“Grayson, please,” she whispered.
“It is I who will be begging, love.” He pressed a kiss to the line of her hair, where fire met white. “Let me bed you again.”
She shook her head, her ringlets brushing his lips.
“I beg you,” he said.
She shook her head again, still not looking at him.
The correct thing to do when a lady rejected his advances was to swallow his pride, give an uncaring shrug, and depart. He remained in place, tracing circles on the base of her neck. “My pride is trembling, Alexandra.”
“I am confused,” she said. “You so confuse me.”
He kissed her cheek. “I want you. There is nothing confusing about that.”
The wind stirred her skirts and strands of her long hair. “I wish to marry. But you tumble me like a tavern girl and sequester me on your ship. I do not know what you want.”
He traced her cheek. What did he want? Her, he knew that. Happiness? Maggie. Time. He drew a breath.
Peace.
“Do you want me, Alexandra?” he asked in a soft voice.
“Yes. If you must know the truth, I do.”
His heart leapt.
She held up her hand. “But am I to be your mistress? I cannot be. Or will I be a pirate’s lady and sail away with you? I believe your crew truly will mutiny if I do that.”
His lips twitched, but he suppressed his smile. “I told you, I am not leaving England.”
“Because of Maggie.”
Mutely, he nodded.
“Good. She does need you, Grayson. From what I gather, she did not have a proper upbringing.” She smiled, a shining light of glory. “I am pleased that you shouted at the missionaries.”
He bit back a laugh. “She told you about that?”
“Yes. And that you bought her all kinds of absurd presents. And shaved off your pirate’s whiskers for her. You are a good man, my lord, a fine gentleman. Even though my feelings toward you are extremely wrong and a bit distressing, I do see the goodness in you.”
He looked down at himself. “You do? Where?”
“Here.” She laid her palm flat against his chest. She looked suddenly puzzled and lifted her fingers away.
Grayson unbuttoned his coat. Beneath it stretched a leather bandolier that held his pistol in its holster. He shrugged off the coat, unbuckled the bandolier, and laid it and the pistol on the bench under the starboard rail. He spread his arms. “Better?”
“You so confuse me.”
“I am what you see. Nothing to confuse you.”
He reached for her. She stepped away, smoothly sliding from his outstretched fingers. His hands closed on emptiness.
“For heaven’s sake, Grayson, you are a
pirate.
”
“Private merchantman. The charge of piracy is pending. And, if I find the French king, it will be dismissed.”
She made a noise of exasperation. “It does not matter what you call yourself. I know nothing about your world.” She waved her hands at the ship around her. “You have battles with ships and you have been sliced open and shot. I only know drawing rooms and at-homes and balls and operas. I have ladies and gentlemen coming to call—and pirate hunters do not try to murder my next-door neighbors. You—” She pointed a slim finger at him. “I do not know what to make of you. You still have not told me what you want.”
“I want to know you,” he said softly.
She shook her head, her ringlets dancing. “You want to come to my bed and make me feel all wild and strange. I want to lick your skin, and I have never in my life wanted to do something so wicked.”
He smiled slowly. “You want to taste me? I am pleased.”
She wagged her finger at him. “No, do not smile at me like that. You make me all confused inside. You make me long to say ‘Yes, please, Grayson, let us tumble on the bed as we did last night and throw caution to the wind.’ ”
Warm sensations pricked his loins. “It was not entirely on the bed.”
“Do not interrupt, please. You want to ravish me like a common tart, or a lady passenger who is no better than she ought to be.”
He stopped. “Lady passenger?”
“Yes. That is what pirates do, is it not? You enter a lady’s cabin, seduce her, and steal her jewels. While you are sinking the ship, of course.”
Mirth danced in him. “Is that what you were thinking last night?” His desires began to rampage. “Well, if you would like to play such a game, Alexandra, I am willing.”
She glared at him, but her cheeks turned a beautiful
pink. “Do not be ridiculous. Besides, it is not my game. It is Mrs. Waters’s.”
He frowned, lost. “Mrs. Waters?”
“You met her in my reception room last week. Before the accident outside my house. You remember—the woman in blue with very black hair.”
His memory brought the event into focus. He remembered a large woman with a doughy face and small brown eyes, her hair unnaturally black. She had batted her lashes at him and blatantly roved a hungry gaze up and down his body. Alarm touched him. “Good lord.
She
thought that about
me
?”
“You must have done such things as a pirate.”
He lifted his hands. “Alexandra, I assure you, if I had ever attacked a passenger ship, and if I even suspected that Mrs. Waters was onboard, I would have fled in the opposite direction.”
“It makes no difference. I have behaved like a common—lady passenger. And you did steal my jewels.” She glared accusingly.
“I remember you begging me to take them.”
“I cannot imagine what you wanted with them. Maggie says you have emeralds, and you said you have opals. Why did you want my ugly diamonds?”
He smiled a little. “It is a surprise.” Indeed, he had surprised the Bond Street jeweler that afternoon when he’d strode into the shop and flung down the diamonds and the handful of opals, five perfect stones, and said, “Do something with these.” The jeweler had gaped, then the artist in him had taken over and he’d lifted an opal to peer at it through his glass. “Exquisite, my lord, most exquisite. Yes, yes, I can make quite a fine setting. Your lady will be most pleased.”
Grayson’s whole awareness at the moment had nar
rowed to pleasing his lady. He took up her hand and placed it on his chest. Her palm was warm through his linen shirt. “Perhaps you could be a lady passenger in the captain’s cabin,” he said, his heart beating fast and hard. “And I, the wicked pirate, could find you there.”
Her lips parted, her eyes clouding in confusion. “No, I—”
“Or on deck will do just as well. It is dark, and my crew is all below.”
“Grayson—”
She had firmly drifted from calling him “my lord” to using his given name. Good. He wanted her to know him, inside and out. The viscount was definitely on the outside.
A sudden sharp gust blew across them, cutting the summer air with the chill of the North Sea. Alexandra, in thin cotton, shivered. “Perhaps we should go in.” She gave him a sharp look. “But only because I am cold.”
He smiled and led her there.
Inside the warm cabin, Grayson drew her into his arms. They rocked a little together, swaying with the gentle motion of the ship.
After a time, Alexandra shifted, but her arms stayed firmly around him. “I think—” She paused. “I believe, Grayson, that I shall not allow you to bed me anymore.” She nodded. “Yes, I believe that is the correct thing to do.”
He smiled into her hair. “I would be more convinced if you were not hugging me so tightly.”
“I cannot seem to let go.”
He understood. She needed someone to hold, someone to put her arms around, someone to comfort her. He kissed the silk of her hair, let his palm stroke the soft warmth of it.
How strange the civilized world was. On board his ship or in port taverns, he had but to slip his arm about a woman’s waist, and all would understand the signal. She
was
his
. Not to be touched. Rules were a bit different in fashionable London. There, if a woman was yours, you very carefully did
not
touch her, at least in public. He cared nothing for such ridiculous strictures, but she did. She lived her life by rules that made her miserable. He sensed, though, that she would be even more miserable if she broke those rules.
He skimmed his lips across hers. “If you do not wish me to bed you, then we shall do something else.”
To his delight she looked slightly disappointed. “What?”
He loosed her hold, then strolled away from her, across the small room to his bunk. “Well, my lady, let us suppose
you
are a pirate, and
I
am a passenger.”
Her lips parted.
He laid on the bunk and stretched out his arms and legs. The bed had been constructed to fit him so that he would not be flung about in stormy seas. His right leg and arm hung over the wooden side, but so be it. He half closed his eyes. “Do as you will, my lady.”
And please do not turn and run from me, leaving me lying here like a fool.
She had already battered his pride into tiny pieces. She had the power to break him completely.
Slowly, slowly, her slippers whispered across the board floor. His heart began to pound. He counted the steps—five, six, seven. Through his lashes he watched her pause at the bedside. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, damp and curled from the river-sea air. Her cool eyes riveted to him, her thick lashes shielding them as her gaze swept down his body.
Every one of his muscles tensed as that gaze roved him. He willed himself to lie still, not to leap from the bed, seize her, drag her to him.
She touched his shirt. He held his breath, certain that
if he moved one fraction of an inch, she would stop, overcome by lady-like impulses, and run away.
Alexandra took hold of one drooping tape that tied his shirt and softly pulled it. The tape slithered through the knot, and the lacing parted.
Sweat pricked him, cooling his skin from the hot fires that raced through his blood. He forced himself to wait, to see what she’d do.
Gently and slowly, she pushed the loosened shirt open. She looked upon him for a long time, her gaze tracing his chest. She reached down, her fingers landing on the round bullet scar on his left shoulder. She traced it, her fingers moving over the jagged hole that, long ago, had rendered him unable to prevent the murder of Ardmore’s brother.
She whispered. “I do not wish to bed you. You understand that?”
“Yes, my lady,” he said obediently.
She looked relieved. He suppressed a laugh. She leaned down, her fragrance dancing over him, and pressed her tongue to the hollow of his throat.
“Love,” he moaned.
Her tongue brushed fire over his skin. She kissed his throat, then his chin; then she raised her head. “Your whiskers feel strange.” She touched the tip of her tongue to them again. “I like them.”
He liked that she liked them. He hadn’t shaved since early that morning, so his face must be like sandpaper. She seemed to find this fascinating.
He closed his eyes, willing himself to lie still and enjoy every moment. His shirt opened wider. Her tongue touched the cutlass scar on his right shoulder. Ardmore had given him the wound while Grayson had still been trying to recover from the gunshot. The sword cut, deliv
ered in Ardmore’s grief and rage at his brother’s death, had laid Grayson low for weeks. He’d raved like a madman in his fever, while Oliver had nursed him as though he’d been a helpless boy. He’d sensed death’s wings beating near, but Oliver had pulled him back to life.
Thank God he’d lived so that he might lie on his bunk while a most beautiful lady tasted him.
She let her tongue trace the path of the old injury. She glided over his ribs down to the hard muscles of his stomach that had ached for months until he’d rebuilt their strength. Down farther to stop, barricaded, at his waistband.
His fingers moved of their own accord to the buttons of his breeches. “Let me assist you, lady.”
Her head came up. “No, I don’t want—”
Buttons popped under his shaking fingers. He forced himself to stop, to stretch his hands once again to his sides. He willed his desire to stay inside, out of sight, where it could not hurt anyone. “Do as you will,” he murmured, his voice cracking.
She knelt over him for a long time. Her eyes were dark, pupils widened, her red-brown hair fanning like a cape over her yellow-clad shoulders. And then, sweet girl, she very carefully drew the flap of his breeches aside to expose his hipbone and the end of the scar.
She dipped her head to him and took up where she’d left off. Her tongue moved from his abdomen to his hip, to the knotted white skin where the cut ended. Air touched him, cold, where she licked him. He shifted his weight, trying to still his arousal. It would escape his control and take her of its own accord if he did not contain it.
She lingered for a moment, her face hovering over his hip, her warm curls tangling across his stomach. He
wanted to hold her, gather him to her, encourage her to continue.
But if he did, she might fly away like a frightened bird.
Do not hold on
, Sara had told him. Let go, and see what would be.
He knew somehow that losing this woman would be entirely different from the regret he’d felt when Sara had left him. Alexandra had already changed him. She’d touched him deeply in the short while he’d known her, and that change would not be easily forgotten.
Alexandra peered at the pale skin that showed in the square of his opened breeches. Slowly, timidly, she pulled the flap all the way back.
His arousal sprang out and landed heavily on his abdomen. Large, stiff, and not very happy, it lay there waiting for him to do something. He balled his fists.
She stared at it for a long time, her head bent so he could not see her eyes. Her lips moved slightly, as if she were speaking, but no sound emerged. Moments slid by. The candle in the lantern above flickered, sputtered in melted wax, and flickered again.
Ever so lightly, she licked the tip of him. He gasped and squeezed his eyes closed.
Her warmth moved. “Does that hurt you?”
He took several breaths, trying to slow his heartbeat to only a frantic pace. “No, love. Quite the opposite.”
And please, please, please do it again.
What she did was kiss it. The light cushion of her lips pressed daintily to the tip. He clenched his fists so hard his nails drove into his palms. And still he willed himself to lie still, to say nothing. Any quip or teasing word might frighten her away, and then she’d go and so would this incredible feeling.
She delicately touched him with her tongue. Then she
kissed him again. She grew bolder, playing a little, never giving him more than the briefest touch. She obviously had no idea how to pleasure a man, knew nothing of the studied methods of courtesans. She did not know how to take a man into her mouth, how to draw the maximum of pleasure from him.
And he did not care. What she did was more erotic than anything he’d ever felt before. She had already driven him closer to madness than any of Sara’s sexual games ever had. The tickle of Alexandra’s long hair, the sweet perfume of her, her light touch sent him into spirals of ecstasy. He pressed his hand to his face and stifled another groan.
What are you doing to me Alexandra Alastair?
He needed to be inside her right now. Inside and happy. But folds of fabric hid her, and he would never be able to fling aside the gown and pull her on top of him in time.
It was too late. He dragged in a breath, then groaned aloud. His seed spilled, scalding hot, onto his skin.
He opened his eyes in time to see her spring away in surprise. She came to rest at his feet, sitting back on her knees, her eyes wide. “What happened?”
“You happened,” he said between his teeth.
He groped in his pocket for a handkerchief, half embarrassed, yet flushed with joy. He wiped up the mess, then closed up his breeches again. “My sweet, you cannot be so beautiful and then touch a man so and expect nothing to happen.”
“Are you angry?”
He broke into a grin. “No, my love, my beautiful love.” He reached for her. She came into his arms, a shy smile on her face but a small glow in her eyes, the glow of a woman who finally understood her power. He gathered
her against him and kissed her hair. “You have made me very, very happy.”
He slept with her. Alexandra thought he would perhaps continue their tumble in bed, but he simply stripped off his clothes and burrowed under the covers and invited her to join him. She did, still in her yellow dress. He lay on his side and tugged her back against him, circling one arm about her waist. She lay in the cradle of his body, feeling herself droop with tiredness.
He slept before she did. The candle in the lantern burned out and darkness filled the room. Behind her, his sonorous, even breathing lulled her. She drifted off soon after that, feeling wanted and happy and
wicked
.
When she awoke, he was still there. She’d imagined he would slip away in the dark, rising and dressing and disappearing back to Town and leaving her imprisoned again. But he only bellowed to Mr. Priestly to bring them some coffee and bread, and hurry up, they were hungry. After that, he dressed and took Alexandra home.
Two days later, Alexandra rubbed her sore fingers and frowned at the papers piled on her writing table. She’d spent the time since Grayson had brought her home in frantic last-minute preparations for her soiree, made more difficult because Alice, her very proper lady’s maid, had given notice.
Jeffrey and Annie and Amy had been quite impressed that Alexandra had been abducted by pirates and rescued by the viscount. They begged her for the story, of which she gave an edited version. Even Cook did not seem dismayed at her adventures, but then, she’d already struck up a friendship with Mr. Oliver herself. But Alice had packed her bags and departed.
No better than she ought to
be
, the maid’s tight-lipped expression had betrayed, and Alexandra supposed she was right.
Today, Alexandra’s difficulties mounted. The wrong flowers had been delivered, and she was waiting impatiently for the correct ones to arrive; and all the ices had melted because Jeffrey had not stored the containers in the right place in the cellar. The Duchess of Lewiston had written to express her regrets that she could not attend, and Alexandra had paced the sitting room carpet a good hour wondering frantically if her behavior was now the talk of the town. But no other letters telling her the invited guest was suddenly ill or called away came, and eventually, she calmed. Of course, no other cancellations could mean that all wanted to come and examine her through quizzing glasses and lorgnettes, the Mayfair lady who had become a pirate’s mistress.
But dear lord, how beautiful it had been to touch him! He’d tasted so hot and so exciting and so wicked. He’d filled her with longing, and she’d been utterly fascinated by him. His body was so well-formed, a sculpture of lithe muscle and sinew. It seemed a shame not to gaze upon it, to touch it, to taste it.
He’d lain tense under her fingers and tongue, his breathing swift, his pulse rapid. How scalding hot his arousal had been, how firm and stiff, and yet, how velvet soft. She’d never touched a man before, certainly not her husband, who had simply poked at her in the dark and then departed, leaving her numb.
Grayson’s hands had balled to tight fists, his eyes had closed hard, his muscles had hardened, as if he’d been holding himself in with great effort. And yet, he’d lain still and let her touch. He’d not demanded a thing.
She laid down her pen and rubbed her temples again. If he had continued to plead with her, would she have
been able to resist? When he’d said in his low voice,
I beg of you
, she had been hard-pressed not to fling herself into his arms, no matter they had been standing on the quarterdeck at the time, in full view of the ship.
His siren call was clouding her reason. She was Alexandra Alastair and she wanted a respectable marriage and motherhood, not a tumble with a handsome pirate. Did she not? She craved a child more than anything. She could not have one without a proper marriage to a gentleman who would be a proper father. She could not allow Grayson, however handsome, to steer her from that purpose. She had failed the first child of her body. She would not, she
must not
fail the children to come.
She laid her head down and let out a heartfelt sigh. She had not thought a single sensible thought since Grayson Finley, Viscount Stoke, had moved in next door.
“Madam?”
Alexandra quickly raised her head. Jeffrey stood in the doorway, watching her anxiously. “A gentleman has called to see you, madam.”
Alexandra drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her wet eyes. “What gentleman, Jeffrey?”
“Don’t know, madam. I put him in the reception room.”
She waited, but he was no more forthcoming. “Did he not give you a card?”
Jeffrey shook his head fervently. His wig stayed in place while his head moved back and forth. “No, madam. But he told me his name.” A silent moment passed. “Except I’ve forgotten it.”
Alexandra hid a sigh. At least facing her frustrating footman had dried her tears. It was not easy to wallow in sorrow with Jeffrey in the room. “Is he one of the viscount’s men?”