by BJ James
“Do you?” Valentina nestled back against him, her arms crossed over his at her waist. The sun had lifted above the window, and, as they stood watching, the day descended into afternoon.
“Umm-hmm.” With his cheek Rafe brushed a dewy dampness from her shoulder and kissed the curve of her throat. “Sandy beaches stretching for miles. Glittering like diamonds by day, rivaling the stars at night. And surf, foamy and white, capping waves as blue as your eyes. A place where the wind sings in palms and palmettos, and each day is as warm and soft as a kiss.”
“Sounds like heaven.”
Rafe chuckled, and kissed her again. “Close. But no cigar.”
Settling for what she had, without turning, Valentina caught at the lobe of his ear tugging him to her waiting mouth. When she could think again and speak again, she asked dreamily, “How close?”
“Eden.”
“Eden?” she repeated. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
For a long while they were quiet again, each thinking, remembering. Each watching the passage of the day between kisses.
The habitual and inevitable blue heron, standing on one foot at the edge of the lawn, shivered then fluffed and preened. Strolling in imperious majesty across the yard, he stopped before their window. Cocking his head this way and that, he peered toward the bedroom panes. Then, seeing only a handsome bird like himself, he glided on.
Smiling at the great bird’s antics, Valentina asked, “Are there blue herons?”
“On Eden? Hundreds.”
“Good. There should always be herons.”
Rafe didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breath. “Will you go there with me?”
“Yes.” No questions. No quibbling. Simply, yes.
A smothered sigh whispered from him. “The tide is in. The Summer Girl should sail soon.”
“She should, but...”
The caveat drifted to nothing as he turned her to him. Looping his thumbs beneath the lapels of the gossamer robe she wore, he slipped it from her. Swinging her naked body into his arms, he kissed her again as if he could never kiss her long enough, or hard enough.
Taking her to her bed, lying with her there, he finished for her, “But we have time.”
Nine
Sails billowed, catching a benevolent breeze as The Summer Girl glided over a calm sea. Shore was only a craggy line against the horizon. The day was bright and warm, the afternoon sky cloudless.
This small drift of time was all Rafe would have wanted of it. Quiet, uneventful. The captain and his one man crew at peace.
Chuckling softly to himself at his own misnomer, Rafe regarded his “one-man crew.” Valentina lay as she had for more than an hour, with her face turned aside, marking their passage by the changing vista, lapsing in and out of restful languor.
A rest well earned that pleased him immensely.
One day at sea had proven she was a worthy and knowledgeable seaman. Two days and she had become invaluable. In three, as the sea seduced, she had fallen into a natural, rhythmic routine. Her hands were willing and strong, her smile quick. Sun and wind and reflection had turned her face and body a light flush of bronze. And, hardworking, spirited crewman or not, as she whiled away a lazy afternoon in a swimsuit that had seen better days, no man in his right mind would call her anything but a woman.
Filling sails creaked and snapped, the sloop rocked for a furious moment as a rogue wave rushed quickly by. As The Summer Girl settled into a calm glide, roused from her drowsy drifting, Valentina shifted and turned and found him watching from his station at the helm. “Hi.”
Rafe grinned at the lazy greeting, his gaze never leaving her. “Hi, yourself, sleepyhead.”
Swinging her feet to the floor and brushing the wild disorder of her hair from her face, she smothered a yawn. “Did I sleep for long?”
“Only a short while.”
“Short this tune, but I don’t think I’ve slept so much or so well in my life.” An unruffled sigh and a careless shrug almost dislodged the wisp of cloth that covered her breasts, but she hardly noticed. “It must be the sea.”
“Must be.”
“I can’t remember the last time I sailed.”
Rafe said nothing, letting her take the conversation where she would.
She watched a half dozen small ripples of a calm sea rush by, imagining their frothy caps of white as they rose up to wash a distant shore “We always returned to the sea. After each family odyssey and each adventure, the bay was there, waiting for us.” Smiling, she mused fondly, “My dad insists there’s pirate blood as much as the robber baron blood running in our veins.”
This account of the robber barons had been described in her dossier. With it, the family history, the untapped influential connections, the wealth. But no sheaf of papers could express the affection he heard, the closeness of family ties.
Yet when she grieved, she grieved alone.
“No matter where we’ve been, or what we’ve done, we always come back to it. As kids it was to sail and scavenge the shore. As adults...” In a preoccupied gesture, she stroked a fingertip down the line of her throat. “I suppose it’s simply in answer to a need in us.”
“To celebrate.” He risked an observation. “Sometimes to heal.”
“Heal?” A sudden frown washed over her face, then was gone as suddenly. “Yes.” She nodded. “Sometimes.”
Rafe said nothing more.
“Only two of us have broken the habit. Patience has Matthew, now.” There was a wistfulness in her tone, but no trace of envy. “And Tynan his Journey’s End.”
A fitting name, Rafe decided, for a ranch in the far reaches of Montana.
A trailing pelican squawked, begging for a treat. Then, squawking again in scolding disappointment, veered away to plunge beak first into the sea in search of its own meal.
Drawn from her reminiscence by the feathered indignation, Valentina hooked a careless thumb beneath the flimsy top, hitching it a scant inch higher over the sloping fullness it barely contained. Turning her undivided attention to Rafe, she drawled, “My, but you’re talkative today.”
Rafe smiled again. A smile that was amused and charming, as with smooth and practiced moves, he brought the sloop about in a wide, sweeping turn. “Just going with the flow.”
“Just the flow, huh?”
“Something like that.”
She nodded a noncommittal agreement, knowing that in his reticence he was carefully not pushing any more buttons before she was ready. Another sigh, long and grateful, and an inch regained was as heedlessly lost as the swimsuit top settled precariously lower. Lifting her gaze to the sky, she noted the altered angle of the sun. “Changing course?”
Rafe busied himself with the sail before answering casually. “Just making a small detour.”
“Another detour, you mean.”
“Do you mind?”
“I keep thinking there’s somewhere you should be.”
His answer was untroubled and thoughtful. “I’m exactly where I need to be, Valentina.”
The words, as much as the slow look that skimmed over her, drew a glow of color to her cheeks. “McCallum International doesn’t need its chief taskmaster?”
“If it does, I’m not the taskmaster I consider myself.”
“A well-oiled machine, et cetera, et cetera?”
A minute adjustment, another minor shift in course and Rafe nodded. “Something like that.”
Rising from the chaise, Valentina moved to the polished coaming that rimmed the sumptuously appointed sloop. Arms hugging her sides, rocking easily with the subtle buck of the vessel, she faced the oncoming shore and considered this man who had come into her life, taking her burdens as his, yet never intruding. He would be an exacting taskmaster, but fair and kind, never asking for more of another than he would give himself. It was no effort to imagine the loyalty and respect he would inspire among those with whom he dealt and worked. Nor that they would want to earn and keep his respect. As she did, at least f
or a little longer.
“So, Valentina, what shall it be?”
His quiet question, his musing tone, stroked her mind as subtly as his glance did her face and body as she turned to him. “What shall it be?”
“Detour?” With a gesture Rafe indicated the direction he’d abandoned. “Or return to course and full speed ahead to our final destination?”
Valentina didn’t hesitate. In three days of sailing, in several meandering digressions along sweeping waterways, Rafe had shown her picturesque shorelines, quaint fishing villages and small but stately old shipping towns. One more could only lengthen their time together. “Detour.” Sparing no thought for the transient truth that only days before she’d wanted nothing to do with Rafe, she smiled with interest in her eyes. “This one sounds special.”
“It will be.” He liked the way one brow lifted in a curious quirk and her eyes narrowed against the sun. “We have a dinner date.”
“We do?” Hiding her surprise, she crossed the deck, halting a comfortable distance from him. “May I ask where, and with whom?”
“You’ll see.” Reaching out for her, Rafe drew her into the circle of his arms, keeping her willing prisoner as he steered in another wide, arcing turn from shore. A temporary abandonment of the course he’d just set. A natural digression.
Pleasant diversions in mind, kissing the top of her head as his hand strayed to the vagabond top to aid and abet its wandering journey, he murmured, “Just not yet.”
With sails furled and engine quiet, The Summer Girl drifted at anchor. Gulls wheeled and dipped curiously over the idle vessel, looking for a stray crumb. Lying in the shade afforded by a stretch of brightly striped canvas awning, Rafe never looked away from his self-appointed task of guarding Valentina’s sleep. She rarely dreamed now, in fact never, but neither did he tire of watching her.
In the aftermath of their lovemaking, she was flushed and relaxed. Her lashes lay on her cheeks in a dark ruffle. Her mouth was soft and sultry from his kisses. An invitation he couldn’t resist.
Bending to her, with his own mouth he traced the shape and angle of hers, knowing the instant she woke, feeling the curve of her smile beneath his. Drawing away a little he looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, her body languid. Only her naked breasts lifting in an uneven breath betrayed the quickening he saw in her smile. Her searching hand found his arm, sliding from there to his shoulder, his neck, his cheek. Fingers fluttered over his temple, clasped at his neck, tugging him gently down.
“More,” she murmured as his lips were a breath away from hers. Her smile was wicked, the smile of a mischievous wanton as she flexed and stretched, brushing rose tipped breasts against the bareness of his chest.
“Shouldn’t you open your eyes before you make that invitation?” Chuckling, Rafe turned his head into the cleft of her breasts, kissing the delicate slope of each. “Who knows who crept on board while you were sleeping. I might be a roving pirate, a seafaring warrior, or some fierce marauder come to ravish the beautiful maiden lying like a windflower on a beach sheet.”
Lashes lifting only a trace, she regarded him drowsily through their dark veil. Her fingers strayed to his lips, gliding over them in erotic exploration. Her voice was husky, her look an invitation. “Aren’t you?”
Green fire smoldered in the gaze that held hers. “Which would you say?”
“All.” The word caught in her throat and her hips writhed against his as he nibbled at her fingers. “Definitely all.”
“Which would you have, Valentina? Pirate? Warrior? Marauder?” With each name there was a caress. With each a promise. With each he tantalized and seduced. “When?”
Hardly aware of the heat of the sun or the wash of the sea, her body curled into his, scorched by a need no ocean breeze could ever cool. “You.” Catching fistfuts of the gleaming black mane as it lay over his nape, she dragged his mouth again to her. “I would have you. Rafe Courtenay, pirate, warrior, marauder, I would have you now.”
But as he took her arms from his neck, pinning her wrist by her shoulders on the beach sheet, Rafe had other intentions. He would be pirate, warrior and marauder. But more than that he would be her lover as never before.
Gazing down at her, he made no move to release her, letting his breath and the rise and fall of his chest tease the tightening bloom of her nipples. As the sensual caress drew a low moan from her, he shifted again, sliding his long brawny torso over her. Twining his legs through hers, he bent his head to offer comfort for the sweet anguish he’d created.
The lave of his tongue, the delicate suckle, sent sensations surging through her. Keening shafts of turmoil and need arched her body like a drawn bow as she sought more. When she would have struggled out of his grasp in her greed, he held her tighter, harder. Never ceasing in his own struggle of self-restraint, kissing, caressing with each move and shift of his body, he let the tide build.
Waiting and teasing. Teasing and waiting, he felt the growing hunger, the thirst, the lust. The bittersweet yearning. He felt its power, in him, in Valentina. And still he denied it. He touched, he stroked, he discovered. She trembled with each new exploration, and cried out in the anguish of incomplete ecstasy, needing him as much as he needed her.
And still he waited.
Loving her was always sweet, but this time would be all the sweeter for the wait. Wilder, fiercer, and more consummate for the aching pleasure of delay. This time he would take her to the brink of total destruction, when two people could survive only as one. That place where there was no sun, no moon, no walls. There, he would make her his. Only his.
Keeping himself from her, he plied his gentle torture, giving her every pleasure but the one she would have. With trembling heart and restraint of steel, he held back the ascending tide. As desperate as she, as needful, he endured.
Each time she bucked and lunged against him in mute cry that she could bear no more, with a kiss, the slide of his body, a worshiping suckle at her breasts, he took her deeper into the mania of desire and passion.
Abruptly, they were there, poised at the gate of nirvana, trembling at the fragile precipice of that perfect place only consummate lovers ever know. That wondrous, elusive place that once gained would not concede. Where there would be, or could be, no turning back. The culmination that could abide no longer than a heartbeat.
While the precipice crumbled away, he took her with him, at last, into the whirlpool of rapture.
As he released her wrists, freeing her, she reached out for him, grasping, clawing, bringing him to her and herself to him. Her mind and heart were frenzied, her skin feverish. The heat of her passion seared like a brand. Demanding. Commanding. Meeting passion with passion, branded and branding, Rafe lifted his body to hers, thrusting and driving into the embracing womanliness who trembled in need of him. Only for him.
Before, in their lovemaking, this moment had been couched in guarded care. Now that could not be, as shrouding walls tumbled and the final shred of reservation slipped from her.
There were no shadows between them, no reserve. She would be his, completely, as she had never been in all their lovemaking. And as he moved deeper, relentlessly, the intimate caress answering and soothing her most primitive longing, he was the pirate. The warrior. The marauder.
At last the fury that demanded release raged beyond any control. When it had ended, when in his heart and body and soul he had made her his, he watched her drowse again, replete in the afterglow. In that quiet time that follows the storm, he knew this was more than resolution of grief. More than proving she was worthy of life and love. More than anything he expected in all his life.
Musing and watching, while gulls continued their wheeling and dipping, while The Summer Girl drifted lazily at anchor, he knew in his mind what his heart had known all along...this was about love.
For love he had needed to make her his.
And as he guarded her dreams, for love, whoever he was, whatever he might become, he was hers.
Heart, body, and so
ul, she was a part of him. And he of her.
Rafe turned from his study of the marina and the Charleston skyline as he heard her footsteps on deck. Valentina stood poised at the top of the stairs, restless fingers toying with one of what appeared to be a hundred tiny silk-clad buttons marching down the length of her dress. From the modest decolletage, to the fluttering hem at her ankle, they winked and shimmered in the light, teasing him with the secrets hidden beyond their closure.
Crinkled pleats skimmed over her body, making promises of its wonders. Rich turquoise lay against her skin, flowing around her, lustrous as a gown of jewels. Her eyes, in contrast, were dark and unfathomable.
As she hesitated, heavy eyed and content, but uncertain after her reckless abandon, he wanted nothing as much as he wanted to take the dress from her slowly, teasing himself with the treasure each button revealed. But he knew himself and her effect well enough to know that one button and he would be lost. And there was not time.
Feasting his eyes on her, recalling the taste of sea spray on her skin, he committed to memory this sultry vision his lovemaking had created. When he would have made love to her beneath the stars and into the long sweet hours of the night, he must escort her ashore instead. His voice was hoarse with remembered passion, with secret and biding desire. “Ready?”
“Yes.” Her hair had been slicked back from her forehead, then caught up in a single clip. Curls cascaded from her crown to her nape, with escaping strands brushing her throat and the top of her shoulders. Her slender neck was graceful and regal as she lifted her chin in familiar determination. Her look met his, keeping secrets of her own. “As ready as I will ever be.”
Rafe offered his hand but did not touch her. With all her barriers torn asunder, Valentina was vulnerable as she’d never been. The first move, or any move must be hers.
Beneath the weight of her burning sapphire stare, he stood his ground. What he wanted and would have from her must come from strength and trust, not in a moment of fragility. With the wind ruffling and tugging at the pale linen slacks and dark silky shirt of his more formal attire, with light from the setting sun casting long shadows at his feet, he waited.
