by Kate Pearce
“You’re sure?” he asked quietly, as he dropped a kiss on the skin of her shoulder.
“Yes.” There was no other answer. She wouldn’t allow there to be.
“Long, tall Tressa Teague.” He laid her down upon the blanket before he stretched out next to her, drawing her torso flush with his, letting his hands skim lightly over the length of her body, up and down her arms, around her face and into her hair. Each touch, each whisper of his breath along her skin, wound down through her belly until the sweet tension coiled throughout her body.
He speared his fingers through her hair, unraveling her messy braid and spreading the long strands out around her head. He buried his face in it, inhaling deeply.
Which for some reason made her smile into the dark. “I’m sure I smell of gunpowder and tar.”
“You smell of danger and excitement,” he countered at her ear. “And you taste of—” He kissed her deeply. “You taste of cleverness and loyalty, which is the sweetest taste there is.”
She could only smile at so silly and so sweet a comparison. “Better than brandy?”
His fingers traced the contour of her lips. “Better than everything.”
He was so tender under all that brash, careless charm. She thought he might say something else, but after a long moment he simply closed his eyes and breathed deeply, before he kissed her again, with slower, more careful kisses, taking his time and relaxing into her embrace. Tressa’s eyes fluttered closed as she gave herself over to the pleasure. Matthew’s hands heated her wherever they touched, gliding over the curve of her hip and smoothing down and around her bottom.
His lips were at her ear, even as his hands cupped her, the words the same evocative murmur. “My sweet Tressa. So true.”
She needed little else to inflame her—the heat of his hands, the touch of his tongue at her ear, all set the inexorable tide of passion rising within her. She felt the strong bone structure of his handsome face beneath her palms, the strength of his passion for life. And for her.
She was no so naive as to think she was the only woman he had ever loved, but she was the woman he was loving now. He was magnificent, with his blazing red hair and deep blue eyes. He was the man she had chosen—and was choosing now.
Tressa ran her fingers up the sides of his temples to trace the faint lines of his scowl, so familiar and dear to her now. Her hands delved into his windswept hair, traced the shape of his skull, and down the strong cords of muscles in his neck as she pulled herself back up to his mouth.
She wanted to be closer, to discover everything there was to know about him. She slanted her mouth across his, deepening the kiss. She wanted and needed to feel the heat of his skin next to hers, to feel the comforting strength of his body wrap around her. To choose her. To need her.
When their tongues met and tangled in her mouth, Tessa gasped aloud with the sheer joy of the sensations streaking across her skin like lightning. Even her hands felt hot and tingly as she ran them over his body, so different from her own. His skin was warm and inviting, his chest was sprinkled with hair that lightly abraded the sensitive tips of her fingers and palms.
Her breathing shifted into audible pants that should have embarrassed her, but she was beyond embarrassment, beyond even the recall of reason. Matthew was here, with her, and she would have him now. Now, before anything or anyone else could come between them, or stop them. She would have this one perfect night, so she could live off its memory for years to come.
Tressa trailed her hands down his long torso, to the edge of his small clothes, growing anxious to hurry him along.
“I should have shucked those despite your delicate sensibilities,” he growled as he levered himself off her. “We both should have. Come.”
He came onto his knees beside her. “I want to undress you properly. And make love to you properly with the morning light streaming through the stern gallery, lighting up your skin. But this will do just as well. Even better.”
She had nothing left of modesty—she went straight to the ties at his waist, grazing her fingers across the growing bulge at the apex of his thighs.
“Handsomely, now, Teague,” he murmured, on a low laugh, covering her hands with his own, and guiding her hands to clasp him firmly. “Slowly, love. We have all night.”
“We do not,” she contradicted him on a kiss. “We may be discovered at any moment.”
“Then we had best be very, very quiet while we bring each other to perfect ecstasy.”
Ecstasy—it sounded like a faraway island she would never find without a map. She wished in that moment for a map of his body, a topographical study of the intriguing ridge of muscle that ran along his hips and disappeared beneath his breeches.
She slid her hands down along the muscled path to the button flap, and he growled, “You are a curious lass, aren’t you?” He kissed her again. “I like curious. I like naked and curious even better.”
He illustrated his delightful point by undoing the buttons at the back of her dress, and helping the fabric to fall with a shush to her waist. “Better,” he whispered as he traced the sensitive undersides of her breasts, before his hands settled to untie her front-lacing stays. “And better still. So practical and well-reasoned, Teague.”
She smiled even as she kissed him—he would make her laugh even as he made love.
Tressa helped him along, shimmying out of the stays before she reached for the bottom of her shift and shucked it over her head without a moment of consciousness.
“Best.” He brushed his palm lightly across her tight nipples, first one breast and then the other, until she felt her flesh contract into an almost painful burst of bliss.
She gasped and arched her back, pressing herself forward into his hands, even as she put her own hands to work. “Now you. Because I think I’m going to like naked, too.”
Chapter 18
She was such a woman for him—making him laugh even as she made his cock press heedlessly against the thin cover of his small clothes. He wanted this marvelous girl so badly, he hoped to hell he could shuck them off in time. He had anticipated a slow seduction but devil take him if she wasn’t his equal in this as in all things. “Handsomely now,” he murmured again, but she liked her own way, and the moment he had pushed his small clothes clear of his hips, she had him in hand.
He used his groan of satisfaction to run the edge of his tongue lightly across the sweet peak of her nipple, wetting the lovely tight bud before he abruptly nipped, abrading the sensitive flesh against the sharp edge of his teeth.
She cried out in pleasure, her eyes clenched shut tight to absorb the intense sensation, so he rasped the other peak while his hand dove down across the sleek scoop of her belly and into the nest of soft curls between her soft thighs. “And there is best of all.”
He covered her gasp with his mouth, taking pleasure in the panting sounds of pleasure that rose with each shallow, rapid breath.
He lifted her with one hand around her back, setting her gloriously long legs to wrap around his waist, wreathing him in the scent and feel of her. She held him tight, as if he were the only solid thing in a sea of flotsam.
Matthew tumbled them onto the blanket and rose over her, running his free hand all the way down her endless legs, kneading the straining muscles rhythmically until she caught the rhythm and began to move her hips in time, riding his hand as it covered her mound.
“Handsomely now.” He slowly slid one long finger inside and felt her inner muscles close around him, hot and slick and delicious. She was close—so close he could feel her pulsating.
God’s balls. Matthew sent up the blasphemous prayer as he leaned over her body to cover her with his weight. To glory in feeling all of her at once.
She planted her feet against the blanket and pressed upward again as he moved his finger within her, prompting him to move above her, soothing her rising need with the press of his body. He kissed her deeply, his tongue tangling with hers in rhythm with his hands, and when she subsided, he e
ased another long finger alongside the first. A rush of heat and desire ripped into his gut at the scalding heat of her passage as it closed tightly around his fingers. He tried to move them slightly, to stretch her just a little bit more, so she would be ready for him.
Tressa let out a gloriously breathy moan and her hips rose off the ground with the gentle pulse of his fingers. She was so bloody close, and he concentrated on grazing his thumb every so lightly against the sensitive nub shielded by her sweet flesh. She arched wildly one last time and he swallowed her cry as her climax shuddered through her.
Matthew kissed her again and slowly withdrew his hands from her body. She was glorious. He lay next to her and took pleasure watching what little he could see of her face as she drifted on the ebbing tide of her ecstasy.
Her shattered breathing began to slow and ease, gradually returning toward normal, but he wasn’t done with her yet. Not by a long, long shot. Fate had been both persistent and kind in delivering her to him, and he was damn well going to make the most of the opportunity.
Matthew wanted her so badly he ached. For her, this long, tall drink of girl in his arms, and he wanted to make the most of the precious time he had with her. The devil only knew what might come of his rapidly changing plans—the plans he didn’t yet know if he could bring to fruition.
But she was here, now, and they were together, and she was gloriously naked. And she was his and no one else’s.
He kissed her again, and again his hands delved into the silky glory of her hair, sliding across his palms. He meant to kiss her lightly, to give her time to recover, but she stirred and nuzzled delightfully at his throat, and his lust and his cock rose with each supple stir of her body, every subtle friction of her skin against his.
Merciless devil, but he couldn’t wait another moment to have her.
He kissed her more deeply as he settled firmly between her legs, pushing her legs wide with his knees, as he guided himself into her welcoming flesh.
“Easy. Slowly, love.” he whispered, though there was nothing easy about it—he was nothing but barely controlled impulse.
He gave in to the need to taste her, taking her nipple into his mouth in a way that made her throw her head back and gasp into the night.
And damned if he wasn’t smiling, too. His hand replaced his mouth at her breast when Tressa pulled his mouth up to hers, kissing him back, sliding her tongue with his as if she wanted the taste, and the smell and the feel of him around her just as much as he wanted her.
Her body began to move in response to his, her hips shifting languorously beneath him. He pressed up higher on his arms, taking his weight off her, and flexed his hip muscles against her.
“Oh, better, Kent.” She breathed his name as if it were a prayer. “Better still.”
Tressa arched into him, and he lowered his head to her breast, suckling her in time with the pulse of his body into her center. She closed her eyes and ran her hands up his arms, kneading the bunched muscles there and across his chest, making him heedless and happy, drunk on her delirious bliss.
“Do that again.”
“This?” She ran her hands across his chest again, slower this time, her fingers tracing over his nipples in imitation of the way he had touched hers. “Do you like that?”
“Aye.” He rose higher upon his knees, pulling her tight against him before he let go of her hips, and molded his hands to cup her breasts. He flicked the tight peaks with his callused thumbs.
A carnal sound of encouragement and need broke from her mouth as her eyes crashed shut.
He felt it too, the crashing wave of pleasure pooling deep into his belly. His breath began to saw in and out of his chest, and his vision began to narrow until there was nothing else but her. Her beauty. Her body. Her bliss.
He wanted to hold her again, to feel her energy, the heat of her desire, so he ran his hands down over her hips and around to her bottom, tracing the swift curve of her sweet arse with his palms, kneading her flesh as he rose up upon his knees. He surged into her, stronger and stronger, feeding the need, stoking the fiery heat that built where their bodies touched.
Matthew felt her slipping away, losing herself to the inexorable whirl of sensations. She clutched at his arms, trying to anchor herself against the relentless onslaught of pressure and pleasure, even as she planted her feet flat against the blanket and angled her body higher.
The pleasure was so intense it was almost pain, almost a burden to hold back. Matthew felt for his coat beside her head, and stuffed it under her bottom, leveraging her up.
She made a sound of appreciative approval, and pushed her thighs higher, clutching at his arms to anchor herself. And in answer, he drove the breath from both of their lungs with the simple efficacy of lifting her legs flat against his chest.
And there she was, all sinuous passion and beauty before him. “This, Teague. This is best.” All feeling, all sensation, all emotion converged into the bone deep feeling of ecstasy. “You are best.”
Chapter 19
The sharp, aching pleasure bolted back through Tressa. She heard a low keening moan and knew it came from her, that it was a sound of approval as much as distress, because it felt so good, too good—a pleasure so intense she could not escape it.
But Matthew was a vision of power and male beauty. She watched his hands round to her hips and pull her up high against him. She felt a jolt of such intense, joyous pleasure streak through her, and something inside, some last vestige of reason or restraint came untethered and ran riot. Some heady, insistent, intoxicating mixture of greed and joy that rose higher with each escalating thrust.
She watched him, rising above her with such intensity that her heart felt joined to his. She felt him, apart from her and yet in her all at the same time, and she knew in that instant what it meant to be undone—to let go of every last tie to reason, and give way to the glorious physical wash of upending emotion that shot through her.
She closed her eyes and felt him stroke his hand down her belly, into the thatch of curls crowning her body where they were joined. He teased his fingers through the hair, then slipped his fingers lower, ever so slightly lower, to the sensitive engorged flesh below.
Tressa cried out again. It was too much and not enough all at the same time. She had to move, to do more. To find the last drop of ecstasy that was just out of reach. And Matthew wanted to find it too—he pulled her back hard against him, holding her hips still against him as he surged inside her.
He held her so—so that something changed and sharpened, and it felt so, so good, so incredibly pleasurable that Tressa felt as if she was dissolving into a hundred different pieces of bliss.
But instead of dissolving, she shattered. Falling to a hundred pieces of exquisite pleasure. And he clasped his mouth to hers just as she screamed.
Pink and grey dawn slanted under the edge of the dory and pierced his eyelids.
Damn his eyes, was it actually morning? How had he slept through the cold and the storm? Well, he had been occupied with the warm bundle of contradictions spooned against him under the haphazard heapings of clothes and cloak.
The warm bundle of contradictions who was awake and looking at him with an embarrassed sort of happy satisfaction.
He smiled, reaching out to gather her to him. “Morning, sweet Teague.”
“Hello, my captain.” Her smile was everything in his world.
Except that they were far from the world they needed to return to. “Let us bestir ourselves so I can take my turn at saving us this morning.”
“About time.” She sorted through the heap of clothes covering them. “Heavens, but it’s cold.”
Matthew peered out into the unusually bright morning, and hastened to dress himself so he could find what lay outside their cozy shelter. “The storm brought a heavy frost—no, it’s ice.”
While they had been heating themselves with love, the storm had brought a rime of ice that coated the shoreline in a brittle casing. “At least it should keep the s
oldiers in their barracks.”
Tressa followed him out. “Tide’s on the rise.” Her words curled into wisps in the cold air over her head. “I think we should take the blanket, and head across the dunes for the other boat. It has some food—apples and cheese and ale—although they might be frozen.”
“Teague, how am I to take my turn to save us, if you will keep using that superior brain of yours?” But he carefully stowed the pistol in his belt, folded up the blanket and tucked it under his arm before he took her hand. “Though I am following your superior plan, I will insist on the navigation—this way.”
He led them at a slow run, lest anyone from the fort be raking the coast with a spyglass looking for anything amiss. If they did see them, Matthew hoped they would only see two lovers out for a morning tryst.
And to lend veracity to his imagined scenario, he stopped and kissed her—a lovely soft, sighing kiss of sweet morning desire. “I cannot wait to get you on the other side of this channel, Teague, and all to myself in a comfortable, warm bed.”
“Then we had better keep moving if we’re to make it that far, Captain.”
It was the work of another thirteen minutes to locate the boat and drag it across the beach to where the high tide was cresting. “Get in before you get your feet wet, Teague. And that’s an order.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Tressa hopped nimbly over the low rail, muttering, “I’d much rather take the tiller and captain the boat than try to captain you.”
“Get in,” Matthew growled, following her into the boat before the water could get higher than his boots—after last night’s frigid dunking Matthew was loath to get that wet and cold again. A sailor was far more likely to perish from exposure than he was from a cannonball.
But Tressa kept him from getting wet by her efficient competence—she already had the mast stepped and the sail filling with wind by the time he was seated in the sternsheets. All he had to do was take up the tiller and head them straight into the cold, blue-grey waves.
