The Brazen Bride

by Stephanie Laurens

  The more Logan thought of it, the more he suspected that her crew saw her as . . . not male, definitely not that, but as a different category of female, one demonstrably capable of leading them.

  Her comparisons between herself and Queen Elizabeth seemed even more apt.

  After dinner, he followed her up on deck, again trailing behind her as in the weak moonlight she checked this rope, that furled sail. Finding themselves at last alone, he murmured, “I thought sailors were superstitious about having women on board.”

  She laughed. Reaching the prow, she swung around, hitched a hip on a coil of rope, and looked up at him. Studied him through the shadows, then faintly smiled. “Most of the crew, certainly those years older than I, have sailed with me since I was a child. The Esperance usually does relatively short trips, so my father often brought me along.” She glanced around, affection in her face. “I ran wild on this ship as a toddler, as a young girl. And from when my mother died—I was eleven at the time—I sailed on every voyage.” She met his eyes. “I was even on board when we assisted with the evacuation at Corunna.”

  Logan shifted to lean against the side, studying her in return. “So you were a seaman’s brat, and when your father died, you inherited his captaincy?”

  “More or less. The rank is, of course, honorary, but you won’t find anyone in Guernsey quibbling.” Her lips twisted wryly. “Just as no one, not any harbor master here or in England, or even in France, or any other maritime authority, would question my right to take the helm even though, as a female, I can’t hold a master’s ticket.” She tipped her head back along the ship. “There’s two others aboard with master’s tickets who could captain the ship, but they’re content to leave that to me. Experience tells, and on the sea there’s much less tolerance of mistakes.”

  How far had she ranged? Had she seen any naval actions? How much time did she spend aboard in any year? Did the Esperance ever put to sea without her? Logan asked his questions and she answered, directly, honestly.

  The confirmation that she had seen real action, that yes, she’d wielded her cutlass and killed when necessary, was both reassurance and horror combined, although the information that she’d carried her sword for more than a decade provided some relief.

  By the time his curiosity was satisfied, he had a much better understanding of who she was, and how she had come to be Captain L. Trevission, owner and captain of the Esperance .

  As those mounting the nightwatch came up on deck, Linnet rose, quirked a brow at Logan. “Are you feeling more resigned to letting me take you to Plymouth?”

  He looked at her for a moment, as if only then realizing that easing his mind had been her intention, then he looked across the deck to where most of the other larger ships dipped and swayed in the weak moonlight. “I suppose I am.” He looked back at her. “If you’re the fastest, the surest . . . then I suspect I should stop arguing and thank you.”

  Lips curving, she inclined her head regally. “Indeed.” Glancing pointedly at the men on watch, she looked at him, smiled. “You can thank me below.”

  She led the way, feeling deliciously brazen. He pushed away from the side and followed without a word. Down the companionway stairs, along the narrow corridor and into her cabin.

  He shut the door, turned, and she was on him, stretching up, winding her arms about his neck and pushing him back against the wooden panel. She pressed her lips to his, felt his hands fasten about her waist. She kissed him boldly, determined to keep the reins, to remain in control, to have him offer his thanks under her direction.

  This was their last night together. Her last night with him, almost certainly forever. She would do her duty and get him to Plymouth tomorrow; by the time night fell again, he would be gone from her life. She was sure that was the way fate would have their liaison end—he would go, and she would never see him again.

  Blindly reaching with one hand, she fumbled, found the bolt on the door, and slid it home. Then she framed Logan’s face and kissed him, kissed him with all the passion he’d shown her she harbored in her soul.

  How? Where? She was struggling to think when, in the blink of an eye, in one surging heartbeat, he took over the kiss.

  Simply filched the reins from her grasp—as he hadn’t that morning in the stable yard.

  As he steered her back, back, until the back of her thighs hit the edge of her desk, she fought to regain the ascendancy, their battlefield the ravenous mating of mouths their simple kiss had become—but there he held the upper hand. Experience told.

  Wrenching back from the kiss, eyes closed, she tipped her head back, gasped, “My ship. I’m captain here.”

  “But I’m the captain’s lover.” As if to prove the point, he closed one hard hand possessively over her bound breast, palpating, then rubbing his thumb over her tightly furled nipple. “Regardless”—wrapping his other hand about her thigh, he eased her hips up and back onto the desktop—“last night was yours.” He caught her gaze, boldly pushed his hand between her thighs and through the buttery soft leather, rubbed her there. “Tonight’s mine. Tonight I get to dictate. Tonight I get to have you my way.”

  His head swooped and his lips came down on hers and he captured her again, captured her wits and her senses and waltzed them into the fire.

  Into the heat she’d come to know so well, into the flames she’d learned to delight in. One hand at her breast, the other working between her thighs, he pushed her on until she was panting and desperate, then he flicked open the buttons at her waist, worked his hand inside her breeches, and his fingers found her. Stroked, then delved, then penetrated her.

  His tongue filling her mouth, his hand at her breast, his fingers buried in her body, he sent her spinning, dizzyingly rapidly, over the edge into ecstasy.

  Wits whirling, she slumped back, bracing her arms on the desk behind her. Eyes closed, head hanging back, she struggled to breathe, to think, to anticipate. Yet as he drew his fingers slowly from her sheath, all she could think about was having him replace them with his erection. She wanted that, ached for it, as if she were hollow inside. But how? Where? Her breeches were too tight—she needed to get them off before—

  One hand on her midriff, he pushed her down, until she gave up and fell on her back across the desk. He worked her breeches down to her knees. She felt the cool wood, the ridges of the desk, against her bare bottom. Then he grasped her knees, pushed them up and as wide as the breeches would allow and bent to taste her.

  Thoroughly.

  Until she lost her breath so completely that she could only sob and wordlessly beg, entreat, implore. Hands clenching tight in his black hair, she arched helplessly beneath his too-knowing ministrations. Desperately dragged in a breath. “For God’s sake, Logan—just fill me. Please . . .”

  He obliged, but with his tongue, stroking so deeply, so roughly that she climaxed in a shattering, shuddering rush of sharply glittering pleasure.

  As it waned, she only felt emptier still.

  Cracking open her lids, she focused on his face, took in his expression of pure masculine gloating as, straightening, he looked down at her. His slow smile stated he knew exactly what she wanted, what she needed, and how to deliver it.

  “Up.” Grasping her hands, he pulled her up and off the desk, steadied her when she wobbled, then turned her and steered her, guiding her unsteady steps toward the table. It was difficult to walk with her breeches about her knees, but before she could think to do anything about it, his hands tightened about her hips and he halted her. “Lean forward and grip the edge of the table.”

  She did, her knees against the edge of the bench built out from the table’s base.

  Even as the vulnerability of her position registered, she felt his hands roam her bare bottom, sending sensation and dewed heat washing beneath her skin, then his boots bracketed hers, keeping her feet, her braced legs together. His splayed hands caressed slowly, savoringly, upward over her hips, pushing her shirt and her chemise up over her waist, exposing even mor
e of her, then one hand settled heavily over the back of her waist while the other swept down and away.

  Her heart was still cantering, hadn’t slowed from before. Anticipation kicked it into a full-blown gallop.

  She’d barely started to work out what he planned, hadn’t truly caught her breath, when she felt the thick rod of his erection push into the hollow between her thighs, felt the marble head nudge between her folds—and he thrust home, pushing her forward, onto her toes, making her breath stutter, her hands grip tight.

  He withdrew and thrust in again and she nearly mewled with pleasure. He held her hips steady and filled her repeatedly. She could feel his groin meeting the smooth skin of her bottom, feel the rasp of crinkly hair, the evocative pressure of his balls against the backs of her thighs. She clung to the table, head bowing as the sensation of him filling her over and over, deeper and yet deeper, rolled over and through her, and claimed her mind.

  His hips pumped powerfully in a primal beat. He reached around her, hands working, then she felt a tug. He leaned forward, pushed deeper into her. A darkly whispered order in her ear had her complying by releasing one clenched hand, then the other, letting him strip off her coat and waistcoat, then reaching beneath her shirt, he loosened her bands, drew them down, and closed his hands about her breasts, screened only by her fine chemise.

  He kneaded, filled his hands and played, possessed, while his body possessed hers in the most flagrant way.

  Then he leaned closer yet, one hand leaving her breast to skate down her front, to stroke her curls, then reach further and stroke her, then cup her there, steadying her as he changed the angle and pushed her on.

  She shook her head in desperation, started rocking her hips, riding to his rhythm.

  Glorying in the sensations that crashed through her as he rode her deeply, thoroughly, unrelentingly, until she shattered again. Came apart on a cry she fought desperately to smother.

  Felt her legs, her arms, fail, heard his deep, dark chuckle as he caught her against him, held her to him, still sunk in her body, hard and full.

  She felt a moment’s indignation that he wasn’t as desperate as she.

  But she knew him, his ways, well enough by now to know that he would seek his own release only after reducing her to boneless helplessness with bout after bout of blinding ecstasy.

  Her wits were so enthralled in glory she was only distantly aware of him shifting her bands, unpicking the knot, then unwinding them.

  Then he drew off her chemise, withdrew from her, shuffled her the short distance to her bed, and tipped her onto it.

  She could barely summon the strength to lift her lids, and through her lashes look up at him. He stood for an instant looking down at her, his smile holding equal measures of primitive possession, unalloyed pleasure, and simple content.

  The latter clutched at her heart, but she pushed it aside. He would undoubtedly be just as content with some other woman, some other lady, later. After.

  Logan couldn’t help smiling at the sight of her, his fierce captain, sprawled mostly naked on her bed, her skin rosy, flushed with sated desire, the marks of his possession showing faintly on the fine skin of her breasts and hips. He would probably mark her more before the night was out, but as he’d informed her, this was his night, his way.

  He saw the glint of green beneath her lashes. Before she could think to say anything, he reached down and tugged off her boots, rolled down her stockings, and drew off her breeches.

  Leaving her totally naked, still sprawled, letting him look his fill as he swiftly dispensed with his own clothes, then, naked, let his body down on hers, covering her, with one hard thrust mounting her, feeling her arch instinctively beneath him, then wriggle to more comfortably accommodate his harder bones, his different angles.

  Clamping one hand about the worked head of the bed where it attached to the wall, he looked down at her beneath him and let the reins fall, let his body surge.

  Again and again, he moved powerfully over her, thrusting deeply into her, smoothly, rhythmically, taking her, possessing her. Imprinting the feel of him deep within her.

  He didn’t stop when she dragged in a huge breath, thrust a little faster as she raised her arms, ran her hands down his sides, over his back, then helplessly clung.

  And started riding with him, her body undulating beneath his, actively receiving him.

  Giving him all, everything he wanted.

  All of her, every last gasp, every moment of passion he wrung from her. With his free hand, he reached down and gripped her thigh, raised it. She lifted it further, wrapped that leg, then the other, around his hips, opening herself even more.

  So he could fill her even more deeply, take even more of her luscious heat, bathe even more deeply in her scalding glory.

  Eyes closing, he rode on, harder, ever more powerfully pushing her on. He could feel his grip on reality fracturing, feel the siren call of her body as it tightened around his, inexorably racking the wheel of passion to the last degree.

  He raised his free hand, blindly searched and found her face, framed it, then bent his head and sank into her mouth. Filled it to the same primal rhythm with which he filled her sheath.

  Swallowed her scream as she climaxed beneath him, as bucking and straining she fractured, and ecstasy took her, racked her, raked her.

  As she pulled him with her, hands clutching, her sheath a velvet fist clamping around him until he surrendered, until, on a long, hoarse groan, one she drank in, he gave himself to her.

  S ometime later, Linnet awoke, immediately reassured by the weight of the heavily muscled leg entwined with hers, by the warmth of the hard chest wedged beside hers. Opening her eyes, she saw Logan propped on one arm alongside her. The narrow bed forced him to lie half over her—no bad thing in her opinion.

  The moonlight had strengthened, pouring through the stern portholes to bathe his face, limning the chiseled angles in silver. Revealing his expression, the firm set of his lips, but drowning his blue eyes in shadows.

  A long moment passed, then he said, his voice deep, low, but definite, “I meant what I said. I can’t believe you can conceive of anything in this world powerful enough to make me give you up. Make me not return. Only death, or something close to it, will stop me coming back for you.”

  She said nothing; there seemed nothing she could say. In this, their views were diametrically opposed, and no amount of his loving was going to change that. But . . . “I believe you believe that.” She had to allow him that. “I don’t think you’re just saying it, a sop to your conscience or mine. But—and yes, there is a but—I don’t have your faith that, once back in your real world, away from my world, you’ll still see things the same way.”

  The twisting of his lips told her clearly what he thought of her lack of faith, her inability to believe. But after searching her face for a moment more, he shifted, then slumped over her shoulder, laid his arm across her, holding her half beneath him.

  If their minds weren’t in accord, their bodies were. Sleep drifted over them, inexorably drew them down.

  Before it captured them completely, he murmured, his voice a dark, faintly Scottish rumble by her ear, “One of us is wrong. Bone-stubborn witch that you are, it’s going to be glorious when you realize it’s you.”

  Linnet fell asleep smiling.

  Close to midnight

  Shrewton House, London

  D aniel strode into the bedroom he and Alex had been sharing, brushing lingering snowflakes from his coat. By the flickering firelight, he saw Alex rise to prop in the bed, brows arching in question.

  Closing the door, Daniel headed for the bed. “The snow’s coming down heavily. I’d forgotten how wet snow here is. The roads are slush.”

  “I thought you and dear Roderick were off to deal with Hamilton in Surrey.”

  Daniel grimaced, and sat on the bed to pull off his boots. “So we’d thought, but by the time we reached the area, he—or those with him, guards like Delborough had, according to th
e few of ours left to tell the tale—had removed those of our men sent to trail their party, and before you lose your temper, the party split into four, so there were only two men at most following any group.” Boots off, he stood and stripped off his coat. “With our followers dispatched, the devil and his henchmen went to ground. But all is not lost.”

  Tossing his coat aside, he started on his waistcoat. “Roderick and I managed to track our men well enough to get a reasonable idea of the area in which Hamilton’s bolt-hole is. We’ve left men enough to trail him whichever way he runs, and they’ll send word as soon as he does.”

  “Hmm.” Alex resettled in the bed. “I still think it’s close to certain he’ll head in the same direction—toward the same ultimate goal—as Delborough. Somewhere in Cambridgeshire, northern Suffolk, or Norfolk, to whoever is the puppetmaster pulling all their strings.”

  Daniel tugged his shirt from his breeches. “Did you have any luck with finding a new base closer to the action?”

  “Yes. Creighton proved most useful. From his description, the house he’s found in Bury St. Edmunds will be just the thing. I’ve organized for our removal there tomorrow.”

  Undoing his breeches, Daniel nodded. “You’ve sent word to all our scattered commanders?”

  “I have. I thought it best to get the word out before the weather closed in.”

  “So what’s happened with Delborough?”

  “Larkins is, apparently, confident his little thief is terrified enough to deliver Delborough’s scroll-holder to him—he seems very sure, but I’d rather Roderick went up there tomorrow to make certain nothing goes amiss.” Alex rolled over as Daniel lifted the pale blue silk covers and climbed into the bed. “As for Monteith and Carstairs, we’ve had no further news.”

  “With any luck, both are already dead.”

  Alex grimaced. “Much as I’d like to believe that . . . Delborough and Hamilton, too, were supposed to be dead by now. Yet they live, and still have their scroll-holders, and what’s more, are steadily getting closer to their goal—wherever that is. Regardless, our cultists are having a harder time of it here in England. Not only do they stand out, but they’re also having difficulty comprehending that they can’t simply kill, torture, and intimidate as they do at home in India.”