Surrender of a Siren (26 page)

She’d bared herself before him, in every way. As she’d never dared reveal herself to anyone. More truth had passed between them in the last ten minutes than any conversation could relay, and still he held her, soothed her. Would his lips still form such tender words and soft kisses, if he knew the complete truth?

He kissed her palm again. “Don’t cry. I’d die before I’d let anything or anyone hurt you. I couldn’t bear to think I’d caused you such distress.” He pressed her hand against his bearded cheek. She felt his lips graze her temple. “Sweet,” he whispered against her ear. “You’re safe with me. Always.”

Sophia turned her head slowly, until her gaze locked with his. His eyes— they were the purest cerulean blue, and fathoms deep. She caressed his cheek with her thumb. “Oh, Gray.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She said his name, and it pierced him. Like a needle-thin dagger that threaded right between his ribs to embed itself in his heart.

And like any sudden wound, it caught him completely off-guard. It hurt. It sent him into shock.

What had just happened? He’d been reading; she’d been painting. They’ d argued over paint, discussed colors. He’d teased her until she blushed, and she’d teased him back. She’d touched his face. Oh, how she’d touched him. Then suddenly he was viewing the most erotic display he’d ever witnessed in his life. And that included several erotic displays he’d paid good money to watch.

He’d said things to her. Wild, depraved fantasies he’d never voiced to any woman without paying her handsomely first. Perhaps a few things he’d never said to any woman at all. And she’d listened, and complied. Willingly. With sensual abandon and such sweet trust, it made his heart ache. He’d said anything and everything that came into his mind, to keep her going. To bring her to that peak of pleasure and watch her while she came.

That much was good. Very good.

But then she’d cried, and he’d said more. He would have said anything, promised her everything to soothe her. Now he stared into her red, weepy eyes, suddenly realizing how very close he’d come to doing just that— promising her everything—and it scared him into a cold sweat. She dragged that soft, soft thumb across his cheek, and his knees actually trembled. Trembled, damn it!

Gray had no idea what the hell was happening to him, but he knew that it had to be bad. Very bad.

Her lips were pouty and swollen with passion and just begging to be kissed, long and slow and deep. His groin was still throbbing with the memory of her erotic little gasps, her back arched in ecstasy.

Oh, Gray
, she said. Oh, Gray, indeed. As in, oh Gray what the holy hell has come over you and what the devil do you intend to do about it?

He took the coward’s way out. He looked away.

“I thought you were painting a portrait. Of me.”

She turned her head, following his gaze to her easel. A vast seascape overflowed the small canvas. Towering thunderclouds and a violent, frothy sea. And slightly off center, a tiny ship cresting a massive wave.

“I
am
painting you.”

“What, am I on the little boat, then?” It was a relief to joke.

The relief was short-lived.

“No,” she said softly, turning back to look at him. “I’m on the little boat. You’re the storm. And the ocean. You’re … Gray, you’re everything.”

And that was when things went from “very bad” to “worse.”

“I can’t take credit for the composition. It’s inspired by a painting I once saw, in a gallery on Queen Anne Street. By a Mr. Turner.”

“Turner. Yes, I know his work. No relation, I suppose?”

“No.” She looked back at the canvas. “When I saw it that day, so brash and wild … I could feel the tempest churning in my blood. I just knew then and there, that I had something inside me—a passion too bold, too grand to keep squeezed inside a drawing room. First I tried to deny it, and then I tried to run from it … and then I met you, and I saw you have it, too. Don’t deny it, Gray. Don’t run from it and leave me alone.”

She sat up, still rubbing his cheek with her thumb. Grasping his other hand, she drew it to her naked breast. Oh, God. She was every bit as soft as he’d dreamed. Softer. And there went his hand now. Trembling.

“Touch me, Gray.” She leaned forward, until her lips paused a mere inch away from his. “Kiss me.”

Perhaps that dagger had missed his heart after all, because the damned thing was hammering away inside his chest. And oh, he could taste her sweet breath mingling with his. Her lips were so close, so inviting.

So dangerous.

Panic—that’s what had his knees trembling and his heart hammering and his lips spouting foolishness. It had to be panic. Because something told Gray that he could see her mostly naked, and watch her toes curl as she reached her climax, and even cup her dream-soft breast in his palm—but somehow, if he touched his lips to hers, he would be lost.

“Please,” she whispered. “Kiss me.”

“I can’t.” For the second time that day, he pulled her hand away from his face. For the first—and, he suspected with distressing certainty, the last— time ever, he slid his hand from her breast. “I just can’t.”

The pain in her eyes devastated him. “Then I suppose you’d better leave.”

The bell clanged through the silence, insistent and ceaseless. An alarm to match the frantic pounding of Gray’s heart. Did the whole ship know the danger he was in?

But as his consciousness filtered back, he became aware that the dull thunder in his ears wasn’t his pulse. It was real thunder. And the roar of breath rushing in and out of his lungs was drowned out by the howl of distant wind. The ship gave a lazy tilt, and a small cake of pigment rolled the length of the table before crashing to the floor. Then a wild lurch cleared the rest of her paints and had them both grasping the bolted table for balance.

“All hands! All hands!”

Gray pushed back in his chair, glancing up through the ventilation grate. As he rose to his feet, another sudden dip swept the chair out from under him. “Sweetheart, I—”

“I understand, Mr. Grayson.” Her voice was weak. “Go. Please, just go.”

And with one last look in her welling eyes … God help him, he left.

Gray emerged from the companionway to a scene eerily similar to the one on Miss Turner’s canvas. The
Aphrodite
hurdled over white-capped swells, and a bank of forbidding black clouds clung to the horizon.

As he made his way to the helm, seawater dashed over his linen-clad shoulders, reminding him he’d left his coat belowdecks. Regret hollowed out his chest. His coat was the least of what he’d left there. Any shred of courage or decency he possessed. His heart, the shriveled, black thing it was.

And her.

Above him, a pair of sailors were deftly reefing the main topsail. Gray envied them. That was what he needed: He needed to work. He needed to perform hard, physical labor until he was numb to the fingertips and blind with exhaustion. He needed to sweat her out of his system.

He met Joss at the ship’s wheel. “Seems we’ve got our wind back.”

“Aye,” Joss said. “And then some. I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Nor the sound of them,” Gray added.

Joss lifted a spyglass to his right eye, squeezing the left shut. “There’s a sail approaching to windward. I’ve given orders to lie-to and hail her, see what they can tell us about the squall. Perhaps they’ve just come through it.”

“Or around it.”

Joss lowered the spyglass to give him an enigmatic look. “What are you doing abovedecks, anyhow?”

“The cry went up for all hands.”

“You’re not a hand. You’re a passenger.”

“I may not
be
a hand, but I’ve got two perfectly good hands, and if I sit on them a second longer, I’ll go mad.”

Joss stared at Gray’s open collar, where his cravat should have been knotted. “She’s really getting to you, isn’t she?”

“You have no idea,” Gray muttered.

“Oh, I think I do.”

Gray ignored his brother’s smug tone. “Damn it, Joss, just put me to work. Send me up to furl a sail, put me down in the hold to pump the bilge … I don’t care, just give me something to do.”

Joss raised his eyebrows. “If you insist.” He lifted the spyglass to his eye and began scanning the horizon again. “Batten the hatches, then.”

Gray tossed a word of thanks over his shoulder as he descended to the quarterdeck and went to work, dragging the tarpaulins over the skylights and securing them with battens. As he labored, the ship’s motions grew more violent, hampering his efforts. He saved the vent above the ladies’ cabin for last, resisting the urge to peer down through the grate. Instead, he first secured one end, then blanketed the entire skylight with one strong snap on the canvas.

“Ahoy! Ahoy!” Wiggins leaned forward over the prow, hailing the approaching ship, its puffed scudding sails a stark contrast against the darkening sky.

Gray moved to cover the companion stairs, reaching inside the gaping black hole and groping for the handle to draw the hatch closed.

Something—or someone—groped him back.

When the skylight was battened, the cabin went instantly black. Sophia felt the sudden, suffocating darkness, even though her eyes were clamped shut, the heels of her hands pressed flat against them to stem the tide of tears.

What was happening?

She stood up on shaky legs, smoothing her frock over her hips and adjusting her bodice in the dark. Fumbling in the darkness, she felt her way toward the cabin door and opened it. A square of light pierced the darkness overhead—the companionway hatch.

She moved toward the stairs and placed a foot on the bottom riser. When she reached forward to grab hold of the ladder’s edge, however, her hand met instead with something warm, solid, and strong.

An arm.

“Sweet,” a voice said. A large hand closed over her wrist.

His
voice.
His
hand.

She nearly wept anew. He was still there. In some absurd, maudlin spike of self-pity, she’d prepared herself to never see him again.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, his shadowy face protruding through the hatch. “Get back in your cabin.”

Oh, but of course he was still there. His mere presence signified nothing, she told herself sternly. It wasn’t as though he’d any means of escaping the ship. If he had, he surely would have taken it.

Even so, she hadn’t the courage to let him go.

She used his arm as leverage, hauling herself up the stairs even as the ladder pitched and rolled beneath her. “What’s happening?” The salty breeze whipped loose strands of hair across her face, and she used her free hand to tuck them behind her ear. She gripped his arm with the other.

“There’s a storm coming.” Deep lines etched his face. His own hair clung to his brow in thick, wet locks. “You need to remain below.”

“This isn’t so bad,” she protested, pulling the hair from her face once again. “It isn’t even raining.”

He caught her chin in his hand and stared down at her face. For a breathless moment, Sophia thought he intended to kiss her.

She thought wrong.

“Look.” He swiveled her head toward the ship’s bow.

“Oh.” The wind whipped the sound from her lips as quickly as she uttered it. Before them, the sky boiled with towering, greenish-black clouds. If Sophia hadn’t suffered through enough geography lessons to know better, she would have thought they’d sailed to the very end of the earth and were about to tumble off the map into a churning void.

He turned her face back to his. The threat in his eyes was no less murderous than that of the sky. She’d never seen him look so forbidding. “Now go below. And stay there.”

“Are you coming with me?”

His lips thinned. “No.”

“Ahoy!”

Shouts drew their attention to starboard, where a tall ship backed its mainsail in preparation to speak with the
Aphrodite
. Peering through the spray, she could barely make out the ship’s name painted on its side: the
Kestrel
.

The wind accelerated, screaming through the rigging overhead. The ocean’s surface erupted in a thousand white-edged crests, like a sea monster bearing row upon row of menacing teeth.

“Get below!” Gray steered her back toward the hatch.

Then the sky cracked open in a flash of white, just as thunder quaked the deck beneath their feet. For a terrifying, endless moment, the world blanked. There was no sight, no sound, only the pungent scent of sulfur and weightless shock.

With a swift yank on her wrist, Gray twirled her into his chest, wrapping his arm across her torso and forcing her down to the deck. Sophia cowered between the wooden planks beneath her and the human fortress of warmth and strength surrounding her. Protecting her. She took a mental inventory of her limbs, making sure they were all still there. Yes, there were her legs, curled awkwardly into her belly. One arm was pinned beneath her; with her other hand she still clutched his sleeve. She slid her trembling hand down toward his wrist, rejoicing to feel his pulse pound against the crook of her thumb. Her own heart thudded against her ribs. Muffled noises reached her ears—men shouting, wood splintering. But the only sounds that Sophia cared about were these twin rhythms: his heart, and hers.