Safe in the Earl's Arms

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‘There’s no bigger cabin, except Ben’s,’ he told her, ‘and he is captain, so it’s rather hard to shove him out through the door.’

‘I’m... This is fine.’ She dropped to her knees, pulling the top covers in place and brushing her hand across them. She lowered her chin. ‘You know I’m not... The ship is moving more and...’ She touched her stomach.

He knelt, reaching out for her shoulder, feeling the roughness of the sleeve. ‘Melina—if you’ve any compassion at all, try to keep from being ill for a bit longer. I can... But with the storm coming and...’

She pulled back. ‘This is not the storm?’

He’d said the wrong thing. ‘A few raindrops. Ben thinks we’ll sail through without a bobble.’

The ship heaved and she moved backwards, sliding with the makeshift bed. He shifted with the momentum, putting his arm around her and arranging so his back was to the wall and he held her at his side. He felt stronger than any wave—but she didn’t.

A blast of anger hit him. The fates—he knew them well, they were his bedfellows—they were conspiring again. They thrust another wave against the ship and he held her tight, seeing the press of her lips.

He was not some rutting beast—and she would still be here tomorrow—assuming they didn’t die in the storm.

Warrington stood, extinguished the wick and looked to the window. He had no time to get a hammer and nail a covering over the opening so the flashes of lightning wouldn’t illuminate and accentuate the discordance outside.

He’d been graced with this woman whose ancestors could have been from Thessaly, where mythology began, and he would not be allowed to touch her. Lightning wove gold threads into her hair, but illuminated the pallor of her skin and reminded him she didn’t feel well.

At least on deck he would be forced into thinking of staying alive. He reached to the door, but her voice stopped him.

‘Please,’ she said, and touched the bed beside her. ‘The ship shakes so. I don’t want to be alone. I feel better with you near. Here.’

Lightning kept flashing through the glass—giving her a mythical glow, freezing the unmoving image of her into his mind, painting her like a statue, a work of art.

The intensity of her gaze caused him to stare—her eyes clear as a harvest moon, surrounded by lashes dipped in the flashing light. He dropped to his knees, landing beside her, entranced by the flickers of lightning on her skin. He swept his finger over her bottom lip. Now he knew what magic felt like. His skin tingled with anticipation.

More thunder crashed. He heard a crack of lightning. With the sounds, and the sight of her, sensual energy surged in him, heating him until an internal maelstrom engulfed him. The memories he made tonight would some day take on larger-than-life images in his mind. Melina, different from all he’d seen before, and all he’d see again, would remain in his thoughts—like a precious gem hidden away in a safe. A secret only for himself to have.

A wave tilted the ship and she wrenched her body around, clasping the front of his shirt. She buried her head against him and he held her.

‘Have you ever been in seas this rough?’ she asked.

Lightning crackled much too close. The very air could not be still, as if it had an awareness of their moments, and told them to hurry, hurry, hurry, and grasp every second of sensation.

He ran his fingertips across her back, and the lightest touch of his hand against her took his breath. The fierce waters faded from his mind.

When he could speak, he said, ‘Once is too many times. I didn’t tell you before. Suspected you’d worry if you realised how brutal the waves can be when the sun heats the water in the day and the storms take us at night.’

He pulled his coat front aside, sliding into a sitting position, and then tucked the garment around her back, hugging her inside with him. ‘This ship was built to handle such weather and the men are the best sailors in the world. Nothing will happen.’ Assuming the repairs held and the storm did not get too violent.

‘Shut your eyes, and think of... Think of this,’ he said.

His mouth closed over hers and the kiss was nothing more than a simple touch, almost the same as he might give a tavern maid who’d plopped down on his lap, before he scooted her away to get to his ale or talk with his companions. But the pulses stirring in him ignited.

When he pulled back, she reached out, running her hand along the side of his jaw, seeing him with her fingertips.

‘I have wanted to touch your face since I first saw you,’ she said. ‘You’re so foreign from the men I have known all my life. And the other sailors. I think you even look at me differently.’

He rested his forehead against the side of hers. ‘I wanted...since I saw you...so much more.’ His lips explored her skin and he cupped her breast, letting the fullness feed the sensations in his fingertips. The fabric didn’t prevent the yielding flesh from rolling beneath his caress with her softness and he discovered the hard nipple, and stretched his hand over her, so he could take in as much of the feeling as his mind would allow. No corset. He’d never felt through a woman’s clothing to find so much of her underneath.

Just as she had explored his face, he traced her, keeping the fabric of her garments as a barrier between skin and mapping out the feminine twists and turns of her.

The storm would frame them and their bodies would gain sensations from the hint of danger in the air. And she would be the essence of every sensual mythological being ever imagined.

He couldn’t read her expression and didn’t know if it was a flaw in him, or if she hid herself well. But when she parted her lips and moved towards him, he didn’t have to. She slipped her arms around his waist, mumbling his name, muffled words against his chest, and she clung to him. Her breasts pressed against his shirt, causing his clothing to feel tight over his body. She moved with the lunging waves, too, but not in the same way as he. She kept herself upright by pushing herself into him at the same time as she pulled. He braced against the wall, one hand clutching the edge of the bunk, leg jammed against the opposing side. His body was forced still within the movements. And she burrowed and snuggled and wove herself against him, holding on like a handkerchief might be wrapped around a blowing limb. When the ship created even the smallest distance between them, she moved to fill the space, keeping him as her anchor.

Using all his strength in one arm, he kept them steady while he held her with the other hand.

He found her lips with his and at first she paused, but when she moved again her hands wouldn’t be still, roaming his body with a hunger in her fingertips, searching him out as if she were afraid she might miss touching some exquisite part and wouldn’t be able to bear it.

Somehow she’d settled herself into the movement of the ship and now used it to keep herself thrust against him. He savoured the desires her body created. If she was a goddess to lure men to their doom, he was prepared to die.

‘This helps. And the waves are not so strong now,’ she whispered, and he could feel the movements of her lips against him as she spoke.

‘Just ripples.’ But they weren’t. Everything had intensified. He reached to pull free the last bits of his shirttails, which remained tucked in his trousers, and her fingers tangled with his, helping him.

The water outside crashed against the hull, but he no longer cared.

She leaned into the side of him that he used to hold them steady, leaving him one hand free to rub the small of her back. But her fingers remained under his shirt, clasping him, leaving heated handprints, which encased his whole body.

‘You feel so...pleasant,’ she whispered into him, her face moving up so that her lips were at his neck.

And for the first time since he saw her, she was in exactly the right place, saying exactly the right thing.

Letting her sway into him, her rocking against him when the ship moved caused the fire inside him to smoulder so intensely he wondered if he should just let their clothes disintegrate into ash instead of removing them. He had no time to wait for such an event. He didn’t fear her not holding up well in the storm—he felt concern for himself not surviving the intensity within him.

His lips lingered against her hair, and skin, taking in all of her he could. This truly was the woman of his imagination—the night cravings that woke him with seconds of pleasure lingering in his mind and hours of hollowness facing him. But this time, he would sleep after the dream, untortured—soothed.

He buried his face into the curve of her neck. She did feel like Aphrodite—and he had the imagination of her vanishing from his arms, fading, mocking him for desiring her so intensely. But he couldn’t be imagining this because he’d never tasted a dream and he tasted the nectar of her lips, and this time, he relished the hint of saltiness at his tongue.

His fingers brushed over the strands of her hair loosening from the pins and he slid his palm down, closing his eyes and closing all his senses except the ones at his fingertips.

He knew they had to separate so he could get past the clothing. But one moment apart was a moment for ever lost. He savoured her cheek, her ear and the hollow of her neck. A banquet for his starved senses.

She might as well have already undressed.

She kissed him, he thought. He wasn’t totally sure. He pulled back, only enough to look into her face to make certain she was real. Dark eyes stared back at him.

She’d not tugged at his clothes again, or spoken much, but she didn’t need to. Her expression now told him all he wanted to know.

For the second time in his life—and he’d never tell her—he felt like a virgin. Yet a different sort of innocent. One who knew all the pleasures he could unleash with his hands, his mouth and his body.

He forced himself away—aware of his own breathing echoing in the cabin—knowing if he did not move back, he couldn’t get closer. Melina’s hands, hesitant but bold, didn’t lose their purchase easily and that knowledge alone washed him with a satisfaction he’d not experienced before.

He pulled off his coat and lifted his shirt over his head.

The luscious heat of her—against his chest—hit him harder than any wave could have tossed him. When he touched her breasts, running a finger over the mark just at the top of her bodice, he could barely breathe. This was his Aphrodite. She would vanish soon, but not until she left him truly sated for the first time in his life.

‘You are to be savoured.’ He wanted to feel all of her and adjusted her on to her back, moving her so she was tucked between his body and the wall. He released the buttons of his trousers. The sight of her, in this thrown-together bed where another woman would never rest, clutched at him, filling him with a reverence that arrested him. He stopped for another moment, just a moment, to look at her. He wanted to see her face even when he shut his eyes. He needed her locked into his mind so that all other memories of women on the earth were erased—Melina alone remaining in his thoughts.

For this, he would have sailed around the world—twice—to capture her so she could bring him to his knees and let him rise back up, unburdened.

He kicked his trousers free at their feet.

Hooking his arm under her leg, he pulled her knee to his mouth for a chaste kiss on the coarse cloth of her skirt. Now the fabric felt leaden, thick and suffocating for skin soft as hers. Much too rough.