by Susan Ward
Merry’s eyes flashed fiery hot at that. Varian hid his smile. She was like a sweet vine, crawling and expanding all through him. And the more she wrapped herself around him, the more he wanted her to.
~~~
It rained for six days without stop. Varian spent the majority of the time below decks in the cabin. They passed the long, quiet hours of the day alone, with only brief interruptions by Indy, who had returned after one day to see to the Captain’s needs again.
A routine had returned to their life together. In the beginning it had been agonizing for Merry, the sudden loss of all privacy. By the fourth day it had become second nature.
She now saw Varian every morning, when he rose to bathe and dress. She would lie in bed while he shaved, doing those formerly unknown male grooming requirements, and then she would climb from the sheets, still richly warm from his flesh, to breakfast with him.
Before he left the cabin or on his return he always indulged a gentle kiss or a light caress. True to his words, he never pressed her to accept his lovemaking. But the intimacies were another matter.
Merry wondered how long she would be able to fight her hunger to lay with the man. Each touch, each kiss made it more painful to hold herself from him. As much as she regretted the ruin he had brought to her, she could not stop her heart from wanting him.
It was the sixth day hence and as Merry lay in Varian’s bed, lids heavy with want of sleep, her drowsy eyes followed his moves around the cabin. He was meticulous about his grooming. As she watched him disrobe and step into the Brogue hip bath, she wondered how it could be that she had never seen any of this before they had shared a bed.
She watched as the water dripped from his dark hair, across the broad well-muscled shoulders, and then down his flexing back. He was the kind of man women dreamt of having for their own.
I must not weaken. I will not stay here with Morgan. I want to go home.
As sleep tugged at her lids, she couldn’t stop herself from watching him as he climbed from the tub. Morgan he may be, but it was not fair that Varian was such a magnificent man.
~~~
Varian came awake with Merry’s limbs wrapped all around him. Her cheek was against his chest, her arm relaxed across his stomach, her leg crossed over his thigh, and her riot of curls was a web around them. There was a rush of pleasure from her peacefully nestled on his chest.
Closing his eyes, he stayed still, hoping she wouldn’t stir. It had taken a week. Stubbornness always. Inch by inch, from the edge of the bed, until she had fallen asleep last night only a breath between them, and had lost the battle in sleep not to touch him.
His eyes wandered the creamy span of flesh down her back, and he fought the urge to lift a hand to caress her, as he longed to. If he touched her, whatever gave him the power not to roll her over and seduce her drowsy body into willingness would be gone.
Merry stirred slowly, like a kitten, limb by limb. Always the same order, feet, leg, hands then head. It amazed Varian, all the details he absorbed about her, without ever consciously doing it. In a week, having memorized the details of how she woke and having them in his mind, alert and ready, with all the other details of his life, mostly grim and, too often in the past, all there had been.
Still drowsy, Merry’s soft cheek brushed lazily against his chest. With the quiet lift of a hand, Varian lost his battle and eased up her face until her lips met his. Her doe-eyes closed, he met no resistance. Slowly and artfully, he deepened the kiss, his tongue playing in light seduction until her mouth melted open for his passionate invasion.
His arms entwined around her, at her waist and beneath her thigh, and in a subtle move she was turned onto her back. He balanced his naked body above her as his caresses roamed her trembling flesh with the steady moves of his lips. She arched up into him, her tiny fingers locked in his hair to bring his mouth back to hers.
His body pressed fully against her, and the touch of his manhood, hot and aroused, sent her eyes wide. Lifting her palms, she made a feeble push against his chest and twisted her lips free of his kisses.
“I will not lay with you. Never,” Merry exclaimed.
After touching his lips once on her neck in a parting gesture, Varian eased away from her. An arched brow. “If you would prefer not to wake to my passion, Little One, you should attempt to remain on your side of the bed. Having you sleep next to me is temptation enough without having your limbs wrapped around me like a lap-robe. If you don’t wish to lay with me, Merry, you need to be more cautious with your body. One morning you might stay drowsy too long, so I won’t know your mindset, and the misdeed will be done.”
Noting her flashing eyes and the cherry spots of color on her cheeks, Varian smiled. He watched as Merry pushed up on pillows in an all too familiar pose, blankets clutched at breasts like armor.
Merry eased her legs up against her breasts as Varian moved around the cabin in a routine she had come to know well. Gnawing her lower lip, her glance made the move with him to washbowl.
“You bite holes in the cuffs of my shirts while you dream, Little One,” Varian commented dryly, as he went through his morning routine of washing and cleaning teeth. “You are going to need to either stop sleeping in them all together, or separate out a handful and keep them for yourself. I wore one yesterday that looked like it had been attacked by a swarm of bats all over the cuffs.”
“It’s an old habit, since I was little, and I can’t stop it. If it’s too much an irritation, you could return me to England where I could chew my own nightgowns in peace.”
A smile hovered at the corners of his lips. “I would prefer you to stop sleeping in the shirts.”
Countering fiercely, she said, “I would prefer to be returned to Falmouth. We are both forever destined to be a disappointment to each other.”
He grinned. “I take heart in your use of the word forever. It is an improvement over earlier. A hopeful sign that we are moving away from never.”
That made her clamp her mouth shut and blush in fury. Varian reached for a fine boar bristle brush and began to apply shaving soap to his face, watching Merry as he took out the sharpened razor.
Varian couldn’t resist, and meeting her gaze in the mirror, he laughed, “See, human and imperfect like all men. Not even able to escape the growth of facial hair overnight.”
On a stubborn little voice, she corrected, “You are half-right, you insufferable man. You are still inhuman, but now I am aware you are imperfect.”
Varian laughed over her saucy retort. “You are quick, you are clever, and you are more wise. Having known a man in the biblical sense, you have in your first effort hit upon the perfect opinion of men. Inhuman, imperfect, every last one of us.”
Merry rolled over onto her side and continued to watch him. Frowning at him, her curiosity forced her to ask, “How come I have not seen any of your imperfection for six months? Where have you been doing all this?”
His black eyes were sparkling when they met hers in the glass. “Tom Craven’s cabin. Why do you think he’s so annoyed with you being aboard ship? He never wanted me to kill you, Little One, he only wanted the privacy of his cabin back. He was growing quite weary of me disrupting his solitude, not to shock your tender sensibilities, and has been amused beyond tolerance by my willingness in doing it. I have been forced to suffer his rude amusement running wild between us for months.”
The laughter forced its way through her guard. It was absurd. The infamous Captain Morgan leaving his cabin, not to shock his young hostage, while seeing to his more intimate manly routines. Ridiculous and sweet. Varian was beyond all comprehension at times. It would have shocked in the beginning, since Morgan just being in the cabin unsettled her and sent her into panic.
Counting the neat, even strokes of Varian’s razor, she thought, Now I watch him shave and I do not lift a brow. But I blush and feel it on my cheeks. No wonder he is amused by me. I am foolish. How can I lay with a man and yet blush while he shaves. Why does he want me?
&n
bsp; Those black eyes met hers in the glass again.
“I want you, because you are beautiful. Flesh and heart and soul,” he told her, dropping a kiss on her nose.
Merry relaxed back against the pillows, watching as he rummaged through his shirts, before selecting one. White, today he wears white. He is in a good mood.
Varian paused, half done in securing the fastenings, to cup her chin. “We are in the Caribbean, Little One. The days are brightly sunny and spectacular. You’ve been in the cabin over a week. Go on deck. You need a touch of color and you need to laugh.” Softly, his voice a low seduction, he whispered, “I miss the sound of your laughter, Merry. Are you so hardened to protect yourself from me you can’t even allow me the pleasure of your laugh?”
Merry couldn’t answer him. The change of his voice and eyes brought effortless deflation of her anger. She was powerless in protecting herself against him at times, but not so powerless to fall deeper into this painful web of loving him. However, she could not escape the painful yearning to touch him, either.
“Come here, Varian,” Merry whispered, gesturing with a finger for him to come sit next to her.
It was a hard battle for Varian not to take her in his arms, and to only settle on the edge of the bed beside her. She never called him by his Christian name in that breathless way unless they were in throws of passion. It had been an unconscious slip pushed upward by this raging unsated desire in them both. It was good he could read her well, and know she wasn’t inviting him to bed with her. She was being playful, not romantic, but there was the rub for him. It made her so seductive in every gesture, look, and turn.
She eased forward to fix one mother of pearl button in place. “Three buttons undone at the top. Just the right amount. Never four. Always perfect. Somehow, even on a ship, you never have a wrinkle, never a crease. Never a smudge. You most probably have no cargo. The hold must be full of new shirts for you. Three buttons.” With the feather light stroke of her fingertip she traced on the underside of his jaw. She held up her finger beneath his eyes, to show him she had removed a tiny spot of soap he’d missed. “Except now, you carry a touch of Merry. I have distracted you or you would not have missed a spot. You never do, and I doubt Mr. Craven fixes your errors for you.” Then she began to laugh softly. “And you are wearing a shirt with the bite marks of a bat on the cuff. I have made you imperfect. That is your touch of Merry. You should send me away quickly, so you may be inhumanly perfect once again.”
Merry had only meant to make Varian smile, to hide her desperate want to touch him with a bit of whimsy, but merciful heavens, she had not meant to make him smile like that. She felt hot tears lift behind her lids and a desperate ache to go into his arms.
Running a knuckle down her cheek, Varian whispered, “To hell with the shirts, Little One, I would rather keep you.”
~~~
“Play a card, Merry lass. Why are ye staring off again? I need to win back me money,” Shay exclaimed.
Merry looked up at Shay, realizing she had been staring out the windows, lost in her thoughts. Their card games had become part of her daily routine. This one had gone on for nearly a week.
“I am sorry. It is hot in the cabin. I will try to finish the game, though I suspect I will beat you again, so I hope you have not lost more money than you should. Morgan has plenty of money.” She looked at the bag of coin she’d taken from Morgan’s desk, the shiny pieces scattered carelessly around her. “I wanted to lose his money and I have failed even in that. It’s only Varian I can’t best. He won nine games to my one. The man has no logic to how he plays. He is impossible to follow.” She tossed down a card. Shay groaned. “Are the days always so warm in the Caribbean?”
“They get hotter in the summer,” Shay said idiotically, and she made a face at him with a laugh.
It was a sign. The lass was feeling better if she were back to making faces at him. She’d looked pinched and skittish when the game had started seven days ago, uncomfortable in his company. He didn’t think less of the lass because she’d gone to the Captain’s bed. It was past time for her to give up that worry, as unfathomable as her worries were to him at times. The English were cursed with an amazing capacity to worry over naught.
Over his cards, Shay studied her. Merry was sitting against the pillows in Morgan’s bed, blankets pushed down, and clad only in a man’s shirt with the hem pushed up to let the breeze cool her bare legs. The Captain had asked him to join the lass here and they could have the bloody door closed, no less.
The man was worried about the lass. Couldn’t get her topside. Worried enough to be letting him frolic on his bed, after having tossed his arse across the deck for touching her backside. On his bed, door closed, alone with a vision that would have tempted Saint Paddy. The man made no sense, at all. Shay wouldn’t trust even St. Paddy alone with the lass if the lass was his.
Shay played another card. Merry trumped him. “Merry lass, why don’t ye come topside with me today and see if the days are warmer yourself?”
Merry shook her head. She tossed down another card. “Morgan hates it when I stay in the cabin, wants me topside, getting color in my cheeks and laughing, so I stay in cabin because he hates it.”
It sounded idiotic, even to her. She didn’t care. She was desperate to go home and she would irritate the man to death if he wouldn’t return her.
“I want to go home and he won’t let me. I won’t make it pleasant for him to keep me. I will irritate him until he has had enough of me and lets me go. Nothing I say to him has any affect. Perhaps I will wear him down with irritation.”
Shay frowned, half at the lass and half in trying to figure which of his last three cards to play. “You’re a fool, Merry. He’s a good mon. Treats ye well.” He tossed down a diamond and lost the round. “Aint goin’ to happen’, Merry lass, try’n to force his hand to send ye home. If have’n me in his bed playing cards with ye every day doesn’t irritate the mon, nothin’ is going to. Ask me himself, he did, with all them smooth manner to come down and put a smile on yer face. A proud mon, to lower himself to do that for ye, is a good mon.”
Varian was always kind. It was part of the trap. Part of what made what was wrong feel so wonderful and such a temptation. Lucifer was clever and hard to do battle against.
Merry tossed down a card and snapped, “Morgan is just frustrated he’s not getting his way. He doesn’t know what to do about me. That’s why you’re here.”
The Irishman arched a brow in a wickedly suggestive way. “Ah, mon didn’t lower himself at all. Wants ye smilin’ so you’ll start smilin’ in the sheets again. Yer right, Merry lass, the mon is ruthless to send me fion figure down here to stir yer passion. Be want’n it again so badly, himself be let’n me climb in the sheets with ye instead of himself.”
Merry slapped his hand for that. It was mortifying how little privacy a woman could maintain on a ship of men. It was more than half the reason why she wouldn’t go topside. It had taken nearly two weeks to face Shay. She’d had no choice about Indy. The boy was always here, a fixture in the cabin, a fixture in her world now.
They were such a curious pair, the lass and the Captain, and Shay couldn’t help asking, “The mon makes no sense. Ye sleep in these sheets beside him, do ye, and the mon really leaves ye alone if ye not be want’n it, Merry lass?”
She felt the color deepened on her face, but she nodded.
Shay tossed down his last card. “Aye, can be see’n yer logic now. Would want away from the mon meself. Grants you anything ye want, leaves ye alone when ye not be wanting it, and send ye a fion figure from Ireland to amuse yerself with. The mon should be shot. Slovenly bastard.”
Merry tossed a card, took the game, took his coin, and made a face at Shay. Slovenly bastard. It was some private joke the boy carried. It made him laugh each time he said it.
In a few moments, there was firm thread outside and Merry muttered to Shay, “Slovenly bastard returns,” before the door came open. She leaned forward, gathering u
p the cards, her hair tumbling in an ebony spill that hid the suddenly quick rise and fall of her breasts.
Shay became an instant mass of tense facial tissue and tightening muscles. He was always quick to move to the chair before Morgan returned. He’d forgotten himself, yet again. He was lying on the man’s bed with his woman clad only in a shirt no less. The man be throwing him through the window this time.
Merry stopped Shay’s movement with a hand placed on his wrist. “I don’t want you to leave. I want to play another game.”
Shay froze. Getting caught on the bed was bad enough, but Merry’s hand would get him killed. In shattering suddenness, he murmured, “I don’t have any more bleed’n money, Merry lass.”
The Captain’s black eyes settled on the scene without a flicker. Shay watched nervously as Morgan went to Merry, dropped a light kiss on the top her head and then settled at his desk. Not a word from the mon. The mon was a mystery since the lass. Bloody Christ. Maybe he be waiting to kill me until later, when the lass won’t be see’n it.
“Am I poor yet, Little One?” Varian asked.
She let her eyes dart to him, noting he smiled, but was more Morgan, less Varian, because Shay was in the cabin.
Gathering the cards, she focused on her fingers. “No, unfortunately. I have taken all the boy’s money. I did everything I could to lose, you insufferable man. You’re the only one I can’t beat. I lose to you in cards...” She was tilting her head from side to side in agitation with each word. “…I lose to you at chess...” another tilt. “...I lose to you always. I lose to you everything.”
Merry froze and looked up. She could have killed herself the instant the words left her lips. Whatever she had gained by the sharing of Varian’s bed, she hadn’t gained his poise to aid her in preventing these occasionally awkward moments with the man; moments that made her say such humiliating and childish things.
