Desire in the Sun (23 page)

“Oh, Lilah!” A broken laugh escaped him as he put his arms around her and pulled her close against him. “You are so innocent! If I were a gentleman I’d stop this right now.”

“I’m tired of you being a gentleman,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “I’ve never felt about anybody in my life the way I feel about you, and I want you to do something about it.”

He slid a hand up through her wet hair and cupped her skull, gently pulling her head back so that he could look down into her face.

“You do, do you?” A tiny smile flickered on his lips and died. His eyes were both tender and rueful as they
met hers. “How about if I teach you to kiss properly?” Lilah nodded, unable to trust her voice. His hand left the back of her head and stroked her cheek, his thumb just brushing her lower lip.

“Promise not to bite me?” It was a husky whisper. She nodded again, feeling her heartbeat quicken, and he bent his head. At first his lips brushed over hers so softly that she lifted her chin to deepen the contact. The bristles covering his cheeks and jaw abraded her soft skin, but she barely noticed. Every ounce of her concentration was focused on the gentle fusing of their mouths.

“Open your mouth.” He whispered it against her lips as his tongue probed at her closed teeth, Lilah trembled, her arms going up instinctively to clutch his neck. She opened her mouth. His tongue slid inside, touched hers. She felt a quickening start deep inside her belly, felt her knees weaken. As she quaked in his arms they tightened around her, pulling her full up against him so that she felt the entire length of him. The hairs on his legs were rough against her soft thighs; the hairs on his chest cushioned her breasts that might as well have been as naked as he was, covered as they were only by the thin layer of soaking cloth. The secret part of him was huge again, and hard as it pressed against her belly. Now that she knew what it did, it held no fears for her.

Around them the water bubbled and hissed, but she wasn’t even aware of where they were. She was only aware of him, of his body against hers, of his lips and tongue teaching her things that she had never dreamed of.

His tongue was still a gentle invader, still stroking the inside of her mouth. Lilah had never imagined that such a disgusting act could make thrills run over her from head to toe. Acting from some deep primordial instinct, her tongue moved too, to stroke his.

He groaned into her mouth, then lifted his head despite her grip on his hair, pulling his lips from hers.

“What’s wrong?” Her eyes flickered open to stare dazedly into his. His eyes were a dark smoldering green, alight with a kind of wildfire.

“This is harder than I thought. I want you so much I ache.”

“Do you?” she whispered. He drew in a breath, standing very still as her lips plied sweetly over his. When he took over the kiss its character changed. No longer so carefully gentle, his mouth slanted over hers and his tongue thrust between her teeth with bold possession. His arms tightened around her as if they would squeeze her very breath from her, but Lilah didn’t care. She was in the grip of new and exciting sensations, trembling from head to toe, intoxicated with this new world of the senses that he was teaching her.

She was bent back against his arm, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her arms tight around his neck. Her eyes were closed, her head whirling as she gave herself over to his kiss. Then she felt his palms slide down over her back, his touch warm through the thin wet linen of her chemise. His hands lingered at her waist, testing the smallness of the curve, moved on over her buttocks to stroke the backs of her bare thighs. Then, before she could even breathe again after the intimacy of that gesture, his hands slid up under the hem of her chemise to close on the soft round cheeks of her behind.

Lilah gasped, the sound swallowed by his mouth. Her eyes flickered wildly open only to shut again. His hands on her bottom pulled her close against him, lifting her up on her tiptoes so that the soft mound of her womanhood was pressed tight against the stiff protuberance of his flesh.

“Jo-oss.” It wasn’t quite a protest, wasn’t quite a sound of pleasure. Her head was awhirl, her heart quaking in her chest, and she was both shocked and exhilarated by the way he was holding her, the things he was making her feel.

“Shhh.” He gentled her with kisses until she was weak and pliant and quivering in his arms. Then his mouth grew hot and hungry as he rocked her against him. At the rhythmic contact she felt her body tighten as flares of pleasure radiated out from that central spot. She gasped her pleasure into his mouth.

“Oh, Joss!”

His hold on her shifted so that only one hand stayed beneath her chemise. The other came up to cup her breast, squeeze it.

Lilah cried out. Her nails dug into the back of his neck as exquisite pleasure exploded inside her. She shivered and shook and at last went limp in his arms. It was some time later before she even became aware that he still held her.

“Does that … always happen?” Her face was pressed to his neck as he rested his cheek against the top of her hair. His arms were tight around her, his heart drumming urgently against her breasts. That part of him that had given her so much pleasure still pressed swollen and hot against her belly.

“Not always. Not to females. You’re lucky. Hell, I’m lucky.” He sounded as if he were having trouble getting the words out. Lilah felt pleasantly lethargic and warm and comfortable in his hold, but she bestirred herself to look up at him.

“You’re lucky?”

“To have such an apt pupil.”

He smiled down at her, a tender ghost of a smile, but his eyes were strained.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, frowning faintly. She felt wonderful, and it seemed odd that he should not feel the same.

“Never mind.” His grip on her loosened, and his hand came up to stroke the hair back from her face. “You still have lots to learn.”

“Mmmm.” She stepped back away from him, feeling
almost self-conscious now in the aftermath of their lovemaking. His eyes were intent on her face, and it seemed to cost him an effort to let her go. As he looked at her a rueful smile curved his lips.

“You are soaking wet and your nose is red and you are still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I think you’ve been sent by a malevolent fete to be the death of me.”

She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Come on, let’s get out of this bloody pool. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting waterlogged.”

It occurred to her that she would get to see him naked again, that she would get a good look this time at what she had only glimpsed and touched. It also occurred to her that he would get almost as good a look at her as she stepped out of the water in her wet chemise. The garment covered her to the thighs, but it would provide little in the way of concealment. At the thought of Joss looking at her in such dishabille, Lilah felt a little glow of mingled excitement and embarrassment start to grow inside her.

She slid her hand into his.

“I quite like being lovers,” she said seriously, then looked at him in surprise when he laughed then groaned.

XXVII

“A
vast, there, Magruder, you’re goin’ too bloody fast for me old bones!”

The shout came from somewhere close at hand. It froze Lilah and Joss in their tracks, still shoulder deep in the pool.

“Aw, step lively, Yates! If my ol’ peg leg can set this pace, sure to God your two good ones can keep up!”

Joss and Lilah exchanged astonished looks. The voices were coarse, the accents rough, but they were certainly no ghostly utterances. There were at least two flesh-and-blood men on the island with them. After nearly a week of being alone, and a growing fear that it might be a long time indeed before they were rescued, the voices struck Lilah as manna from heaven. With a delighted grin at Joss, she opened her mouth to call to the strangers.

He quickly silenced her by clapping a hand over her mouth. “Don’t. You’re the next thing to naked, and there might be more than two of them.”

Lilah had forgotten about her state of undress. She nodded, and Joss removed his hand with a cautioning look. The voices grew closer, arguing loudly now about who was carrying the heavier end of the load. Joss edged Lilah over into the lee of a large rock, and they stood silently, their heads just above the water, listening. It
occurred to Lilah suddenly that with rescue at hand, her time with Joss might be over before it had truly begun. At the thought, her throat tightened, and she clutched his hand.

The voices of the intruders faded away into the distance. Joss listened intently, then with his hands braced on the sides heaved himself out of the pool. He reached down and pulled Lilah out of the pool to sit on the rocky ledge at his feet.

“Get dressed,” he said in a terse whisper. “I want to follow them.”

He was already stepping into his breeches. The heady lover of the firewater pool had turned in an instant into a grim-eyed man with his mind on matters far removed from the pleasures they had just shared. He hardly even looked at her as she pulled her dress on over her soaking chemise. His attention was totally focused on the intruders, whose fading voices could still be heard cursing one another in the distance.

“Joss!” It was a whisper. He turned to look at her, his expression impatient.

“Do up my buttons, would you, please?” Though she had managed to get out of the dress on her own, buttoning it up again was beyond her. The buttons were tiny and slippery from where her chemise had already soaked her dress. Even when dry, she found buttoning herself up a slow, arduous process. Dressing herself was one of many things she would not miss a bit once they were rescued from the island.

In fact, the only thing she would miss was Joss.

She turned her back to him and he did up her buttons with quick efficiency, clearly no stranger to assisting a lady’s toilette. His thoughts were not on what he was doing, she could tell, or even on her at all. The ramifications posed by the intruders occupied all his attention. But when he finished, he bent to slide the sandals on her feet, taking care to wrap the vines securely around her
ankles. At that evidence of his care for her she felt a lump rise to her throat.

She almost wished they would never be rescued.

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her after him as he set off in the direction the strangers had taken.

Once in the forest, they marched single file with Joss in the lead. The undergrowth was thicker in this direction, which was due south, away from the small bay. Joss tried to shield her from the worst of the vines and branches, but a long scratch quickly decorated her arm, and her dress suffered a triangular tear in the skirt that made it just this side of indecent.

Lilah came up beside Joss and was astonished to see the blue of the ocean glinting beyond the thick curtain of vines that he had moved a scant few inches aside.

“We must be at the opposite end of the island,” Lilah whispered. Joss nodded.

“Look there.”

They had emerged at the edge of a cliff overlooking a small, half-moon-shaped bay. Joss pointed toward the curve of the beach below them.

Lilah looked, her eyes widening. The scene was incredible. On its side in shallow water lay a ship nearly as large as the
Swift Wind
had been. At first Lilah thought she must be looking at the results of another shipwreck, although there had been no storms since she and Joss had washed up on the island and they had already tramped its circumference on foot and found themselves alone. But then she saw that the ship was held on its side by blocks and tackles tied to trees, and that men in rowboats were busy scraping her hull. The ship had been denuded of everything: topmasts, sails, seabags and chests, weapons and a welter of miscellaneous stores and goods that were scattered along the beach helter-skelter. Some piles were protected with tarpaulins, some were not. Not far from the ship two men
hauling logs stomped up to where a fire blazed under a huge kettle. It was too far to hear the exchange that took place between these two and the stocking-capped man stirring the kettle, but Lilah guessed from the peg leg on one of them that these were the men they’d heard.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

“She’s being careened.”

At Lilah’s look of incomprehension he added patiently, “Having her hull scraped, caulked and repaired. She must have taken some damage in the storm. Smell that?”

Lilah sniffed, then nodded, wrinkling her nose.

“Hot tallow. They’ll coat the hull with it, make her watertight again.”

Lilah watched for a minute or two, then looked at Joss again. “Shouldn’t we go down and tell them we’re here?”

His eyes ran over her face, down over her body, whose feminine curves and hollows were clearly delineated by the wet-through dress. He shook his head.

“I think we’d better keep an eye on them for a while first. If the whole crew of them decided to take a fancy to you, there wouldn’t be much I could do to stop them.”

His eyes ran over her again. Looking down at herself, at the full mounds of her breasts pressing wantonly against the cloth, at her nipples clearly visible as the wet friction of the cloth rendered them hard as buttons, at the transparent nature of the skirt, which had never been intended to be worn without a petticoat around her legs, Lilah blushed. When it was just herself and Joss, she had not worried about her state of undress. But at the thought of so many strangers seeing her like this, her cheeks burned.