The Reckless Bride (40 page)

How to ride him.

He held her, showed her, taught her, guided her—showed her how to love him this way.

Showed her how to ride him until their hearts beat as one, until their breaths were ragged gasps and their senses spun.

He surged up, locked his lips over one turgid nipple and suckled powerfully. Head tipping back, she cried out, and rode him even harder.

Until he burned at her core, hot and hard, and she tightened and tightened, then he thrust up, deep, one last time, and on a rush of pure pleasure she melted.

Releasing her breast, he locked his lips on hers, claimed her mouth in a searing kiss. Locked her hips to him and rolled her to the side, rolled her beneath him.

With one powerful thrust resheathed himself fully within her.

Then he rode her.

Into shattering bliss, into exquisite oblivion.

Into the heaven that waited for them, in each other’s arms.

In the depths of the chilly night, Rafe’s mind swam back to consciousness. His body remained sunk in a sated, bliss-filled warmth he never wanted to leave.

Thank God he wouldn’t have to. He tightened his arms around Loretta, breathed in her scent, felt it wreathe through his mind and sink to his bones, then relaxed, eased his grip. There was no need to physically lock her to him. She wasn’t leaving either.

She’d claimed her turn, her right, and claimed him.

My turn to show you how much I love you.

She’d said the words and meant them. In uttering them she was braver than he. That one little, four-letter word still held the power to make him quake.

But …
my turn
she’d said. Which implied she knew, had correctly interpreted and understood, all he’d unintentionally, helplessly, revealed the night before.

He lay still, her body, warm and sated, curled against his, and wondered how he felt about that.

If even though he hadn’t said the words, hadn’t uttered them out loud … if she knew, and he knew she knew … where did that leave them?

She seemed to know.

Sadly, he didn’t.

He wasn’t sure how to deal with that emotion—that massive, powerful, all-encompassing emotion that some ancient scholar had in some fit of idiocy described in a word of only four letters.

That emotion was so overwhelmingly powerful it qualified for seventeen letters, at least.

Yet no matter what label was put on it, the result remained
the same. When it came to acknowledging it, working with it, managing it, he had no clue. He wasn’t sure what it meant, how it would affect him.

He didn’t know what he ought to do about it, for it, with it.

Most pertinently, he wasn’t sure he, being him, could do very much with it at all.

The morning brought distraction, but not in a way any of them would have wished.

As Rafe had told Julius, he, Loretta, Hassan, and Rose remained below deck as, soon after an early breakfast, the
Loreley Regina
tied up at the dock in Bonn.

A thin fog hung over the docks. The winter sun was struggling to thrust even a ghostly grayish light through the heavy clouds.

Soon after Julius and some of the crew had departed for the warehouses, another crewman came down to tell them that the crew left on watch had spotted Indian-looking men wearing turbans with black scarves wound around them.

Rafe thanked him, and he left.

The minutes crawled by; the tension grew.

To break it, Rafe suggested a game of whist.

They gathered in the salon, in their usual spot in the prow where the windows on either side of the vessel let in enough light to see.

The dock lay alongside. After peering out, Loretta drew the lace curtain across the dockside window, relieving Rafe of that concern. Even if cultists strolled past on the dock, they wouldn’t be able to spot them through the lace.

They settled to their game.

Nearly an hour later, they heard the men returning.

Julius looked in, saluted. “We have all we need.” He nodded at Loretta. “I gave your letter into the post, m’amzelle.” To Rafe he said, “We will be putting out shortly—there is another vessel ahead of us that must go first.”

“Excellent.” Rafe relaxed, leaning back in the armchair.
Julius left, and Rafe looked at Hassan. “If we escape detection here—”

A heavy thud sounded on the narrow walkway on the starboard side, the side facing the dock. Simultaneously the boat tipped, then righted; there seemed little doubt what had happened.

Both Rafe and Hassan leapt to their feet, heading for the door to the walkway.

“No!” Loretta swung to face them. “Go down. Go and stand in the corridor where they can’t see you.”

Rafe and Hassan hesitated, caught by the instinct to defend and protect.

“Aar
—
“
Rose clapped a hand over her mouth. Eyes round, with her other hand she pointed at the mahogany brown face pressed to the port prow window, the uncurtained one facing the river.

Black eyes stared at them. The apparition wore a turban wound about with black silk.

Rafe swore and raced for the walkway door, Hassan at his heels.

The cultist’s gaze tracked them, then he whirled and disappeared toward the dock.

Loretta yanked aside the curtain over the dockside window, knelt on the window seat and tried to track the man.

All she saw was a boot as he leapt up onto the dock and vanished.

Five minutes passed before Rafe and Hassan returned to the salon. As they did, the prow of the
Loreley Regina
swung out into the river.

Both men came to join Loretta and Rose as they stood at the front of the salon and watched the docks fall behind, and the river open up before them once more.

Once they were underway, Loretta glanced at Rafe.

He met her gaze, his own heavy with concern. “The dock was crowded. They—there were two of them—disappeared before any of us got more than a glimpse.”

She nodded, then, sensing there was more behind the men’s hugely increased tension, raised her brows.

Rafe exhaled, ran a hand through his hair. “They not only know we’re on the river. They know we’re on this particular boat.”

The cult also now knew that he and Hassan had two women with them. Rafe hadn’t stated that, yet of all the aspects now in play, that weighed on him the most.

They kept watch, a tense watch, throughout the rest of the day. They saw no likely cultists as they slipped past Cologne, but at Dusseldorf they spotted a lone cult member sitting on a pile of rope on the dock.

He was watching the river, but idly.

Given the speed the
Loreley Regina
was making downriver, with the wind holding steady from the stern, they concluded that the news of their sighting at Bonn hadn’t yet reached that far north.

Later, after dinner, Rafe paced the stateroom’s sitting room. Rose had gathered her things and decamped to Hassan’s cabin at the end of the corridor, leaving the stateroom to him and Loretta. Given how he felt, he was grateful.

“With any luck, they’ll expect me to leave the boat now that I know they’ve spotted us on it.” Eyes narrowed, he stared at Loretta, seated in one of the armchairs. A lady’s traveling writing desk balanced on her knees, she’d been scribbling on and off since they’d settled in the sitting room.

She looked up, met his gaze. “That would be fortunate, given we have to halt at anchor every evening.”

They were presently at anchor in what Julius had described as a secure merchants’ basin off Duisberg. The town’s docks were some way away, back along the river, and the riverbanks were too distant, and the currents between too strong, to imagine any attackers swimming out to the
Loreley Regina.
In addition, the crew were on watch. Now they’d sighted the enemy—indeed, had had one board and
then escape—they were very much on their mettle. Rafe knew their party was as safe as he could make them, yet still …

This, he suspected, lips twisting as he resumed his pacing, was one of the outcomes of that four-letter-word emotion.

Stifling a sigh, Loretta closed her writing desk and set it aside. She’d been trying to jot down ideas for her last
Window on Europe
vignette, but Rafe’s imitation of a restless, prowling beast was an irresistible distraction.

Standing, she turned down the lamp, then blew it out, plunging the room into moonlight and shadow. Rafe halted as she turned to him. Smiling wryly as much to herself as to him, she walked to him, took his hand, wound her fingers with his, and drew him to her room.

Shutting the door behind them, she turned and went into his arms.

They closed around her, his head bent to hers as she stretched up. Their lips met, brushed, touched, then they sank into each other’s mouths, into each other’s embrace, and let the moment have them.

Let the night enfold them, let passion rise up and sweep them away, knowing this night might be the last of their journey in which they were free to indulge. During which they were safe enough to indulge.

During which they could strip each other bare, join, and let the glory take them.

Unrestrained, unshielded.

During which they could with complete and utter focus concentrate on the other, on their wants and needs, on satisfying both, on reaching and seizing, then clinging to that ultimate glory.

It left them wracked, sated and limp, in a tangle in her bed.

Gently, with those reassuring touches only lovers could share, they disengaged and settled to sleep.

Boneless, at peace, Loretta slid into sated slumber.

Rafe held her close.

And listened to the night. To the occasional creak, the whistling of the wind. The almost silent slap of the river wavelets against the hull.

Physically sated he might be, but he was mentally too tense, too on guard, for sleep.

As the dark hours rolled on, his mind circled. To the start of his mission, to the start of this long journey. To his thoughts and feelings then. And how they’d changed.

Yet another outcome of that unnameable emotion.

He now had so much more to lose, something so precious he would give his all, even his soul, to protect it. She, her life, her love—they were inviolate, something he could not conceive of ever allowing to be harmed. But along with that bone-deep determination came a yearning, a hope beyond all other hopes, that he would live through the coming clashes and survive to join his life with hers. That he would live to have a chance to explore all he felt for her, long enough to learn how to cope, how to manage, how to acknowledge and admit to that too-powerful emotion, out loud, to her.

To say the words and admit to the truth that already lived in his heart.

That already invested his soul.

And that was one thing he’d been wrong about. Yes, with that emotion came vulnerability of a sort he, the warrior in him, hated to embrace, yet simultaneously, out of the hope, the yearning, and the determination it engendered, that emotion gave him strength.

A strength he’d never felt before, one he’d yet to test. But if its power was anything like that of the emotion that gave it birth …

The chances were he’d find out. Soon.

And alongside the new—his recently acquired hopes and dreams—ran the older imperatives: his loyalty to his friends, his duty to his country, and his devotion to seeing James MacFarlane avenged.

As the faint gray light of dawn seeped into the cabin, he held Loretta close, and with his cheek on her dark hair, thought of those things, his most prized possessions, his deepest vows.

Those were the things he would fight for, that he would face the Black Cobra and battle for. And of them all, the one he would give his soul to keep safe was his future with her. Reckless would never be reckless with that.

B
y the following afternoon, they’d left the main channel of the Rhine and were on the Lek, the arm of the river that eventually flowed past Rotterdam. Rafe stood on the bridge looking out at the passing riverscape. He’d come up to consult with Julius and his crew over what they might expect once they reached their destination. Although some miles from the open sea, Rotterdam was the biggest seaport in Europe; its many shipping basins played host to merchantmen and fishing fleets from all around the globe.

If anything, the river currents had strengthened and the
Loreley Regina
was running fast before a stiff breeze. Although they’d all helped mount a close watch on the numerous small town docks they’d whisked past, as well as on the surrounding river traffic, they’d sighted no more cultists.

With a nod to Julius, Rafe headed for the companionway. Descending, he walked into the salon to join Loretta, Hassan, and Rose, who were waiting in the armchairs about the small table they’d used to play whist.

“Julius says,” Rafe reported, dropping into the chair alongside Loretta’s, “that we’ll reach the port of Rotterdam tomorrow, in the late afternoon or early evening. Quite aside from the vagaries of wind and currents, we’ll soon have to slow to tack between vessels anchored in the river.”

“Will we halt tonight?” Hassan asked.

Rafe shook his head. “Apparently that’s unnecessary. Although to hear him describe it, the river will be an obstacle course, in these reaches all vessels mount running lights, and accepted practise is for vessels to keep moving until they reach their intended destination. Speaking of which, Julius agrees that putting into the usual passenger docks would be foolish. Because we’ll have to slow for the last stretches, it’s certain the cultists in Rotterdam will be warned of our arrival before we reach there. Julius predicts that the cult will have a welcome waiting for us at the
Loreley Regina
‘s customary dock.”

“What’s the alternative?” Loretta asked.

“The consensus is that we’ll all be better off if the
Loreley Regina
avoids all the basins set aside for passenger vessels and instead slips into one reserved for merchantmen. Apparently smaller craft occasionally put in there to unload cargo they’ve brought downriver. The crew consider it highly unlikely the cult will be patroling the trade docks—there are simply too many to cover, even with a small army.”