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She rushed into her waiting coach, chased by the reality that her association with Captain Warre was finally over, and that Papa’s best friend would shortly become her husband.
But she had barely settled against the seat before the door wrenched open again and Captain Warre lurched inside as the coach pulled away. Her heart thrilled at the sight of him for one beat, then two, before a cruel hand reached into her chest and squeezed hard.
“Suppose you tell me about this ‘offer’ William made to you, and about the ‘solution’ with Deal that makes it unnecessary.”
Heartache spread like fire. She couldn’t have smiled if she wanted to. “Instead, suppose you explain why you chose to waylay my coach instead of paying a call.”
“What solution?”
She couldn’t discuss this with him—not when she knew he looked with pity on her time with Mejdan. Not when she could barely stand the sinking feeling of leading herself into captivity even as everything inside her wanted something more.
“As you saw for yourself last night,” she said, deliberately addressing the first part of his question instead of the second, “William was drunk. And anyhow, not even the soberest offer of marriage from William could ever be serious. Surely you know him well enough to agree.”
“I would have thought so.”
“A ship can only have one captain, after all.” She reminded him of his own words. “And William is not anxious to place himself under a woman’s command.”
The corners of his eyes creased, but only just. “Understandably so. I had the impression this offer was serious, however, because he feared the alternative.”
“For no good reason. The committee only confirmed what I’ve suspected and what I imagine you’ve known—that marriage would put a quick end to all this. I can’t believe you have any objection, as news of my engagement will certainly release you from your debt to me.”
Something deadly flashed in his eyes, but he merely shrugged. “Interesting plan.”
It hurt too much to look at him, so she turned her face to the window. This was not the way to her house. “Where are we going?” she asked sharply.
“I’ve ordered your coachman to take a detour through the countryside.”
Her breath turned shallow. “And your own coach?”
“Sent it home.”
“I see.” Dangerous possibilities careened through her imagination. Dangerous yearnings. “I don’t suppose you know of anyone looking for a wife?” she said, because Captain Warre on the defensive was so much easier to deal with.
“Not anyone willing to face the blade of your cutlass every time he wishes to bed you.”
The look in his eyes said clearly that he would find her cutlass no obstacle. Heat flooded her most secret places. “But, Captain, what kind of wife would I be if I did not allow my husband to bed me whenever he wishes?” It was imperative to keep him at arm’s length, because every part of her wanted to be in his arms. The reaction in his eyes was exactly what she’d hoped for. “And I intend to be a most dutiful wife,” she added, just to goad him. “In fact, I doubt my cutlass will play much of a role in the marriage at all. I don’t plan to marry a man who requires such measures to form, shall we say, a meeting of the minds.”
“Only the feeblest man would fit that specification.” The moment the words were out, he narrowed his eyes. “Good God. That’s precisely what you’re thinking, isn’t it. This ‘solution’ William objects to—you’re planning to marry someone too old to care about your reputation or your fortune, who will soon leave you safely widowed. Good God.” He stared hard now. “You’re going to marry Deal.”
She hadn’t wanted him to find out until after she’d left for Scotland. “You make it sound so mercenary.”
“It’s nothing if not that. Bloody hell.” His eyes turned that familiar stormy green. “No wonder William renewed his offer. I would offer for you myself to keep you from such a disgusting plan.”
A horrible pain caught her in the chest even though his cruel words only confirmed what she already knew. “And I would refuse you as I refused him.” And wouldn’t he be relieved.
It was impossible to look at him without an assault of memories: his mouth on fire against hers, his hands burning her flesh, his words giving her strength when she’d had none. The keening inside her broke into a silent wail.
He leaned across the coach, his mouth set in a grim line. “I’ll not allow you to throw yourself like a bone to some old limpstaff who doesn’t deserve you.” A simmering fury in his eyes told her he was imagining Lord Deal in her marriage bed. His face was inches from hers, so close she could see the flecks of brown in his green eyes. So close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her lips. She wanted to taste them, just one more time. Just once, she would have liked to give everything to a man she chose.
“If I intend to have a legitimate heir, I can’t afford to waste my time with a limpstaff,” she scoffed, goading him. “Rest assured I will make sure of Lord Deal’s virility before the marriage takes place.”
“Bloody hell.” It was the last thing he said before he pulled her to him and kissed her. His mouth was brutal, punishing, and the taste of him poured across her tongue like heaven. “Half of London lays awake at night thinking about how to get between your thighs,” he said against her lips. “I want to kill every last one of them.”
His possessiveness made her shudder. “There’s no need, Captain. None of them will succeed.”
* * *
THEY MIGHT NOT, but James would succeed, and he was through waiting.
He half stood and leaned across the coach, pulling her to him more forcefully than he meant to, crushing his mouth down on hers again to drink the heady taste of her. She responded instantly, and his body surged. Her lips were soft, and her tongue slid across his like velvet, stoking the fire inside him. A small voice whispered no, this wasn’t the place, but then her hands touched his face and the rush of blood in his veins silenced the warning.
He had the preservative in his pocket, and this torment would end here. Now.
The coach jolted and he fell back to his seat, taking her with him in a mass of skirts that drowned his legs. The cold sheath of the cutlass hidden inside all that fabric tapped his leg, but she would have no desire to use it. He would see to that.
He invaded her mouth more and more deeply, trying to get enough of her, but it was impossible. Her scent drove him mad. He kissed her throat and neck, ran his tongue along her jaw. “I want you at my command, Katherine,” he breathed against her ear, knowing full well the effect it would have, and she did not disappoint.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “I will be at no man’s command ever again—” he nipped the base of her neck and she gasped “—Captain.”
That was up for debate, but one thing was sure: he was through being “Captain” to her. He pushed her gown off her shoulders and slipped his hands inside her stays, freeing her breasts. Christ, the sight of their creamy perfection nearly pushed him over the edge. They were proud like she was, sitting high over the top of the stays, and their round softness filled his hands. Puckered, dusky areolas bewitched him and he took one in his mouth, sucking hard, satisfied when her head fell back on a ragged gasp. He pulled with his lips, nipped with his teeth, rolled her between his fingers until she was clinging to him, breathless and crying out with need.
He was so hard he could barely think. Her fingers dug into his hair, holding him to her breasts one moment, sliding down and gripping his shoulders the next. She was half-crazed, fire in his arms, and he had to touch her. Madly he yanked at her skirts until he freed her legs and had her seated open-thighed across his lap. He reached behind her, fighting yards of fabric to find her skin. His hands skimmed across silky buttocks, and he found home between her thighs. She was wet. Hot. He pushed one finger inside her, then two. Her opening constricted around him.
“Touch me, Katherine,” he rasped, but she was already there. Her hands moved over the front of his breeches—too slow, too soft. His breeches were so tight it hurt. Ah, God—he undid the fastening and his erection sprang into her hands and he groaned. Her fingers tightened around him and he fought for control, gasping into her mouth on a kiss deeper than the ocean. Faster, deeper he stroked her. It wasn’t enough. He needed more—needed to be inside her. When her hands slid down his shaft and cupped his sac, he snapped.
He withdrew his fingers and grasped her buttocks, kissing her hard as he lifted her over him. He felt his erection breach her opening. Felt her tight heat swallow the rest of him in one, hard stroke when he pushed inside her. Ah, God—God—
He couldn’t go slow. She cried out against his lips, but he devoured the sound with his kiss and thrust into her hard and then harder, fast and then faster. Finally she was his. His. And still it wasn’t enough. Her hips matched his savage rhythm, taking him to the hilt with every thrust, but he wanted more. He wanted every bloody thing she had.
She panted against his mouth, clinging to him. He looked at her lips, wet and swollen from his kiss. Fixed his gaze on those half-closed topaz eyes, drunk now with desire. And then he felt her begin to tighten around him and knew he was about to make her come to her peak.
He drove into her even harder. “Katherine,” he rasped. Ah, God—he watched her face as the pleasure took her and she tightened around him harder, harder, convulsing in waves around his shaft.
Her fingers gripped his shoulders. “James!”
And that was all it took. The sound of his name on her lips drove him over the edge. He dug his hands into her buttocks and surrendered, buried deep inside her. The release ripped through his body and into hers and left him mindless. Voiceless.
And still—still—it wasn’t enough to satisfy him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#ulink_667cb977-e2c5-5957-a898-f4627d66dc21)
KATHERINE SHUDDERED, GRIPPED by waves of pleasure so intense they entirely controlled her. She tried to think, tried to regain her senses, but they’d been lost—stolen, along with her breath.
She’d never known.
She closed her eyes and felt herself pulse around him tightly. Intimately. Felt him throb in reaction.
“Never known what?” he asked in a rough, throaty voice, and she realized with dismay she’d breathed the words out loud.
Another shudder, this one less intense. She opened her eyes, only to have her gaze land in the space between them where her bare breasts jutted out above her stays.
“Nothing,” she said, unwilling to let him know how much of what they had just done had been new. He expected her to be experienced—assumed she was, and there was no reason to let him suspect how little she really knew.
His hands closed possessively over her breasts, and his thumbs circled her nipples. The touch sent pure pleasure shooting down through her belly, straight to the place where their bodies were joined. His eyes were dark and on fire as he watched his hands move against her flesh. “Never known what?” he asked again.
Instead of answering, she inhaled deeply and let the breath push her breasts closer to him. The distraction worked. His mouth closed around one distended nipple and she let her head fall back again. The female breast, she’d learned, carried much power.
This is Captain Warre, a voice reminded her, as though it mattered anymore. Captain Warre. It didn’t matter. Soon enough he would be another part of her past. She would be married to Lord Deal, and there would be no reason to see Captain Warre again.
He didn’t have to know that here, in the privacy of her own thoughts, she had just given herself to him in a way she would never give herself to another man as long as she lived. This was for herself, and nobody could ever take it away from her.
It was enough. It would have to be.
Already she could feel him stirring inside her, and already her pleasure began to build again. He nipped her with his teeth, and she gasped. His touch, the fire between her legs—she may as well have been a virgin for all she’d known about passion. She tried rocking against him and had the satisfaction of hearing him groan against her breast. He moved inside her, suckling and thrusting at the same time, and she barely recognized her own ragged cry.
He may have been Captain Warre. But here, now, in the secrecy of her coach with his body joined with hers, he was simply James, and his passion was madness. She put her hands on his face. Traced the bridge of his nose, the angle of his cheekbones. With that unruly, silver-streaked hair, those green eyes, those arrogant brows—he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. And he was inside her.
She felt his rough jaw beneath her palms and the soft give of his lips beneath her touch. Watched him take her fingertip into his mouth, felt his tongue circle it hotly while below he withdrew a little, then pushed deep, filling her completely. The penetration touched her very core.
His thrusts grew more powerful. Deeper. Faster. Instinctively she braced her knees into the seat cushion, lifting her hips and pushing herself down as he drove his shaft up. He let her finger go and used his mouth elsewhere to bruise her lips, bite her neck, ravage her breasts. She raked her fingers into that glorious hair, dug into those powerful shoulders. He commanded her now, despite everything, and the pure pleasure of him washed over her like waves crashing over a deck.
She heard herself whisper his name, then gasp it louder as the urgency began to build. It was happening—the pressure inside her that fought for release anew. He leaned his head back, and suddenly she was staring into those green eyes at the same time as she drove herself down on him.
“James—”
“Yes—” The word hissed from his lips. “Ah, Katherine.”
And then that explosion of bliss took her, only this time she was looking into his eyes when her body clenched around his throbbing erection, squeezing him so tight she could feel every pulse.
“Katherine,” he breathed again, the cords in his neck taut, his hands gripping her bottom. She could tell he hadn’t found his release again—not yet. He leaned forward, kissing her breasts, the base of her throat, the curve where her neck met her shoulder, where he nipped and suckled her skin until she gasped with the sting of it. He pulled her against him and kissed his way to her jaw, her ear. “Katherine, marry me,” he whispered into it.
Everything inside her went still. “What?”
He nipped her earlobe, played his hands over her bare buttocks, lightly stroking a finger over their cleft so that she could hardly think beyond the feathery touch. “Marry me,” he said again, this time against her lips. His tongue slipped between them, simulating the intimacy they still shared below.
Marry? Instinctively she twined her tongue around his, drinking the taste of him even as she grew keenly aware of the complete, utter way he possessed her—his tongue in her mouth, his arms around her body, his hard length buried between her thighs as she’d ridden him the way a ship rode a storm.
A ship can only have one captain...
And he was proving, at this precise moment, that he would be that captain. A sharp, painful regret lodged somewhere behind her heart. “No,” she said into his mouth.
His hands stilled on her buttocks. “Don’t be a fool, Katherine.” He kissed her again and groaned, and again his hands moved on her skin, his fingers seeking and finding that place where they were joined. “It would solve everything.” His voice was rough. Languid.
“Where one problem would be solved, a dozen more would appear.” It was hard to think with his tongue caressing her lips. “More the fool, you, for thinking anything different, Captain.”
His face turned to stone. “I won’t be ‘Captain’ to you—not anymore.” He looked at her with his eyes on fire.
James. She straddled him with his erection thick inside her, more vulnerable to him now than she’d been ten years ago when he’d let fly with his cannons. He didn’t understand, and he never would.
His gaze raked over her face, swept across her breasts and shot back to her eyes, unsatisfied. He began to move inside her, pushing up with a long, heavy stroke. “I want to hear my name on your lips, Katherine. Say it again.”
She did, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to repeat it two, five, ten times. Instead, she kissed him and met his thrusts with her hips.
After today there would be no reason to ever say his name at all.
* * *
THE MADDEST OF mad dashes from her carriage to the house should have been enough to protect her, but the clop and creak of a coach and four left no time for escape and Katherine knew, even as she rushed past Dodd so quickly she nearly knocked him over, that her tryst with James in the carriage was as good as discovered.
“Katherine!” Phil’s voice called out, still a few houses away.
Hang it all, Phil needed a quiet domestic hobby very, very badly. With a desperate tug Katherine pulled her cloak’s hood more tightly over her horribly dislodged hair and tried to make it up the stairs before Phil could get to the doorway.
“Katherine!”
Like a burglar caught in the act she froze on the landing and turned—just a little—as Phil swept past Dodd into the house. In the center of the entrance hall Phil stopped and looked up. “For heaven’s sake, Katherine, did you not hear me calling?”
The entire neighborhood had likely heard her calling. “What is it, Phil? I’m feeling ill and I need to lie down.”
“Dearest, of course you’re feeling ill. I heard what happened and I’ve called twice to see you already—did you not come directly home?” She came to the foot of the stairs. “Tell me you haven’t done anything rash.”
Katherine swallowed a hysterical laugh. The soft flesh between her thighs felt sweetly raw and damp, and her still-sensitive nipples pressed tightly inside her stays. Her entire body thrummed with sensations that nothing in her past—except that fiery encounter in her cabin—had prepared her for. Rash? No, she hadn’t done anything rash.
“I had to speak with Lord Deal,” she said.
“Not about marriage. Please tell me not about marriage.”
“About traveling to Scotland. Now please, Phil, I really do need a rest. My head aches like the devil.” She started up the second flight of stairs and hoped Phil would let her go. It was not to be.
“Something’s happened.”
“Of course something’s happened,” Katherine snapped. “I’ve been all but ordered to marry.” Good God, now Phil was climbing the stairs after her. “I told you my head aches and I need to rest before it’s time to dress for Lady Effy’s.” God help her, she didn’t know how she would meet James’s eyes tonight after what they’d done.
“What you need—” somehow Phil managed to fly up the stairs twice as quickly as Katherine “—is to tell me whatever you’re not telling me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Rubbish.”
Pit her against a shipload of bloodthirsty corsairs, or a gale that pushed thirty-foot swells over her deck, and she had courage aplenty. But confess to Phil what she’d done in the carriage? That was another matter entirely. She strode toward her rooms as though they would provide some kind of safety.
“Are you all right?” Phil asked, all concern as, naturally, she followed Katherine into her dressing room. “Have you been crying?”
“Certainly not.” Blast it all, the looking glass on the dressing table was right there, letting Phil see her face. She turned, but there was nowhere to hide.
“Are you sure? Katherine, your hair! I can see from here that it’s—”
“Enough!” Katherine turned, finally facing Phil. Anger surged through her but fizzled into something weak and soft and suddenly she feared maybe she would cry.
