“Do you think,” the man called Benson asked, “that once we escaped, those slavers chasing us would go back to their camp? Perhaps to report?”
Robert considered, then shook his head. “I doubt it. Their orders about who to seize are coming from inside the settlement—from Undoto, from Muldoon, previously from Lady Holbrook, and we don’t know from who else.” He paused, then said, “Thinking back to what Miss Hopkins and I heard the senior slaver who called on Undoto say to the priest, it sounds as if the slavers are sent in with...for want of a better word, an order to fulfill—so many adult men, young women, or children. It’s up to those in the settlement to point them at suitable people to take. If that’s how it works, then the slavers currently in the settlement were sent to seize more men, not women. I can’t see that those who lost Miss Hopkins to us are going to feel it necessary to return to their leader back at the camp to report that.”
“True enough,” Coleman said. “If you’re sent from home to fetch a rooster, you don’t go back just to report you found a loaf of bread but lost it.”
Aileen wasn’t sure she appreciated being equated with a loaf of bread, but she agreed with the logic. “So the slavers who gathered in the lair will still be there—still waiting for a summons to snatch selected people.”
Most nodded, including Robert. “And,” he said, “four were already there, and six more arrived this evening. Even allowing that three or even four have come to fetch supplies, that still suggests that the slavers are expecting to take more captives, and most likely soon.” He glanced at the other men. “From what I gathered from Lashoria’s servant, the slavers are not really welcome, even in the slums, so six or seven men seems a lot to have sitting in the settlement for no reason.”
A sense of quiet optimism had infected them all—a positive sense that they still had a chance of completing their mission. Aileen looked at Robert; he seemed to be juggling scenarios in his mind.
As if sensing her regard, he met her eyes. After a second, he nodded as if having made some decision. Then he glanced at his men. “Right, then. We have a few days at least, and with any luck, that may be enough. We’ll resume our watch on the lair. You four”—he looked at the four men who had accompanied him into the settlement—“will need to exercise caution in returning to the hide, but you know what you’re doing. Pull back if you get any hint that anyone there realizes you were part of the group the slavers chased tonight.”
Benson nodded. “We’ll go back in during the day. Mostly only women out and about at that time—those locals as helped the slavers tonight were all men.”
Latimer nodded. “Good point.”
“Indeed,” Robert said. “And for my money, even the men who supported the slavers tonight weren’t all that eager. Ten to one, they’d been coerced. So we’ll resume our watch on the lair, and meanwhile, we’ll wait to see if the slavers who’ve been taking children return for more.” He glanced around and met his men’s eyes. “We have two potential avenues, either of which could lead us to the jungle camp. With luck, one will turn up trumps, and we’ll be able to set sail for London before Decker hoves on our horizon.”
“Amen to that,” Latimer said.
Robert stood. “Thank you, gentlemen—to your usual stations for tonight, and our shore party will leave at first light.”
* * *
It was several hours after midnight before Aileen finally found herself alone with Robert.
The steward, Foxby, having ascertained that neither his captain nor she had eaten since breakfast, had insisted that he should be allowed to serve them a meal while Latimer and Hurley made their reports. She’d been impressed by the scope and quality of the fare assembled so rapidly; the clam soup had been excellent, the fish stew nicely spiced, and the goat and mutton remarkably succulent. The trifle Foxby had laid before them to complete the repast had made her smile. She’d thanked the steward sincerely and had smiled at the cabin boys.
Both had seemed rather round-eyed to have a lady—any female, she supposed—on board.
She’d listened with half an ear to Latimer’s and Hurley’s reports; she’d sailed often enough to have a sound grasp of the day-to-day business of captaining a ship. While she would normally have been more interested in the details, tonight—or rather this very early morning—she’d had other matters on her mind.
As had Robert. Although he’d appeared to give his officers his full attention, his gaze had flicked more than once to her face. He’d eaten steadily and did not encourage his men to linger. When the final dishes had been cleared, he refused Foxby’s suggestion of brandy. He rose and walked with Latimer and Hurley to the door, along the way crisply confirming his orders for the morning.
She listened and noted that he made no mention of her accompanying him when he returned to the inn to await a possible summons should the slavers return for more children.
He saw Latimer and Hurley out and shut the door.
Then he paused, facing the panel.
Aileen rose. She smoothed down her skirts, then tipped up her chin. “I will, of course, go with you tomorrow—I will need to fetch my belongings from Mrs. Hoyt’s, and I will need to be there to ensure the lad doesn’t grow wary and refuse to work with you.”
Several seconds passed. He continued to stare at the door. Then he simply said, “No.”
“Yes.” She made the statement evenly. “This is just as much my plan as yours.”
He didn’t move for several heartbeats, then he reached out.
She heard the lock snick home.
Robert swung around and looked across the cabin at the one woman in the world who seemed able to set his blood pounding with nothing more than a challenging, upward tilt of her stubborn chin.
In that moment, he felt...untethered. Lacking his customary leash.
A gentleman of the sort suggested by the diplomatic veneer he habitually affected would have declined to argue with her and offered her his bed while he sought a pallet with one of his officers or a hammock among his crew.
He wasn’t that sort of gentleman.
And she—of the bright eyes, brilliantly brassy hair, and unrelentingly direct personality—effortlessly connected with the real him, the buccaneer at his core.
He stalked toward her.
She didn’t back away, didn’t glance away—she didn’t give an inch, not her—although she did put her hand to the desk beside her as if seeking the reassurance of some solid support.
Their gazes locked and held. He halted before her, with a mere foot between her hems and his boots. His expression felt set, unyielding and grim. He searched her eyes, looking for...he knew not what. “Do you have any idea what I felt when I saw that slaver carry you into their lair?”
His tone was harsh, rough, the words wrenched from deep inside him.
As if the question re-evoked them, the emotions rose up—and poured through him and engulfed him again.
They rocked him to his foundation and threatened to sweep him away.
When they’d first struck, in that moment of sheer horror in the hide, by main force he’d held the feelings and the impulses in, reined them back.
But this time she was there, with her head tipped back to meet his gaze and her brandy-colored eyes spitting bronze-green fire. “I imagine you felt as I did when I saw that slaver brandish his sword an inch from your throat.”
Their gazes remained locked as they each drew breath; resistance and defiance burned in them both. There was no give in her, and none whatsoever in him.
Emotions rose in a tumult between them—his, hers—clashing, merging, transmuting. Then the amorphous storm seemed to coalesce, overtaken by hunger and need, crystalizing into raw desire, a near-violent hunger, and a yearning that reached to his soul.
He felt stripped bare by the force of his own emotions.
Only to be scorched by the heat of hers.
He felt the inexorable tug, the escalating magnetism forcing them together. The undeniable compulsion to take that last step, haul her into his arms, and plunge into the beckoning maelstrom.
Before he moved, she did.
Unwaveringly certain, Aileen took the last step to close the distance between them—knowingly, with the full force of her considerable will. Hadn’t she prayed to all the gods to be given this chance to live her life—to seize him and explore this uncharted territory? Now fate and the gods had granted her wish, and she was determined to grasp the moment with both hands and let it take her where it would.
To surrender to this path and follow where it led.
To set aside all reservations and live life to the fullest.
With her gaze locked on his eyes, on the passion she could see darkening the blue, she drew her hand from the desk and stepped to him. Stretched up, slid her hands over his shoulders, locked her fingers in his hair, drew his head down, and kissed him.
And felt the shudder that wracked him.
Sensed him holding on—to his control, to his responses. Still holding against the whirlwind of wanting despite the aching need she could all but feel in him.
She traced the seam of his lips, then parted hers and invited him in.
He groaned.
And gave in.
He plunged into the kiss and surrendered, as she had, not to her but to the living entity that beat at them with burning wings.
Passion.
She’d never felt it before, but she knew what it was.
He angled his head and took control of the kiss, and their hunger ignited.
She pressed closer and felt his arms close around her and lock tight, holding her against him.
Emboldened and oh, so very sure, she curled her fingers in the dark silk of his hair and followed his lead, fed their fire with her own hunger, her own escalating need.
Robert felt more grounded, more anchored—more himself—than he’d felt for years. As if he’d shed some outer casing, some restrictive armor, and was, for the first time in a very long while, free to simply be.
Himself.
The man he truly was with the woman who made him so. Who demanded he be himself and who would accept no less.
Who seemed to see straight through his veneer and deal directly with his true self.
She confounded him and delighted him.
Countered him, provoked him, and somehow balanced him.
Their lips and mouths fused, hot and urgent. She tasted of honey and trifle, and beneath that, of an elixir that was uniquely, quintessentially, her.
Their hands shifted and gripped—tight, tighter; their tongues dueled and incited, laced with a heady blend of hunger and need, of passion and wanting. He felt as if they were careening in a carriage with no reins, plunging headlong with no thought for direction.
He struggled to summon wit enough to think. Through the fogging haze of burgeoning desire, he wondered if he shouldn’t slow them down—at least a fraction. With that goal in mind, he shifted, intending to press her back against the desk long enough to make some attempt to seize their reins.
But she shifted, too, backing, swiveling. His feet followed instinctively. Locked in their embrace, in a searing kiss that was rapidly turning incendiary, they waltzed...
To the bed.
Their thighs bumped against the raised side. She flung her arms around his neck, locked her lips on his, and pressed herself to him in flagrant invitation—and he forgot about slowing down.
Forgot about everything beyond her and the need to have her. A need that had been born in the instant he’d first seen her, that had grown with each hour spent under the threat of danger, and finally forged by the cataclysmic shock of their near brushes with death.
In some rational corner of his mind, he understood the sudden escalation of their needs.
Hers, and his.
But that didn’t help. His need had grown steel-tipped claws; it shredded the remnants of his control and sent them flying on the winds of passion.
Desire burned.
He shrugged out of his light jacket and let it fall to the floor. They were too greedy, too hungry, to allow their lips to part. As her fingers found the knot in the neckerchief at his throat, he set his palms and fingers to sculpting her curves. To caressing, fondling, tracing, then claiming.
Aileen shuddered. Her senses fractured. Compelled, she clung to the kiss, to the heated exchange of desire and hunger, while she grappled with the sensations his knowing hands wrought. With the way her breasts swelled and firmed beneath his hand, with the sharp, delicious spike of sensation that streaked down her nerves when his fingers found one well-sheathed nipple and artfully tweaked.
If he’d been detached, she wouldn’t have responded, but he was so patently caught by the same needs, swept up by the same swelling, welling tide of sensual compulsion, that every touch made her quiver, every firm caress sent her senses flying.
Yes, yes, yes! She flattened one of her hands over one of his, holding his palm to her breast. How long she’d waited to feel this.
This wanting, this hunger, this connection.
This elemental need of another—male and female—of what that other could evoke.
Could provoke.
Of what they could share.
Their lips parted; eyes half glazed with passion met from beneath heavy lids. She couldn’t bear to lose the taste, the touch of his lips on hers, and it seemed he felt the same; their lips continued to brush, to seek and touch, to sup as she felt his fingers deftly unbuttoning her tightly fitting jacket.
She fell on the laces at his throat, flicked them loose, undone. Sent her hands to grab fistfuls of his loose shirt and tug the material free of his breeches and up.
Robert broke from the tantalizing, teasing, temptation-laced kiss and stepped back. His eyes met hers—bright and burning—as he seized his shirt and whipped it off over his head.
He tossed it aside, and her gaze shifted, locking on the bared planes of his chest.
For an instant, the look on her face held him spellbound.
They’d left the lamps burning. Neither needed the dark, each too intent on exploring all they were. Instinctively, they’d wanted the light—so their eyes and all their senses could feast.
Over the years, many women had looked on him, many with open appreciation. Yet never had he had a woman look at him as she did—with a species of wonder and openly covetous joy.
And more. There was assurance in her gaze, a bold confidence combined with brazen determination—for him, to him, she was the epitome of challenge, even in this.
He seized her arms, hauled her to him, and slanted his lips over hers.
Sensed the gurgle of appreciative delight the kiss trapped in her throat, then she seized him back, returned the kiss with fervor, and fed back to him every iota of passion he lavished on her.
They were evenly matched. He’d never thought he would think so, not of any woman, not in this arena, but with her, it was true. There was no hesitation in her touch, no drawing back. Just the same drive that drove him, focused on the same inevitable and openly desired objective.
Her jacket hit the floor; she helped him with the tiny buttons closing her blouse, and it soon followed.
Her hands skimmed his chest, fingers testing, claiming, even as he wrestled with the laces of her skirt.
Her fingertips grazed his nipple, and he paused, caught, trapped by the sensation, suddenly teetering on a sensual edge he hadn’t known was there. Not so close. He hauled in a tight breath, found her lips with his, and dove back into the kiss, seeking an anchor through the swirling haze in his mind.
She pulled back from the kiss on a gasp. “Let me.” She pushed h
is fumbling fingers aside and swiftly undid the laces, then pushed her skirts and petticoats down. One hand splayed against his abdomen, she balanced and stepped free of the froth. Clad only in a chemise so fine it was translucent even in the poor light, she raised her head, met his eyes, and boldly closed the few inches between them.
His lids fell, and he groaned at the feel of her as she pressed herself to him.
Beyond his control, his hands smoothed over her curves, over the indentation of her waist and down, around. He filled his hands with the globes of her derriere, then he gripped and lifted her to him, held her against him, molding her hips to his.
Aileen exulted in his unalloyed desire, in the heat as his lips again found hers. She rejoiced as her nerves sizzled, sparked by the giddy sensation of his hard, muscled torso impacting her softer curves. In the heady delight of seeing how much the sensation affected him, too.
Desire was a steady beat in her blood, passion a resonating thrum. She’d toed off her half boots and left them buried beneath her skirts, but she wasn’t inclined to waste further time removing her stockings—not when the evidence of his reciprocating desire was so blatantly declared to her senses, his erection a rigid rod pressed to the cradling softness of her belly.
She wanted him, and he wanted her, and she saw no reason to dither—to even pause.
A heartbeat later, she had the buttons at his waist undone.
He broke the kiss, clapped a hand over hers at his waist. His eyes, burning blue beneath weighted lids, met hers. “Are you sure?”
She couldn’t manage the frown that deserved. “No. I’m certain!”
She slipped her hands free from his restraining grasp, curled her fingers into the material of his breeches, then tugged, simultaneously sinking down.
His breeches and thin linen underdrawers slid over his hips. Determined, she wrestled them down to his calves.
Heard him curse, but her attention had fixed, transfixed, on the proud jut of his erection.
Oh, my!
Robert stared down at her—at the expression on her face. Then the damned woman licked her lips.
A Buccaneer at Heart Page 27
