Across a Moonlit Sea (30 page)

The scream was brief and muffled, leaving the distinct impression of the owner’s identity trembling on the air, and Dante was in the shrouds, climbing, before the sounds of the wind and the sea had completely absorbed it. He reached the stout upper yard and crossed it with hardly any thought to his own footing or balance.

“Beau? Beau! Hold fast, I’m almost there!”

“M-my—my foot is slipping!”

Anchoring himself to the mast with one arm he slid down and straddled the yardarm, reaching down, lunging for a fistful of her clothing just as the wind relented and the sail slackened. Her foot slipped free and she screamed again, a short, panicked cry that was bitten off when she felt the pressure tighten on her doublet.

“Grab my arm! Reach up and grab my arm!”

Beau managed to clutch at his sleeve. A powerful surge of strength tautened the muscles as he hauled her upward
and she felt herself upended and lifted over the yardarm so that she sat straddling it with the mast at her back and the bulk of his chest in front.

Dante released her doublet in exchange for a more secure hold around her waist. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

A rapid shaking of her head was the only answer she could muster.

“You’re sure? You haven’t broken or twisted anything?”

She hesitated and he could see her turning her ankles, testing her knees and hips. She shook her head again and leaned forward, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder.

He let go of a lengthy sigh and waited for the pounding in his chest to abate. “Should I even ask what you were doing up here?”

“I … come here all the time,” she replied, her words muffled against his throat. “To think.”

“To … think?”

“To
think!
Sometimes I just need to get away from everybody and everything and
think.
Is that so terrible? So hard to understand?”

“No, but on a night like this, do you not
think
you could have found someplace a little less venturous? And where the devil is the watch?”

“I relieved him.”

“You—?” He swore under his breath again. “If this were my ship, and you were one of my crew, I don’t give a damn how good or valuable you are, I would—”

She lifted her head, lifted her eyes slowly to his, and he was startled to see a bright film shimmering along her lashes, starting to swell at the corners.

“—I would give you the thrashing of your life,” he said gently, “for risking your neck like this.”

“I told you,” she whispered. “I have never so much as cut my hand or … stubbed my toe … until you came on board.”

“Forgive me,” he murmured, “if I have brought this ill fortune down upon you.”

He reached up and tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, then urged her head back onto his shoulder again. “Go ahead. You can cry if you want to, I promise I will not tell a soul.”

“There is nothing to tell, because I never cry!
Never!”
“Forgive me again,” he said softly, stroking his hand down her hair. “It must have been a trick of the light.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“That.”

He stopped stroking her hair and moved his hand away. “This?”

She took a small breath. “No, not that.”

He put his hand back.

“Stop 1-laughing at me.”

“I swear I am not.”

“You are,” she insisted. “You’re
always
laughing at me. You laughed when you found out I was a woman, and again when you were told I was the ship’s pilot. You found it amusing when I tried to shoot you on the Virago and you did not take me the least bit seriously when I said I would fillet you into tiny pieces if you kissed me. And in the cabin that night—” Her head came off his shoulder and not only her eyes, but her cheeks, were suspiciously damp.

“Yes? In the cabin that night?”

“You were laughing at my ignorance,” she whispered. “I know you were.”

Perhaps it was because of the bad fright she had just experienced, or perhaps it was the starlight playing with his
powers of perception, but when she looked at him, her guard was down and the full measure of her vulnerability was suddenly, unwittingly, revealed in her eyes. The ship still pitched side to side, sliding forward and rearing back as it carved through each new swell, and he was forced to keep one hand grasped around a mast brace, the other clamped securely around Beau’s waist, but he could and did draw her even closer than she had managed to insist herself.

“No, mam’selle,” he said slowly. “If I was laughing at anyone’s ignorance, it was my own. Believe me, Isabeau … it was my own.”

A small huff of air escaped her lips, and while it might have shaped the word
liar
, he did not contest the charge with more words. The stars shifted dizzily overhead and the wind snatched at locks of his hair, blowing it forward so that when he dragged her mouth up to his, silky black strands were trapped between them.

She scarcely noticed. Or cared. He was kissing her, that was all that mattered, and she flung her arms around his neck, kissing him back with a desire that bordered on desperation.

They broke apart, both gasping quick, shallow breaths, both staring at one another as if expecting some form of rejection. When none was forthcoming, they melted together again, open mouthed and open eyed, holding one another hostage until the tremors in their bodies threatened to rival the tremors coursing through the mast.

He tried to draw her closer and cursed at the impossibility. He tried to appease himself by devouring her with kisses, thinking it would do until he could get them down out of the rigging and he could devour her in other ways. His hand did not have as much faith and went beneath her doublet instead, unfastening the belt that held her hose snug around her waist. He gave the wool a fierce tug, tearing
the seam open from waist to crotch, and, with his mouth slanting more determinedly over any effort to protest, he slid his fingers deftly through the gap.

She was sleek and slippery, and he stroked deep into the heated folds of her flesh, groaning when he felt how hot she was, how tight, how soft and wet and quick she was to respond to the intrusion. The first shivering volley of pleasure was starting to tighten all the grasping little muscles even as her hands clutched at his shoulders and her head shook side to side in denial. Spasms drenched her with more heat and it was not enough, suddenly, just to hear her crying out his name in disbelieving whispers. He withdrew his fingers and made a similarily accommodating gap in his own clothing, then, with her body still quivering with shock, with pleasure, he hooked her legs over his thighs and lifted her onto his lap.

“You’re mad,” she gasped. “We’ll both fall.”

“Not if you hold on,” he snarled savagely, “and trust me.”

Beau spared a glance for the deck, still thirty feet below, and then she spared nothing, for the solid shaft of his flesh was furrowing up inside her, so hard and thick and unyielding, she had no choice but to lock her arms around his shoulders and trust his madness. Both of his hands were braced on the mast now, his feet were stirruped through lines of rigging. Every muscle and sinew in his arms and across his back stiffened as he pushed up into her clinging heat and a primitive sound broke from his throat.

The ship took a frisky leap through a deep trough and one of his feet slipped, leaving him scrambling a moment to balance himself and his precious burden on a yardarm no wider around than a tree trunk.

“Wait,” he commanded desperately. “Wait. Hold yourself there, or I swear—”

Beau was panting lightly against his neck, her body paralyzed, not from fear but from the almost inconceivable depth of his penetration.

“You might be right,” he admitted raggedly. “This is mad. I can’t move. I can’t … do anything. And I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You are not hurting me,” she assured him on the outward escape of another breath. “And you don’t have to move. You don’t have to do anything at all.”

To prove it, she arched her back and let the ship’s motion press her hips forward, swallowing him to the hilt. They both groaned, then groaned again when the
Egret
rocked back and the pressure eased.

“Don’t … do that again,” he warned softly. “Or I will explode.”

“I … can’t help it,” she cried, half laughing, half sobbing, as the Egret plunged again. The rocking motion, less pronounced on deck, was magnified by the weight and pull of the sails, by the rush of the wind, and the vibrations that shook the stem of the mast. Each giddy swoop brought him deeper and deeper inside her until it seemed he might touch her heart.

Dante’s arms were shaking, his teeth were clenched tight enough to make his jaw ache, but there was nothing he could do. His body tensed and his flesh reared, and his pleasure did indeed explode with a stunning lack of finesse. Beau felt the throb of each scalding burst and bit down hard on his shoulder to keep from crying out, to keep from screaming as the waves of ecstasy began to sweep through her with an equally fierce and unrelenting mercilessness.

“It occurs to me,” he said some time later, his voice hoarse and muffled against her throat, “we might both need rescuing.”

Beau shuddered softly and burrowed closer to the massive bulk of his chest. The conflagrant waves of heat had passed but not the pleasure. If anything it remained steady and threatening, sending small spirals of warm thrills along her spine and through her limbs.

“We should try standing up,” he suggested gently.

She opened her eyes and debated the question from the point of if she
wanted
to stand up.

“I don’t think I can,” she whispered. “I don’t even think I can move.”

Dante risked unclamping a hand from the mast ring and found her chin, forcing her to look up at him. Her eyes were glazed and heavy-lidded. Her mouth was deliciously puffed and moist but he refrained from kissing her, suspecting if he did they might never find the strength to untangle themselves and climb safely down the rigging. Even now the motion of the Egret was working its mischief again, making him aware of the sleek, molten friction where their bodies were still joined.

“We’ll make a pretty sight when the watch changes.”

Beau frowned and leaned forward, silencing his common sense with her lips. His tongue was too gallant to refuse her invitation and she welcomed him into her mouth with a languid sigh, running all ten fingers up into his hair and refusing to let him go until he’d been properly rebuked.

He groaned but still he eased her reluctantly away. She resisted halfheartedly for another moment, then let him lift her off his thighs and settle her back on the yardarm. They were both embarrassingly wet, although he seemed to regard the evidence of their expended passions with somewhat less mortification than she.

“Mon petit corsaire féroce”
he mused.

“What?”

“My fierce little corsair. Only you could have inspired me to such desperate measures.”

“So you admit it. You
are
mad.” She glanced at the belling sail below them. “On a yardarm, for pity’s sake. We could have both ended up in the sea.” She looked to her rumpled and torn clothing and sighed. “It would not hurt to learn a little restraint.”

“Me?” His dark brows shot up. “I have been showing remarkable restraint this past week. You cannot know the number of times I have been tempted to haul you out of your miserable hammock again and— By the way, you never thanked me.”

“For what?”

“For letting you enjoy a good night’s sleep … alone … in your own bed.”

Distracted momentarily by the shape of his mouth and the intriguing way he used it to fashion words, she gazed up into his eyes and wondered if she should feel cheated or guilty.

“So … why did you do it?”

“For one thing, you were dead tired. For another … I did not intend to force something on you that you didn’t really want. I foolishly thought—like the arrogant bastard you believe me to be—I would wait until you came to me.”

“I did not come to you tonight,” she pointed out quietly.

“Not by design, no. But neither did you push me away. Or refuse me my madness. And after tonight, whether I come to you or you come to me, it will make little difference in the end.”

A gust of wind caused Beau to turn her head and look out over the vastness of the sea. It defied all logic to be straddling a yardarm thirty feet above the gundeck of a moving ship, her thighs slick, her body runny and warm, her sex pouting, quivering for more. It defied every shred
of common sense and judgment to even let there be an ‘after tonight’ … yet what could she do? Where could she go to hide from him? The
Egret
was a small ship and she was an even smaller fool.

“Surely you know … this cannot possibly last beyond the first step we take on English soil.”

There was a very noticeable hesitation before he said, “England is more than two weeks away. We could grow quite bored with each other in that time—gallery balconies and swaying yards aside.”

She rested her head against the mast, feeling suddenly trapped in the narrow space between his outstretched arms. “And if we become bored with each other before then?”

He shrugged blithely. “Then it’s you to your solitary hammock and me to my solitary bed.”

“And on to a civil parting on the quayside in Plymouth?” she added dryly.

“It will be so civil, mam’selle, the angels will weep.” He laughed at her expression and pulled himself up so that he was standing on the yardarm. He adjusted his clothes, then reached a hand down to help her to her feet, and on an impulse drew her against his chest, holding her there long enough for her to feel the hardness rising in his body again.

“But for now,
ma petite
, and for the next two weeks, we’ll make them weep over other things, shall we?”