“God…I want…you must…”
Their eyes locked. He held himself above her, trembling, and his eyes burned her.
His breath gusted against the damp of her throat, raising gooseflesh. She saw the sweat beading his upper lip, his teeth sunk into his lower lip. Felt the force of his desire for her, for her, in the hard muscles quivering beneath her fingers, in the fevered heat of skin, in the rapid rise and fall of his vast shoulders. She dragged a finger down the seam between his ribs, stopped a bead of sweat, transferred it to her tongue. Then slid her hands over his hips where their bodies joined, triumphant, marveling.
His pupils flared; his eyes were midnight.
He drew his hips back slowly, his eyes fixed on her face, watching for her reaction, his eyes flaring in triumph when she threw her head back, and her mouth parted on gasping breaths of pleasure. The hot slide of him inside her was extraordinary, glorious, terrifying; she gripped his arms, not knowing what else to do. He thrust again, and she groaned the wonder of it, and it spurred him on. He plunged again. She locked her feet around his back, and wanted to growl, to scream that it wasn’t deep enough. She wanted to be him, to be fused. She arched her body to take him, and her response fed his need and shredded his control until he abandoned it altogether and let desire set the pace, drumming his cock into her in a primal rhythm, the force of his big body rocking her. She arched to meet him, the sound of his flesh against hers unbearably erotic, his face rapt, focused inwardly now, now as he drove himself toward his release.
She held him when he went motionless above her and hoarsely, joyously called her name.
Not even the most outlandish of the bets inscribed in the betting books at White’s would have dared predict that Violet Redmond would kill a man…and lose her virginity…to a savage earl…on the high seas…
All in one day.
They lay alongside each other, together and apart. A circle of sunlight through the window landed on his belly, like a target.
Who am I now?
Not Violet Redmond, daughter of Isaiah and Fanchette, pristine, wealthy, untouchable, a coveted prize on the marriage mart, a delicious source of speculation in light of her tendency to wildness. Not the Violet Redmond who’d from sheer boredom threatened to cast herself down a well over a petty argument with a suitor and had been pulled back by the elbows. Not the Violet Redmond who’d been cosseted her entire life, rescued and petted by her brothers and parents.
She was in utter disarray. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about wrinkles or her hair. She was a woman who could kill, who could eat bread rocks, who could survive being pounded by a monster wave and living in a vole hole. She’d been undone completely by this man, turned inside out. She wanted only him, and suddenly life was simply and unbearably beautiful and sad. She’d given everything. She was glad. But Violet felt as anchorless and alone, suddenly, as Asher Flint must have felt his entire life.
To whom or what did she really belong now? She’d just unmoored herself with no guarantee of a future, for she knew how this would end, for it must end.
Still, she would not undo what was done.
He leaned over, propped on his elbow, his smile lazy, his eyes guarded and achingly blue in the sun, and lifted a strand of her hair, which was simply everywhere—fanned on the pillows, stuck to her lips, glued to his body with perspiration.
He drew it slowly out through his fingers, the long, long length of it, peered through it as though it were a net he’d been caught in.
She smiled at him. He began to speak. Hesitated.
“It can be better for you,” he finally said gruffly.
“I wanted it,” she said quickly. Lest he feel any guilt or remorse. Something to do with her pride.
I wanted you.
I wanted it? Good God. How very proud her mother would have been to hear those words.
“I never would have guessed,” he murmured smugly.
So ungentlemanly.
Still, she smiled at that, transformed by one wild bout of lovemaking into a wanton, and rolled over on her back, stretching her arms out behind her head, her breasts arcing upward.
His eyes darkened interestedly, and he feasted them brazenly.
“It can be much better,” he whispered. He leaned over and drew her nipple into his mouth and sucked gently, traced a lazy figure eight over it with his tongue.
Little rivers of fire fanned out in her blood.
“Oh,” she sighed, and she threaded her fingers through his hair.
Her legs shifted restlessly, already wanting to wrap around him again, a heavy desire simmering low in her belly, a now familiar ache of want. Surely they’d spent their lust. Surely, she thought with some despair, it couldn’t be an endless, insatiable thing.
She thought of opium addicts, and wine sots, and how more and more was never enough.
“Turn over on your side.” A whispered command.
She was disappointed he didn’t intend to linger with her breasts, but she obeyed, and tipped.
He gathered the miles of her wild hair into a neat fistful to get it out of his way and dropped it over her shoulder like Rapunzel’s rope. Her back thus turned to him, he unlaced the dress they’d so roughly treated and loosened the laces with his fingers.
“Raise your arms.”
She obeyed. He slid the dress up over her head, folded it in a cursory sort of way and set it aside. He placed a single gentle, slow kiss at the nape of her neck.
Her nipples were instantly erect as pen nibs. Gooseflesh raced over her limbs.
“Will the crew be wondering where you are?” she murmured.
“The crew knows where I am. They assume I’m comforting you.”
They both smiled at the euphemism.
Next he unlaced her stays and together they eased them away from her body.
And now she lay completely nude apart from her stockings, clothed only in close sultry cabin air and the circular sunbeam that had migrated with a few minutes passage from him to her, and the hands of a man who fanned them over her shoulders as reverently as if she were wearing wings. Dragging soft kisses, trailed by feather-light fingertips, down her spine as though it was the road to his salvation. They didn’t speak. She could hear his breath now, quiet but uneven, the sound of ramping arousal, and she loved knowing what simply touching her did to him. Her body hummed with wild want but she tamped it, because she was hungry for the detailed knowledge of her body, of seduction, that he possessed. She suspected it was a frontier, limitless as the sea.
Does he love me? Does he even know?
She thought of his face on the deck this afternoon after she’d fired that shot. Unguarded in that moment. Everything he felt was in that gaze.
But what if he does? And it simply didn’t matter. She loved him. And love was bigger than she was.
And Violet, the rebel, surrendered to it.
As he’d said the other day, it changes nothing. He wanted Le Chat captured and she wanted Le Chat free. In the end, one of them would need to betray the other.
So there is only now, she told herself. She told herself it was enough.
His hand planed along her waist to the rise of her hip, slipped down over her belly, and a tiny involuntary sound of anticipation caught in her throat. Her legs shifted, hoping his hand would slide down between.
“Soon.” There was hint of wicked laughter in his whisper.
But that hardly made it better, because now she was nearly trembling with anticipation of whatever he planned to do…“soon.” He gave a gentle tug on her hip to roll her over onto her back and feasted his eyes somberly on her nude self for a moment, and only later, as she reflected, would she recall that she hadn’t known a twinge of modesty as he studied her.
“I think I like you best on your back,” he told her earnestly after a moment. Knowing it would earn him a scowl.
Which it did.
He grinned like a wicked little boy, and it was so charming it pierced her through.
“Are you certain you don’t like you best on your back?” he continued relentlessly, with mock concern, and his fingers trailed along her thighs, coaxing them apart. Too easily, almost greedily, they went.
“H-h-uush,” she gasped. The need to express outrage seemed so unfair when what he was doing was so delicious and she needed him to continue.
“Because if we’re agreed on the matter…I can think of ways to keep you right…there…for hours…and hours…and hours…”
His voice became softer and softer and softer with every “hour,” and the last one was a whisper, a blown breath, between her navel and the triangle of curls.
She throbbed, aching, and when his tongue touched her slick soft center she jerked from the sharp bliss of it.
And his hands pressed her thighs apart and again he stroked her with his tongue, and this time she moaned, the astounding newness of it, the wickedness of it, bowing her upward.
The velvet heat of his tongue against her hot, swollen cleft was exquisite, and he demonstrated a remarkable genius for knowing just how to lick, and stroke, until she rippled beneath him.
He knelt between her legs and guided himself in, a leisurely lovemaking, looking down on sated, dream-clouded eyes, her arms flung back over her head, her hair a tangled fan, and so slow he took her this time, each thrust searching and precise, the rhythm of his hips nearly languid, until he knew she was coming again, shouting his name in a hosanna he thought he’d never tire of hearing.
And then he slipped out, and lay down next to her, and pulled her into his arms.
He wasn’t sure when she began to weep. Just that she was weeping. He had the usual male horror of female tears, and she seemed to know it.
“It’s just emotion.” She sniffed, and brushed her hand across her eyes. “I’m not upset.”
Just emotion. Love and fear and loss and longing and the prospect of yet more loss. She was extraordinary, this girl. A warrior’s heart beat in her, but she was young, and everything that had happened to her in a short amount of time would have been too much for most stalwart men, let alone a woman.
He murmured soothing nonsense syllables with an instinct for tenderness he hadn’t known he possessed. He stroked her hair. And he wrapped her in his arms, held her until she slept.
Chapter 24
The boy Mathias had been right. After two days of mercifully charitable seas, The Fortuna sailed into Cádiz. And among the ships in the harbor were The Prosperar.
And, naturally, The Olivia.
Flint stood on deck and watched that shining jewel of a warm harbor grow closer. He called for the anchor to be dropped. He waited to feel a surge of battle anticipation: At last he had the advantage over Le Chat, and all Flint had ever needed were his wits and a hair of advantage.
Instead, he thought of two nights of Violet Redmond rippling in pleasure beneath his hands. Her soft body asleep in his arms.
And feeling like a traitor, he went below to wake her up precisely as he’d awakened her for the past two wanton days.
Four things told Violet something was very different about this particular trip to shore.
The first was that Flint awoke before she did, bathed and dressed, strapped on every weapon he owned, and quietly left the cabin. Without kissing her good morning.
And for the past two magical, thoroughly carnal nights, it seemed he could scarcely stop kissing her when they were alone.
The second was that he returned in a hurry to see her, and they managed to make love without removing anything but the necessary clothes, and there was an urgency, too, that spoke to her uneasily of finality.
The third thing was that two launches were lowered. Not just one. For some reason Flint was taking most of the crew, rather than a small contingent, leaving only a small number of men behind on The Fortuna.
The fourth was that among the crew was a boy she’d never seen.
A scrawny, somber boy, teetering on the brink of his teens.
Her suspicions were confirmed when she was told by Flint she was to stay behind on the ship.
“No,” she said firmly.
“It could get dangerous today,” he said absently.
His back was to her. His front was rather focused on Cádiz.
“Asher…who is the boy?”
He glanced back at her. Eyes wide in a warning about using his given name. And she felt it begin to open up at her feet: the abyss that life would be without him. It was coming sooner than she hoped.
“May the best player win, Violet,” he said softly, finally. “Isn’t that what we agreed all along?”
A cold realization charged at her.
“He knows something about Le Chat. That boy! He’s leading you to him!”
“He came aboard with the pirates,” was all he said after a moment. “We captured him.”
“And he knows something!”
“He may indeed.” He gave her nothing but cool, distracted command. Watching his men at work.
She wanted to thump him. She refused to act like a child, or stomp her feet, though she was sorely tempted. “Then bring me with you.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” He began to turn away to some other business on the deck.
She put her hand on his hard, warm arm. She didn’t care who saw. “He’s my brother. Are you afraid that if I’m there I’ll find some way to stop you? Or that you might be less willing to shoot him?”
“You’ll see him once we arrest him,” was all he said.
“Damn it, Flint”—the salty language and raised voice at least got his eyebrows up—“you know it isn’t fair. Do you want to win this way? I told you what I knew. I got you as close as you did. I demand you treat me fairly.”
He looked down at her, and she knew, despite it all, he couldn’t resist.
“Make room for Miss Redmond in the launch,” he shouted.
A few inquiries at the dock was all it took to learn that the El Cisne Blanco was near the Plaza de Mina, a ten-minute walk through ancient streets thronged with merchants and shoppers and bathed in soft Spanish sunshine.
A wiry, sleepy-eyed clerk hunched over a desk.
“Will you show us up to Mr. Hardesty’s room, por favor?”
The innkeeper looked up at the whole lot of them. “Ah, Señor Hardesty. He is gone.” His dark eyes were nearly bugging with alarm and suspicion. Which could have something to do with all the weapons they were wearing.
“Gone?” Flint fixed the innkeeper with a stare designed to quail him into truth.
“I cross my heart to you, señor.” He showed ten fingers twice. “Twenty minutes now. Perhaps longer.”
How? Hardesty’s men could have watched the sea with spyglasses for The Fortuna and warned him she was sailing into port.
But how would he know they would head straight for this inn?
Unless they’d been watching for that, too. Unless they’d seen the boy with them.
“We’d like to take the room he’s lately occupied.”
“We have not cleaned it, sir.”
Flint scowled his contempt for that excuse and threw a handful of shillings down on the counter. “We don’t care,” he growled.
The man’s eyes widened at the profligate display of money and at all the swords and pistols gleaming on the crowd of disreputable-looking men.
“You will see for yourself, señor, I swear to you. Third room on the right, and here is the key,” he said hurriedly, sweeping the shillings into his apron.
Flint snatched the key from him.
He made a quick decision. If anything that belonged to Lyon Redmond was still in the room, if there were any sign of him, Violet was certain to know.
“Miss Redmond and I will go into the room. Half of you guard the entrance to the stairs,” he ordered the men. “The rest of you make sure you know the lay of Plaza de Mina before tomorrow.”
They found the room in question. The door was ajar by inches. Pistol drawn, Flint nudged it all the way open and peered arou
nd the corner.
The room could have been occupied by anyone; nothing seemed particularly piratical about it.
The only possible sign of swift abandonment was a bureau drawer left partially ajar, and that’s where the earl went immediately. There was a small bed, sagging a bit in the middle, tightly made up, the wood frame dust-free but scratched and pocked in places from years of users. A large window was hung with rickety shutters, flung open so that the room was ironically illuminated, bright as day, inviting inspection. A stub of candle was pressed into a dish on a tiny table next to the bed.
Next the earl bent to peer beneath the bed, and that’s why Violet saw the rosewood box before the earl did.
And all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck went erect.
It was a utilitarian, unadorned, uncarved rectangle about the length of one bound book and about the height of two, and nearly the same color as—and thus nearly camouflaged by—the table it sat upon. It had a hinged lid, currently closed.
It also had a lock that could be easily picked with a hairpin and a false bottom that could be sprung if one only knew where to press. Violet knew this, because she’d been an exceptionally nosy and deft younger sister, and she’d seen Lyon do it once, and she’d done it out of curiosity when he’d left his room.
It was all she could do not to throw her body over it. As though Lyon himself stood there, smirking at her. And as she grew accustomed to the terror of the moment and it ebbed, that familiar, glorious, sun-bright burst of affection and an equal fury yanked her between them.
Lyon had left his family behind without a word.
But he’d brought the bloody box with him, out of sentiment.
And she suspected he’d left it here for her to find. Because she would know something was hidden in it. But what?
Her stillness alerted the earl as surely as if she’d gasped.
He straightened abruptly from where he was peering under the bed.
“Violet? Is aught amiss?”
“Nothing’s amiss.” Her lips seemed strangely disconnected from her body; she sensed them go up. She hoped the smile didn’t look as ghastly as it felt.
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