How To Please a Pirate (18 page)

“Please don’t make me,” he whispered.

She shuddered with need. “Oh, Gabriel . . . “
was all she could manage.

“I’ll take that, Mistress, as consent.”

Gabriel bent and scooped her in his arms. She
was light as a child, but her soft curves quickly dispelled the
comparison. No longer the prickly chatelaine, she was pliant and
willing, pressing her lips against his throat as he ducked back
into the secret corridor. He left the door open behind him, hoping
the moonlight would shaft down enough for him to see. He couldn’t
bear to put her down long enough to re-light the candle.

“Where are we going?” she asked between
planting feverish kisses on his neck and nipping his earlobe.

“To my chamber.”

He didn’t make it a question. There was no
going back. She wanted him. He wanted her. Damn tomorrow, they’d
have each other this night.

But as urgently as he needed to bury himself
in her sweet flesh, he was determined not to rush things this time.
In the armory, his world had turned to heat and irresistible
longing in a blink. It had taken everything in him to stop long
enough to make sure it was her will, too before he deflowered her.
If she’d said no, he hoped he’d have been able to pull back, but he
wouldn’t have laid money on it.

Now there was no question of stopping. Lyn
draped her lithe arms around his neck and laid her head on his
chest as he side-stepped down the dark passage. When they’d passed
this way before, the smell of decades old dust had filled his
nostrils. Now he was drowning in the scent of this woman, all warm
and musky in his arms.

His eyesight adjusted to the dimness and he
traced his steps by distant memory back to the lord of the manor’s
suite. It seemed an eternity before he was able to kick open the
door to his chamber which he’d left ajar. He stood stock still for
a moment, trying to quell the hammering in his chest. He wanted Lyn
with every fiber of his body, every drop of blood in his veins. She
made him weak and strong at once. He was tempted to give in to the
rutting beast inside him, but he was determined to love her well
this time.

He kissed her as he lowered her feet to the
ground. To his delight, she molded herself against him, her
softness against his hardness. Her fingers curled around his lapel,
tugging him ever closer.

Part of his mind screamed this was a
heartache waiting to happen. He would still have to wed another.
She would see to it. There was no turning Jacquelyn from her
purpose when she set her mind to something and she was fiercely
determined to save his barony for the sake of his nieces. He might
only have her this one time.

There was so much that needed saying.

When her tongue dove between his lips, no
words would form in his brain. Surely she must know the way of
things, that their joining would be as ships chance-met on the high
seas, an exchange of mail and messages and then parting to continue
their separate voyages. Yet Jacquelyn seemed set upon having him in
any case. With a groan of pleasure, she met his passion with her
own. Her fingertips fluttered over his bared throat and upward,
twining his hair, kneading his scalp.

He fondled her breast, but she gently pushed
his hand away.

“You’ve had your time to explore, Captain,
and may yet again,” she said with a devilish grin he’d never have
believed if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes. “But this is my
time.”

He would have argued, but she unbuttoned his
shirt and slid her hands inside, caressing, teasing, her fingers
splayed across his chest. So she wanted her hand on the tiller, did
she? He’d allow it for now.

He contented himself with cupping her cheeks
and making love to her mouth as she touched him unhindered. As
their kiss deepened, her hands drifted lower to tug at the waist of
his breeches and fumble with the buttons on either side of the drop
front. In her haste, she popped one right off. It hit the floor
with a plop and rolled out of sight.

“Oh, dear,” she said as she reached into his
breeches to cup his scrotum in her warm smooth palm. “You seem to
have lost a button.”

He was near to losing control. His cock ached
for her touch. The way she kneaded his balls sent his groin into a
frenzy of pleasure and agony in equal measure.

“Shall I stop to find it?”

What is she talking about? Oh, the damn
button.

“Not for all the gold on the Spanish Main,”
he said between clenched teeth.

Lyn grazed him with her palm, her touch a
glancing caress. She looked up at him, her eyes enormous. She
stroked him again, harder this time while never taking her gaze
from his, questioning, watching for his reaction.

He’d made love to a number of women. This was
the first time a woman made love to him. He’d always had to take
his pleasure with the others, but Lyn was intent on giving.

Waves of sensation rolled over him, engulfing
him, nearly taking him down. When she pressed a shy kiss beneath
one nipple, he drew in a shuddering breath. Lyn nipped him and sent
desire surging to his swollen cock. She began trailing kisses down
his chest to his navel and dropped to her knees before him.

He thought he might die.

If she lost her nerve now, he was sure he
would.

Gabriel had never believed much in heaven.
The idea of a land of delights beyond this life was a pleasant
fancy, but he held to what he could handle with his own hands, see
with his own eyes. Mayhap his uncertainty about what lay beyond
death led to his turning pirate rather than finding out first hand
about the afterlife when the
Defiant
foundered.
But if there was such a place as heaven, surely it couldn’t hold
more bliss than the sweetness of her mouth on him.

For if it did, heaven would be more exquisite
joy than mortal man could bear.

* * *

He groaned low again, a rumble of male
strength reduced to incoherence. A thrill of power coursed through
Jacquelyn as she licked his full length. When he invaded her with
his mouth in the armory, she’d lost herself in the maelstrom of
sensations. Since the madness of that time, she’d wondered what it
would be like to turn the tables on him.

Her imagination hadn’t come close.

She was sure she was doing it all wrong, that
she was using her tongue when she should take him into her mouth,
that she stopped to kiss him when he wanted her to suckle, but
somehow her inexperience didn’t seem to matter. He was powerless
before her, trembling with need, and she reveled in enslaving him
with pleasure.

Strangely enough, giving to him sent shivers
of delight over her. Warmth pooled between her thighs and the ache
that was becoming all too familiar to her began its incessant
drumbeat. He caressed her head with both his big hands, gently
threading her locks through his fingers. She flicked him with her
tongue in random feathery strokes. His breathing hitched as he
sucked air over his teeth.

He fascinated her. She’d known how men were
fashioned. At least she had a good guess after overseeing the
breeding of the broodmares at Dragon Caern. She’d assumed men were
just smaller versions of stallions.

But Gabriel’s cock was a wonder, all smooth
and hard and hot. She loved the way it moved of its own accord,
arcing toward her, veins bulging. She closed her lips around him
and laved her tongue over the bit of rougher skin just below the
tight head. His ballocks drew up into a snug mound.

He made a strangled sound and pulled her away
from him.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, you were doing something very right.” He
took her hands and raised her to her feet. “But if you continue,
this will be over far sooner than I wish it to be. And I want to
give you a full measure of pleasing before I take my own.”

“I gave you pleasure, then?”

“More than I dreamed possible. More than I
can bear.” Gabriel swore softly as he cupped her cheeks. “Far more
than I deserve.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” She smiled up
at him. The fire that had started in her exceedingly naughty dream
now threatened to erupt into a full blaze, but she banked the
flames. Drawing out the torment only seemed to increase it. “I’ll
wager you can bear a good bit more. Besides, it pleases me to give
you pleasure.”

“Truly?”

She nodded.

“What would you have me do, Lyn?”

“To begin with, I would look at you. All of
you, Gabriel.”

He spread his hands in surrender and she
reached up to shove his shirt off his shoulders. He toed off his
shoes as she hitched his breeches down over his muscular thighs. He
stepped out of them and stooped to pull off his stockings. He wore
no small clothes, heaven be thanked. Then he straightened to his
full height and held her in a smoldering gaze. Faint light from the
banked fireplace kissed his frame, accenting the mounds and
indentations of his muscles.

Hard and strong, he was everything that was
male. All that was female in her answered him with soft
moistness.

So this is how a woman crosses over to the
dark and becomes a courtesan. Is this how it was for mother? This
thundering need to be with a man, devil take tomorrow?

She shoved away all thought but Gabriel.

“If I lived to be a hundred,” Jacquelyn said,
“I’ll never see anything finer than you in the altogether, Gabriel
Drake. Not ever in my whole living life.”

He chuckled, his belly and cock jiggling.
“Apparently, you’ve led a sheltered existence up till now,
Mistress.”

“Then unshelter me.” The ache between her
thighs was making her a terrible wanton, but she was powerless to
stop it. “I want to know everything about you. Everything that
pleases you.”

He closed the distance between them and
gathered her into his arms. “All you need do is look in the mirror,
then. You are what pleases me, Lyn.” He bent to kiss her, taking
his time, his lips sweet and almost chaste on hers. Then the kiss
changed, deepened and he stole the breath from her lights.

His hands roamed over her body, sending
sparks across her skin. He parted Timothy’s shirt and bared her
breasts. Her nipples hardened as they grazed his chest. He pulled
down her boy’s breeches so their bare bodies could press against
each other, skin on skin. She kicked off her slippers, reveling in
the feel of him, warm and solid and wanting.

He cupped her bum and lifted her off her toes
so his cock spread her opening just a bit. Her gut clenched,
waiting for him to enter her. To her dismay, he lowered her back
down without joining with her.

He released her mouth and shot her a wicked
grin. Clearly he planned to draw out the torment as well. “Speaking
of mirrors, the sight of you changing clothes in yours this night
was a treasure I’d not trade for a chest of doubloons. If you would
truly please me, Lyn, all you need do is shake those lovely breasts
at me again. My view in the mirror wasn’t as clear as I’d have
wished.”

Embarrassment heated her cheeks, but she’d
asked what he wanted. Isabella’s daughter would never do anything
by halves.

She raised her arms above her head in
surrender and bounced twice on her toes. “Like that?” Then she
cupped her breasts and offered them to him. “Or like this?”

“Oh, Lyn.” He took them in his calloused
palms as if they were more precious than gold and bent to claim a
nipple with his lips.

Her whole being thrummed with life. She felt
each pulse of her heart twice, once in her chest and once between
her legs. She arched into him, hooking her knee around his thigh
and pressing her wetness against him. Anything to appease the
ache.

He groaned in response to her arousal,
scooped her up and carried her to his big feather bed. They tumbled
into it in a tangle of limbs, kisses that fell where they may,
hands that sought and massaged the neediest of places.

His head disappeared beneath the sheet and
she felt his hot mouth on her, probing and teasing. A coil strained
in her belly. She was wound tighter than the eight-day clock in the
parlor. At any moment the spring might break under the tension.

“Please, Gabriel,” she said between
shuddering breaths.

“My every intent, Lyn,” he said as he mounted
her, sliding his full length home in a rush of need. Her womb
contracted once in greeting and he stilled, willing them both into
control. The ache subsided only a little.

There was no pain this time. Only the wonder
of holding him inside her. They moved as one, sinuous and slow. The
pressure bubbled up inside her again, like a pot ready to boil
over.

Gabriel thrust deep and held her head between
his hands, holding his weight on his elbows. He said her name with
tenderness as he looked down at her. “Lyn,” the secret name he’d
given her, low and rumbling. One more thrust and she began to
unravel.

Rolling contractions bucked her frame. Her
limbs were no longer her own, shuddering in spasms of joy. Then she
felt his release, pulsing hot and steady in tandem with her own.
She held him tighter, welcoming him into herself, accepting all of
him.

Spent and gasping, they clung to each other.
She kissed his sweat-dampened temple, savoring the saltiness of his
skin. He covered her mouth with his in a soft kiss. A kiss that
said she had given him a gift and he was grateful.

As he laid his head beside hers on the
pillow, still joined, unwilling to sever their connection until it
was absolutely necessary, she realized he’d gifted her as well.
She’d never imagined it was so, but the giving and receiving of
pleasure was no small thing.

They’d been lifted out of themselves for that
blissful moment, transported to a place of delight she’d never
dreamed existed. A part of them would always be joined in that
secret place.