An Improper Proposal (36 page)

She didn’t reply. Instead, she took hold of his penis—which was really quite outrageously hard, for someone who’d claimed not to like her touching his nipples—and, with extreme delicacy, tasted the tip of it with her tongue—the way he rather regularly tasted her.

A frantic thrashing followed as Drake tried once again to break his hands free. Payton had to raise her head and say sharply, “If you don’t stop that I’m going to leave you here all night, exactly as you are.”

“Payton,” he ground out, as angrily as if it were a curse word and not her name. But she noticed he’d grown quite still.

She turned her attention back to the enormous appendage she held. It seemed to her that if he reacted so intensely to the merest touch of her tongue there, he might have an even more interesting reaction should she slip her entire mouth around the engorged head—if it would fit. Well, there was only one way to find out.

This time, he inhaled, so sharply that she thought she might have caused him an injury. But he didn’t try to throw her off, which he certainly could have, if what she was doing was in some way painful. In fact, quite the opposite. He grew perfectly still, hardly even seeming to dare to breathe. So she obligingly slid her lips as far around his phallus as she could. Curling her fingers round it, too, she attempted to simulate what she thought it must be like to him when he was inside of her.

Apparently she succeeded, because she noticed that his breathing grew quite irregular, and that his chest had gotten slick with perspiration, despite the cool night air around them. But he was far too big, and her mouth too small, to continue the experiment. Besides, his blatant excitement was contagious. She’d begun to feel a familiar throbbing between her own legs, a longing to be filled. So she positioned herself over him, and, watching him carefully, lowered herself onto that pulsating shaft, still slick with moisture from her mouth.

He groaned. It was quite a loud groan, too. Payton herself had groaned a little—he had never seemed so big as he did that night, despite the fact that she was more than ready for him; apparently, her kissing him there had caused some kind of correlating reaction that swelled his erection to even greater proportions than usual—but his groan drowned hers out. She began to think tying him up had been rather a good idea. Now she had perfect control over their movements, and could time everything exactly how she pleased …

Except that, astride him as she was, she felt rather more of a sense of urgency than usual. That throbbing tenderness between her legs was more easily satisfied, what with that hard wall of muscle that made up his abdomen to rub against. She forgot all about the clinical observations she’d been intending to make, and started moving rapidly up and down the length of his shaft, her hands splayed across his chest. He was moving, too—not to break his bonds, this time, but to plunge himself more deeply into her. She wouldn’t let him, this time. Halfway in was as much as she’d allow. This seemed to drive him mad, but there was nothing he could do about it. Without the use of his hands, he couldn’t force her to stay still. Intoxicated with her sense of power, Payton rode him with giddy energy, until suddenly, a familiar tingling started in the soles of her feet …

And then a celestial hurricane erupted. All around her, a magnificent display of fireworks shimmered and twinkled. It was like that night on the deck of the
Virago
that summer he’d offered her his pillow, only this time, she wasn’t lying on the hard wood of the forecastle, but flying above it, in her own chariot of flame. She shuddered all over with the pure joy of it, and collapsed, smiling, onto Drake’s damply furred chest.

Only he was still twisting beneath her, trying to find the same release she’d already experienced. Opening her eyes, she saw that his face was tightly contorted, as if in pain. Lethargic in the afterglow of her orgasm, she nevertheless took pity on him and reached up to pull lightly on the vine that had anchored his hands above his head.

His wrists came free at once. She’d always been rather good at slip knots.

Shocked, Drake opened his eyes and stared up at her. She smiled smugly down at him—but only for a second. Because an instant later, she was gasping as he drove himself, with unexpected force, deeply into her. Both his hands had gone to her buttocks, keeping her hips motionless as he plundered what lay between them. He ground himself into her, like a man who’d gone without lovemaking for a good deal longer than she knew, for a fact, he had.

My goodness, she thought. I shall certainly tie him up more often.

Then she felt him explode within her. He did it with such violence that she had to hold onto him rather tenaciously to keep from being thrown out of the hammock.

But he was instantly contrite afterward, reaching up to pull her down against him until her cheek rested against his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, fast as a hummingbird’s wings at first, then slowing down to a more moderate thud, thud, thud, as his breathing became even again.

“Don’t you ever,” he said into her hair, “do that again.”

She smiled against his chest. “Which part?” She reached out, and laid a finger over one of his nipples. “This part?” Then she dipped her hand lower, to take hold of his now considerably less engorged genitalia. “Or this part?”

He took some time to consider the question. “The tying-up part.”

She lifted her head to look at him. “That was the best part.”

“Oh, ho,” he said. “We’ll do it to you next time, and see how much you like it.”

She sat up eagerly. “Could we? Could we really?”

“Good Lord.” He reached out, and pulled her back down against him. “Go to sleep, Payton.”

“But next time, could we—”

“Yes,” he said. He said it as if he were exasperated, but Payton saw, before she closed her eyes, that he was smiling.

And then, the very next morning, her brothers arrived. It was unfortunate that this particular morning, Drake—perhaps because he was still exhausted from the activities of the night before—did not wake early. He was sleeping very soundly, Payton snug in his arms, when a thunderous bellow woke them both.

Payton, for her part, mistook the bellow for the blare of a conch shell, and she tried to block the sound out by throwing an arm up over her head—only her arm was caught beneath Drake. But how could that be, if he was the one blowing the conch shell?

And then the bellow turned to words, and she opened her eyes, and saw her brother Ross standing there, his face purple with rage.

“What in the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” he screamed. “We spend weeks—weeks, do you hear?
—
combing the seas for you, fearing the two of you are dead—dead!—and what do we come to find? That you ain’t dead at all, but quite obviously alive. Alive and fornicatin’!”

Payton would have run for her life had not her arm been pinned down by Drake’s body. He, a quick glance showed her, didn’t look the least bit alarmed. In fact, he was studying Ross with interest from the depths of the hammock, one arm thrown across her, more to cover her nakedness, she supposed, than because he thought Ross might strike her.

But it was rather too late for that. Ross had already noticed her nakedness. And Drake’s, too, for that matter.

“Don’t just lie there, you black-hearted devil!” Ross shouted. “Get out of that hammock and put some clothes on! And get your hands off my sister!”

Payton, her mouth dry as sand, nevertheless summoned up the courage to say, “Ross, you are making far too much of this. Drake and I only—’’

“Shhh.” Drake tightened his arm around her. “Better let me do the talking, love.”

“Love?” bellowed Ross furiously. “Get out of that hammock. Do you hear me, Drake? Get out of that hammock before I drag you out of it!”

“I say, Ross.” Raleigh appeared from another part of the beach. “I think we’ve come to the right spot. There’s a longboat hidden in the bushes over—Oh, there they are! Hullo, Drake, hullo, Pay. Good to see you. We thought you were dead.”

“Don’t,” Ross commanded his brother, “come any closer. Just stay where you are.”

Raleigh looked alarmed. “Why? Is there a snake?”

“Yes. Of a sort.” Ross took off his coat—a heavy black affair, lined with white satin; they had evidently been in mourning for a sister they thought lost to the high seas—and flung it over Payton. She pushed it from her head and glared up at her brother.

“Drake didn’t do anything wrong,” she informed him. “I don’t see what you’re being so nasty about. Raleigh’s happy to see me.”

“Damned right I am,” Raleigh asserted. “You don’t know what it’s been like back home. Georgiana weepin’ all the time, Papa gone right off his musket-balls, Hudson always in a temper. You know he’s given up liquor since you disappeared? Hasn’t touched a drop. I say.” He suddenly looked taken aback. “You two are a bit snug in there, aren’t you?”

“Snug?” Ross spun upon his younger brother. “I’ll tell you how snug they are! They neither of ’em have a stitch on!”

Raleigh’s jaw dropped. “Oh, Drake,” he said with a groan. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“Why is everybody blaming Drake?” Payton wanted to know. “It was all my—”

“Shhh,” Drake said again, laying a finger over her lips. He adjusted Ross’s coat so that it covered her completely, then said, in a low voice, “Your brother Hudson is probably around here somewhere. Why don’t you go and try to find him?”

“Don’t be an ass, Drake,” Payton advised him. “They’re going to kill you.”

“Nonsense.” He smiled down at her reassuringly. “We’re old friends. Would old friends try to kill one another?”

She scissored a glance in Ross’s direction. “Under the circumstances—”

“Go on,” Drake said cheerfully. Really, but he was in extraordinarily high spirits. He must, she supposed, a little dejectedly, be pleased that they’d finally been rescued. Funny, she hadn’t thought he found her company so very tiresome.

“Go find Hudson, sweetheart,” he said to her. “And leave the men to talk.”

She glared at him. Leave the men to talk. Wasn’t that just like[* *]a man? As if anything her brothers had to say was going to be the slightest bit worthwhile. Didn’t he remember how angry he’d been at them, just the other day? Or at least, she supposed it had been the other day. She had lost track of time, a little. Still. He didn’t have to send her off, as if she were a child.

Payton decided, right then, that she’d go and find Hudson, all right—but not because Drake had asked her to. She was only doing it because she had a feeling Drake was going to need reinforcements. From the looks of Ross and Raleigh, fists were due to fly at any moment. Really, how stupid men were sometimes.

Graceful as a cat, she swung from the hammock, clutching Ross’s coat closed in front of her. Before she left, she turned and levelled both her brothers with an evil stare.

“If you harm so much as one hair on his head,” she hissed, “I’ll make you sorry for it until the day you die.”

Then she tossed her head and walked away.

She found him at once, of course. He was crouched in the sand, as if he thought he was Natty Bumppo or someone, closely examining a set of her footprints, left the evening before.

“Hi,” he was shouting. “I think I’ve got something over here!”

“Hudson,” she said, and he straightened, and stared at her as if she were an apparition.

“Pay?” he said. He looked quite terrible. Dressed all in black, he hadn’t had his hair cut in a while. He wore it pulled back in a black ribbon, but some of it wouldn’t stay, and it floated round his head in a halo. He looked a bit like a mad Quaker, if there was such a thing. “Is that really you, Pay?”

“Yes, of course it is, you bleeding sod. Who were expecting? The Virgin Mary?”

“Pay! It really is you!”

If Raleigh hadn’t already informed her that Hudson had given up drink, she might have accused her middle brother of being drunk. He certainly staggered toward her unsteadily enough. And then, to make matters worse, after he’d wrapped her in a smothering hug, she suspected he might be crying—even though she knew perfectly well Hudson would never do something as maudlin as shed tears of joy at the sight of her.

“Are you all right?” he asked, when she’d finally fought her way out of his affectionate, if restrictive, embrace. “Everyone said you were dead. I never believed it, not for a moment, but it did look bad for a bit.”

“I’m fine,” Payton said. “Hudson, you’ve got to come at once. Ross and Raleigh are going to kill Drake.”

“Drake?” An expression of even more heartfelt delight broke over Hudson’s face. “Drake’s alive, too? Why, they were quite emphatic about the fact that he was dead. What a happy day! The two of you, alive and well!”

“Drake won’t be alive for much longer,” Payton said, “unless you come at once. Ross has gone right out of his head.” She took his hand, and tugged at it. “He thinks Drake’s compromised me, or something, and he looks as if he might do something dreadful.”

“Nonsense.” Hudson followed along after her, obligingly enough. “Everyone knows Drake would never do any such thing.”

Payton glanced at him over her shoulder. “Well,” she said. “Exactly. I’m glad one of you still has some sense. You all seemed to have gone positively barmy since I went away. Do hurry, Hud. It’s two against one, and that’s hardly fair.”

“You know,” Hudson said happily, “I’m going to have to join the church now. I made a bargain with the Lord. I said I’d enter the priesthood, so long as nothing had happened to you. I’m going to look a bit silly in a white collar, don’t you think?”

“Don’t be an ass, Hudson. No church would take you.”

“You think so?” He sounded eminently relieved. “Oh, good. I was a little worried about that vow of celibacy. The rest of it wouldn’t be so bad, but that one …”

They’d reached the beach by then, and Payton dropped his hand. Drake, she could see, had gotten out of the hammock, as Ross had ordered him to. They had even, she saw, allowed him to put on his trousers. But there was no indication that any of the talking Drake had promised had gone on after that. A good deal of hitting, it looked like, but no talking whatsoever.