Lois Greiman (25 page)

D
esire burned through Cairn, hot as torched pitch. He kissed her in return, passionately, wildly. She tore at his shirt. It came away in her hands. He reached for her bodice, but her arms were in the way, working at his pantaloons.

Virginity was well overrated. Experience was easier. Passion was everything and so long missed.

She pushed his trousers over his hips.

He heard her intake of breath. Her movements slowed, but she didn’t shift her gaze. It remained on his erection, which hugged his belly, tight and hard. He waited breathlessly, and then she touched it. He closed his eyes as she wrapped her hand around his length, stroking him. Desire bucked like a wind-tossed frigate in his veins, but he remained absolutely still, waiting.

“I did not expect…” She raised her gaze to his. Her cheeks were flushed, the black of her pupils all but swallowing her eyes. “It is large.”

He was surprised by her words. Hoary was ecstatic and squeezed hard up against his abdomen.

She stroked it again. He gritted his teeth and shuddered. “Lass, if you hope to wait a bit, you shouldn’t—”

“Will it…” She licked her lips. She’d lowered her gaze again and just the knowledge that she was staring at it made him all but burst with wanting. “Are you certain it will fit?”

“Damn!” he groaned. “Don’t tease me, lass.”

She lifted her gaze to his. Her eyes were huge, her lips slightly parted, and he could do nothing but kiss her. He crushed his mouth to hers, and she answered like a wild vixen, returning his caresses with mind-numbing desperation. He tried to slow the passion, but her hands were everywhere, stoking the fire until it was out of control.

He kissed her throat. She moaned and arched into the bed. Drawing her knees up, she cradled him between them and wrapped him in her arms. It was then that he realized she was trembling. Like a babe. Like a child, lost and alone. He calmed himself with a hard effort, drew himself back a few scant inches and kissed the corner of her mouth with gentle, tremulous care.

She laced her fingers through the hair at the back of his head, wrapped her legs around his waist, and devoured him. Perhaps he tried to fend her off, but Hoary insisted she was too strong for them. Too strong. They had to capitulate. Hoary had a great vocabulary.

Answering her wild kisses, he gave up his hopeless battle. He could no longer wait, could no longer think. Rearing back, he plunged into her—and felt her tear.

She gasped and stiffened. He squeezed his eyes shut and swore hotly as he tried to retract. But she was already recouping. Wrapping her legs more tightly about him, she pushed tentatively against him.

He cursed again, just as heatedly, but if she noticed, she made no response. Instead, she pushed harder, and his body responded with aching need, pumping into her.

She answered savagely, squeezing him with unbelievable strength, sucking him in, driving him beyond control. He no longer tried to stop, for he couldn’t. He was out of his mind, out of his depth, out of control. He pumped madly against her, and she bucked back, gasping for breath, taking him in, drawing him past release until he burst free and fell with a hard rush into satiation.

He collapsed atop her. Through the coarse fabric of her gown, he could feel her heart thumping wildly. Against his ear, her breath came hard and fast.

Guilt was the very next sensation he felt. And guilt made him mean. He was a pirate, for God’s sake. Pirates had no room for guilt.

“Who the hell are you?” he growled.

She opened her eyes rather slowly. They were still dark, still wide, still so damned beautiful it made him want to cry like an abandoned babe. To pull her into his arms and beg forgiveness. He’d rather die.

“Is it…” Her lips, always full, looked swollen now and as red as a blossom. She licked them. He watched the movement and felt his mouth go dry, and his stomach pitch low in his gut. “Does it always feel like that?”

He swore again and pulled himself away from her. “You were a virgin.”

She blinked. Her lips quirked. Perhaps it was a smile. Perhaps she was going to cry. He realized suddenly that he had no idea which it might be. How could he know so little of her mind when he knew her body like a glove.

“I told you I was,” she said.

He shook his head and pulled his attention from her lips. “You knew I didn’t believe—”

And then she kissed him, openmouthed, with passion as hot as a burning poker. He leaned into her, then found his mind and jerked to his feet. He was naked. But that seemed
the least of his worries. He paced jerkily across the room and back.

“You knew I didn’t believe you!” he repeated.

She sat up, but didn’t bother to smooth her skirts. They rode high on her thighs, barely covering her hot core. Her shoes were still on, her stockings in place. But her hair had come loose and stroked her face like wild, darkling waves. Her eyes were wide and slanted, and her lips…

He tried not to moan, but perhaps he failed, because her lips quirked up again.

“You knew,” he said.

Her gaze skimmed him, starting at his eyes and traveling down with languid speed. Her nostrils flared. “You did not answer my question, MacTavish.”

He felt strangely breathless, as if he’d been battling.

She kept her gaze well below his waist. “Does it always feel like that?”

He felt himself swell, felt his balls draw tight against his body, but he shook his head, fending off the hard press of desire renewed. “I’ll be the one asking the questions, lass.”

She raised her gaze slowly back to his, but that did little good, for her eyes were deathly dark with desire. He crunched his hands to fists and held himself carefully from her. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“What is it you want to know, MacTavish?” she asked. Her tone was perfectly level, as if they sat in a fine tearoom eating crumpets and discussing the latest antics of the
ton
.

Yet her voice was strangely husky. He swallowed. Even in a tearoom he would be hard-pressed to keep himself from her. “Who are you?”

“I told you—”

“Aye,” he growled. “But you lied.”

“Did I?” she asked, and rose slowly to her feet.

A nipple had escaped. He realized it with a shock for the
first time. The bodice, always low, had been misplaced during their lovemaking, and now the dusky peak of her left breast was peeking over the white gathered cotton. He shut his eyes and found he could see it just as vividly in his imagination.

“Aye,” he said, and opened his eyes resolutely. “You did. Repeatedly. But I’ll have the truth now.”

“My name is Linnet,” she said.

She was lying. Of course she was. But something deep inside of him whispered that he wanted to believe she was lying. Thieves were a problem. But ladies…

“Widow to the late Lord Waldon,” he said.

She advanced. He managed to hold his ground, neither retreating, as his brain suggested, nor rushing in, as Hoary vociferously insisted upon. “Yes.”

“
Virgin
to the late Lord Waldon,” he corrected, and laughed.

She stopped and eyed him quizzically. “You find that amusing?”

“Amusing?” He sounded hysterical. Him. Cairn MacTavish. Pirate. Bastard. Laird. Hysterical. It would have been funny if it weren’t so damned scary. “Nay. It’s not amusing. It’s damned ridiculous.”

She reached out. He watched her hand draw near and braced himself against the impact. But it was no good, for when her palm brushed his chest every living cell buzzed to attention, yammering insolent suggestions to his battered brain.

“Ridiculous?” she asked, and glanced up.

He was breathing too hard. As if he’d battled and lost. What the devil was wrong with him? Burr would laugh his damned ass off if he saw this.

“This late husband of yours,” Cairn said, teeth gritted. “Was he breathing?”

She scowled slightly when she nodded.

“Was he male?”

“Yes,” she said, and slipped her hand across his nipple.

His muscles jerked as if yanked by a cruel puppet master but he kept his teeth gritted against the razor-sharp sensations and remained as he was. After all, he could hardly go screaming from the room. It would be unseemly, as Bert would say. “
And just idiotic
,” Hoary added. He shook his head. “There’s where your story goes wrong, lassie.”

Her eyes fluttered up slowly, as if it were difficult to shift them from his chest. Her lashes were thick and sable. Her cheeks were flushed. Hoary danced like a leashed hound.

“What do you mean?”

He laughed. It sounded wheezy. But his chest was on fire, so that could only be expected. He clenched his muscles and fought for some kind of normalcy. “No man could take you to wife and not have you.”

Her honey-sweet lips parted slightly. Her eyes narrowed in thought, and her hand stilled just below his bottom rib. It made it damned hard to breathe. Harder still to keep from rising on his toes just to urge her hand a little lower. But he was thinking now.
Thinking
, he repeated. Hoary snorted.

She lifted her chin and moved her hand again. “Do you mean to say I am…attractive.”

He barked a laugh. “Don’t—” he began, but just then her hand slipped down, causing his breath to catch hard in his throat.

She moved closer. “Don’t what?” she asked, and slipped her hand up his shaft.

He squeezed his eyes closed, and she brushed her lips against his chest. It would be girlish to tremble, he was certain, but he may have done just that.

He forced his eyes open, and she lifted her gaze to his. She rose up on her toes and kissed him, freezing the world.

“Is it a hoax?” he breathed.

“Hoax?” She scowled and moved her hand again. His cock pulsed, drawing her attention lower and causing her to tighten her grip.

He moaned.

“You think I faked my innocence?”

“Virgins don’t usually—”

She licked his nipple, lapping it with the tip of her tongue. Every muscle in his body jerked up as tight as a bowline.

“Don’t usually what?” she whispered.

Was he panting? “Damn, woman! You’ve the ways of a London whore!”

She blinked. “Truly?”

He would have laughed if he could breathe. As it was, every bit of energy went into keeping himself upright, keeping his hands to himself, trying to think.

She was scowling, but her hand was still wrapped around his erection, and her lush lips were still parted.

“How do virgins act?” Her hand moved.

“Virginal.”

She stroked. He moaned.

“Can you expound?”

“I’m hardly an expert on the subject.”

“Truly?” Her hand stopped. He missed the movement immediately.

“I’m a pirate. A bastard at—”

“A lord. With all the lordly rights.”

“Aye, well, I’ve been busy.” And injured. And Elizabeth had done little to enhance his desire for women. She, too, had seemed innocent at the outset, but proved to be well experienced. This girl had seemed experienced, but now, after lying with her…He deepened his scowl. It was all very confusing. But Hoary didn’t care in the least. Hoary wasn’t confused. Hoary could focus like a beacon. “But what of you?
Surely you haven’t been too busy to…” She was stroking again, distracting him.

“No. Not too busy. Too…foolish. I did not realize how…” She paused and kissed his chest.

He swallowed. As it turned out, he truly had had no idea what a woman could do with her hands. Perhaps he was the innocent here. “How what?” he asked.

“It was not unpleasant, MacTavish.” She said the words casually, but there was a taut earnestness to the words that made him pause. “I had no way of knowing your touch…” She stopped herself. “That
touching
would feel…It was not repulsive.”

“You had no way of knowing?”

“As I told you…” It seemed almost that she tried to hold herself back. But she leaned forward finally and kissed his throat. He managed not to rip her gown off and reenact the entire deflowering process. He didn’t quite manage to control his frustrated moan. “I was well protected,” she said, and kissed his jaw.

He gritted his teeth in an attempt to think, to get his mind around this change in her. Hadn’t she, just hours before, refused to lie with him? Hadn’t she fought like a tiger to protect her virginity? “They must have pounced on you from every corner.” It took him a moment to realize he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. “Men,” he added. “How did you keep them at bay?”

“It was not so hard.”

He could feel the sweet softness of her feral breast pressed with hot intimacy against his chest. “Not so hard, lass, they must have been tearing down your—”

She kissed his nipple.

“Balls, girl, who protected them from you?”

She drew back slightly, and he regretted his words imme
diately, for anything that stopped the touching could be immediately labeled “very bad.”

“You think I’ve thrown myself at men?” she asked, and blinked, not as if she were insulted, but merely intrigued.

Her hand started up again, which surely would suggest that, yes, she had indeed thrown herself at men, but that could not be the case, not with what he now knew. She’d been a virgin just moments before, and if there had been the slightest chance for any breathing man to have her, that man would have taken it or died trying.

His brain felt hot. “Why me?” he asked.

“Are you not the lord of this isle?” she asked, and smiled a little. “My liege?”

He nodded, just now remembering. But the foolishness struck him immediately. Aye, he might not be as experienced as some, but he knew enough to realize that she was not giving herself to him out of some sense of—Hell, she was not
giving
herself to him at all. She was taking. Devouring. He stopped her hand before Hoary could guess his intent.

“Why me?” he asked again. “Why now?”

She tried to free her wrist. He tightened his grip. She scowled, looking young and vexed.

“Lass,” he said, and lifted her chin with his free hand so that their gazes met. “Perhaps…Maybe you could trust me with just this tiny piece of the truth.”

She stilled and her mouth softened. “I’ve told you the truth, MacTavish,” she said. “I was protected, told to save myself. Indeed, I was ordered to save myself.”