Imogene gasped and moaned beneath these sweet assaults.
Van Ryker was an experienced lover—she a woman made for love. And her new willingness brought out the best in him, so that for both of them their fiery joining was a thing of wonder, impassioned, overwhelming. And he—a man who had known so many women in his roving life—had in his touch this night the questing yearning, the tenderness of the man who has found the one love that will ever content him.
All of this was communicated silently to Imogene as they swayed together there on the bed, rapt and lost in the ecstasy of their joining, lost to time, aware only of each other. As their shivering bodies met and held and rippled, as their skin rasped against each other’s as smoothly as heavy silk, as they whispered words unheard and made vows unspoken, as their blood raced and they were drenched in torrents of desire and swept away on bright rivers of endless love, they became one in a way that neither of them had ever before experienced. It was a commitment more permanent than any wedding band—although both knew that too would follow. It was a pledge unspoken between man and woman, heart to heart, forever.
And when at last the fever pitch had receded and they fell away from each other, panting and spent, when she lay beside him lazily, basking in the thrill of his touch as he ran his fingers lightly over her still-pulsing body in its afterglow of wonder, Imogene found herself asking on a long-drawn sigh of contentment, “Why did you not take me with you that night in New Amsterdam at the Governor’s Ball? Then all of this need not have happened!”
“Take you?” he laughed, tormenting a nipple that quivered at his touch. “By force?”
She gave him a lustrous look. “Yes, for I was very stubborn.”
A half-smile played about his lips. “You told me you loved another man and I believed you.”
“I lied!”
“Poor Imogene.” He ruffled her fair hair tenderly. “And all I wanted was your happiness!”
She snuggled closer to him, stroked his long leg muscles. “When you did not come to Vrouw Berghem’s that night I went down to the docks to tell you I would go away with you—and found you gone.”
His countenance went blank with surprise. “You did that?” She nodded soberly. “I convinced myself I was doing it to protect my husband’s life but—now I know that was not the real reason. It was because I loved you, although I would not let myself believe it.”
His arms went round her, tightened, and a muscle in his jaw worked. “I did not know,” he said huskily. “God, how I fought myself to keep from marching to that house and breaking down the door and sailing away with you. You’ll never know what it cost me!”
“I think I do.” Imogene sighed, a soft smouldering sigh that promised much. Tomorrow on Tortuga there would be such a wedding as befitted its leading buccaneer captain—a wedding procession beneath an arched corridor of raised cutlasses—and the bride would give herself away! Tomorrow all Tortuga would drink their health. But tonight . . . tonight a woman who had made so many mistakes in her short life would count her blessings and take to her arms the one man made for her alone.
She gave van Ryker a slanted look. “I think I was meant to die on the ice, ” she told him. “God gave me a second chance—he gave me you.” Her voice was rich and sweet and van Ryker looked wonderingly at this new, softer Imogene. Out of the reckless girl had been born a lovely woman, the woman of all his dreams.
She turned toward him in luxurious abandon, rolled over on a soft naked hip and felt her breasts brush against his heavy chest muscles, felt a small surge of triumph as those muscles contracted at the soft sudden pressure of her body. She laid her arm gently across him and stroked his forearm. “Van Ryker, is it not a wondrous heaven that has brought us together at last?”
Van Ryker looked away and studied the wall decorations of this room hung with Spanish hangings, Spanish maps, Spanish weapons—all of them taken by the force of his arms. He thought of all his contriving, the wrongs he had done to Stephen Linnington and—yes, to this woman so dear to him who lay pliant and loving beside him. Why, he had taken her as any prowling pirate ship might encircle and seize an enemy vessel! And after all he had done to her—she had come to love him! He felt humbled by the warmth of her smile.”
“I do not deserve my heaven,” he said huskily. “But I am glad to have it all the same.”
Suddenly she sat up, brought her hand to her mouth with a little cry. “Stephen!” she gasped. “He will go through life thinking he is tied to that woman! He does not know it was only a fake marriage.”
“He knows,” said van Ryker coolly. “For I told him myself when I had him flung onto a ship bound for Barbados.” There was a long pause.
“You—told him?” she asked slowly. “And he did not return to me?” Her pride was shaken.
“It would seem he has another love in Barbados. Her name is Bess Duveen.”
“ ‘Bess’?” Her breath drew in with a gasp. And then, thoughtfully, “Yes, of course it would be Bess. She always loved him, from that first moment. I did not know until she wrote me of his ‘death.’ And now he will return to her—they can marry!”
“He said that was what he had in mind.”
Imogene looked into that smiling saturnine face, seeing it all—all the contriving, all that van Ryker had done to bring her willing into his arms. Had ever man done more? she asked herself. She watched him as he lay on his back with his arms folded comfortably behind his head, his naked form long and lithe and competent and completely relaxed, his forearms and a deep V down his lightly furred chest burned bronze by the hot Caribbean sun. How many times had he lain beside her and she had hated him—even while she thrilled to his caresses?
“Van Ryker,” she said, marveling. “You knew me better than I knew myself. And yet you took a long chance with me.”
“I am given to long chances.”
“But I might have killed you—in a burst of anger when you told me to take up the sword and told me how you had tricked me!”
“ ’Twas a chance I had to take, Imogene. And if you had killed me—well, a Spanish bullet might do that any day.” His gray eyes were reckless and alight. “I counted well the cost, and deemed the odds to be slightly in my favor.”
“You gambled your life for me,” she said gently. And then, more briskly, “Van Ryker, you have taken me as you would a Spanish prize!”
He studied her narrowly. “And do you still think heaven brought us together?”
She was looking into his face—like him, at heart a rover—a rover who had come home.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I think you were sent to me—that I might love you. Always.” And as she buried her face in the sinewy rippling muscles of his deep chest, she remembered long ago asking the tall standing stones they called Adam and Eve to send her a lover. And who was to say they had not sent her this bold breathless love that would be with her to her dying breath? The lean buccaneer clutched her to him and smiled down upon her bent golden head with a tenderness that changed and lit up his dark face. He had gambled his life for this woman—and he had won.
It was all that he would ever ask of heaven.
Epilogue
Unknown to all or them, the ship Wilhelmina had put in at Bermuda for water before proceeding to the Bahamas, and Elise—whose real identity had been discovered on board—had fled the ship there, taking Georgiana with her. Neither of them had gone down with the Wilhelmina. Imogene had shed her tears for those who still lived. She well deserved the happiness she had found at last.
But that night, on the Sea Rover’s rolling deck, Barnaby Swift, who made the ship his home, looked landward and saw the lights of a certain house on Tortuga being extinguished. He raised his glass, and being a sometime poet and slightly drunk, he proposed a toast to the moon. For it was such a night, with the scented wind blowing across the shining deck and phosphorescence silvering the sea.
A toast to the wine of endeavor,
A toast to the worlds we have won.
&nb
sp; Forever and ever and ever
May her golden hair shine in the sun!
Bold Breathless Love Page 47
