Never Trust a Pirate (39 page)

Maddy was so cold. Her mind refused to work—she couldn’t make sense of what she’d seen, what had happened to her. That man… his scream… No, she couldn’t think about that. All she could do was shake uncontrollably.

Luca carried her back to the cabin, and she could hear the water sloshing around his feet. He set her down in the middle of it, the water almost to her ankles, and her bare feet curled in protest, but she didn’t move. Couldn’t move. She stood there, swaying, watching him as he went to the porthole and slammed it shut again, locking it. The endless, horrible rocking of the ship had lessened, back almost to its normal, gentle movement, and she should have been shocked at how swiftly the storm had passed, how it had gone from certain death to almost calm. But she couldn’t think.

Luca came to stand in front of her. “You’re freezing,” he said.

She wanted to come up with something clever, but her teeth were chattering too much. She didn’t even want to look at him, so she closed her eyes, starting when she felt his hands on her. “You need to get out of these wet clothes,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t fight me on this.”

As if she could. She trembled as he stripped the clothes from her, dropping them in the water at their feet, and when she was naked he picked her up and carried her to the berth. The ropes were still here, and he yanked them away, tossing them aside before setting her down on the mattress. It was still damp from the sea spray, and she shuddered against him.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, and somehow managed to rip the sheet off while he released her against the slightly itchy mattress. “Hold on.”

Hold on for what
, she thought.
For icicles to drip from my eyes? Damn, those were tears! There was no reason to cry
.

She closed her eyes, clamping her jaw shut so her teeth wouldn’t rattle out of her head. In the distance she could hear the slap of more cloth hitting the water, and then he was on the bed with all six feet whatever of him, and there was nothing but his hot, silken skin against her, wrapped around her, his heat flowing into her.

Fighting him was out of the question, and she didn’t want to. She wanted to sink into him, lose herself in him, and she slid her arms around him, pulling him closer.

He was hard. Of course he was. And as her shaking slowed to intermittent shivers she knew she was wet between her legs. Of course she was. She needed him, any way she could have him, for as long as she could have him. She needed him right now.

He must have felt when everything changed. He’d had her plastered up against him, his heat radiating into her, and he was rubbing her back, soothing her, when she began to relax, no longer rigid with cold, but melting, flowing, and without thinking she rubbed her face against his shoulder, an instinctive caress, as she tried to move her hips closer to his.

If he hesitated for even a moment she wasn’t aware of it. His hand on her back slid up to cup her neck, pulling her back so that he could look down into her eyes. His deep, implacable black ones, that she could never read, looked into hers for an answer she didn’t know how to give.

But he could read her better than she could read him, because he put his mouth against hers, soft and coaxing, breathing warmth and the taste of the sea into her. The sea that had killed a man, that had almost killed her. The sea that he loved.

And she kissed him back, loving the sea because he loved it, sliding down beneath him, accepting the ocean, accepting everything.

He ran his hand down her leg, then pulled her knee up over his hip. They were lying facing each other, but he made no effort to push her onto her back, he simply arranged her so that that he could slip his fingers between her legs, to that damp, secret place that sent spirals of warmth throughout her. He moved his mouth to the side of her face, kissing her lightly on her abraded cheekbone, and then she could feel his kiss against the tenderness in her jaw where he’d hit her. He kissed her throat, his tongue dancing across the swiftly hammering pulse at the base of her neck, and then he pulled each hand in front of him, kissing her injured wrists before setting them back around him.

But that wasn’t good enough. Because she was no longer cold, she was a blazing coil of need, and she reached between them, sliding her hand down his chest, past the tight nipples she wanted inexplicably to put her mouth against. She moved her hand farther, down, down, to capture the iron-hard erection. He’d been hard when they’d been fighting death out there on the storm-lashed deck. And as she lay tight in his arms everything had boiled down to one essential thing, the one thing that mattered to her. Luca.

Luca. Who didn’t love her, and certainly didn’t need her. Except for this way, and in this moment of heat and desire it would have to be enough. Her hand slid along his length, fingers delicate, tracing each vein, and desires so shocking she could scarcely believe them shot through her.

“Lie back,” she said, an order in a barely audible rasp of a voice. But he heard her—she had the illogical sense that he would always hear her, and he lay back on the mattress, watching her.

She moved to her knees, looking down at him in the shadowy light that had followed the storm. Even in the dusk he was beautiful, golden, muscled, perfect. And so hard for her. Waiting for her. She
hesitated, unaccountably shy, and he lifted his hand to brush it against her lips. “Do anything you want,” he said. “I’m yours.”

She wanted to weep with his lie, but she didn’t. Right then he might believe it. Right then maybe he did belong to her. She leaned over him and carefully ran her tongue across one beaded nipple.

He jumped, making an inaudible sound, and she looked up at him. “Again,” he whispered, and she found she could still smile. She moved down and ran her tongue over him, then sucked the flat nub into her mouth as he had done to her, and he moaned in pleasure, and she felt his cock twitch in her gentle, soothing hand.

She moved to his other nipple, doing the same, but this time she let her teeth graze him, and his hips came up off the mattress. How strangely blissful, she thought. What else would she like to do?

She moved down, tasting the salt of the ocean on his skin, pressing her face against the thin line of hair reaching down from his belly. And then she put her mouth on him, tentatively, delicately, letting her tongue dance across the top of his cock before she enveloped it, sinking down and letting his hardness slide into her mouth.

She heard his muttered curse words, odd, because he seemed to like it. He put gentle hands on her head, cupping it, and showed her what to do, moving up and down on his erection, letting her tongue dance against it, sucking at it, accepting it completely. She wasn’t doing this for him, she was doing it for her. It brought her an intense pleasure she hadn’t imagined, and her hands grasped the base of it, as she took more of him into her hungry mouth.

And then he pulled her away. For a moment she fought him, until he covered her mouth with his, filling her with his tongue, his taste, as he rolled her beneath him. He was between her legs, the head of his mouth-damp cock pressed against her, and he slid in the first few inches easily, before she remembered to brace herself. “More,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please. More.”

He pushed all the way in, and a spasm of pure delight tightened her body around him, and he seemed to swell inside her. “Hurry,” she whispered in clawing desperation, fighting for release.

“No. I want to savor this.” His answering thrusts, slow and steady, made her want to scream in frustration. But he couldn’t control her body, any more than she could, and he’d only thrust a half-dozen times before she climaxed, her body clenching down on his, her skin prickling in an endless contraction that left her breathless and panting. For some reason she expected him to follow, as he had last time. He’d held still inside her as her pleasure washed over her again, but the moment she’d fallen back he began thrusting again, at the same, steady rhythm, and she felt so full, so possessed, that another wave washed over her, tightening everything, and he held still once more.

When she fell back again, panting, he kissed her breathless mouth. “I can keep this up for hours.”

“Why?” she gasped.

His laugh touched strange places inside her. “Because there’s no where else I’d rather be. I want to stay inside you forever, I want to make you come so hard you can’t even think, I want to forget where I end and you begin. I want everything from you, Maddy Rose. Everything.”

Oh, God, she thought, as he slid his hands up to cover her breasts, his thumbs brushing across her nipples and he continued to… to… what was that word the stable hands had used when they thought she couldn’t hear them?
Fuck
. Such a dirty, nasty, erotic little word. That was what he was doing to her. And she wanted more.

His hands on her breasts set off another paroxysm of pleasure, and this time when he moved again he was faster, his breathing a little more shallow. And then, to her shock and despair, he pulled out of her completely.

She cried out, reaching for him, but he simply turned her onto her knees, pushing her hands down on the mattress, her face into
the pillow, as he pushed inside her from behind. It was different this way, he was even bigger, pushing against different places inside her, and she buried her cry of pleasure into the pillow, wrapping her arms over her head, as he moved, faster and faster, and just when she thought she couldn’t stand any more pleasure he reached between them and touched her between her legs, above where they joined, and it was everything, death and madness, pain and joy, as she lost herself completely, drowning in waves of dark, saturnine delight.

He pulled out, and she felt the warmth of his release on her back, and if she’d had enough of her brain she would have wept, but she was still being racked by wave after wave of almost unbearable pleasure that followed her as he slowly pulled her down, wrapping his arms around her as the last bit of control drained from his body.

It was a long time before she could speak. A long time before she wanted to speak. But when she did, she still managed to come up with a challenge. “Hours?” she said in a hoarse whisper.

She felt his smile against her skin. He was lying with his head on her stomach, holding her. “The night is still young,” he said.

And she shivered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

M
ADDY WOKE ALONE.
O
F
course she did, she thought, shoving her hair out of her face. Luca had probably already left the boat and set sail for the Argentines, just like Tarkington.

The water was gone from the floor, as were her clothes. Instead there was a pile of clean linen, including a simple day dress and unadorned underclothing, though no corset. The ship was docked somewhere, but all she could see from the porthole was the great wooden side of the quay, and they could be anywhere from Gibraltar to the Orkney Islands as far as she was concerned.

There was even a pitcher of tepid water beside a washbowl. Apparently the bathing room wasn’t working—either damaged in the storm or perhaps it didn’t work when they were docked. It didn’t matter. She washed her body as thoroughly as she could, washed off the saltwater and the rain, washed away the touch and taste of him from her skin. She couldn’t reach the spot on her back where he’d spilled his seed the first time, and she was glad of it. What would have happened if he hadn’t protected her from making a child? What if she’d conceived, and he’d been long out of her life, at sea somewhere, forgetting all about her? It would have been a total disaster.

A disaster she wanted so much she could weep with longing. But not now. She was made from sterner stuff than this.

During the evening and endless night they’d slept and awoken, made love in ways that still made her blush in the morning, and he’d made it clear he wanted her. Made it clear he’d come after her. She was a fool to expect words of love.

But then she was a fool. She didn’t want to stay with a man who didn’t love her, desperate for scraps of attention, signs of affection. Not when she was so desperately in love with him.

He’d done one odd thing. Her wrist had begun bleeding again, and he rose and went to look for bandages. When he’d come back to the bed he’d brought them, and a knife as well. She’d looked at it dubiously, still too languid to make a protest.