The Dukes of War: Complete Collection

by Ridley, Erica

  She was finally in his arms, and his blasted heart still raced. He was furious at her and half in love with her. She was unpredictable and utterly magnificent. She was the wildest adventure he’d ever been on.

  “You saved my life today,” he growled against her mouth.

  She licked his lips. “You saved mine. Now we’re even.”

  He ripped open her ruined dress. It was already coming apart at the seams from whatever ungodly scrapes she had got into between being left safely behind on his ship and then dropping by a secret lair to fire her pistol at a band of pirates. Perhaps if he tore all her clothing apart, he could get her to listen to him. Follow simple orders.

  Perhaps not.

  He pinned her wrists over her head and lowered his mouth to the bodice of her linen shift. His breeches tightened as his tongue found her straining nipple. Waiting for him. Begging to be touched. The thin material of her chemise molded to her breast as he laved, but it was not enough. He wanted nothing between them.

  He caught the top of her shift in his teeth and jerked down the low bodice to expose her breasts. They were as irresistible as she was. He cupped them, teased them, employed his mouth and his fingers until she grasped his hair in her fingers and arched up to meet him.

  She held on tighter as he yanked the hem of her shift up to her thighs. He could smell her arousal, knew his own was jutting against her hip in eagerness to sink between her legs. Not yet. Soon.

  He slid his fingers into her slick heat, stroking her in demanding, relentless patterns as his tongue and teeth teased her nipples.

  “I want you. Now.” She scratched her fingernails up his shoulders, either trying to pull off his shirt or drag him to her.

  He sank two fingers in deeper, and captured her gasp with his mouth. He wanted her like he’d never wanted anything in his life. And he would have her. His pulse raced. He broke the kiss only long enough to whip his shirt over his head and hike her flimsy chemise up to her hips.

  “Stay put,” he told her with a wicked grin. Then he lowered his mouth to her cunny to pleasure her.

  She was sweet and salty and intoxicatingly responsive. His fingers found his own member as her legs tightened about his shoulders. He released his cock into his hand, gripping and stroking it with every lick of her sex.

  Her legs began to tremble. Arrogant victory ripped through him. She was his, and his alone. His tongue commanded her body. Giving. Demanding. Forcing her to surrender control. To give herself over to him completely.

  She gasped as her muscles convulsed in pleasure. He continued his teasing assault, viciously pleased to be the cause of her orgasm. It wouldn’t be her last.

  The night was just starting.

  Before her tremors subsided, he lifted his mouth from between her legs and sank his throbbing cock into her wet core. Bliss flooded him. And hunger. Her hips rose to meet him, welcoming him in deeper with every pump of his hips.

  He was no longer capable of rational thought. She had stolen everything from him. He was giving it back.

  His mouth sought hers, gasping, kissing. Her fingers tightened in his hair and he reveled in every sharp tug, every buck of her hips, every lick of her tongue against his. She was perfect. He drove into her faster, his lungs bursting, his need desperate.

  “Take your pleasure,” she whispered, wrapping her legs tighter around him. “Make me join you.”

  There was nothing he wanted more.

  He gripped the edge of the bunk and buried himself inside her, telling her with his body, his cock, his kisses, everything he couldn’t even admit to himself. He claimed her with every thrust. She had already conquered him. He was making sure she knew it was mutual.

  When her head rolled back and her legs began to convulse about him, only then did he give himself over to release, taking her with him in rhythmic perfection.

  As he collapsed onto the bunk, he rolled her on top of him so he could cradle her in his arms as he tried to catch his breath. His heart thundered as if he’d just stormed a ship or discovered treasure. ’Twas how he always felt around her. Galvanized. Off-center. Exhilarated.

  In love.

  Chapter 18

  Clara awoke alone.

  Rather than sigh at the wooden ceiling, she smiled and shook her head. There was no sense hoping a pirate might spontaneously turn to romance and domesticity. Although Steele had left her, he hadn’t gone far. She was lying on his bed, in his cabin, on his ship. He’d be back. Eventually. But from the morning sun streaming through the skylight, perhaps she’d be better served going after him.

  She cleaned up and donned a fresh gown—a few more days like yesterday and she’d have nothing left to wear—and then poked her head over the hatchway on the main deck.

  The entire crew milled in a chaotic circle around six heavy, locked chests and piles of bundled cloths filled with all the treasure that had been openly displayed inside the Corsair’s secret lair. Half the men had mugs of grog, despite the early hour. The other half rubbed their thick hands together as if eager to get their fingers on the additional riches tucked inside the locked chests.

  In the center of it all stood Captain Blackheart, an unlit cigar between his teeth and a wicked cutlass in his hand. His eyes softened when he caught sight of Clara, and he motioned her to join them.

  “A glass of port for the lady,” he barked to the crew at large.

  “No, thank you,” she said quickly, as she stepped into the melee. “’Tis rather early for me.”

  “Respectable woman,” Marlowe whispered to the boatswain.

  “Siren,” Barnaby muttered back.

  Steele grinned around his cigar and raised his cutlass. “What do you say we open the chests?”

  The men cheered and raised their mugs.

  With a whoosh, Steele’s cutlass slashed at the lock until it splintered from the chest. He tossed the cutlass aside and swept back the lid with a shouted, “Voila!”

  Dust floated up from a thick pile of dull gray rocks.

  The only sound was the gentle lapping of ocean waves as the entire ship contemplated the distinctive lack of treasure in silence.

  Steele was the first to spring back to life. He hacked open the lock on the second chest, the third, the fourth. Clara gaped at their contents.

  Nothing but rocks. Back-breaking quantities of rocks.

  “Cap’n?” came Barnaby’s hesitant voice.

  “’Twas not the Corsair’s secret lair, but a trap.” Steele’s blade sliced through the last of the chests with little passion. “Every step of the way.”

  “Not every step.” Marlowe gestured at the sacks in the middle. “We did get some treasure.”

  “Pageantry,” Steele spat. “Just like those featherbrained skulls.”

  Clara shook her head to clear it. The piles of bones in that cave had scared her witless. “Pageantry?”

  “Animal skeletons,” Marlowe explained in a low voice. “Not a human bone among them. It was a ruse.”

  Steele cut open one of the sacks with the tip of his cutlass. Doubloons, packets of spices, and a roll of silk tumbled to the floor. “The map was no accident. Neither was this artful array of ‘treasure.’ The Corsair meant for us to steal it.”

  “The Crimson Corsair expected you to die.” Clara’s fingers shook. Everything about it was a nightmare. “He wanted his enemies to get caught in his clever wired traps with their tacks and knives. And if that didn’t work, he left men behind to finish the job.”

  Steele glared at her for a long, tense moment before his lips curved into a smile. “The Corsair didn’t count on you, love, did he?”

  Warmth spread through her at the pride in his gaze and she blushed. “He didn’t count on Captain Blackheart and his crew, either. The staging might have been pageantry, and much of the treasure false, but every speck that was worth anything is right here on this ship. Who knows how many others might have received the same map and never made the return voyage home. But not you.” She grinned at the crew. “You
left him quite a surprise to come home to.”

  “Left his men trussed up like pigs, we did.” Barnaby raised his mug toward Clara.

  Marlowe pulled one of the heavy stones up from the closest chest and heaved it over the side of the boat. It landed in the water with a satisfying splash. “We won’t even leave a single trace of his false treasure. Will we, men?”

  With a hearty cry, the crew rushed forward and hurled all of the Corsair’s rocks overboard.

  “Chests ain’t too shabby,” said one of the swabs. “Better’n the ones we got below.”

  “Bit less secure now,” said another. “Without the locking mechanism and all.”

  Steele hooked his cutlass on a post. “Take them wherever you wish, boys. Just get them out of my sight.”

  Clara stepped forward and touched her fingers to the tightly coiled muscles of his arm. “You won, darling.”

  “I didn’t win. He’s still out there.”

  “You won today. You’ll find him tomorrow, or the next day.”

  “You’re right.” Steele pulled her into his arms for a bruising kiss. “You’re always right.”

  She gave him a crooked smile. “It’s not a matter of being right—it’s a matter of knowing you. Nothing stands in your way for long. You fear nothing. You search for what you want, you fight for what you want, and you take it. That poor Corsair hasn’t a chance.”

  He grinned. “I’ll drink to that. No matter where he might scurry, no matter how long it might take…I will find him.”

  Clara wished she could grin back, but his words left a hollow chill in her belly. Steele would find that despicable Corsair and bring him to justice. But he would do so alone. With his crew, not with Clara. She would not succeed at stowing away a second time.

  Yesterday, the excitement of the moment, the thrill of adventure had given her the illusion that they were a team. Partners fighting together. Loving together. Them, against the world.

  But it was not them against the world. It was Blackheart against the Crimson Corsair. Mrs. Clara Halton against the deafening loneliness of dowager quarters.

  She had no doubt Steele would eventually find his quarry, but the hunt might take months. Years. How long had it been already? Even were she foolish enough to contemplate stowing away for one more journey, it was not at all a practical solution. Clara was no adventuress. Her daughter was in England. Recently wed. Children would be coming soon.

  She wrapped her arms about herself and leaned against Steele’s chest while she still had him. Her fingers grew cold. Soon enough, she would be back on land. An independent widow. Perhaps a forty-year-old grandmother.

  Whereas Steele would roam the seas until his dying breath, she had no doubt. He was meant for this life. Thrived in it.

  She couldn’t keep him. No one could. He was freedom incarnate.

  It was one of the many things she loved about him.

  Loved and hated.

  Chapter 19

  If someone would have predicted that Captain Blackheart might be content to spend an afternoon promenading in the company of a respectable woman, Blackheart—and his entire crew—would have had a hearty laugh at the oracle’s expense.

  However.

  Given that the woman in question was the inimitable Mrs. Clara Halton, and that the afternoon promenade wound through the various nooks and crannies of the Dark Crystal, the idea became less preposterous and more…homey.

  Having Clara aboard the ship had begun to feel as normal and as necessary as the presence of a boatswain or a master gunner. His conversations with her differed radically, of course. Steele never had to explain to the swabs or the riggers whether a nine pounder was better or worse than an eighteen pound cannon, and why brass might be an advantage over iron.

  “And those?” she asked, pointing amidships to a pair of nested boats. “They seem smaller than the whale boat, but larger than the jolly boat that I…borrowed.”

  His lips quirked. Clara was certainly as fearless as any pirate. “Correct. You’re looking at a yawl with a cutter inside.”

  “Yawl,” she muttered as she ran the tip of her fingers along the skids.

  He hadn’t the least doubt that she would soon be able to identify every crosstrees and capstan aboard the Dark Crystal.

  The sparkle in her green eyes enchanted him as she asked sailing questions or practiced nautical terminology laced with plenty of sailors’ cant. He loved that the infinite ways life aboard a ship differed from life on land never failed to intrigue or delight her.

  But the greatest reason Steele couldn’t help but look forward to their frequent walks amongst the guns or through the casks was because he simply enjoyed spending time with her. Her presence had fundamentally changed his life, but not in the way he’d feared. Rather than slow him down or get in his way, she’d become a cohort. A friend. A partner.

  Every escapade was even more fun with her along for the ride. Even when they weren’t adventuring, having her near—and never knowing what she might say or do next—kept his equilibrium off center and his blood pulsing. As far as his body was concerned, being around Clara was just as heady as pirating. Just as tempting.

  Just as dangerous.

  He leaned against the mizenmast and narrowed his eyes at her. “How did you end up in America?”

  She turned toward the railing. “It’s a long story.”

  He smiled. “We won’t reach shore until morning.”

  She stared out at the horizon as if his words had been lost at sea.

  He had no business inquiring into her private life, but the mere fact of refusing to answer only heightened his curiosity. He joined her against the rail. “How old were you when you left England?”

  “Seventeen,” she said after a moment. “Disgraced, disinherited, and three months with child. Not heavy enough for my condition to yet be obvious, but far enough along to have dashed my mother’s dream of her daughter being accepted into Society.”

  “Your come-out did not go well?”

  “It was an unmitigated success. Or so I thought.” Her lips tightened. “I was seventeen. My parents’ money was new, and came from trade. When I was whisked into a darkened corner at my very first ball, I assumed a wedding was a foregone conclusion.”

  “I presume the ‘gentleman’ in question thought otherwise?”

  Her lips twisted. “I was Cinderella, but I hadn’t found a prince. Yet.”

  He lifted his brows. “Did you eventually?”

  “I did.” Her smile softened. “A young doctor. He married me intending to raise Grace as his own. We were a family. We were happy. Until he was caught in someone else’s fight and never made it back home.”

  “War?”

  She shook her head. “The whiskey insurrection. He left home to attend a sick child and was shot twice in the chest. Grace was still a baby. She never knew her father. And I lost the best man I had ever known.”

  Steele said nothing.

  She lifted a shoulder. “My husband’s death was senseless and tragic, and taught me that anything I love can be ripped away from me at any time. That’s why the only thing I let myself love is my daughter. And it’s why after this adventure is over, I’ll settle in a pretty little cottage and never step foot on a boat again.”

  “Fear of losing your life?” Over his dead body. His fists tightened. He would die to keep her safe.

  Her smile was crooked as she met his eyes. “Fear of losing yours.”

  His eyes widened as he stared back at her in surprise. He did not fear for his life. If anything, he hoped it would end at the height of some grand adventure, and not at the hands of disease or old age.

  Clara didn’t just deserve better than that. She deserved anyone else. Someone who didn’t just return home on occasion. Someone who stayed there. Who never made her worry, or wonder, or fear. Someone who wouldn’t leave her a widow all over again.

  “I want a home. A place where I belong,” she said softly.

  Steele’s throat dried
. As much as he wanted to pull her into his arms, he could not allow himself to do so.

  She deserved everything she wanted. Stability, security, comfort in knowing one would awaken every morning in the same person’s arms. Someone other than Steele.

  He was a man of his word, but he was not a man of promises. Of planning futures.

  “A house will make me feel safe. Secure. Like I have somewhere to belong.” Her smile trembled. “A view of the sea will make me feel like we might meet again.”

  He nodded, but he knew it would never be more than a pretty dream. He couldn’t see her and not have her. ’Twould make it worse for both of them. Once he returned her to her family, he would simply do what he did best.

  Sail away without looking back.

  Chapter 20

  After taking supper with Steele and the crew, Clara slipped away to stare out over the waves at the coming sunset. She dreaded seeing land and yet yearned for it. Not because she wanted her adventure to end—a part of her wished it never would!—but because she could not continue in this wonderful, terrible, breathtaking, make-believe world.

  She couldn’t live with such uncertainty. With never knowing if the next bloodthirsty pirate or hidden traps or rocky cliff would be the one to whisk Steele away from her forever. It had taken her decades to overcome the loss of her first husband. Her heart had been crushed anew when she’d sent Grace off to England, never expecting to see her again. Clara’s heart could not withstand another blow. With a man like Steele, such an eventuality would be imminent. Every farewell might be the last time she saw him.

  And yet she did hope to see him again. They could never be a couple, not in the way Clara would need them to be, but that didn’t mean she was eager to say good-bye. Anything but. The very idea stole her breath and squeezed her heart. He was part of her now. She would never forget him.