He wanted her with an ache that frightened him. He was suddenly furious in an unspecific way again.
Enough. It was time to call a halt to the games. He’d felt off balance since she’d stowed away, and hadn’t yet found a way to regain his equilibrium. He knew the surest, swiftest way to regain his power. To prove to himself that she was just a woman like any other.
All he had to do was kiss her.
Slowly, gracefully, he leaned over her; he’d done this dozens of times before in his life. And as his lips came down he caught a glimpse of her sensually darkened eyes widening, her lips parting in surprise.
His lips touched hers. Sank against them. Her lips were a miracle of heat and silk and give.
Oh God. It was a mistake.
The kiss raced like a lightning strike along his spine and seized his lungs with a simultaneous rush of panic and joy. As though he’d willingly flung himself backward from the mast to the deck and not only enjoyed the flight but survived the fall unscathed.
He inhaled sharply and tipped back into the space shaped like him and folded his hands beneath his head, hoping to appear insouciant but in reality trapping them. He was suddenly afraid of what they might do: Plunder. Caress. Explore. Dear God, take, take, take.
He held his body motionless. His heart took painful jabs at his breastbone. His blood was a thick, hot liqueur. His mind a useless scramble.
He could hear her breathing hard next to him. Was aware her fingers were at her lips. Touching them, as if to prove to herself she’d been kissed.
He listened to her breath, the ragged rhythm of it a counterpoint to the incessant sigh of the sea, but for some reason he didn’t want to look at her. He closed his eyes instead and saw her hair, shadow-dark, pooled on the pillow, the shudder of her lashes against her cheeks; he conjured the shape and texture of her lips sinking, opening against his, her breath mingling with his.
He tried and failed to detect the difference between this and every other kiss he’d ever taken.
He was rattled.
It would be a simple enough thing to restore his sense of control: all he needed to do was roll over onto her, peel up her nightdress, fill his hands and mouth with her breasts, slip his hands under that doubtlessly silky arse before she had time even to gasp, get a determined knee between hers to pry them apart, and press his hard V of a torso over hers and give her no choice but to wrap her legs around his waist and sink her nails into his shoulders because damned if she wouldn’t need to hold on for dear life when plunged into her Oh God snug, wet…
He flung himself off the bed as though dodging cannon fire and stood stiff and motionless, looking down at her. His face must have been ferocious, because hers went uncertain, and then inscrutable. Suddenly she was painfully human and young, and new.
No less desirable, but much more frightening.
Her eyes slid down to the majestic bulge in his groin, magnetized there.
And then they bounced back again to the other side of the room as though she’d inadvertently gazed upon an eclipse.
He ought to laugh.
He thrust an arm blindly behind him, found and snatched up the shirt he’d abandoned on the chair and shoved his arms in, buttoned it haphazardly, stuffed half of into his trousers. Bent over and seized his boots by their tops as though apprehending fleeing criminals.
And took himself off to sleep in the vole hole, shutting the door harder than necessary, as if trapping all unwelcome feelings in the room behind him.
Violet lay absolutely motionless. Apart, that was, from her breathing, which wouldn’t settle any time soon. Her night rail remained in disarray, but she let the blankets lay where they were. She wanted nothing else to touch her while his touch lingered on her skin. She seemed to glow everywhere, like a just-lit coal.
She brought her hand up to her breast and touched it, to feel what he’d felt. And then she remembered how he felt. His firm lips, his breath, the heat of his body hovering near hers. She was weak with yearning that bordered on angry: it wanted satisfaction. A fire had been lit. She, who’d never been denied a thing in her life, wanted more.
I kissed an earl. Emotions and sensations kaleidoscoped; she couldn’t seem to grasp onto only one. Joy and fear and ferocious desire and amazement took their turns with her. Pragmatism rallied for attention. She suspected pragmatism was masquerading as cowardice, because it said: Nothing more ought to happen. Keep your distance.
He’d fled as though he’d come to his senses, too. Perhaps now the game would be called. Perhaps the earl had bolted out of the room with his magnificent erection—Lady Peregrine had been correct about the thighs—because he couldn’t bear the notion of touching her again now that he had.
She didn’t believe it.
And she didn’t sleep.
Chapter 17
Violet was driven out of bed before dawn, as sleep, naturally, proved elusive.
She ought to dutifully set to work. Hercules might be missing, but the potatoes were present. Instead, she ventured out onto the deck, finding the day blindingly clear and wind-whipped. When she heard the bass of the earl’s voice rumbling beneath the rush of wind, the creak of the deck, the flap of sails and wings, she migrated toward it out of instinct before she realized what she was doing.
Then stopped to watch him from a distance.
His head was bent to listen to Hercules, who was windmilling his arms, gesticulating wildly. It was rather like watching a hummingbird buzz about a great tree. Complaining about her? Or complimenting her? With Hercules, it was difficult to know.
She knew the instant the earl became aware of her presence. He didn’t turn. He never took his eyes away from Hercules.
But his body tensed almost imperceptibly, as if his every cell was attuned to her.
Hercules finally stalked off, muttering in Greek, but he looked cheerful for a change. Perhaps he was thanking the captain for his new assistant. She could only hope. He didn’t see her; doubtless he would come hunting for her when he didn’t find her in the galley, either.
Flint turned and studied her for a moment from an assessing distance.
Said nothing. Just watched. A strand of her hair lashed at her mouth from the wind and clung. Bloody wind forever mussing a girl.
If she’d thought to feel a latent fit of virginal moral turpitude, it was entirely swept away by that first glimpse of him.
She watched him, wondering how well he’d slept. The wind caught and tossed his hair, turning him briefly into a maypole. Nothing else about him was the least whimsical. Shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled up to expose those hard forearms, hard thighs and long legs poured into those shiny boots. She willed him to come to her, and was afraid that he would, and she’d never felt such simultaneous terror and excitement.
He strode purposefully toward her and stopped, looking down.
She snatched at her hair to clear her vision.
Wordlessly, almost casually, he cupped her elbow, turned her and promenaded her across the deck. As though he had every confidence she would come peacefully wherever he chose to lead her. He steered her around the corner to the launches and longboats, a nook he’d clearly known would be visible neither from the deck nor from on high in the rigging.
Impressively purposeful.
And he stood—or rather, loomed over her, she revised, as her view of sky, the sea, the sun, the deck—leaving her with two choices: to stare at the V of gold skin and curling copper hair exposed by two undone buttons on his shirt. Or to look up into his face.
It took her perhaps two seconds longer than it ought to have to look up into his face.
His blue eyes seemed startlingly vivid, perhaps because they were suddenly her only source of light. His body radiated heat like a blacksmith’s forge.
In moments she felt it—felt him—like a low fever everywhere on her skin.
She drew in a long shuddering breath.
Behind them sails snapped, a gull screeched, some member of the crew shouted
a filthy word from on high to someone below. She could not say for how long they stood transfixed; seconds only, likely. Forever, possibly.
But she gave a start when his hands rose. She eyed them warily, her hammering heart sending the blood ringing in her ears. His fingers seemed to tremble a little in the shimmering heat of the day.
But they were steady when he rested the backs of them against the base of her throat. And something like wonder, and confusingly like supplication, flickered across his face. As though he was testing his welcome, or his own feelings. Surprised by them each time. He exhaled.
It was only then she realized he’d been holding his breath.
And only then she realized hers was held, too.
His hands traveled slowly, slowly upward, his touch so incongruously delicate it was almost indistinguishable from a breath blown against her skin. And just like that, as surely as a swami sings a cobra out of its basket, something languidly uncoiled in her veins. He’d awakened it last night.
It was called to life again by his hands.
If she had to give the thing a name she would have called it hunger.
It seemed everything on her body stood on end—the fine hairs at her nape, gooseflesh on her arms, her nipples. Breathing became a delicious struggle. Her eyelids were suddenly too heavy to remain aloft. When he encountered the leaping pulse in her throat he slowed his fingers there to savor it, and then his fingers threaded up through her hair, sending sparks of sensation scattershot over her skin and lighting tiny bonfires in surprising places in her body, and with one languid, fluid motion he eased her head back and brought his lips down to hers.
The kiss was exploratory. His mouth brushed hers, nudging gently, coaxing her lips apart, until they slipped open and clung to his. Lovely. Lovely. A series of exquisite contrasts dizzied her: his breath, and his firm lips, and the warm damp velvet of his mouth.
And when his tongue delicately touched hers a bolt of want cleaved clean through her. A force as consuming as pain, but quite its opposite.
She actually moaned.
Which is when he broke the kiss abruptly.
His hands remained threaded tightly through her hair. He looked down into her no doubt kiss-clouded eyes. She considered, absently, once again, that his hands were trembling, but surely this was because the world itself had begun to spiral.
“Violet.” He murmured it as though trying out a new, possibly Turkish, word. She detected in it a peculiar hint of regret. A hint of warning.
And then he sighed, and gave a short dark laugh. “Oh, Violet.”
He tugged back on her hair and his mouth came down hard.
It landed on hers, hot and open. She felt her own shameless low moan of relief vibrate in his mouth. God. For balance she curled her fingers into the rough linen of his shirt, found it hot from his skin and damp from perspiration and sea spray. Drugging and complex, so new, so male, the textures of his mouth infinite, she found herself taking of his lips, his tongue, his mouth, the way any proper Redmond would—as though she was purely entitled to the pleasure—taking the way only she could: recklessly. Their lips feinted, clung, slid, nipped; their tongues lashed and tangled, teeth clashed. The kisses never seemed deep enough.
He groaned what sounded like a filthy foreign word and scooped his hands under her arse and lifted her hard up against the hard cock straining through his trousers, and oh God that was exquisite. He ground his body rhythmically against her as he dragged his lips from ear to her throat, his hands running hard and hot over her back. She threaded her hands through his hair, found it damp and warm as incongruously silky as a boy’s. His hot mouth, lips, tongue, teeth, branded her throat mercilessly where her heart threatened to hammer its way clean out of her body; she arched, abetting this. He crouched to slide his lips down, down, to dip his tongue into the shadow between her breasts, where he stopped a bead of her sweat with his tongue. And then his hand tugged down her bodice and he took her nipple in his mouth and sucked.
She gasped, clutching his head hard to her. He swiveled swiftly then and backed her hard against the wall, into the corner. It was all a blur now, a languid grappling tangle of bodies. She may have kissed his eyelid. She did kiss his temple. She licked his collarbone, tasted salt and skin before his lips reclaimed hers. She wanted to bite him. She didn’t. She moaned again quietly, a desperate sound, because she wanted and didn’t know what she wanted, and shivered from the onslaught of sensation as surely as if she’d caught a killing fever, loving and fearing it. Her knees would have buckled, but his hands held her hard, and his erection was so hard against her it hurt even as she ground her body against it, wanting, wanting.
He began to drag up her skirt, and God help her, somehow he’d unbuttoned two of his trouser buttons. “I want you.” His voice was hoarse in her ear.
“I don’t…” Her voice shocked her; a raw, shaking husk against his lips. His mouth took another devouring kiss, stopping her sentence, which was fine, as she couldn’t recall how she’d intended to complete it. He slid a hand beneath her thigh, lifted it to fit his hips against her. “I just…”
Nor that one.
I want was the only thing true.
But what did she want?
And suddenly she found the strength or the fear to push him away, but her fingers remained curled into his shirt as though he was shipwreck flotsam and she was in danger of drowning if she released him. Her body swayed with ragged breaths.
She looked down and saw her own blurred reflection in the polished toes of his boots.
She looked up, and found him staring down at her. And then he seized her hands from their grip and dragged them down, down, down, over the sweat-dampened linen of his shirt, her hands scraping the bumpy row of his shirt buttons, over the steel-banded muscles of his narrow waist.
To the hard bulge of his cock. And pressed her palms there.
Her head shot back, shocked. Her hand jerked reflexively, struggling to free itself.
He held her fast. Watched her carefully, eyes narrowed, jaw taut, harsh breaths wracking him.
He felt…merciless. And so alien and male and enormous she realized just how dangerously deep in she was. It was as sobering as a cold wave thrown against the face.
She tugged her hands again frantically.
He refused to relinquish her.
“Look at me,” he ordered tersely.
She did. Her face was flaming now. The consequences of that kiss, of the feel of him, of what he wanted to do to her, the overpowering maleness of him, nearly burned through her trousers through to her hand. His chest swayed with short, nearly angry sounding breaths. Behind them the sea ceaselessly heaved, mocking them.
He leaned forward; his forehead touched hers. His skin was startlingly hot. And then his mouth, his breath, was in her ear, stirring again the fine hairs on her neck again, washing gooseflesh along her throat, lulling her eyes into sagging closed. Help, she thought futilely, addressing no one and everyone. She heard her own breath gusting against his chest.
He spoke, his voice husky, so gentle it was nearly a caress. But he measured the words out as evenly as a threat.
“You can’t toy with me, Miss Redmond.”
Her head snapped backward.
Blue glare met blue glare.
She knew it for what it was: a warning. He was not a pet. He was not a servant. He was not patient. He was making it very clear that the societal rules that had so entrapped her—and protected her, she understood now, and allowed her to behave as capriciously as she wished with so few real consequences, and to engage in this coy virginal dance—did not apply to him.
Despite the grand title foisted upon him, he had his own rules and cared nothing for hers.
What makes you think I won’t take you? he’d said.
Dear God. He’d been about to. She’d been about to let him.
Her brother’s wife, Cynthia, had once pretended to be an expert markswoman in order to impress a suitor. As a result, she’d ludicrously mai
med a replica of the statue of David with a musket and nearly killed a man with the resulting hurtling marble penis.
Violet had just been handed her own metaphorical musket: her own passionate nature, unleashed. She now knew her desire was as reckless as her spirit and the full equal to the Earl of Ardmay’s, and if she wasn’t careful, of a certainty someone would be hurt, if not by a marble penis, then in some grave equivalent and metaphorical fashion.
She could never succumb. Even she knew that way lay ruin. But the fact that she now knew what she was missing and could never know it seemed the height of cruelty. She’d been denied so little in her life.
She was learning so much on this little voyage.
He slowly lifted his hands, releasing hers. Her palms were hot now from pressing against him; he seemed to burn through to her hands. He was no less hard or formidable than he’d been a moment ago.
He was no less the man that meant to send her brother to the gallows so he could realize his own dreams.
She took her hands away with feigned casualness. But as her hands slid back over his cock, he hissed in a breath, an involuntary sound of pleasure. And despite everything her body leaped ferociously in response, meeting desire with desire.
She was tempted to study her relinquished hands to see if they looked different, because, for heaven’s sake, she’d just touched an erect penis, albeit through clothing, and a tiny childish part of her was thrilled and wished she could brag to someone.
Instead she dropped them to her sides and turned her head starboard, seeking composure out on that endless, impersonal, overwhelming blue ocean. She felt lost. For the first time in her life, she was utterly alone. No one, not Miles, not the perfidious Lyon, no one, could help her now. She had only her own counsel to rely upon, and she knew precisely what that was worth.
Flint hooked a finger beneath her chin and brought her face back sharply toward him.
She met his penetrating gaze with a cool pride that would have made any of her haughty ancestors applaud.
“Enough. Here are the rules to this particular game, Miss Redmond. My plans remain entirely the same. Nothing changes about my mission. You will not dissuade me from it. Either we do this or we do not. Decide.”
I Kissed an Earl Page 21
