"You liar!" she wailed, knowing that she'd been well and truly had. The scoundrel had been playing possum!
"If you call me that one more time, so help me God I'll throttle you." Ian's arms came around her, and he rolled with her so that they both lay on their sides facing each other. Susannah had known, of course, that he was naked —it was impossible to live with a man in such close quarters and not realize that he slept naked—but she had not experienced the fact so vividly before. With his shirt tangled around her hips, she was nearly as bare as he. She could feel the heat of his skin, the roughness of the hairs on his legs, the steely strength of his muscles, pressing against her own soft smooth flesh. It was the first time she had been so near him in months. Had she not known the scalawag for what he was, her senses would have reeled.
But she would not respond to the lure of the flesh. She was done with sinning—and being a fool.
Against her thigh she could feel the unmistakable evidence that her nearness was affecting him in much the same way that his would have affected her, had she allowed it to. The burning heat of the swelling thing made her grit her teeth in determined rejection.
"You've had your joke. Now let me up," she said as evenly as she could under the circumstances. It had occurred to her that this was not the time to escalate their battle. Not when he was naked, and she was nearly so, and they were both so—hot.
"I believe I warned you what I would do if you did not lie quietly in my bunk with me and go to sleep?" One hand moved down to pat her backside suggestively. The tail of his shirt covered her at least that far, Susannah was thankful to discover. But still she felt the touch of his hand like a brand through the thin linen.
"If you dare . . ." she began furiously, holding herself rigid in an effort to combat the weakness that his nearness engendered.
"Susannah." His voice sounded almost weary. "Don't dare me. I find that I am averse to paddling you, after all. But you could push me to it, if you really tried."
His hand still rested against her bottom. She would have tried to dislodge it, but she had the feeling that any movement at such a moment might be a fatal mistake.
"Let me up," she managed through stiff lips.
He said nothing for a moment. Then, "Say please."
"How childish!"
"I thought we'd already established that I am childish. Now say please, Ian, let me up."
Susannah gritted her teeth. But her situation was really very dire, because she wanted nothing so much as to stay where she was. While with her head she hadn't forgiven him and her heart was still very much on guard, her foolish, fickle body seemed not to have gotten the message. His hand on her bottom awakened all kinds of shameful longings inside her. Like the wish that he would push the shirt out of the way . . .
"Please, Ian, let me up," she muttered in hostile surrender. But it was worth it, to escape him before she could make a complete fool of herself again.
"No," he said, and, though it was too dark to be sure, she thought he smiled mockingly.
It took a moment for his perfidy to sink in.
"No!" she gasped. "Why, you skunk! You polecat! You . . ."
He laughed. "I may be all of those things, Susannah. But I am also the man you have to please if you wish to get out of this predicament you've placed yourself in with a whole skin. It's going to cost you more than a grudging please. It's going to cost you—a kiss."
"I'd sooner kiss a . . ." She had been going to say pig, but then, remembering how he'd gibed her about her fondness for swine before, she shut her mouth with a click on the last word.
"That's just too bad, my darling. Unless you want to lie here all night, you're going to have to kiss me."
37
"I hate you!"
"That's too bad, too. Come on, Susannah. Kiss me. Or I'll have to think of some way to persuade you." He patted her bottom suggestively. It was all Susannah could do not to squirm.
"You are the most despicable . . ." Screwing up her courage—and her mouth—she pecked his mouth with hers.
"There!"
He laughed. "You call that a kiss? I barely felt it. I've taught you better, and I want to reap the results of my lessons. Now, are you going to kiss me or . . ." His fingers spread over her left buttock, and he squeezed. Susannah, galvanized, jerked away.
"All right!" she said, glaring at him although of course he couldn't see. Anything, anything, to get away from him before she succumbed to the heated languor that was rising through her body. If he did not remove his hand from her backside soon, she would be reaching down and pulling the shirt out of the way. She wanted his hands on her flesh with so much intensity that she was losing the will to fight. Kissing him might prove a mistake—though she thought she could hang on to her slipping self-control through the course of one kiss—but staying in his arms was certainly dangerous.
"A proper kiss, tongue and all," he cautioned her. Susannah took a firm grip on both her temper and her self- control and set herself to giving the swine what he wanted.
But when she pressed her lips to his he didn't open his mouth.
"That's not fair," she pulled back to say furiously. "How can I kiss you if you won't cooperate?"
"You have to persuade me to cooperate." From his voice, she knew he was smirking. "Wrap your arms around my neck. Press your breasts up against my chest. Wriggle around a little. Stroke my mouth with your tongue. Do it right, and I'll let you go."
"That's blackmail!"
"Blackmail has its uses," he observed, and squeezed her fanny again. Susannah gasped and jerked free.
Seething, trying to ignore the inward trembling that competed with anger for equal space inside her, she freed her arms from his grasp—he obligingly let her—and slid them around his neck.
"Hug me tighter," he whispered. "And wriggle."
Scarlet-faced, thankful that it was too dark for him to see, Susannah tightened her grip to the point where she was plastered so close against him that her breasts felt as if they were being squashed flat. Then she—wriggled, to use his distasteful phrase.
"Ah." It was a curiously hoarse sound. "Now use your tongue."
Hesitantly, Susannah pressed her lips to his, put out the tip of her tongue, and slid it over his closed mouth.
"That's good. That's very good," he whispered. "Now slide your tongue inside my mouth. And wriggle again. I like the way you wriggle."
Susannah wriggled. His lips parted obligingly, and her tongue slid inside his mouth.
She had forgotten how he tasted. Hot, faintly musky, with the merest hint of tobacco—where had he been smoking cigars?—and wet, very wet. She moved her tongue around inside his mouth for what must have been a full minute before he responded, sucking on her tongue and stroking it with his.
"That's enough. I've kissed you," she said, withdrawing hastily. "Now let me go." But her arms still hugged his neck, and her breasts were pressed flat against his chest. After a moment—it took so long because her senses were clouding fast—she realized that he was holding her as tightly as she was holding him.
"You kissed me," he agreed, on a deep husky note that sent shivers down her spine. "What would you say if I offered to return the favor?"
No, her mind shouted. Stop, shrieked her heart. But her body, her traitorous body, on fire from her kissing and wriggling and his hand on her behind, quaked yes.
Paralyzed by the batde that raged within her, she moved restlessly. That move proved her undoing. It shifted the tails of the shirt she wore, pulling it out from under his hand, so that now his hand rested on her soft, curved flesh.
"Ahh." She could not help the small sound. The mere resting of his hand against her bare bottom awoke trumpets of passion in her blood. Unable to help it, she moved again. His hand slid down to the top of her thigh and then closed upward over her cheek.
"If you're planning to call a halt to this, you'd better do it fast," he said, sounding as if he was having trouble getting the words out. "Because you've got me hotter
than a firecracker."
"No," she whispered.
"You want me to stop?" From the sound of it, even asking the question pained him.
"No." Susannah quivered and ached and burned with wanting him. Her arms tightened about his neck. Her thighs pressed his, and she—wriggled.
"No." It was a groan of satisfaction. His hand on her bottom pulled her up close against him, and his mouth slanted over hers. His tongue repaid her for the torture she had caused him, and his fingers delved into the cleft between her cheeks, stroking and exploring, and squeezing her behind. When he lifted his head to kiss her throat, Susannah was gasping and clinging to him like Spanish moss to an oak.
"I want you naked." He was unbuttoning her shirt, trailing kisses in the wake of his hands. When the last button slipped its mooring, he parted the front, and his mouth slid from halfway down her belly to the valley between her breasts and then, trailing fire, over a soft peak. As his lips closed over her nipple, Susannah cried out and arched her back.
"Easy," he whispered, tugging the shirt down her shoulders. "This is going to take a long time."
Feeling as if she were going to die if it took much longer, Susannah helped him take off her shirt. Then, and it was shameless, and she knew it was shameless but she didn't care, she slid her hands up the back of his head and pressed her breasts closer into his face. He suckled her harder, his mouth sliding from one taut nipple to the other, while his hands stroked and teased her bottom until she was gasping and writhing against him in mindless need.
"That's it," he said as her thighs parted restlessly in response to his butterfly forays. "Now lift your leg up around my waist."
Susannah did, under the guidance of his hands. They were lying on their sides, she with one leg around his body, he with his head bent to her breasts and one hand spread over her buttocks, pressing her close. He reached up, caught one of the hands that were entwined in his hair, and pulled it down between their bodies.
"You put me in," he said.
For a moment Susannah had no idea what he meant. Then, as he reached his destination and folded her fingers around his throbbing shaft, she knew. He was burning hot, and velvety soft over a turgid strength, and her first impulse was to recoil. But he brought her fingers back to him, and this time she took hold of him without having to be urged.
"If you want me, put me in."
If she wanted him. Susannah was on fire with wanting him. She was mindless with it, soulless with it, a quivering, flaming body with a will all its own. She grasped him, and guided him, and then he was inside her, filling her, thrusting urgently while she writhed and clung.
"I love you, love you, love you," she cried in the final glorious moment, when rapture burst like flaming rockets inside her. It was only later, what seemed a long time later but could not, in reality, have been more than minutes, that she realized what she had said.
Lying cradled against him, her head pillowed on a strong arm stretched out to provide what comfort it could, Susannah went cold. And her coldness had nothing to do with the drafts blowing about the floor.
He had said nothing, as he found his own release, or after, nothing, as she lay beside him on the floor. Perhaps he had been so wrapped up in the driving ecstasy that had possessed them both that he had not heard, or understood, what she had said.
Another moment passed, and then he pressed a quick, hard kiss to her mouth before sitting up. Seconds later he was on his feet, leaving her scrambling about on the floor for the discarded shirt. She knew, without knowing quite how she knew, what he meant to do.
The snap of a spark being struck confirmed her guess. The lantern wick caught and flared to life. As a warm golden glow stretched over the small cabin, Ian replaced the globe and turned to look at her, fists on hips, eyes narrowed. If his nakedness disturbed him so much as a whisker—and she did not think it did—then it was not apparent from his stance. Susannah, still on the floor although seated now with her legs tucked up beneath her, pulled the edges of the shirt together, lifted her chin, and met that searching gaze.
"Well, now," he said. "That's very interesting. Did you mean it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Though she did, of course. His mouth smiling at her told her that he knew it as well as she did.
"You said you love me. Did you mean it?" He was watching her like a bird might a particularly juicy worm. Susannah had to fight not to lower her eyes.
"Perhaps. At the time." Did he look faintly disappointed?
"Only at the time?"
He was not going to let the matter go, it was clear. Susannah would have stood up and turned away, but his shirt, while a perfectly adequate cover for her person from her thighs up, left a great deal of bare leg available for his inspection. It was silly to worry about letting him see her legs, of course, when he stood before her naked as a babe and she had made shattering love with him not five minutes before, but still she couldn't help it. So she faced the matter head on.
"Does it really matter?" she asked. His lips pursed.
"Yes, it does. To me. It's a simple enough question: do you love me?"
Looking up at him, trying to think of an answer that was not quite a lie and yet almost longing to say it at last, Susannah felt her throat go dry. She was setting herself up for heartbreak again, she knew, and the pain would be worse this time than before.
"Oh, if you must have it, then yes," she said, and with the best will in the world she could not keep her eyes from dropping to the floor. She sensed rather than saw him move, and suddenly he was crouching before her, his hand lifting her chin.
"Yes, what?" He was smiling, yet not quite smiling, as he met her eyes. His hair had come loose from its confining ribbon some time during the wild night and hung loose to frame his face. His mouth curved sensuously at her, and his eyes were warm and yet oddly intent.
Just looking at him made her heart swell.
"Yes, I love you, Ian," she whispered, because she couldn't keep it secret anymore.
He smiled then, a real smile, and pinched her chin.
"Now that is interesting," he said almost casually. "Because, you see, I love you, too."
As her eyes widened and her lips parted, he suddenly wasn't in the least casual as he took her in his arms.
38
No wedding trip was ever any more blissful than the remaining three weeks of that voyage. Having thrown her cap over the windmill, Susannah gave herself to Ian body and soul. She loved him, with a fierce abiding passion that she knew would last her her whole life long. If she did not quite trust him or his protestations of love for her, well, that was something to worry about later. For now, for however long it lasted, he belonged to her, and that was enough. She didn't even miss her family or remind Ian that he had promised to send her home again the moment they docked. Instead she penned them a letter detailing some if not all that had happened and promised to return to them as soon as she could. In her happiness with Ian, she was able, if not to put them from her mind, at least to shove them to the back.
England, when they landed, was not what she had expected. For one thing, it was, as Ian had promised, cool. To one who was used to living in a land of steamy, near- tropical heat, it was downright cold. Gray fog drifted over the capital like a blanket the day they arrived in London, shrouding her view of most of that city's narrow thoroughfares. To compound the difficulty, what seemed to be thousands of chimney pots spewed thick, sooty plumes of smoke into the already lowering sky. Small black flakes of soot floated like snow through the air. What she did see was not impressive—tightly packed brick-fronted buildings, row upon row of them, with scarcely a blade of grass or a tree anywhere; crowds of people hurrying hither and yon, breaking into shrill altercations at what seemed the least cause; vendors hawking their wares in strident voices that Susannah could scarcely understand. Carriages of all sizes and descriptions filled the streets, travelling in both directions at shocking speeds with scant regard for safety. In one street, Ian called it Picca
dilly, a black phaeton with a coat of arms picked out in gold leaf on the door came so close that its wheels almost brushed that of their hired carriage, so close that Susannah jumped back, away from the window to which her nose had been pressed.
"What's the matter?" inquired Ian lazily. An indulgent smile played around his mouth as he watched her wide- eyed wonder at her first glimpse of London. Susannah saw that smile and knew that she was the source of his amusement, but beyond sticking her tongue out at him saucily she made no objection. She was enjoying herself far too thoroughly to take umbrage at him.
"That carriage—it nearly hit us!"
He glanced around her, out the window, then settled back into his former position—long legs stretched out in front of him, booted feet crossed at the ankles, head resting back against the worn velvet squab, arms raised and hands locked behind his head. He looked so handsome in that posture that Susannah almost leaned forward to drop a kiss on his mouth. But she knew if she did she faced the very real prospect of being pulled into his arms and treated to a session of heated lovemaking right there in the carriage. Ian's appetite for carnal love was very keen and aroused by the least little touch or smile, as she had learned with a great deal of interest. She had no wish to arrive at their destination—a hotel, Ian said, until he could get a few matters of business squared away—with her hair and clothing in disorder, so she contented herself with smiling at him.
"That was just Cambert. He likes to think he can drive to an inch, but in reality he is the most cow-handed clunch imaginable. You were quite right to fear that he would hit us, because he has such accidents frequently."
"Cambert?" Ian sounded as if the careless driver was well-known to him. But the carriage had obviously been horrendously expensive, and the bracket-faced driver had been clad in clothes that looked as if they had cost the earth. Certainly Susannah had never seen even the finest of the Beaufort gentlemen turned out in such style. For a man who had counted shillings and pence every step of the way on their journey to claim acquaintance with such an obviously wealthy London gentleman seemed farfetched. And yet—fool though she probably was—the silver-tongued devil almost had her convinced that he really was a marquis. Certainly she wanted to believe that—and everything else he said.
Nobody's Angel Page 29
