An Improper Proposal

by Patricia Cabot

  Which would explain why she liked it so much.

  No sooner had Payton opened her eyes than she closed them again, lost in the pleasurable sensations he was evoking with his clever, dexterous fingers. She could stop him now, she knew, before it was too late. Seize his wrist and pull his hand away. It was what Georgiana would want her to do.

  But instead of closing her fingers around his arm, she brought them against the iron-hard bulge she could feel straining against her, at the front of his trousers. Would he, she couldn’t help wondering, let her touch him this time, the way he was touching her? Did he yearn for her touch, the way she, for so very, very long, had yearned for his?

  Payton’s question was answered at once. Even though she only brushed the tip of his penis with the lightest of touches, Drake reacted as swiftly as if that touch had branded him. Wrenching his lips from her nipple, he brought his mouth to hers in a kiss that was fiercely possessive. Then, before she was really aware of what was happening, he shifted, and suddenly, what had been covered just seconds before in material was free, singeing the smooth skin of her inner thighs.

  Free, and somewhat alarming in size.

  Drake looked up at her. He was breathing as heavily as if he’d just run a mile, his golden chest rising and falling beneath her, and yet the words he managed to rasp out made it clear that his only concern, at that moment, was for her: “I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered.

  She didn’t know that the moonlight, which had cast him in complete shadow, had revealed to him a sudden panic in her eyes. She didn’t know that the coarseness of his new beard had stained her chin and neck with a permanent blush. She didn’t know, as he did, that she was slick with wanting him, wetter than any woman he’d ever been with. All she knew was that, in spite of his own obvious need, his only thoughts had been for her welfare. That, as much as the gentle restraint he’d shown in his handling of her, caused a wave of love for him to wash over her, as powerful as any lust she might have felt for him in the past.

  “I know,” she told him, suddenly shy. She could tell by his expression that she hadn’t reassured him, and she was casting about in her mind for some way to do so when, once again, her body took over—and answered him for her. Before she was even really aware she was doing so, she’d moved her hips slightly, just enough so that the tip of his hard shaft nudged the moist opening of her core. Below her, Drake looked momentarily startled, and instinctively, he froze, his eyes so hidden in shadow that they no longer looked silver, but—she noticed in some distant part of her brain—Mack, like the sea before a storm.

  And then Payton moved again, taking in a little more of him, curious to see how much of him she could hold. Not much, she imagined. He was a very large man, and she was an abnormally small woman …

  His control broke. All of that restraint she’d so admired was gone in less time that it took for her heart to beat once. Suddenly, he plunged into her, burying himself into that tight, wet heat, where he’d longed to be for what seemed like an eternity …

  Payton’s choice of expletives was graphic as well as colorful, but unfortunately its originality was lost on Drake, who was so concerned for her well-being that, after delivering that first thrust, he immediately came back to himself, and asked, not very coherently, “Are you all right?”

  But Payton had found that, after the initial burst of very sharp pain, what followed, while still not exactly comfortable, could not necessarily be construed as painful. Having braced her hands defensively against Drake’s chest and locked her hips to prohibit him from moving any further, she began to suspect that this sensation was equivalent to the one she’d felt the day before … only better.

  “Payton?” Drake asked, sounding more coherent, and a good deal less patient. His chains rattled as he seized her by the arms, to shake her a little. “Payton? Are you all right?”

  She shushed him and gave a small, experimental undulation with her hips. Drake, dropping his head back down against the floor, moaned. But that wasn’t what interested her just then. What was interesting, she found, was that she didn’t feel any pain anymore. All she felt was an urgent pull, a longing to press herself as closely to him as she possibly could.

  And soon that longing turned into an all-out necessity. Moving her hips again, she clung to him, aware, but only dimly, that he was saying things to her. She had no idea what they were. At one point, as she moved against him, she was quite certain he’d said he loved her.

  Then he was moving with her, his big hands gripping her bottom, not so much guiding her as attempting to stay with her …

  And then, as if by a riptide, she was caught, sucked under, a violent and lovely wave of delight breaking over her, shaking her from the scalp of her head to the soles of her feet. For a few moments, she wasn’t at sea at all, wasn’t anywhere near it. She was between the sea and the sky, shimmering there, like late afternoon sunlight. She cried out his name, because it seemed to her that she oughtn’t go flying off like this without him …

  And then, suddenly, she was back within herself, exhausted and panting, clinging to Drake’s naked chest. Only he hadn’t noticed, because he was still out there, where she had just been. She could tell by the expression on his face, his eyes tightly closed, his mouth clenched as if in pain. And she could tell by the violence with which he was plunging himself into her, harder and harder, until she was quite certain he was going to split her in half … and she didn’t even care.

  Then, with a final savage thrust, he teetered over the edge, and all the lines left his face, making him look years younger, handsomer than she’d ever seen him, causing her to fall in love with him all over again.

  Then he was still, as limp as she’d gone seconds before, spent. They lay like that in the gloom of his cell, still joined together, panting and damp.

  Then Drake lifted his head from where he’d dropped it against the floor, and, smoothing her tumbled curls away from her face, asked, a little diffidently, “Are you all right? Did I … I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  Payton considered the question. She was just the tiniest bit dismayed to find that she was all right. She was better than all right, as a matter of fact. She’d never felt quite so good in all her life.

  But she knew that wasn’t how she was supposed to feel. She was supposed to be in horrible pain, bleeding profusely from the loss of her maidenhead. Only Payton suspected she’d never had a maidenhead, because she’d certainly felt only the slightest pain when Drake entered her—startling, yes, but very brief in duration. She ought to have felt more discomfort, aside from her initial fear that he wouldn’t fit. What kind of lady lost her virginity and didn’t experience tremendous amounts of pain?

  Well, the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon, apparently. More proof that as a lady, she was a miserable failure. She’d no doubt broken her maidenhead a thousand times over, inserting the sea sponges Mei-Ling had taught her to use during her menses. How very anticlimactic.

  “I’m fine,” she sighed sadly.

  He stared up at her, concerned. “You don’t sound it.”

  “I just thought … well, I thought there’d be more blood.”

  “Oh,” he said, looking immensely relieved—but whether because there hadn’t been any blood at all, or because he knew now that he’d succeeded in making her climax, she wasn’t certain. “You needn’t sound so disappointed. I didn’t want to hurt you, you know.”

  “I know,” Payton said. “But if we lived in less civilized times, you’d be required to produce a sheet with my virgin blood spilled upon it, to prove to your family that I was pure before I came to your bed.”

  “I hardly think,” Drake said, a bit dryly, “that in the unlikely event we live through this, anyone in my family—particularly my grandmother—is going to require any proof of your virginity, Payton.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s a bit of a letdown. A girl only loses her virginity once, and—”

  “And she’d like it to be as dramatic as possible?”


  “Well, a little blood would have been nice.”

  Drake could not help but feel a cad. He had robbed her of something he hadn’t any right to whatsoever. What’s more, he had done it knowing full well it was wrong. He had sworn to himself that should he ever be fortunate enough to make love to Payton Dixon, it would be in a bed—preferably their marriage bed. And, failing that, at the very least he’d hoped to be in control enough of himself not to frighten her.

  And while he believed that she had derived some pleasure from their lovemaking, he could not help but berate himself for having, essentially, rutted upon her, just as he’d sworn to himself he would not do. Even if she had been on top …

  But how was he supposed to have stopped himself? Never had he been with a woman who took every bit as readily as she gave. And that moment when the trepidation in her hazel eyes had turned to wonder—that had been his undoing. He hadn’t been able to stop himself after that—especially after he’d plunged into her, and found that between Payton Dixon’s legs lay paradise, the tightest, warmest place imaginable.

  He ought to have been able to control himself. It wasn’t as if he was some callow youth, completely without experience in the bedroom. But he’d taken her like a wild thing, without a hint of gentleness—and her a virgin, no less.

  Never mind that she seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed herself, that her only regret—or the only one she’d admit to—was that she’d had no maidenhead to burst. He’d used her abominably. Somehow, he had to make it up to her.

  He reached up to cup her cheeks with his hands. “Would it help,” he asked, “if I said that I loved you?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “Do you?”

  One of those tawny eyebrows rose. “Why do you sound surprised?”

  “Well, only because I’ve been loving you for years and years, and I never thought you’d noticed.”

  “I noticed,” he assured her. “It took me a while, but I noticed.”

  She smiled beatifically, and moved to slip her arms around his neck. But whatever she had been about to say was forever lost when a key scraped in the lock behind them.

  In a flash, it seemed, Payton was away from him and on her feet, simultaneously buttoning up her vest and trousers and urging him to do up his, an order he lost no time obeying.

  The door swung open, and Drake’s jailer raised a candle and peered in at them. “’Ill,” he said, and hiccupped.

  “Right here.” Payton sauntered nonchalantly into the puddle of light cast by the guttering candle. “What, Tito?”

  “Cook wants ye.” Tito was not standing very steadily on his feet. The man was only half-conscious, clearly three sheets to the wind. The nearly empty bottle clutched in one of his massive fists revealed why. “’E’s lockin’ up the galley fer the night.”

  “Right.” Payton gave her trousers a hitch. Drake, watching from the floor, realized with a start that the gesture was an imitation of her brother Ross, who frequently tugged at his breeches in such a fashion. “Let’s go, then.”

  Tito turned his porcine gaze on Drake. “’E give you any trouble, then?” he asked, without much genuine interest.

  “That one? Naw. Not ’im.”

  Tito nodded. “Good.”

  Then without so much as another glance in Drake’s direction, Tito turned to go. From the darkness of the giant’s shadow, Payton gave Drake one last, fleeting glance. Then the heavy door slammed shut behind them both, leaving him alone once again. The only evidence, he realized, that Payton had ever been there at all was the food on the floor and a slightly damp spot on the front of his breeches.

  And a hole, which he was convinced was burning through his heart.

  Chapter Twenty

  Payton wasn’t particularly surprised when she heard that the ship that appeared on the horizon the morning after her and Drake’s—well, tryst was really the only way to describe it—was a Tyler and Tyler ship. Having spotted it well before the man in the crow’s nest, she’d spent most of the morning harboring hopes that it might be a Dixon clipper, her brothers finally coming to rescue her.

  But subsequent reports down to the galley revealed she’d have no such luck. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was a Tyler ship. What’s more, it was expected. Sir Marcus Tyler had been scheduled to meet up with the Rebecca as soon as it entered Bahamian waters. While disappointed on one front—it would have made things considerably simpler if it had been a Dixon ship—Payton was pleased to learn that at least they were near land. Now she could start making preparations for her escape with Drake.

  In the after cabin, she’d noticed while delivering the captain and his lady their breakfast that morning, preparations of a different kind were under way.

  “I can’t stand it,” she had overheard Becky complain to the captain. “I’ve got to go back to bed.”

  “Now, darling,” Lucien La Fond had replied. He had neglected to close the door to the sitting room all the way, and so their conversation was easily overheard by anyone in the outer room. “You know Jenkins said the fresh air would do you some good.”

  “Oh, what does Jenkins know? The man’s useless. I can’t believe you’re making me get up to meet him. You know he’s only going to shout at you, when he learns Drake and I aren’t wed.”

  “Shout at me, dearest?” The Frenchman still spoke tenderly. “But you know I’m not the one who spoiled everything.”

  “No, but you’re the one who sent those stupid men to attack the Constant before the vows were spoken.”

  “Well, how was I to know the wedding hadn’t taken place? You were supposed to be leaving for your honeymoon. Nobody leaves for their honeymoon without getting married first. It’s a rather important part of the process.”

  “I’ve told you a million times. It wasn’t my fault. It was that damned Dixon bitch.”

  Payton nearly burst out with an indignant exclamation at that point. She only managed to restrain herself by reflecting that she’d referred to Miss Whitby in much harsher terms, upon occasion.

  “Yes, yes, I know.” La Fond spoke as if the subject had been discussed so many times, it now bored him. “The truth of the matter is, darling, it’s his fault.”

  Becky’s sigh was audible even as far away as Payton stood. “I suppose you’re right. He oughtn’t to have risked coming to Daring Park himself. I don’t care if he didn’t trust anyone else to do it. That was pure idiocy on his part.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean if he would just learn to keep you out of his bloody schemes, I wouldn’t have cause to worry so about you. It was only because I couldn’t bear to think what might be happening on that damned ship that I sent the Mary B too soon.”

  “But darling, you know me.” Becky’s tone was distinctly flirtatious, especially for a woman who’d so recently been complaining of illness. “You know I wouldn’t have allowed that man to touch me.”

  “Do I?” The Frenchman sounded a bit aloof. “The same certainly couldn’t be said of his brother, now, could it?”

  “But I had to with Richard, silly.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t want you to have to with any man but me.”

  “Well, you certainly made that perfectly clear.”

  The Frenchman sounded indignant. “I made it look accidental, didn’t I? The way he asked.”

  “Papa asked that it look accidental. He didn’t mention that it needed to be so bloody.”

  Papa? Payton paused while filling a dish with jam. Who’s Papa?

  “Now that,” La Fond said, “wasn’t my fault, either. He was already dead by the time those horses dragged him through that briar patch. The surgeon said so.”

  Becky laughed. “Was that the same surgeon who said Sir Richard died from a blow to the head from a low-hanging bough while out riding? Oh, I certainly have a lot of faith in his medical abilities.”

  “All I’m saying, Rebecca, is that if you didn’t let him use you the way he does—”

  “But darling, you know Papa’s ideas always turn out
all right in the end.”

  “Well, this one certainly didn’t.”

  “All the more reason for you to be the one to tell him—”

  This bickering went on until the very moment Sir Marcus’s ship, the Nassau Queen, pulled up alongside the Rebecca, and a plank was placed between the two boats. Payton wasn’t certain who the he in their conversation connoted. Was it Sir Marcus? Or was it Miss Whitby’s father? And who was the Richard she’d referred to? Surely it couldn’t be anyone but Drake’s brother, whom Miss Whitby had fingered as the father of her unborn child. How had the Frenchman known so much about Richard Drake’s fatal riding accident?

  It was all very confusing. Payton longed to slip below and ask Drake if he could make anything out of it. Unfortunately, she was kept far too busy to find any opportunity to escape her duties. The mood on the Rebecca was one of revelry: the arrival of the Nassau Queen meant the arrival of fresh supplies, of food and bedding and most importantly of all, rum. The crew never obeyed their orders with more alacrity than on that day, when the Nassau Queen’s flag was first spotted. Payton was going to have to wait, perhaps until darkness fell, and the rum was flowing freely, before she’d be able to slip away to see Drake.

  It wasn’t until she and Jonesy, with whom she’d established the shakiest of alliances, had been banished below, with orders to mop up a spill from a cask of molasses that had been brought over from the Nassau Queen, that Payton got her first look at Sir Marcus. Payton was nearly ankle-deep in the sticky stuff when, suddenly, the hatch over their heads lifted. Thinking it was some sort of surprise inspection by Clarence, both Payton and Jonesy sprang to attention only to see that it was Sir Marcus, and not the cook at all.

  But Sir Marcus as Payton had never seen him before. There was a murderous glint in his eye as he strode past them and headed straight for the place where Tito stood, guarding the door to Drake’s cell.

  “Open it!” Sir Marcus bellowed at the hapless Tito, who, along with the rest of the crew, had been innocently gnawing on a chunk of salt pork, which had been handed out immediately in an attempt to placate the men’s rumbling bellies until Clarence could assemble a proper meal from the Nassau Queen’s donations.