Merline Lovelace (16 page)

Instant, suffocating terror clawed at her heart Sarah had believed that she could never again experience a fear such as she’d known when she’d burst onto the deck of the
Phoenix
and spied Charlie dangling headfirst from the end of the boom. Now, she realized how misplaced that belief was.

“Jamie!”

Her scream brought his head up with a jerk. Sarah pointed frantically to the shadow.

“Behind you! A shark!”

He spun around. Every muscle in his body froze when he spotted the approaching dorsal fin. Then slowly, so slowly, he raised the spear.

Sarah jumped up. Her heart crashing against her
ribs, she raced the length of the limestone shelf. Along the way she scooped up shells and loose chunks of limestone. If nothing else, she thought desperately, she could hurl them into the water and distract the shark. Perhaps even hit it.

Jamie must have seen her headlong run from the corner of his eye. Without taking his eyes from the gliding gray fin, he shouted a warning.

“Stay out of the water!”

His deep-throated shout reverberated across the small lagoon. The fin sank beneath the surface. Jamie lifted the spear higher, his muscles bunching.

Sarah’s breath tore out in short, painful gasps. She jumped off the shelf and splashed into the shallows. Her arm went back to heave a missile at the same moment Jamie’s arm shot forward.

A long, gray tail split the surface, smashed downward. Sarah screamed and threw every weapon in her pitiful arsenal at the indistinct shape. Jamie held onto the spear with both fists. Staggered back. Went under.

The water foamed red.

Sobbing, shrieking, praying, Sarah clawed at the limestone beneath her feet for a loose piece to use as a bludgeon. She was tugging frantically at a projection when Jamie’s dark head broke the surface.

He fought his way to his feet. Keeping the thrashing, impaled shark at arm’s length, he backed toward shore. When he reached the shallows, Sarah saw the size of the monster for the first time. She also saw that Jamie, far from trying to get away from the huge creature, was trying to land it!

“Let it go!” she screamed.

“No!” Grunting with the effort, he inched closer to the shore. “I’ve…almost…got…him!”

“Are you mad! Let it go and get out of the water. At once!”

“No.”

By the time he staggered out of the shallows with his madly thrashing prize, Sarah was beside herself with fear and fury. She would have thrown herself at the fool and pummeled him about the head and shoulders with both fists if the shark’s viciously snapping jaws hadn’t kept her well away.

Jamie grunted and gave another massive shove to push his prize yet further up the shore. The spear bent in his hands, then snapped with a loud crack. Thrown off balance, the fisherman tottered unsteadily toward his catch. Just in time, Sarah caught his arm and jerked him away.

“You idiot!” she shrieked. “You barnacle-brained idiot! You could have lost a leg! Or an arm!”

She might have calmed herself eventually. She might even have avoided for another day or night or week what happened next. But at that moment Jamie laughed. The fool laughed! The joy of a battle won flowed swift in his veins, and he laughed!

“Barnacle-brained?” he got out between bull-like snorts. “Such language, Miss Abernathy.”

Sarah’s seething emotions erupted. The calm, wise nurturer, the sister who rarely raised her voice and never,
ever,
raised her hand to her siblings, doubled her fist, swung her arm, and clouted James Kerrick, Third Viscount Straithe, up alongside his head.

The blow glanced off his thick skull. He rocked back, surprised but still chortling. Sarah wound up for another swing.

“Barnacle-brained and oyster-headed and seaweed-skulled…oh!”

He cut off her tirade by the simple expedient of catching her wrist and sweeping it behind her back. Her blood roaring in her ears, Sarah tried to pummel him with her other hand. That, too, ended up at the small of her back. She would have kicked him, hard, had she not known that she would smash her toes against his shin.

“How could you frighten me like that?” she screeched.

“Frighten you?” Victorious warrior and unrepentant male, he grinned down at her. “Why, Sarah, my sweet Are you saying that you would care if the shark had me for dinner?”

“Yes, damn you! Yes!”

Her furious shout set the gulls to cawing. They rose in waves from the pools dotting the limestone shelf. Jamie ignored their flapping flight. His blue eyes gleaming with sheer devilment, he brought her body hard against his.

“Yes, Sarah? Did I hear a yes?”

A sizzling retort rose to her lips…and stuck there. Her anger seemed to freeze in her chest, then shatter into a thousand tiny shards that melted instantly away. Logic, until this moment routed by wild emotion, came rushing back.

He might not survive the next shark attack. He might indeed step on a sea urchin, or be stung by one of the deadly moray eels that dwelt in the deep crevices of the underwater reef. They might never leave this island, or leave it and never be together again.

If she lost him to any of these occurrences, Sarah would die. Perhaps not physically, but her soul would wither and the passion would go out of her life forever. The passion she had not even fully tasted yet.

Sarah had never been in love before. She wasn’t even sure that love was the proper label for the confusing, consuming emotion she felt for this rogue. She only knew that she must have all that he wanted to give her. Now. While they had this time together.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Jamie. Yes.”

The laughter left his eyes, replaced by a swift, startled surprise. “What did you say?”

“Yes.”

He stared down at her, stunned. When he grasped her seriousness, his black brows snapped together. For a moment Sarah had the absurd notion that he would now reverse his arguments and try to convince her to preserve the maidenhood she’d guarded so zealously up to this point.

Would she have to beg him? she wondered wildly. She was searching for the words to tell him that she was ready for his long-promised demonstration when he abruptly loosed his hold on her wrists, bent, and swept her up in his arms.

Jamie’s mind churned like a sea driven by gale force winds. His body churned even more. The joy of battle still surged in his veins. Desire, hot and urgent, coursed through him. Like a sail torn from the mast by a violent wind, the lust that had been his constant companion since he’d first tumbled Sarah Abernathy onto his bunk aboard the
Phoenix
snapped its fetters. He wanted her as he’d never wanted any woman in his life.

He couldn’t count the number of nights he’d lain awake and sweating beside her in that damned hut. The number of times he’d started to roll over and initiate a slow, sweet seduction that would lead to her surrender. He had enough experience of women, and
of Sarah, to know that it wouldn’t take much more than a kiss, a touch, a sliding of her body against his, to ignite their simmering needs. But he’d given his word, and grudgingly respected Sarah for holding him to it.

Now she’d released him from his bond. With one simple word, she’d released them both from the restraints of her conscience. She wanted him, and he wanted her.

As he carried her up the path to the hut, Jamie’s own conscience flickered briefly to life. This was Sarah. The missionary’s daughter. Could she take joy in what her father’s teachings would condemn?

Yes! he vowed fiercely. Yes! He’d give her the joy she deserved. Whatever the future brought for them after this day, he could at least give her this taste of joy.

His heart pounding, Jamie ducked his head and carried her inside the hut. She clung to him, hiding her face in his shoulder until he laid her on the springy mat of branches and palm leaves. Sunlight dappled her face, giving him a glimpse of the sudden apprehension that clouded her brown eyes.

His belly knotted in vigorous protest at the idea of halting what they’d begun, but he wouldn’t force her. Keeping his voice light and teasing, he gave her a last chance to change her mind.

“Are you sure you wish to continue your demonstration, Sarah? Some of the translations in that book were a bit dubious.”

Her tremulous smile wrung Jamie’s heart. “I suspect that you, if anyone, can make sense of them.”

That was true enough, although it pricked a bit to
hear her acknowledge it. Smiling ruefully, he bent and brushed a kiss across her lips.

“I’ll do my best, sweetheart.”

Gathering her into his arms, he gave himself up to the sheer pleasure of kissing her. Shyly at first, then hungrily, she responded to his skilled tutoring. Her mouth shaped itself to his. Her breath grew ragged. Soon, she strained against him.

He tangled his hands in her hair, drawing her head back to trace the smooth column of her throat. She tasted of salt and sun and Sarah. Like a cannon with its fuse burned down, Jamie’s desire exploded. Rigid with need, he nipped her chin, her shoulders, the small hollow at the base of her throat.

“Oh! Oh, my goodness!”

Smiling at her startled response, Jamie reached for the ties at the neck of her chemise. To his surprise, his fingers shook a bit as he fumbled with the bow and smoothed the fabric to the side. Her full, rounded breasts filled his palms.

Sweat broke out on the back of his neck. Hellfire and damnation, she was glorious! Above the line of her chemise, she had tanned to a golden brown. Below, her skin was purest alabaster. Near strangling with the need to have her, Jamie forced himself to patience. Laying her back, he covered her with kisses. On her mouth. The slopes of her breasts. Her belly.

The last of Sarah’s doubts fled when Jamie took the tip of her breast in his mouth, then gently suckled. Fiery sensation streaked to every part of her body. But even more intense was the burning image that imprinted itself forever in her mind. This was the image she’d held in her secret heart for so long. His dark head to her white breast.

Light and dark.

Earth and sky.

Man and woman.

When his hand slid between her legs, her womb clenched. Embarrassment, modesty, a maiden’s fear all disappeared as he worked a magic that left her writhing. Wave after wave of heat rose from her center. Groaning, she arched under his hand.

Her soaring ecstasy came to an abrupt halt a moment, or perhaps an hour, later. Jamie’s hand ceased its erotic exploration. His mouth left her breast. His weight shifted, and came down atop hers.

Spinster though she was, Sarah had heard a good number of whispered comments from matrons about the pain associated with the loss of one’s maidenhead. Squeezing her eyes shut, she stiffened her arms and her legs and awaited the fateful moment.

“Sarah. Sweetheart.”

She peered up at him through the screen of her lashes. Jamie’s face was suitably grave, as befitted the occasion, and filmed with perspiration.

“You must open yourself to me.”

She bit her lip.

“It’s rather difficult otherwise,” he said with a small smile. “Open for me, Sarah.”

Slowly, hesitantly, she spread her legs.

Preferring the skilled embraces of experienced women, Jamie had bedded few virgins. But those maidens who’d offered themselves to him had taught him that what needed to be done was best done quickly.

Catching Sarah’s chin in one hand, he took her lips with his. The kiss claimed her. Her lids fluttered down. Her limbs lost a small measure of their rigidity. Before
she understood his intent, Jamie positioned himself, slid a hand between their sweat-slicked bodies to test her readiness, and filled her.

Her eyes flew open. Her hips bucked. Her shield gave. If she felt any pain, she didn’t show it. Jamie held himself taut, waiting for her body to adjust to his. She stared up at him, wide-eyed.

“Are we finished?”

He groaned. “Not quite.”

With a deliberate movement, he eased into her slick, wet depths.

“Oh!”

His every muscle strained with the need to plunge, to pull back and thrust hard, until he found the very essence of the woman beneath him. But this was Sarah. Remarkable, resilient, incredible Sarah. He would lose his arm or his leg before he abused her.

Slowly, so slowly, he began the primitive, timeless mating dance. As he’d known she would, she soon grasped its rhythm. Her arms wrapped around his neck. Her hips rose to meet his. Tentatively at first, then with mounting urgency. She was all that Jamie had imagined, and more. Her body welcomed his with unfeigned, untutored eagerness. Her mouth opened under his rough kisses and gave them back in full measure.

His hips strained against hers. Hot, searing need gripped his belly. Jamie held back, although the effort cost him dearly. He’d be damned to a thousand hells before he’d cut short Sarah’s initiation to the art of love by releasing first. Employing every skill he’d acquired in his many encounters, he brought her closer and closer to her peak. Panting, sweating, clenching
her belly with an instinctive need, she near drove him mad.

“How…? How is this embrace known?”

He heard her voice through the roar in his ears, but couldn’t find the air to speak.

“Jamie?”

He gritted his teeth. “What?”

“How…is…this…known in the…crew’s book?”

His every muscle quivering, he stared down at her. How the devil could she form a coherent thought, let alone find the breath to voice it? He sure as hell couldn’t.

Then her question penetrated his heated brain, and he fought the most wicked urge to grin. Should he tell her? Damn, he wanted to! But he suspected that even Sarah’s lively sense of humor might balk at the knowledge that this most basic of all embraces was known by sailors the world over as the missionary position.

And he wasn’t about to let her balk. Not now. Not with his release and hers so close he ached with it.

Smoothing her hair back from her flushed face with his palms, he cast wildly about in his mind for a suitable title. Instantly, he thought of the shark whose attack precipitated Sarah’s surrender. The grin that he’d suppressed just moments ago broke free.

“This, my curious one, is called Pair Eyed Fish.”