by Paula Quinn
He wasted no more time but wedged his knees between her thighs and spread her wide beneath him.
He stopped when he felt the cold edge of his dagger against his throat.
“Do yer best not to hurt me,” Caitrina warned with a sinister smile crossing over her lips.
He wanted to laugh at the notion of this woman needing him to rescue her. “I’ll do me best,” he promised and pushed his swollen head up against her opening. He moved slowly and with caution, at the end of his own blade. Each thrust he pushed a bit harder, broke further through her barrier. Sweet torture.
Twice, he almost drove himself into her, but he wanted her wetter. “Remove the dagger, love,” he breathed. “I want to kiss ya.”
She smiled, tempting him. Oh, tempting him. She moved the blade someplace else. Alex didn’t care where. He covered her mouth and swept his tongue inside her.
Her legs spread wider.
He moved deeper inside her. He’d never been with a virgin before. He didn’t realize how tight her sheath was until he felt the resistance of it against his cock. It burned like dipping into lava, but he dipped. He rode her slowly, inch by inch, until she clutched his chest and squeezed herself around him, pushing him out.
It was enough to set him over the edge. It was just what he needed.
Taking hold of himself, he guided his flow over her swollen nub and then his stiff shaft. When she was good and wet, he plucked his dagger out of her hand and tossed it away. He pushed deep, dipping his face against hers when she cried out. Every stroke grew deeper, slower, taking on the rhythm of the music on the wind. He kissed her mouth, her throat, while he rode her, feeling her moisten on her own. When he dipped his mouth to suckle her full breast, he finally broke through and almost came again.
But no. He could hold. He wanted to enjoy this with her for as long as it took.
It didn’t take long.
When he rose up on his haunches and took her with him, curled over his elbow, connected at the hips, she cried his name. He knew she was close.
“Alex, I feel like I’m on fire!” she cried out.
Aye, he burned as well, his senses, his blood. “Shall I cease?” he asked.
“Nae! Nae.” She opened her beautifully large eyes and smiled at him. “Never stop.”
He thrust hard and deep, and deeper still when she dug her fingernails into his shoulders.
When she rose up and pressed her body against him, he filled his hands with her bottom and guided her up and down. She let out a long laborious moan. He looked at her and watched her climax. Another thrust and he burst deep inside her, riding with her over the crest of ecstasy.
When they were both done, they collapsed onto the plaid, breathless and spent. Alex rolled off her and smiled when she turned in his arms and snuggled into his chest. She fit. She belonged exactly where she was and Alex never wanted to be parted from her. The power of his feelings for her accelerated his heart.
She felt it against her ear. “What is it?” she asked, spreading her warm breath over his skin. “Why are ye racing? Are ye racing from me?”
He laughed and then yelped when she pinched his side.
“I’m being verra’ serious, Alex,” she told him, rising up on her elbow to look him in the eye. “Ye make light of many things where courage or yer heart is concerned. I would be more to ye than just another means to answer yer lustful desires.”
He almost laughed again, then thought better of it. She was correct, after all, about him making light of certain things. At least, that’s what he’d been told countless times by women. Sometimes he laughed because he didn’t like thinking that assumptions about him were correct. But they usually were. He guarded his heart well but she’d broken through his barrier. He knew now that she was innocent of trying to steal his map. He believed her about finding the trapdoor open. He knew Sam had nothing to do with it, but he would ask him if he saw the door open.
“Me heart quickens because what I feel fer ya…”—he paused, trying to come up with the right words—“makes me uneasy.”
“What d’ye feel fer me?” she asked softly, her huge sapphire eyes steady on him.
He let out a long, gusty exhalation of breath and cursed himself silently for bringing it up. “I feel… ehm… I care fer ya.”
“Ye do?”
He cast her a dubious glance, not unfazed by how lovely she looked against the starry sky, aglow with the residue of their lovemaking. Did she truly not know that his heart had gone soft on her? That he feared losing his mind at the thought of losing her? He didn’t want to love her. Not because of the pain her betrayal would inflict, but because if he took her on as a pirate, he could lose her to the sword or the noose. Hell, they were already likely being stalked. But if he sent her home, he would lose her for certain. “Of course, I do.” He would train with her every day. He wouldn’t let up until he knew she could defend herself. “I care fer ya… very much.”
She raised her brow at him and looked as surprised as she confessed to being. “I never thought to hear ye speak such words.” Her lips curled into a challenging smirk. “Or have ye spoken them to many?”
“I’ve spoken them to none. ’Tis why ya feel me heart race.”
Her dimples deepened along with her voice when she asked, “Am I to believe that I have done what nae other women before me could do?” She shook her head, answering her own question, then she traced his nipple with her finger. “I hear how the men speak of yer prowess in the bedchamber. It takes a special lass to win the heart of a man like ye. My grandmother did it. So did my aunt Isobel. But I dinna’ possess such power that binds ye to me.”
He smiled. “I turned me ship around fer ya, lass. Ya possess something. If ya don’t think that Gustaaf is bound to ya, then ya’re a fool. He lied straight to me face about yar climbin’ the masts.”
Her smile went soft in the moonlight and she nodded her head. “Dear Gustaaf. He protects me like a brother.” She gave him a curious look when he grunted at her.
“Och, I knew this would happen.”
“What?” he asked. “Ya knew what would happen?”
“I tried to warn ye, if ye recall. I said that a few nights with me and ye could lose all.”
“Aye.” He remembered, smiling at her like some love-struck fool. She was right, she had warned him. “Ya spoke of befuddlin’ the rake Captain Kidd.”
“And have I befuddled ye, rake?” she asked, bending down to kiss him on the mouth.
“Aye, ya have.” He tasted the sweet fragrance of her lips, her tongue. He lifted his hands to her face and tunneled his fingers through her hair, drawing her down over him. When her soft breasts touched his flesh, he pulled her closer until she straddled him.
“I know ya are sore,” he whispered, kissing her mouth, her cheek, her chin. “I will not take ya again so soon.” He almost went back on his promise when she groaned. She wanted more but he knew it would pain her too much tomorrow. Her body was delightfully untried and pure and he felt honored to be the first to have her. He told her so amid kisses and realized with a sense of stunned disbelief that he wanted to be the last. He’d never cared before about whether or not other men shared the women he made love to. He’d never felt this way about any of them. Just looking at Caitrina, kissing her, touching her, smelling her sweet fragrance, was enough to drive him mad with the need to protect and possess her.
“I don’t want to share ya,” he confessed, cradling her cheek in his palm and gazing into her eyes.
“I dinna’ want to share ye either,” she told him, then dipped her mouth to his.
Could he give up the rest for this one? He smiled into her face, unable to conceal what she made him feel. “Ya’re stayin’ with me then? Would ya make a ship yar home, Caitrina?”
She nodded. “Try ridding yerself of me again and I’ll kill ye while ye sleep.”
He laughed and scooped her thick tresses away from her neck to kiss her pulse. “Ya sound like a true pirate already. Soon ya will be
spittin’ in a bucket with the rest of the crew.”
She bit his lobe in response to his nibbling her throat. “Gustaaf taught me how to aim fer the bucket a few nights ago.”
He tried to get his mind off her by conjuring her image spitting over her shoulder like Gustaaf or Sam would. It didn’t help, but it made him smile.
“What other bad habits have ya picked up on me ship besides spittin’ and disobeyin’ yar captain, Miss Grant?”
She left his ear alone to gaze down at him and flash him her dimples. “I’ve learned how to curse. Want to hear me?”
He shook his head, aching to fit his mouth around hers again. Had he ever wanted anyone this bad before? No. No one. Caitrina was more than satisfying a desire. All of him was involved. He wondered, briefly, if he might go mad with his need of her.
“When I found Kyle in the waves, I thought I’d lost ya, Caitrina.” He turned her over on her back, then he rose up and brought her with him in his arms. “I feared ya dead and it near drove me mad. When I found ya alive, nothin’ else mattered. I would accept travelin’ with a woman who hated me, as long as she lived.”
“I dinna’ hate ye, Alex,” she purred against his chest while he carried her to the shoreline and into the waves. “I was hurt. Now I am not.”
“Good.” He smiled against her mouth as he carried her into the shallows. He held her still when she shivered and tried to squirm out of his arms. “Because I want more of ya.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Trina loved Parrot Cay. She loved the Caicos, and its people, and its hot, balmy nights. She didn’t blame the women for wearing so little. Camlochlin was never this hot.
She closed her eyes and felt her heart pick up the beat of the crashing waves and distant drums.
“It sounds like ye here, Alex.” She looked up at the silhouette of his chin and jaw against the firelight. She wished it were daylight, so she could see his handsome face more clearly. But his voice was what had bewitched her from the first.
Lying nestled in his arms, she breathed in the scent of his skin beneath her nose and smiled. Kissing his chest, she tasted the sea and wondered if water flowed through his veins. Nae. Blood coursed through him, hot and potent. Only a fool would deny it. He drove her mad with desire so lurid she hardly recognized herself. She’d given herself to him with a kind of carefree abandon she’d dreamed about, but had never attained.
Now she understood more clearly why her brother Malcolm had been caught so many times stumbling out of maidens’ homes from Perth to Skye. Nothing in her life compared to making love. Not hunting game or sailing toward adventure on the high seas. Nothing would ever compare to Alex’s body inside her, atop her, his breath mingling hot and short with hers, his hands traversing the shape of her body, cupping her breasts while he kissed them. Was it so marvelously enchanting for everyone, or was it better when love was involved?
There was one thing she missed about home. Having a woman to tell things to. She missed Abby.
“I grew up here and in places like it.”
She closed her eyes, listening intently to his voice, lost in the sound of him, excited to get to know things about him.
“The islanders became me family. Most of the time me father left me with nurses. I was raised as one of them until me ninth year.”
“Where was yer mother?”
“I don’t know much about her save fer what me father told me, which was different dependin’ on whether he was drunk or sober. She abandoned me when I was a babe.”
A shiver crawled up her back and she shook in his embrace. She couldn’t imagine her life without her mother in it.
He gathered her in closer. “If ya are cold, we can go back.”
She shook her head. “Ye grew up without a mother. ’Tis terribly sad to me.”
“Nay, ’twasn’t sad,” he assured her gently. “I had many mothers.”
She still felt bad for him. “What about yer father?” she asked him. “Did ye ever see him?”
“He came back fer me when I was nine. I hardly knew him but he put me on his boat and made me crew. He taught me about the sea and how to live on it. I came to love it and him. I stopped missin’ me family on the Islands and remained with him fer nine years.”
“He made ye a pirate then.”
“Nay,” he whispered against her forehead. “He gave me a love fer the sea. Wantin’ to serve no man but meself made me a pirate.”
Aye, she understood that sentiment. She didn’t want to serve any man either. Well, not until now. Would she agree to finally becoming a wife… if Alex asked her? What would being married to him be like? She’d never thought of it before with other men. The thought of keeping a home and raising children had never appealed to her. But she could have a child now. Now that she and Alex…
She sat up and stared at him, alarmed by a storm of thoughts and questions filling her head.
“What if I have yer child? How many children d’ye already have? Dear Lord, I didna’ even ask if ye were wed! Are ye wed, Alex?”
He gazed at her with a slow smile curling his sexy mouth. How could she resist him ever again after tonight? “Nay, I’m not wed, and if ya have me child, I’ll be surprised since, as far as I know, I’m not able to father any babes.”
“How d’ye know this?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I would have had one by now, and I don’t. At least, no one’s ever come to me and called me father of her babe.”
She stared at him and shook her head. “D’ye keep eyes on all the whores ye’ve slept with then?”
He laughed. “Nay, but I’ve seen them all more than once. I’d recognize if they had a babe strapped to their hip.”
She looked away, not wanting to think of his past.
He touched his knuckles to her face, drawing her gaze back to him. “If ya give me a child I will love it, Caitrina. But is this the life ya want fer a babe?”
When she didn’t answer he pulled her down into his arms again. “Anjali knows a medicine woman who will give ya some herbs to keep a babe from growin’ in ya. ’Tis yar choice, beauty.”
Did she want such an herb? She closed her eyes and let the rhythm of his heart calm her nerves.
“Does Anjali know yer body intimately?”
“Nay,” he told her quietly, further soothing her anxious heart. “Her mother was one of those who helped raise me. Anjali is like a sister to me.”
Relief flooded Trina’s veins and she kissed his flat belly. How could she compete with these bonny island women who were crafted for moonlight and dancing?
She kissed him again. His belly tasted salty from their bath in the sea. He couldn’t stay too far from the waves. Was he a merman, her lover? She looked down the length of his hips, over his thighs, and down his shapely legs to convince herself that he wasn’t. He was all man, with a sword of steel and granite. When his flesh shuddered against her lips, it sent a trickle of red-hot heat someplace low beneath her belly. She thought about the passion of his thrusts and the way all that hard male body felt while he drove himself into her deeper, his hands possessively caressing her breasts. She wanted more of him, but if she wanted to walk tomorrow without announcing what she’d been doing all night to the entire crew, she would have to deny her body.
But she didn’t have to deny his.
Leaning farther down, she spread her tongue over his hot flesh, kissing and relishing the flavor and feel of him. When her hunger traversed a path lower and more sinful, his slow groan of wicked delight prompted her to eat him alive and leave nothing left. Moving on instinct alone, on some base primal desire to take him in her mouth and suck him like she needed him to live, she cupped his scrotum in the palm of her hand.
“Gently, love,” he whispered, or perhaps it was the wind.
Reaching out her tongue, she ran the tip of it up his shaft. She let him guide her with his hands, then crawled between his legs and swallowed him up without any assistance. He hardened instantly, muddling her reasons for not cl
imbing aboard and riding him like a storm. She held on tighter, closing her lips around his full head, and bit down softly. He spread his arms out to his sides and gave his cock up to her. She took, sucking him, licking him, worshipping him until he rose toward the sky.
He leaned up on his elbows to watch her mouth moving over his desire. She descended once, and then again, when he yanked her up, pulling her body over his until his cock was poised just beneath her opening. He looked deep into her eyes, setting her insides aflame with passion. She spread her legs along his sides and let him slide deep inside her. It didn’t hurt as much as she thought it might. In fact, he felt rather wonderful clutched within her tight grasp.
She cried out when he cupped her buns in his hands and drew her up and then down, against his body, atop his shaft. She moved her hips in unison with his and they rode the waves together.
When they were done, and quite tired, they lay coiled in each other’s bare limbs and fell asleep.
Until the morning, when the fire died, and Mr. Pierce woke them with a loud cough.
Trina thought she might faint, despite Mr. Pierce’s averted gaze. Who knew how long he’d already been looking?
“Her cousin is lookin’ fer her, Alex. I’d prefer, fer the crew’s safety, that he didn’t find her like this.”
Lord! Kyle! She moved to reach for her clothes, then stopped and waited until Alex thanked him and sent him to delay Kyle’s arrival.
She stood, dressing, watching Alex do the same. Their night had been magical, a night that she would never forget and planned on repeating again and again.
“I’ll see ya later today, love,” he promised, and with a kiss he was gone.
Trina looked after him for a moment, wondering if what he called her meant something. Love? Lord help her. Why in blazes did she feel like singing?
