“With pleasure.”
She pushed the spoon into his mouth and he took the broth, his gaze never leaving her face. A second spoonful followed the first. The soup in the bowl steadily decreased. A tension inside her coiled tighter with his every sip. She avoided looking into his eyes, but it was impossible to feed him without staring at his lips.
Full and sensual, they did not merely accept the spooned offering, they welcomed it, enfolded it, caressed it. Mesmerized, she could well remember those lips on hers, recollect the sensation of his kisses trailing down her neck, recall the sense of urgency when he took her breast in his mouth....
“I’m finished.”
“What?” She jerked her gaze from his lips and glanced at the empty bowl. How could she not have noticed? “I can fetch you more, or something else, if you’d like.”
“I should very much prefer something else.” Intensity edged the soft tone of his words.
Delicious fear shivered through her. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and directed him a challenging gaze. “What do you want?”
He stretched a long arm over the tray and cupped her chin in his hand. Gently, he pulled her toward him until their lips barely touched, soft and evocative, more a whisper than a kiss. He brushed his lips over hers, to and fro, delicate strokes, hot and silken.
Her eyes closed and her lips parted and a sigh whispered through them. She leaned nearer, the yearning inside her demanding more than this teasing, this hint, this mere suggestion of what would come.
Abruptly, Nicholas drew back. His gaze searched hers. “Sabrina, I want to make certain ...” A question hovered deep in his smoldering eyes. “That is, if you ...” Confusion played across his face. With an insight born of her heightened emotions, she realized he wanted only to make sure this was her desire as well as his. This man who was so well known for taking what he wanted from women was obviously concerned about her feelings. It was definitely out of character and absolutely delightful.
Joy surged through her, and she wanted to throw her head back and laugh with exhilaration. Surely, somewhere in the vast reaches of his heart he truly cared about her. And if he could care about her, then one day he could love her.
“If you are wondering about violating one of the terms of this marriage ...” She shrugged and cast him an inviting glance. “I have discovered I find privacy highly overrated.”
He stared for a moment, as if he didn’t grasp the meaning of her words. Then, like a spark bursting to flame, understanding broke on his face. With one powerful arm, he swept the tray to the floor in a clash of metal and broken pottery. With the other, he pulled her into his embrace, dragging her forward, across his body, until she lay flat upon him, her heaving breasts pressed hard against his naked chest. The thin coverlet came only to his waist, and his hard arousal nudged her through the layers of blanket and her own clothing.
Sabrina gasped and stared into his eyes. “What about your head? Doesn’t it hurt?”
He grinned. “I believe it has been replaced by a more persistent ache.” He bent his lips to her neck and nuzzled the sensitive flesh. “An ache, I suspect, that can be most pleasurably attended to.”
With wild abandon, she threw her arms around his neck and he clasped her tight to him. Their lips met, violent and exacting. Passion erupted in full force, demanding, insistent, greedy.
His tongue invaded her mouth to plunder and pillage. She responded in kind, not a submissive defense but a counter battle with her own weapons, her own commands, her own objectives. Her fingers twined through his hair. His lips crushed hers, intent on defeat, requiring surrender.
He nudged her back until she sat upon him, her legs straddling his. Impatiently, he pulled the man’s shirt she wore out of her breeches and pushed it upward, his hands sliding over flesh taut with need. His searching fingers reached the underside of her breasts and she moaned aloud, her head falling back. He cupped the tender mounds with a gentleness that belied the raging hunger arcing between them and teased the pebbled nipples with his thumbs.
“Nicholas!” She gasped for breath and her head lolled on her neck. In one quick movement he twisted up to sit facing her. Swiftly, he jerked her shirt over her head, freeing her breasts to his gaze and his touch. His hands encircled them and he lavished attention first on one and then the other, teasing with his lips, his tongue, his teeth until she thought she would surely lose her mind from this exquisite torture.
He turned without warning, holding her close, shifting his weight and abruptly she no longer sat atop him but lay beneath. Gazing up, she read her own wonder and passion and yearning mirrored in his stormy black eyes. She tunneled her fingers through his thick, dark hair and drew his mouth back to hers, losing herself in a sea of erotic promise.
His hands, his mouth, his tongue sought out every part of her, drifting from lips to breasts and lower, ever lower. He trailed his touch over the flat of her stomach and beyond, slipping his hand between her legs and the secret heat still hidden by her breeches. He cupped the mound at the joining of her legs and fingered the point of her yearning, throbbing beneath the fabric.
Nicholas’s hand moved to the waist of her breeches, and he dipped his fingers beneath the material, stretched tight across her stomach. He fumbled with the laces and she strained against him, desperate for the scorching feel of his skin against hers. She gripped his shoulders and strained for his touch, the tension inside her coiling tighter and tighter.
He groaned against her neck. “Sabrina.”
“Oh God, Nicholas, please.” Yearning throbbed through her. Why didn’t he take her now? Why did he continue this sweet, intense torment?
“Sabrina.”
“Nicholas.” She nearly wept with desire, the ache for him, threatening to overwhelm every thought but one searing truth.
“I can’t get the bloody thing untied.”
“What?” His words barely penetrated the haze of her arousal.
“It’s these damn breeches.” He ran an impatient hand through his hair and glared. “I’ve never tried to untie someone else’s breeches before, and I’m afraid I’ve gotten them in a knot.”
She propped herself on her elbows and looked down. The laces crossing her stomach were indeed tangled and knotted. She gazed up at him in amazement. “Get them undone, Nicholas. Now.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
She stared at him in disbelief. “I don’t care what you do. Chew them off for all I care. Just get the bloody things off.”
He bent to examine the problem. His nearness alone was enough to set Sabrina trembling. He shook his head. “Sabrina, I don’t know...”
She widened her eyes in alarm. “Nicholas, I have come to a number of realizations about you and I in the last day. About what I want and what I need, about concessions and compromise. This is not merely a moment of mindless passion.” She gripped his arm. “I do not give myself freely. I have had opportunity, but I have not lain with a man...” Her gaze dropped, the intimacy of what she was about to reveal astounding her. She drew a deep breath and turned her eyes to his. “... in thirteen years.” Insistence rang in her voice. “Now get these bloody breeches off me.”
The enormity of her confession seemed to stun him. A resolute gleam appeared in his eye. “I have an idea.” He pushed her flat back on the berth and rolled over her, his feet nimbly hitting the floor by the side of the bed. In three long strides he crossed the room to his valise and fumbled inside the bag.
In spite of her frustration, she noted with awe the power of his nude form. His bronze skin glowed. His legs stretched long and lean. The muscles in his back rippled with his efforts and Sabrina’s desire rose once again. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes only to open them abruptly when he grabbed her elbow and jerked her, with one strong hand, to her feet.
“This is your last chance.” His black eyes glittered with promise and passion. “Do you trust me?”
Did she trust him? She wanted him. Needed him. But trust? She did not trust him with her secrets. Could she trust him with her heart? She lied. “With my life.”
He laughed. She had not fooled him, he did not believe her words any more than she did. Nicholas pulled her tight against him, her naked breasts rubbing against the rough hair on his chest. In his other hand he displayed a long, sharp dagger, plain in appearance, obviously more for utility than display.
Sabrina gasped. “Nicholas, you’re not—you wouldn’t.” The expression on his face said he would, without hesitation. “Wait. You don’t understand. I have saved these breeches for years. I have only two pair.”
“Excellent; then you will not miss these.” His voice growled, deep and sensuous.
“But I—” His descending lips cut off her objections. He stole her very breath and she sagged against him. He could do what he wished with her breeches, or anything else for that matter.
The dull edge of the knife lay hard against her stomach, and she flinched. The laces popped with release at the smooth slice of the knife. It took Nicholas less than a moment to slice the confining strings, and he slid the breeches down the long length of her hips to fall unresisting at her feet.
She splayed her hands across his back and clung to him, her bare body pressed to his. His manhood throbbed against her, hard and powerful, and she drew a sharp breath. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the berth. With a gentle motion, he laid her on the bed.
She was all that he’d dreamed, all that he’d ever desired. Her breasts rose firm and full, nipples rosy and erect, her tiny waist flaring to seductive hips. Golden curls protected the portal to her pleasure. Nicholas had been with beautiful women before, and he wasn’t sure how, but this was different. This was not an insignificant coupling, it was ... more.
She stared at him provocatively, her eyes half closed and glazed with desire. He groaned and lay down beside her, wanting nothing more than to take her. Now. Hard and swift. But it had been so long since she’d known a man’s desire. And he wanted this to be more than mating. He would pleasure her until she reached newfound heights of ecstasy and only then satisfy himself. With slow, lingering caresses he would draw out her passion, preparing her for their joining. Yes, he would take his time—even if it killed him.
His lips claimed hers and his control dissolved beneath the fury of her
response. He stroked her supple body and she writhed at his experienced touch,
his own desire spiraling ever higher. Her heated flesh seemed to singe his very soul, and he gasped with the urgency to possess and devour her.
Like an adventurer in an undiscovered land, he searched and explored her hidden secrets until his fingers reached the gate of tangled curls and slipped past to the valley beyond. He dipped into the fragile folds of flesh, wet with welcome, quivering with need, and gently caressed the delicate bud of her womanhood.
She gasped with surprise and pleasure, and he bent his head to take her nipple in his mouth. Teeth and tongue echoed the stroke of his fingers, and she whimpered with the exquisite sensations coursing through her. Her hands clasped his head convulsively and she pulled his lips to hers.
“Take me, Nicholas. Take me now, husband.”
He hesitated; then he poised above her, his manhood insistent, demanding, not to be denied. Slowly, he slid into her throbbing heat, deeper and deeper until he was fully submerged in the trembling fire within her. He drew back, prolonging the maddening anticipation, then plunged again and again, his thrusts growing harder, faster.
Her hips rose to meet his and they moved together in a rhythm beyond time, beyond truth. She called his name over and over in a frenzy of sizzling pleasure and selfish possession. He murmured words of wonder and magic and awe against her scorching skin. She was at once his master and his slave. He was conqueror and conquered. As one, the forces that joined them drove them upward to a desperate pinnacle, fierce and intense, where their very souls merged.
With one powerful thrust he drove deep within her. Sabrina cried out, the taut coil inside her exploding in waves of quaking ecstasy. Nicholas shuddered convulsively against her, his body clasped to hers, her name a breath on his lips. “Sabrina ... Bree.”
They collapsed together, spent.
Victorious.
The laughter built deep within her. Sabrina buried her head in the crook of his neck and battled the irresistible urge to giggle. She bit her lip, suppressed laughter shaking her from head to toe.
“Sabrina?” Nicholas’s arms tightened around her, a note of distress sounding in his voice. “Are you all right?”
“Fine, really quite fine.” Her choked words muffled against his neck.
“Sabrina?” Nicholas pulled away, concern clouding his stormy eyes, and studied her intently. “Do you regret what has passed between us?”
“Regret?” She stared at him with amazement. Worry pulled his brows together. A dark bruise cast a roguish shadow on one cheekbone. The healing cut above his eye slashed a line of emphasis to his frown. He appeared so troubled, so anxious, so apprehensive, in such stark contrast to her own feelings, it was almost comical. Regrets? Hardly.
The laughter she’d successfully stifled now triumphed over her, bubbling to the surface and erupting in an explosion of mirth. Nicholas stared, dumbfounded. The expressions chasing each other across his face simply added to her amusement. Concern, followed by confusion, nipped at the heels of astonishment, trailed, finally, by mild annoyance.
He raised an eyebrow. “You know, my dear, a lesser man would take your reaction to our lovemaking as something other than complimentary.” Nicholas’s wry comment only served to trigger another wave of laughter.
“Oh, Nicholas, I’m sorry.” Her glee belied her apology. “It’s just that... well, I simply feel so wonderfully delicious.”
“Delicious?” A slow grin spread across his face. “I hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but
delicious
may well be an accurate description.” His eyes twinkled and he brushed his lips lightly across her forehead. “Yes, indeed,
delicious
is definitely the right word for it.”
He lay on his side, propped on one elbow. She gazed up and tossed him a teasing smile. “So, am I still a prim and proper paragon of virtue?”
He threw back his head and laughed, a deep, rich sound that shivered through her blood. “You have assuredly provided new meaning for that phase.” His expression grew serious and he idly traced the line of her jaw with a long, bronzed figure. “Why did you do it, Sabrina?”
“Do what?” she asked, startled by the unexpected question.
“Hide yourself. Live virtually disguised all these years.”
She stared at him cautiously. “Whatever do you mean?”
He shrugged, his fingers continuing their exploration, now trailing down the curve of her throat. “I mean, you have given the world the impression of a quiet, reserved woman. Quite sedate and extremely proper.” His bottomless eyes seemed to search her soul. “You are not at all what I had been led to expect. And ever since we began this escapade your every word, every act, has convinced me your life in London was a sham. Why did you hide this daring, delightful woman I have finally had the good fortune to discover?”
She dropped her gaze from his and stared at a distant point far beyond the walls of the cabin. Her love for him dictated honesty, at least to a point. They would very likely spend the rest of their lives together, and that was no longer a distressing idea. There was much about her past she would never tell, but equally as much he now deserved to know.
Sabrina caught his gaze with hers. “It was for Belinda. When we returned to London after Jack’s death I knew I could not continue the reckless life I’d led before. The ton would probably accept me, but what would happen to my daughter when she was old enough to take her place in society? She would always be faced with a mother branded as fast and unconventional and God knows what.” She shook her head. “I could not allow that. I could not allow my child to pay for my sins, petty though they might be.”
She sighed. “So, I buried myself in propriety, going about in society no more than was necessary. Letting my presence be known without undue attention.”
His fingers now drifted lightly down the valley between her breasts, and she quivered at his touch.
“So, you existed rather than lived.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You make it sound awful. It wasn’t quite that bad. It’s not as if I was an absolute recluse. And besides, I had ... other interests to keep myself occupied. But all in all, it has been rather—”
“Dull and boring.” He leaned over and kissed her on the tip of her nose. “I promise, I shall not allow your life ever to be boring again.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “And how, dear husband, do you propose to prevent that?”
He pulled her close. “I am willing to spend a very long time trying to devise ever more interesting and intriguing activities to deter tedium from creeping into your life.” His lips met hers with a passion that sealed his promise and stole her breath. Her lips parted under his and she accepted his tongue eagerly. Desire rose again between them.
He pulled his mouth away and feathered kisses down the side of her throat. Excitement and urgent need coiled within her. She nibbled on the lobe of his ear and ran her tongue lightly down the curve of his neck, along a thin, almost imperceptible, silvered scar. It was obviously a very old injury. Such a serious wound surely would once have threatened his life.
“Nicholas, how did you come by this scar on your neck?”
His efforts at surveying the sensitive points of her body had progressed to her shoulders. His words mumbled against her flesh, tender with heightened awareness. “It’s nothing. A trifle. A mere boyhood mishap.”
Merely a boyhood misadventure.
She gasped with sudden understanding. Good Lord! Nicholas was the government agent she’d outsmarted all those long years ago! She had married the only man who held a real threat to her continued safety. The very man who’d haunted her dreams and filled her fantasies now warmed her bed.
The irony of it all threatened to overwhelm her. But it explained so much. Her immediate attraction to him. The vague familiarity of his voice, his scent, his kiss. Perhaps fate meant them to be together. And, thwarted once, now gave them a second chance.
His lips reached her breast and he drew the hardened bud into his mouth; his tongue teased and tormented. Apprehension battled with desire and lost. Her discovery and what it meant for the future faded under the onslaught of his touch. Time enough to dwell on this new development later. She could not sustain rational thought under the firestorm of sensation besieging her.
Sabrina abandoned herself to the erotic bliss of Nicholas’s skillful touch and joined him without reserve. Lost in the oblivion of passion, her final thought was a simple acknowledgment: everything between her and this man, after all these years, could truly be attributed to magic.
Sabrina snuggled close by his side, Nicholas lay in the lethargic haze of passion well spent. One arm curled around his sleeping wife, the other folded behind his head. He gazed unseeing at the rough beams above him, suspecting the least astute of observers would call his grin idiotic. His lips quirked upward, held aloft by a delightful sense of peace and harmony.
Never had lovemaking effected him quite this way before. Oh, assuredly, he often ended a passionate encounter both exhilarated and exhausted. But this overwhelming sensation of well-being and contentment was an altogether new experience, an experience of which he doubted he would ever tire.
She sighed and shifted, and he drew her closer. He never imagined the serene creature he had dispassionately selected as the perfect wife would ultimately steal his heart. But she had swept into his life and his soul with the unrelenting inevitability of time itself. And Nicholas could no longer avoid the obvious.
For better or worse, Nicholas Harrington, Earl of Wyldewood, was finally, deeply and irrevocably in love. His doubt about the very existence of the emotion had dissipated, replaced by an inner warmth he had never known. Not the searing heat of passion, but something far more intense, somehow deeper, richer, more lasting. Odd, that love had come to him now, when he was far past the susceptible days of youth. He chuckled wryly. At least a man of his years and experience was intelligent enough to recognize the unique and fragile emotion and mature enough to cherish it.
He gazed at his wife and marveled at whatever quirk of fate brought them together. Her fair hair glistened in the late afternoon light like strands of gold, and he idly stroked it away from her face. He had assumed when they wed that she believed this avowed marriage of convenience would be much the same as many fashionable matches. They would go their separate ways, together only when the dictates of social pressures demanded it. But even then, he had wanted more from her. Now he would never let her go, and he hoped she would not want to leave.
Sabrina was obviously exhausted, but Nicholas was far too restless for sleep. A fair amount of soreness still persisted in his muscles, but the ache in his head had virtually disappeared. Only the fear of disturbing his slumbering wife stopped him from rising from the berth. He sighed and firmly closed his eyes, accepting his not unpleasant confinement, willing himself to sleep.
Fragments of elusive dreams drifted through his mind. Snippets of conversation, memories, fears ... desire lingered just beyond reach. He struggled to rein in the meandering recollections, to make sense of the disjointed bits, the aimless pieces. It was something about the past. About yesterday? No, farther away than that. Something about the sea, a woman, the
Lady B
...
Nicholas’s eyes shot open, and only his arm around Sabrina kept him from bolting upright.
Lady B
. The smuggler he had tried, and failed, to capture a decade ago. That was the name of this ship. The ship belonging to that bloody American. How could he have been such an idiot not to have made the connection before now?
Excitement surged through his veins, and he forced himself to stay calm, to examine this intriguing revelation with rational precision. Obviously the memories of that past incident had surfaced because of the blow to his head, a blow not unlike the one that had felled him ten years earlier.
He remembered waking up on a deserted beach, knowing before he opened his eyes that there would be no evidence of the smugglers he sought. He staggered to his feet and winced at the painful pounding in his head. Nicholas was at once grateful to be alive and livid at the failure of his mission. To this day his defeat plagued him. No particular blame was placed in the Home Office. Although he had not captured the band, he had at least halted their activities. But his inability to succeed in his quest had cast a black mark in his own mind, on his own private record. A record that before and after was composed primarily of success and triumph.
And his defeat was at the hands of a woman: the mysterious Lady B. He had combed the village with a corps of experienced men, thoroughly searched the countryside, all to no avail. Not only did no one admit knowledge of her, not a single soul so much as blinked at the mention of her name. Eventually, the futility of the effort forced him to concede, but he had forgotten neither the failure nor the woman.
Long after the details faded into vague impressions of the past, she haunted his dreams. For years she’d emerge from the mists of his memory with her voice, her touch, her kiss, renewing a raging desire for a woman he’d never known. The same unyielding need that surged within him now for Sabrina.
Abruptly, the similarities between his wife and the mysterious Lady B struck him. Both evidenced a courage and an independence he had not previously encountered in a woman. Both displayed far more intelligence than other women of his acquaintance. And both spurred his passion and fired his blood. How strange. Their attributes were the opposite of what he would consider acceptable in a woman, but in these two, those very qualities drew him toward them with an irresistible pull.
He shifted in the berth, tightened his arm around his wife and considered the matter. While it was very likely his presence on this particular ship was a mere coincidence, he no longer doubted there was a link between this vessel and his past nemesis. An unerring instinct deep in his gut confirmed the fact. It was more than probable that Madison knew the lady. The ship was allegedly named for Madison’s sister, but with every word spoken on this trip that story grew more and more suspect.
Could Madison have worked with the smugglers? The man carried a certain arrogant, freewheeling, lawless air about him that bespoke disdain for government and authority. Madison could well have used his ships—this ship, perhaps—to supply the goods from France for smuggling into England.
Nicholas gritted his teeth. A driving determination built within him to find the truth. Not that there was any official action he could take; Madison was neither on English soil nor was he a subject of the Crown. But Madison could lead him to Lady B. And then what?
The question reverberated in his mind, and he examined his feelings carefully. Surprised, he noted that his long-held desire for the unknown woman no longer existed, supplanted, or perhaps merged, with the more immediate passion for his wife. And he realized Sabrina was the only woman he wanted in his life, now and forever.
Still, the need to answer the questions that had tormented him for a decade remained. If he could discover the identity of Lady B, he could redeem himself. Oh, not in the eyes of his one-time superiors—a ten-year-old smuggling case hardly still held the interest of the Crown—but in his own. Beyond that, perhaps, it no longer mattered.
It would not be easy to solicit information from Madison. Nicholas smiled slowly. But it would be exceedingly enjoyable. The life of an earl was not nearly as fascinating as his previous activities as agent, spy and diplomat. Playing cat-and-mouse with Madison would allow him to resurrect skills he had expected never to use again. The captain was very likely a challenging subject. Nicholas chuckled. He thoroughly enjoyed challenges.
Sabrina could tell him about Madison’s background. He wondered briefly about this business partnership she’d once had with the American, then dismissed it from his mind. No doubt it was a trifling matter. Surely Sabrina had no knowledge of Madison’s illicit activities.