The Pirate Lord (23 page)

But he wouldn’t let her hide from him. Tipping her chin up, he stared at her face, a devilish smile playing over his lips. “Remember what I did to you in the forest? Would you like me to do that again?”

She could only stare at him in mute embarrassment, unable to utter even a word. He dropped his hand to her thigh, then glided it up the soft inner skin. A shiver of desire whispered over her, and to her mortification, her lower body undulated toward him just a fraction. With a knowing look, he inched his hand up until it brushed her dewy curls. But he stopped there.

His eyes locked with hers, gleaming with purpose. “I want to hear you say it, Sara. Tell me what you want. Tell me you want me inside you.”

Her cheeks flamed even more. Oh, he was too cruel. He was paying her back for all the things she’d said to him, all the times she’d refused him.

“I know you do,” he said with the most infuriating confidence. “But I want you to say it. I won’t have you
telling the women tomorrow that I ravished you against your will.” His thumb parted her damp hair to rub against the tiny nub there, making her jerk and press herself shamefully against him. But his thumb danced away after that brief caress.

“Say you want me, Sara,” he growled. “Say it!”

Now his hand was stroking the inside of her thigh again, making her ache to feel those sensuous strokes higher up. She squirmed, trying to get nearer that terrible hand and its tempting offer of pleasure, but he took his hands off her when she did so.

“Please, Gideon…please…touch me…” The words were out before she could stop them. Her voice didn’t even sound like hers, so breathy and sensual. Another woman possessed her body, making her act like this wanton, and she couldn’t seem to stop it. “Please…”

He scowled. “That’s all I’m going to get from you, isn’t it? Very well. It’s enough. For now.”

Then he slipped one finger deep inside her in a velvet stroke that wrung a sigh from her lips. He began a slow motion…enter…retreat…enter…retreat. She rocked against his hand, and when his glittering gaze on her became too much, she hid her face again in his shoulder.

His hair brushed her cheek, smelling of smoke and cinders. Although he’d bathed since they’d fought the fire, he still bore the scent of the Prince of Corruption—of flames and ashes and brimstone.

It didn’t matter. He stood at the gates of hell beckoning her in, and she rushed toward them without a thought. God forgive her, but she did want him. She wanted him more than anything she’d ever wanted. She’d been headed for damnation ever since that day in the forest, and tonight had only sealed her fate.

He nuzzled her cheek, then his mouth sought hers, taking it with a savage eagerness that increased her need. His tongue mimicked the movements of his fin
gers, driving in and out. She could feel his arousal press between her legs but could pay it little heed when he caressed her with such deep, erotic strokes. He broke off their kiss, his breathing harsh, guttural. Her hair fell into her face as strange new sounds erupted from her lips. The press of his hair-roughened chest against her now sensitized breasts only heightened the delicious sensations.

He brought her to the brink of the same pleasure he’d given her before, then abruptly withdrew his hand. A whimper of protest escaped her lips before she could stop herself, and her eyes shot open.

He wore a decidedly wicked expression. “Not this time, sweetheart. This time we’ll reach it together.”

As she stared at him, uncertain what he meant, he lifted her off his lap and laid her back on the bed, then stood up beside it. Tugging at his belt buckle, he yanked off his belt and flung it aside. She heard it clatter to the floor halfway across the cabin as he tore loose the buttons of his trousers, then dragged them off.

Her mouth formed a silent “O” to see him completely naked. So this was what men looked like. She doubted anybody could have prepared her for the sight of Gideon with his clothes off. His lean, scarred belly…his navel ringed with dark hair…his thick, corded thighs that attested to many hours spent balancing on a moving ship’s deck—all of it tantalized and shocked her at the same time.

But what stunned her most was what lay between his thighs. Fully aroused, he was man enough to stun any woman. He was going to put
that
inside her? He would kill her!

“I…I can’t…” She lifted her gaze to his face, desperate to make him understand. “I can’t do this!”

She sat up and reached for a pillow to cover herself, but he was too fast for her. He climbed onto the bed, kneeling next to her, and she waited for him to mock her for her fears. Instead, he lifted her clenched hand to
his mouth and kissed her fingers till they relaxed and opened.

Before she knew what he was doing, he’d taken her hand and placed it on his hard shaft. She tried to draw her hand back, but he closed his fingers around hers. “You see,” he murmured in a strained voice, “it’s not so bad, is it? It’s only flesh. Flesh that aches for you, that belongs inside you.”

He moved her hand on him, letting her feel the tight, smooth skin encasing his hardness. His fingers dropped away from her, and she continued the motion until he swore and pushed her hand away. “I’ll go insane if you keep that up, sweetheart. I’m too ready for you.” He flashed her a smile. “And you’re ready for me.”

When she opened her mouth to protest that she could never be ready, he kissed her, his arms clutching her so closely she could scarcely breathe. Before she knew it, he was shifting her body to lie beneath his and spreading her legs apart with his knees.

Then he was sliding inside her. She gasped at the intrusion and wrenched her mouth from his in shock.

“It’s all right,” he whispered in soothing tones. “Relax, sweetheart. Just relax.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” she snapped in fear. She was all too aware of him inside her, over her, around her. She’d never felt so totally helpless, so conquered.

A lock of black hair fell over his forehead, making him look devilish, though his next words were anything but. “I don’t know,” he muttered with a shade of uncertainty. “I’ve never taken a virgin before.”

He moved further inside her, and she stiffened. “How wonderful,” she said sarcastically, as the sense of intrusion only increased. “You’re a novice at this.”

His lips twitched, as if he were suppressing a grin. Or a groan. “I’m only a novice at taking virgins. But I’m about to remedy that situation.”

He inched further inside her, then stopped abruptly,
his eyes growing solemn as he stared down into her face. “You know it’ll hurt some when I break your maidenhead, don’t you?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“Do you trust me not to hurt you more than necessary?”

Every muscle in his face seemed taut from the effort of entering her slowly, and his eyes glittered with need. Yet he held off, waiting for her answer. That reassured her as nothing else could have. He might be a pirate, but he would not deliberately harm her.

Though she feared he had the power to hurt her deeply.

“I trust you,” she whispered.

“Good.” He sheathed himself fully inside her.

It was only a quick little burst of pain, but enough to make her cry out. He caught her cry with his mouth, kissing her until she relaxed. Then he began to move, sliding into her with long, slow strokes. At first it felt tight and unfamiliar. Then the slick friction of him inside her began to warm her, to rouse intriguing new sensations inside her. She felt herself open and loosen for him, like a sail unfurling to accept the mighty thrust of wind against it, inside it.

He held himself over her, his eyes the blue of the sky and the stormy sea. He thrust deeper, harder, making her ache for more.

It was sweet heaven and the torments of hell in one. Having him, but not enough…wanting him, but too much. Only half-conscious of what she did, she clutched at his arms to anchor him against her. He groaned, desire flaring higher in his face as he increased his tempo. He drove into her now as if he feared losing her, and she dug her fingernails into his arms to ride out the storm.

She felt as if he reached to the very heart of her. The ship rocked him and he rocked her, thrusting deeper
and deeper, building the tension inside her until she cried out with needing him.

“My God,” he muttered as he drove wildly inside her, like a mythical sea beast riding the waves. “My God, Sara…my Sara…yes, my Sara…”

Her head tossed against the pillows as the pressure built inside her, making her cry out and strain harder and harder to fuse her body with his.

“Yes…oh, yes—Sara!” he half-shouted, half-groaned, as he drove himself in her to the hilt. Jerky shudders wracked his body as he spilled himself inside her. She broke over the edge and felt herself careening through space.

As she cried out her pleasure beneath him, she fleetingly thought that he’d finally done exactly as he’d promised. He’d corrupted her. And to her endless shame, she’d reveled in it. She was wicked, truly wicked indeed.

Oh, how glorious it was to be wicked.

S
ara was dreaming. Gideon stood with her at an altar, looking civilized and very English. His black hair was cropped close to his ears beneath a tall felt hat, and his saber was missing. He wore a fashionable frock coat of deep blue superfine, and she wore a gown of shimmering white silk, with a ruched bonnet rounded with ribbon and sprigs of orange blossoms.

But when she looked about her, the church was filled with convict women and pirates who were gambling and drinking and profaning the sacred place. Through the open doors she could see Petey and Jordan, but they didn’t enter. Instead, they cast her scornful, disparaging looks before turning their backs on her.

She strained toward them, but Gideon clasped her arm, ordering her to be still. Suddenly his frock coat vanished, revealing the leather vest and saber beneath them, making her realize they’d been there all along.

“This is where you belong now.” His expression was distant and rigid, and his fingers dug cruelly into her arm. “You belong with us. You’re one of us.”

“But I must speak with my brother…I must see Jordan…please let me see my brother…”

She awakened to the sound of her own voice whispering Jordan’s name.

It took her a few moments to realize she’d been dreaming, and another few moments to remember where she was. Shaking her head to clear it, she sat up in the empty bed and glanced around Gideon’s cabin, a quick surge of shame pinkening her cheeks. Good heavens, she was naked in his bed.

A flood of memories from the night before washed over her: Gideon forcing her to admit she wanted him…the second time they’d made love, when he’d coaxed her atop him and let her set the pace…feeling sated and drowsy, drifting off to sleep as he held her close in his arms.

At least she hadn’t awakened in his arms. She couldn’t have borne that. Last night, it had seemed perfectly right to give herself to him. Their argument earlier, the fire—all of it had conspired to throw them into each other’s arms.

But now, in the harsh morning light, she knew it had been a mistake. A monumental mistake. Petey would be coming back with Jordan. How could she face them, knowing she’d dishonored herself and her family?

Of course, she couldn’t tell Gideon that. No, she wouldn’t be able to explain anything to him—why she’d been so weak last night…why she couldn’t continue to be weak. He wouldn’t understand why they couldn’t continue as lovers.

That is, if he wanted them to. He might not. He still hadn’t even said he wished to marry her.

She frowned. Not that she wanted to marry
him
. No indeed. As her dream had proved, marrying him would only compound her error.

Quickly she slid from between the sheets that still bore the crimson stain signaling her loss of innocence. She paused a moment to look at it. Gone, all gone. She would never be a maid again.

But she had no time to fret over that now. She must dress and leave before he returned, before he made her forget her good intentions. All too conscious of the soreness between her legs, she scanned the floor for her shift, but there was no sign of it anywhere. She searched around frantically. None of her clothes were here.

“Looking for this?” came a voice from the doorway to the cabin.

She whirled around, her heart leaping into her throat. Gideon lounged in the doorway with her shift hanging from one finger. He was dressed in gray trousers and a snowy shirt unbuttoned nearly to his waist. In the light of morning, he looked handsome and charming and so utterly male he took her breath away.

A curse on the man! Why must he be so appealing?

“I thought you might try to run off while I was away, so I took the liberty of removing your clothes from the cabin.” His gaze slid with telling slowness down the length of her naked body. “I see that was a stroke of genius.”

She blushed furiously. It was one thing to stand in front of him undressed in the middle of the night when she was drunk with passion. It was quite another to do it in broad daylight. She cast a furtive glance through the open doorway. What if one of his men were to enter the saloon? How mortifying that would be!

She held out her hand. “Please, Gideon, give it to me.”

He sauntered into the room and closed the door behind him. With a smile, he hung her shift on a hook by the door, then came toward her. “Not yet. I like looking at you in the morning. There’s plenty of time for dressing later.”

“But…but…”

His hand snaked around her waist to pull her close. That familiar light was in his eyes again, the one she’d seen every time he’d looked at her last night. And to her complete shame, she felt herself growing soft and liquid under the fire of it.

“Good morning,” he murmured as he bent his head toward her.

“Please, Gideon—”

“That’s it, sweetheart. Say ‘Please, Gideon…more, Gideon…I want you, Gideon’—”

“Why, you arrogant—”

He muffled her words with a kiss, a long, hungry one that reduced her to pudding. When at last he pulled away, she was speechless and he was grinning. “Much better. I see I’ve been following the wrong approach with you. I should’ve kissed you every time you opened your mouth.”

She puffed up like an angry cobra. “Now, see here, Captain Horn—”

This time when he cut her off, he wasn’t content with just a kiss. This time he lifted her and carried her to the bed, his mouth making love to her every step of the way. And when he followed her down onto the bed, shedding his clothes quickly before parting her thighs with his knees, she could only open to him, rising to meet him as he entered her with a fierceness that left her aching.

This time their lovemaking was quick and wild, with the urgency of two people who fear they’ll never have another chance to mate. To her consternation, she was as eager as he. She wanted him inside her, around her, driving out her fears. She wanted him to be hers, even though she knew he never could be.

Afterward, she lay cradled in his arms spoon-fashion. Despite the sounds of footsteps tramping on the deck just on the other side of the wall and Barnaby ordering the sailors about, she felt peaceful and content just being in Gideon’s arms.

How had she come to this pass? What perverse demon made her forget all her good intentions the second he touched her? No doubt about it, Gideon truly was a satyr, a very talented, very clever satyr who could seduce her whenever he wished. Worst of all, he knew it.

He pressed a kiss to her ear, his breath fanning her hot cheeks. Then he splayed his fingers over her naked belly provocatively. “What is it the Song of Solomon says? ‘Thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies.’”

Good heavens, now the cursed man was quoting Biblical poetry in the most outrageous context. He truly was wicked.

“And thy breasts—” he began.

“Gideon!” she protested, twisting to glare at him as her face flamed. “Really, that passage is quite indecent. It’s not meant to be…repeated aloud.”

He smiled down at her, his expression unrepentant. “I’m a pirate. I’m supposed to say indecent things.” Eyes twinkling, he tugged loose two locks of her hair, then arranged them over her shoulders and her breasts. “But if you insist on being prudish, I’ll speak of something less…indecent. Like your hair.” He stroked it with a delicacy she wouldn’t have expected of him. His voice was soft and almost wistful. “I love your hair. It’s like copper coins and raw silk and Miss Mulligan’s curtains.”

“Miss Mulligan?” She scowled up at him. “Who, may I ask, is Miss Mulligan, and what were you doing with her curtains?”

“Come now, Miss Willis, don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

The wretch. Of course she was jealous. But she’d never let him know that. Tipping up her chin, she tried for a nonchalant tone. “Wouldn’t I be a fool to be jealous of a pirate who’s probably bedded half the women in Christendom?”

That wiped the grin off his face. With a clipped oath
he fell back against the pillows. “Not quite so many. Probably only a quarter of the women in Christendom, though I do try to bed a woman every half-hour or so. It keeps me young.”

Ignoring his sarcasm, she snapped, “And Miss Mulligan was one of them, I suppose.”

“Oh, of course. I bed seventy-two-year-old women whenever I get the chance.”

All at once, she felt like a complete fool. “Oh.”

“You
are
jealous, aren’t you?” He propped himself up on one elbow. “And with no need whatsoever. Miss Mulligan was an elderly spinster who ran one of the many boarding houses my father and I stayed in.”

Glancing up into his face, she saw that his eyes had a faraway look. “I wasn’t quite seven years old when we lived there,” he went on, “and we were only there for six months. That was longer than we stayed in most places.” He played with her hair, letting the strands slip through his fingers to pool over her shoulders. “But I remember the curtains in her drawing room so vividly. They were made of some scarlet, silky material, and when the sun shone through them, they looked like fire. I thought they
were
fire.”

A smile touched his lips. “They fascinated me. Whenever Father was drunk and took the strap to me for doing my lessons badly, I’d run and hide behind those curtains in the drawing room, hoping that the fire would protect me.” His eyes met hers. “I guess, in a strange sort of way, it did. He never found me when I was behind those curtains. And whenever Miss Mulligan discovered me there, she gave me milk and cookies and let me curl up in the bed with her while Father slept off his drunk. For a boy of six, that was heaven. She was kind and motherly and smelled of rosewater. I used to love the smell of rosewater.”

A lump formed in her throat. She could just imagine Gideon as a small boy, hiding fearfully behind the curtains of a drawing room, turning to an old woman for
comfort. She touched her fingers to his cheek. “Did your father…take a strap to you often?”

His gaze met hers, startled, then aloof, like the look a sleepwalker gives a person who wakes him. Lying back on the bed and tucking one arm under his head, he stared up at the ceiling. “Often enough to make an impression on me, if that’s what you mean.” He cast her a quick, cool glance. “You probably think he should’ve done it a few more times, to flail some goodness into me. What’s that the Bible says? ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’?”

“Oh, don’t quote
that
wretched verse! It’s awful how people use it to justify cruelty. Beating a child doesn’t teach him anything but humiliation and fear.”

He stared at her a long time as if trying to fathom her. “Yes,” he finally said. “That’s exactly what it teaches.”

Her heart twisted in her chest. Poor Gideon. No wonder he sought to create his own paradise. The world he’d been raised in sounded as if it was far from paradise. More like hell even.

“Where was your mother while all this was going on?” she couldn’t help but ask. “Did she approve of your father…beating you?”

His face grew shuttered. Abruptly he rose from the bed and drew on his trousers. “She wasn’t around.”

Sitting up in bed, Sara clutched the sheets to her breast. “What do you mean? Did she die?”

Folding his arms over his bare chest, he rested his hip on the edge of his desk. His features were as remote and cold as the figurehead on the prow of his ship. “Something like that. It doesn’t really matter, does it? She wasn’t there.”

She sniffed. “If you don’t want to talk about her—”

“I don’t.” When she cast him a wounded look, he added, “We’ve more important things to discuss, Sara. Like what’s going to happen today.”

The abrupt change of subject threw her off guard. “Today?”

“When the women choose their husbands. Or have you forgotten?”

Oh, yes.
That
. Actually, in the wake of the fire and their night together, she
had
forgotten.

He went on without waiting for an answer. “Obviously we can’t wait until new lodgings are built. That’ll take weeks. The men who went to Sao Nicolau returned this morning, so there’s no reason to delay. I need to know—” He broke off, a vulnerable expression crossing his face. “That is, I want to know whom you intend to choose.”

“Why? So you can approve him?” she snapped.

“What in blue blazes is that supposed to mean?”

It took all her effort to force some calmness into her tone. “The last time we discussed this, you made it quite clear you didn’t wish to marry me yourself.”

“That’s not true. As I recall, I said I wanted to ‘sample the goods first.’”

“Oh, yes, I remember.” She hugged the sheet protectively to her chest, unable to hold back her bitter words. “Now that you’ve ‘sampled the goods,’ did I pass your test with flying colors? How many of the other women have you ‘sampled’ in your quest to find the perfect bedmate?”

“Confound it, Sara, you know I haven’t touched another woman since I met you.” He raked his hand through his hair, looking more uncomfortable than she’d ever seen him. “What we did together last night…that was
not
a test. But it did prove something to me. If I were doing the choosing, I’d choose to marry you and no one else. Unfortunately, by the terms of our agreement, I’m not doing the choosing. You are. And the question is, who will you choose?”

Confused and torn, she wrenched her gaze from his. Marry him? How could she? Though it would likely be more than a month before Petey and Jordan arrived here, they would come; she felt sure of that. And when they did, she intended to leave with them. On the other
hand, the thought of staying with Gideon on this intriguing island, helping him build a new world, was so enticing, she could almost say yes to anything he wanted.

But that was a foolish thought. She didn’t belong here. And in any case, he was just looking for a convenient bedmate. For some reason he’d chosen her, but that didn’t mean anything.

“It’s not as if I really have a choice at all,” she said evasively. “I’d prefer not to marry anyone, but you won’t allow that. If I don’t choose you, you’ve already said you would choose for me, so that means I either choose you for my husband or let you assign yourself as my husband. It’s all the same, isn’t it?”