“Shhh.” He laid a finger against her lips. “Don’t say anything, unless it’s yes.”
The silence was unbearable, the darkness palpable.
Gray kept his finger against her lips, suddenly afraid to move. If he released her and she didn’t say yes …
Doubt seeped into his mind, inviting panic to follow. How had he come to care so deeply for this woman, in just a few short weeks? How had he come to care so deeply for anything? And how did he dare to believe he deserved her, deserved this happiness?
Her lips trembled under his touch; or perhaps his finger trembled against her lips. He felt as though a heavy weight balanced on the fulcrum of his heart. One sigh, one breath from her could topple it. Could crush him.
She swallowed, and beneath his fingertip, her lips thinned, separated. A slender crescent of white rent the dark. She was smiling.
Don’t hope
, he bade his hammering heart.
Women smile with regret as often as not
.
Slowly, he slid his finger downward, releasing her. The world stilled. He felt like a convict awaiting his sentence, absurdly hoping for life imprisonment.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Yes?” Hearing it once was not enough.
The crescent of white swelled, like a waxing moon. “Yes.”
He clutched her shoulders. “Yes,” he prompted again. Hearing it twice was not enough, either.
She hugged him close, her legs over his hips and her arms linked around his neck. He was still inside her, and she tightened around him there, too. Arousal pulsed in his groin, and he began to thicken once again in her velvet embrace.
Craning her neck, she kissed him. “Yes,” she murmured against his lips, over and over between hungry tastes. “Yes, Gray. Yes.” Her head fell back against the pillow. “I love you.”
Just like that, he was hard again. God, he would never get enough of this woman.
His
woman. And miracle of miracles, she hadn’t had enough of him yet, either. Her pelvis rolled beneath his, sending currents of pleasure through him with each clever tilt. She stroked his back, her touch feather-light and cool against his skin.
“Sweet.” He moved his hand between them, stroking her where their bodies joined. “I swear I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you happy.” He prayed it was the truth.
“Mmmm,” she moaned. “Oh, yes.”
Once, twice, a dozen times. Gray could not hear that word enough. He loved her slowly, relentlessly, until she panted and sighed the words, “yes,” “Gray,” and “God” so many times they felt like sacred vows.
Then he watched her sleep curled up beside him, until dawn painted her nakedness in warm, glowing strokes of light. He’d made love to her four times now, he realized, but this was his first chance to truly look upon her body. She was every inch as lovely as he’d imagined, if not more. He felt a bit guilty, realizing he’d chastised her for sketching his likeness, when he’d been conjuring an image of her nude form nightly for weeks. The only difference was, he hadn’t committed his fantasies to paper.
It would take a Renaissance master to capture this beauty.
Her hair spilled across the pillow and his outstretched arm, a million threads of the finest silk floss. When she woke, he vowed, he would brush it until it gleamed. He admired the smooth disc of her areola, relaxed in sleep. Then he blew surreptitiously across it, until it ruched to a tight rosette. His gaze wandered lower, to where her navel rose and fell with each breath, like a tiny cork afloat on her slightly rounded belly. An irregular birthmark stood out on the crest of her hip, like a splash of wine on snow.
He touched a finger to it, and she stirred.
“Don’t look at that,” she mumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I know it’ s horrid.”
“Horrid?” Despite the pained expression on her face, he had to laugh. “Sweetheart, I can honestly say that there is nothing about you that’s horrid in the least.”
“My painting master would not agree.”
The bitter taste of envy filled his mouth. “Do you know, that Frenchman of yours had better hope I never meet with him.”
“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “Not Gervais. Never Gervais. My painting master was an old, balding prig called Mr. Turklethwaite.”
Gray’s bafflement must have been obvious.
She went on, “There was never any Gervais. I mean, you know that I’d never taken a man to my bed, but you must understand … I’ve never allowed another man into my heart, either.” She kissed his brow, then his lips. “I love you, only you.”
God. How brave she was. Tossing those words about as though they were feathers. Could she possibly suspect how they landed in his chest like cannonballs, detonating deep in his heart?
Struggling for equanimity, he asked casually, “So when did this other painting master have occasion to see your birthmark?”
She laughed. “He didn’t. But I painted something like it once, on a portrait of Venus. I told him I thought it lent her an air of reality. Oh, how he scolded me. A lady who paints, he said—” She gave Gray a teasing look. “He would not apply the term ‘artist’ to a female, you see.”
“I see.”
“A lady who paints, he said, should approach the art as she would any other genteel accomplishment. Her purpose is to please; her goal is to create an example of refinement. A true lady would not paint an imperfection, he said, any more than she would strike a false note in a sonata. Beauty is not real, and reality is not beautiful.”
Gray shook his head. “Remarkable. I believe I despise your real painting master even more than I hated the fictional one. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
She rose up on her elbows, her expression suddenly anxious. “Gray, how can you wish to marry me? There’s so much you don’t know. Some of it is ugly indeed.”
“I know you are
mine
.” Wanting to reassure her, he laced her fingers with his. “I meant every pledge I made to you aboard the
Aphrodite
. You are safe with me, and I will never leave you. I came to you with honorable intentions when we made love. I meant to marry you then, knowing no more of you than I do right now. I may not know your history, but I trust that I know your heart.”
“Better than anyone.” A little smile coaxed her lips apart, and he kissed them. First sipping gently at her upper lip, then savoring the plumpness of its counterpart below.
“And do you trust me? You can tell me everything. You do believe that?”
“Yes, certainly. And I will tell you everything.” A hint of uncertainty flashed in her eyes, however, and she bit her lip. “In time.”
Her reluctance wounded him, but Gray forced himself to feign patience. Pressing her further might yield answers, but not trust. He wanted to earn both. “Very well. In time.”
She toyed with a lock of his hair. “There’s so much to tell, is all. I’m uncertain where to begin.”
“Well then. Let us begin with essentials. Are you free to marry me?” He exhaled slowly, in a pointed effort not to hold his breath.
“Of course. When I come of age, that is.”
“Tell me your birthday.”
She smiled. “The first of February.”
“It will be our wedding day.” He traced the shape of the birthmark on her hip. “Very convenient for me, for your birthday and our anniversary to coincide. I’ll be more likely to remember both.”
“I wish you would stop touching me there.”
“Do you? Why?”
“Because it
is
ugly. I hate it.”
He tilted his head, surprised. “I quite adore it. It reminds me that you are imperfectly perfect and entirely mine.” He slid down her body and bent to kiss the mark to prove the point. “There’s a little thrill in knowing no one else has seen it.”
“No other man, you mean.” He kissed her there again, this time tracing the shape with his tongue. She squirmed and laughed. “When I was a child, I would scrub at it in the bath. My nursemaid used to tell me, God gives children birthmarks so they won’t get lost.” Her mouth curled in a bittersweet smile. “Yet here I am, adrift on the ocean on the other side of the world. Don’t they call that irony?”
“I believe they call it Providence.” He tightened his hands over her waist. “You’re here, and I’ve found you. And I take pains not to lose what’s mine.”
He kissed her hip again, then slid his mouth toward her center as he settled between her thighs.
“Gray,” she protested through a sigh of pleasure. “It’s late. We must rise.”
“I assure you, I’ve risen.”
“I’ve work to do.” She writhed in his grip. “The men will be wanting their breakfast.”
“They’ll wait until the captain has finished his.”
“Gray!” She gave a gasp of shock, then one of pleasure. “What a scoundrel you are.”
He came to his knees and lifted her hips, sinking into her with a low groan. “Sweet,” he breathed as she began to move with him, “you would not have me any other way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Breakfast was late. Quite late, but served with a smile. And because the men were already at their duties, Sophia assumed the task of delivering Mr. Brackett’s meal to the hold.
Bearing a tin plate of biscuits and a small pot of tea, she descended the long, narrow ladder, past the cabins and steerage, into the very belly of the ship.
“Mr. Brackett?” She paused at the bottom of the stair, uncertain in which direction he lay.
“Could that be Miss Turner?” His too-courteous voice scraped out from somewhere to the left. Sophia felt anxiety wing through her, but she did not allow it to build a nest. He was confined, she reminded herself. And he would be a fool to attempt any mischief with her.
“I’ve brought your breakfast.” She walked in the direction of his voice, slowly, allowing her eyes time to adjust to the dim lighting in the hold. Eventually she found him, shackled and chained to a bilge pump. He looked healthy enough, if rather unwashed. The sharp features of his face appeared even more gaunt, and a growth of beard shadowed his jaw.
“Miss Turner,” he said, clucking his tongue. “You came aboard this boat a respectable governess, and just look at you now. Grayson’s made you his serving wench.” He tilted his head. “And his whore.”
Sophia’s face burned. Her hands shook, and the hard biscuits rattled on the plate. “Don’t you dare speak of him in that manner. You are not fit to scrape the tar from his boots. He is a better man than you could ever aspire to be, and what’s more—he is a better person than I. He has sheltered you and fed you, when for what you did to Quinn and Davy, I would have gleefully thrown you to the sharks. As matters stand now, I shall settle for throwing your breakfast to the rats.” She flung the plate, biscuits and all, into the furthest reaches of the hold. “Good day, Mr. Brackett.”
Shaking, Sophia made her way up the stairs and stumbled wildly onto the deck.
“What is it?” Gray demanded, catching her in his arms. He searched her face and examined her limbs. “What’s happened?”
She shook her head, dabbing at her eyes with her fingertips. “Mr. Brackett is a vile, hateful man.”
“Did he hurt you? I’ll kill him.”
“No, don’t. You’ll make a liar of me.” She smothered a burst of hysterical laughter with her palm.
Gray took her by the elbows and led her to sit down. “It’s nothing,” she insisted, soothed by his presence and strength. “He didn’t hurt me. We just … had words, that’s all.”
“You’re not to go down there again. Do you understand?”
“Believe me, I’d let him starve before I ventured down in that hold again.”
“I’d be tempted to do just that—let him starve. But unfortunately, we won’t be at sea long enough.”
Sophia looked up, sniffing. “Are we so close to Tortola?” It wasn’t the end, she reminded herself. Only the beginning. There would be other voyages, whole seas and continents to explore.
He nodded. “Just a day or two more.” He pulled her to her feet and directed her toward the ship’s rail. “Look.”
A school of fish raced the
Kestrel
, a flurry of silver darts slicing through the foam. She glimpsed them easily through the unclouded waters. The tropical sea looked blue as sapphires from a distance, but clear as glass up close. To Sophia’s astonishment, a few of the fish leapt from the water and sailed through the air on great wing-like fins, before disappearing once again beneath the waves.
“Flying fish. A sure sign we’re close. And there’s another.” He pointed toward the tip of the foremast, where a large white gull perched serenely.
“A bird. I can’t believe it’s been a whole month since I’ve seen a bird.” She turned to Gray. “And yet, I can’t believe it’s been only a month that I’ve known you. I can’t decide whether it’s been the longest month of my life, or the shortest.”
His eyebrows gathered in an exaggerated frown. “I can’t decide which pays me the fainter compliment.”
“Neither,” she teased, linking her arm in his. “To compliment you, I should tell you it has been the
best
month of my life. And it has.” Truer words, she’ d never spoken.
“Oh, nicely managed. My pride is rescued.” Despite his air of nonchalance, his eyes held genuine emotion. They were fully blue today—a rich, azure blue, clear and inviting and endless. Just like the sea.