Captain's Caress Page 6
