by Anne Gracie
“But—”
“What was I supposed to do? Shoot two pirates, then fight off the rest bare-handed? Or shoot one pirate and use the other shot for me? No—if I’m going to be taken by pirates, I’ll do it in the open air, fighting them to my last breath. And taking as many of them with me as I can.” She was shaking by the time she finished speaking.
There was a short silence, then he said hoarsely, “Have you any idea what it did to me seeing you up there on a deck swarming with pirates?”
She met his gaze square on. “Probably much the same as it felt for me to see you beating off three or four men at a time—when only yesterday you were exhausted after only six circuits around the deck!”
He closed his eyes briefly, opened them, and through a clenched jaw said, “This is not about me! I’m a soldier! I can fight with my eyes closed. You’re a woman!”
“You’re not a soldier anymore, and you’ve been sick and in my charge for most of the last week. Now, that shirt is saturated with blood—is any of it yours?”
He fended her off with an angry gesture. “A couple of minor scratches. Dammit, woman, look to yourself! You’re covered in blood!”
She shook her head. “Pirate blood, not mine.”
“In the heat of battle, people don’t always realize they’ve been hurt.”
“Oh. Well then, let me check you—”
“I don’t need a bloody nursemaid!” he roared.
“Don’t be silly, I just want to check if you’re hurt!” She moved closer.
He stepped back. “Don’t come near me!” His voice vibrated with fury. “I’m in no fit state to be touched.”
“I’ve seen you—I’ve touched you in far worse states than this!” She grabbed his shirt.
He wrenched himself away. There was a loud rip.
Through the rent she could see a thin red line. “You have been hurt.”
He made an impatient gesture. “It’s just a scratch. Look to yourself—are you injured in any way?”
She ignored him. “Even a scratch needs tending, and I need to see all of you to be sure.”
He glared at her. “You’re determined to fuss over me, aren’t you?”
“Call it what you will,” she said. “People have been trying to kill you for the last hour and you just told me people don’t always know they’ve been hurt. So.”
“I was talking about you, blast it!”
She didn’t respond, just met his gaze evenly.
“God, you’re a stubborn woman!” Without warning he ripped his shirt off, balled it up, and hurled it out of the porthole. “See?” he stormed. “Nothing serious. Now what about you? Are you nursing any wounds under that filthy, bloody, ruined rag that used to be your favorite dress?” He grabbed the bloodiest part of her dress and yanked. The whole top of the dress ripped open.
There was a sudden, shocked silence.
She stepped back. They stared at each other for a long moment, motionless, panting.
Slowly she turned away and let the remains of her dress and her torn, bloodstained chemise pool around her feet. She stepped out of the ruined garments, scooped them up, and stalked to the porthole in nothing but her baggy Turkish knee-length drawers. She flung the dress and chemise out and turned to face him, shaking, her arms folded across her breasts. “No wounds—satisfied?”
He swallowed, then wiped his hands across his face. “God, Ayisha, when I saw you step out onto that deck . . . I was never so frightened in all my life.” His voice was hoarse.
“I thought we were both going to die,” she told him in a voice that had taken on a distinct wobble. “And I couldn’t bear the thought that we’d never done this!” And she launched herself at his chest.
She flung herself at him, twining her arms around his neck and wrapping her legs around his waist.
His arms caught her, snapping around her like bands of steel as he stumbled against the bed and fell backward onto it.
And then he was kissing her, blindly, desperately, and she was kissing him back in a mindless, wild frenzy.
Anger, passion, fear, and relief swamped her in huge contradictory waves. She couldn’t get close enough, she wanted to climb inside his chest, to hold him, to block out the dazzling, terrifying sight of him surrounded by evil predators, his sword flashing, his eyes blazing ice blue and burning.
She plastered wild kisses all over him, on his face, his mouth, his eyelids, tasting the roughness of his jaw, the bunched muscles of his shoulder—anywhere she could. Kissing, tasting, healing. Making him safe, giving him everything she had to give: herself.
No matter what, no matter who.
She’d been a whisper away from death; she could still feel the wind of the sword slicing a hairsbreadth above the nape of her neck—but she was alive, alive and in the arms of a man who made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt in her life.
She brushed against his groin and felt the rampant, burning hardness of him beneath the buckskin breeches.
At her touch, a powerful shudder racked the big body beneath her. He groaned and the sound fed the wild exultation bubbling through her.
His big hands came over hers and stilled her fevered movements. His breath came hot and hard, his broad, strong chest heaved with exertion.
His blue eyes pierced her with intensity. “Are you sure of this, Ayisha? Because if you say yes, there’s no going back.”
“Yes!” She bent and kissed him. “I want you. I want this. And I want it now.” She didn’t know what “this” was, but a powerful force deep within her drove her on.
She was alive, alive, and she needed him, craved him. Her body knew it, was throbbing, aching, guided by an instinct as old as time. And she trusted her instincts.
“Then if you’re sure . . .” he said, his voice deep and gravelly. Slowly his gaze dropped to her naked breasts, just inches above him.
She felt her cheeks flood with heat. She’d forgotten her nakedness while she was pressed against him. She’d never been bared to a man’s gaze before, and his frank stare filled her with a mixture of shyness and pride.
“Beautiful,” he breathed. “Like cream of moonlight. Such a crime to keep them bound all these years.”
He lifted his face and kissed her on each breast and the feeling of his hot mouth on the cool, tender skin . . . If she died now . . .
But she wasn’t going to die, and he was alive, and oh . . . his rough-textured jaw against the softness of her breasts . . .
He teased her halfway to madness, brushing his mouth over her breasts in fiery gossamer drifts, holding her above him so she could not move, could not plunge on top of him and taste him, touch him in return as she longed to.
His mouth, his tongue, his jaw caressed her until her every nerve was aflame.
Finally his hold shifted. He cupped her face in his hands and brought her mouth down to his, deliberately . . . so slowly she was shaking with anticipation by the time their lips touched.
She kissed him back, feverishly, desperately, clumsily, not knowing what to do, wanting to drive him to aching madness as he had driven her.
She knew what came next. Her hands shook as she reached the front flap of his breeches, but it was haste, not nervousness.
Well, just a bit of nervousness.
She knew his body intimately. After bathing it so many times in the last week, there could be no surprises.
But what he did with his mouth . . . scrambled every bit of . . . sense . . . but she wanted . . . needed . . .
He pressed his hand over hers, stopping her undoing the breeches, pressing her palm down over that heavy, hot thickness beneath. “Slow down, little cat,” he groaned.
She stared at him, panting. “I don’t want to slow down.” He didn’t move, so she bent and bit him lightly on the shoulder.
He laughed. “Little wildcat,” he said and rolled over on the bed so she was beneath him.
“Trust me,” he told her. “It will be better slow.”
“Better for wh
om?” she growled in frustration.
“For you.” He smiled and the gleam in his eye deepened. “And therefore for me.”
He kissed her again, deeply, his tongue like hot velvet, mating with hers, stroking with insistent rhythm until she was weak with wanting, then trailing slow kisses along her jaw, down her neck, until he reached her breasts.
“Wild strawberries,” he murmured, tasting her nipple. He bit lightly on it, caressing the tip with his tongue, sucking, biting softly, caressing the tip with teeth and tongue, and all the time she arched helplessly beneath him as spears of rhythmic pleasure pierced her.
His big, warm hands moved with rough-skinned tenderness all over her, cupping, squeezing, stroking. He seemed to know exactly what to do to bring her to the brink of ecstasy. Ayisha wanted to do the same to him, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t even move, except to shudder and writhe in helpless pleasure.
She shivered as he cupped the soft mound at the apex of her thighs, caressing her through the cotton of her Turkish drawers.
From a long way away she heard, “Do you care about these things?”
“Things?” Her eyes flew open and the world came back a little, rippling dreamily. She could hear herself panting. He was panting, too, his eyes glazed-looking and intense.
What had he just said?
He tugged at the drawstrings. “I can’t get them undone.”
She stared at his mouth and forgot to answer. His beautiful, masculine mouth . . . and what he did with it . . .
Then he muttered, “Don’t worry, I’ll rip ’em off.”
“No, I’ll do it,” she said, her wits scrambling back. Her fingers flew to untie the drawstring. She started to push them down over her hips, but again his hands closed over hers and drew them away.
“My job,” he said softly and kissed her long and slowly on the mouth, and she melted again.
As he kissed her, his hand caressed the softness of her stomach and slowly pushed the drawers down, over her stomach, over her hips, and then she was kicking her feet out of them, and his hand was cupping her, massaging her softly while his mouth tenderly ravaged her breasts.
The hands that could seize a pirate and fling him across the deck caressed her with such delicacy she felt like weeping.
He parted her and one long finger stroked her lightly, circling and circling. Her world closed to just that one point, where his finger joined with her and she pulsated around it. And then he pressed and she jerked almost off the bed as a shaft of pure lightning shot through her.
She lay panting as her shattered awareness slowly came back to her. Her eyes fluttered open. He lay beside her on the bed, his eyes scrunched closed, looking as if he was in pain.
She didn’t know what he’d done, but she knew what he hadn’t done. Now, finally she would have her way. In seconds she’d unfastened the flap of his breeches, loosened the drawstrings of his drawers, and was tugging them down over his long, hard thighs.
She stared. What had she thought? No surprises here? How wrong she’d been. How had it got so much bigger? And darker. And thicker. And longer.
But she’d handled his body so often during the fever she shouldn’t feel shy about touching him. She hesitated. He’d been asleep then and the touching had been for medicinal purposes only.
She stared at his heavily aroused manhood and decided perhaps she was a little bit shy, after all. She glanced at him to see what he was thinking. He lay there, watching, his eyes gleaming, waiting for her to make the first move.
She reached out and touched him tentatively. It was hot, the skin like tight velvet. With one finger she stroked it slowly to the tip and back. It tightened and grew and a small bead of moisture appeared at the engorged tip.
He moaned and his body arched as if in pain. But it hadn’t hurt, she could tell by the glint in his eyes. She was doing to him what he’d been doing to her.
She smiled and a ripple of feminine power flowed through her. Her big warrior had trembled at her lightest touch. He watched her, the burning eyes glittering under the sleepy-looking lids, like a lion getting ready to pounce.
She ran her fingers down the length of him again and he flung his head back, his teeth clenched, and moaned, his heels digging into the bed.
“Cats always play with their captives,” he said through gritted teeth after the long shudder had passed.
She smiled. If he didn’t like it, he had only to move away. Or tell her to stop. But he didn’t. She touched the tip and his powerful body arched and shuddered under the light touch. His thigh muscles were braced and corded, his hard stomach tense, his fists clenching the bedclothes as if he was on a rack of torture.
Wondering what would happen if she grasped him with her whole hand, she gently closed her fingers. Then squeezed lightly.
“Enough,” he groaned, suddenly surging up and over her. His weight bore her down on the bed, and he settled himself between her thighs. Without thought her thighs closed around him.
Yes, this was what she’d been craving. She hadn’t realized it until now.
He kissed her fiercely, possessively, and she kissed him back frenziedly, feeling the heated bluntness pushing rhythmically at her entrance. She knew what to expect. She’d heard people talk. She shifted, trying to accommodate him, but it was pushing into her, stretching her, tight, tighter.
His hand slipped between them and he stroked her over and over as he had before, and she shivered and felt herself soften.
He pushed again and—
“Aghh!” She couldn’t help the sudden, surprised yell—it had hurt more than she’d expected.
“What the d—”
“It’s all right,” she said, grabbing his head and kissing him hard, at the same time moving her lower body inexpertly, her body throbbing, moving in time with his.
He groaned and gathering her to him, ravaging her mouth tenderly. At the same time he began to move inside her, slowly at first and then faster and faster.
It was uncomfortable at first, but slowly her body adjusted and she moved with him, and she forgot the pain as the addictive tension built and built. A rhythm took over her body, pounding through her, the two of them moving as one, moving faster, faster, spiraling higher, higher, higher . . .
Her body moved of its own accord, she was lost, mindless, about to explode, to splinter apart . . . All she could do was give herself up to it, to let it take her, sweep her away like the flooding of the Nile. Embracing him with every part of her, shattering together . . .
Seventeen
Rafe opened his eyes to the melancholy half-light that comes just before dawn. It was the time when hope ebbed its lowest, when dying men gave up the struggle and slipped away.
Rafe was immune to it. Yesterday, last night, his life had changed forever.
Ayisha lay curled against him, her limbs entwined with his, and as always, her palm resting over his heart.
It never failed to move him, the care she showed him, even in sleep.
If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget the sight of her stepping out on deck, stepping into mortal danger, raising his pistols and defending him.
Defending him.
A girl of nineteen defending a veteran soldier. It humbled him, utterly. He felt a thickness in his chest as he gazed at her. She was so brave, so . . . precious.
Carefully he moved, so as not to disturb her, raising himself on one elbow, the better to look at her. Her short dark hair clustered spikily around her face. His sleeping beauty.
It was a cool morning and one thin shoulder poked out from beneath the covers. The urge to bend and kiss it rose up in him, the desire to wake her softly, with kisses, but there were faint lavender shadows beneath the dark crescents of her lashes. She was worn out, his little warrior, after all that had happened. He wouldn’t disturb her. He gently tugged the blanket up to cover her.
In sleep she looked so small and defenseless, but Lord, the raw, practical courage of her. She’d killed three men yesterday and bea
ten off who knew how many.
He thought of the way she’d responded to him, affirming life with a passion that burned.
And yet she’d been a virgin.
So what was Alicia Cleeve is dead; here, there is only Ayisha about?
He’d thought it meant she’d been raped. It took some people that way; the only way they could survive some terrible event was to become someone different, leave that person behind, take a new name, make a new life.
It wasn’t rape, thank God. But what?
It didn’t matter. She was full of secrets, but he didn’t care. She’d given herself to him last night, and she was his now to care for and protect, and he had every intention of changing her name again—to his. A new life was ahead of them both.
A plaintive yowling from the box told him that a certain kitten felt it had been neglected far too long. He slipped out of bed and let her out. A brief butt of the head against his hand and she stalked to her sand tray while Rafe slid back into bed, careful not to disturb Ayisha.
Cleo inspected her empty food dish with an air of disapproval, drank from her water dish, then clawed her way up the bedclothes and onto the bed—she was still too small to jump that high. There she proceeded to sit on his stomach and wash herself daintily from top to toe.
Once her toilette was complete, she moved to his chest, butted him on the chin, and eyed him expectantly. He didn’t move, so she batted him on the chin with a soft paw and mrrrowed at him. Beside him Ayisha stirred.
Rafe narrowed his eyes at the kitten. “Hush, that’s blackmail,” he told her in a whisper.
She narrowed her eyes right back at him, but in a seductive manner, and mrrrowed again.
“Quiet, I said,” he whispered. “Your mistress is sleeping.”
He scratched Cleo behind the ears and was rewarded with a rattly little kitten purr. The purring continued. Rafe drifted slowly back to sleep, the kitten curled on his chest.
Ayisha woke to a kitten purring in her ear. Her eyes fluttered open, and there was Cleo curled on Rafe’s chest. She blinked. What was the kitten doing there? She always slept in her basket.
