Almost a Scandal (29 page)

She reached out to stroke along the long line of his strong jaw, his beautiful face. His handsome, perfect, dear face, made rough and masculine by the shadow of whiskers. He looked dark and dangerous, and so very far from her restrained, controlled lieutenant. “I like you,” she answered. “Very much.”

His smile came on slowly, growing and spreading, like a sunset, until it was nearly blinding in its beauty. “That’s a very good place to start, Sally Kent, because I like you, too. I like you very much. This much.”

He began to kiss her again, taking her mouth in slow, exaggerated nips. His tongue advanced into her mouth by degrees, seeking her out, asking without words for her to join him. To taste him. To feel him in every way that she could.

His lips were firm and almost rough, made taut by the sun and wind, and she was taken by the need to catch his lower lip between her teeth to nip and play, to appease the inappeasable yearning that grew from something deep inside, a ravenous hunger for more of him that she could no longer control.

“Yes,” his whisper encouraged her. His body began to move in time with his mouth, undulating into her, pulsing burgeoning heat and delicious friction through her veins.

“Oh.” The word was something close to a moan. “I’m getting some idea now.”

“As am I, my Sally girl. As am I.” His smile widened across his face, wry and deeply amused, crinkling up the corners of those hot green eyes focused so powerfully on her. “All sorts of ideas.”

She began to move with him and a drop of pleasure fell from some great height inside her, and spread in rippling waves, growing and unfurling within until it was lapping at the very edges of her being. It was beautiful and fierce, this bliss building within her, pushing her apart, breaking her into a thousand different pieces of desire. She held on to him, anchoring herself to his strength. She held on to Col, her rock, her salvation.

Her hands were on the curved muscles of his arms, flexing and sculpted, strong where they lifted the small of her back, arching her into him, urging her to join him. So she did, because with each surge of his body into hers, the landscape of what was possible shifted, opening up unmapped continents of experience, uncharted oceans of desire.

Everything was new and intriguing. The feel and taste of his warm skin beneath her hands and mouth. The sight of his naked, muscled splendor. The sound of his pleasure as she stroked her fingers across his flesh. She wanted more of the tang of his mouth, more of the firm tantalizing pressure of his lips slanting across her mouth, opening her to his pleasure. And the more he pressed, the more she enjoyed, and the more she enjoyed, the more she wanted. The more they kissed, the more she felt his kisses elsewhere, and not just on her lips, or on the side of her neck as he made his way down to her collar. The heated sensations were spreading, winding in a serpentine path throughout her body, spiraling into her chest, turning and coiling deep within her very core.

“Col.” She said his name, over and over, because it seemed the only thing she could say, the only thing she needed to say. He was all she wanted, all she needed. His hands stroking her body, his lips kissing her mouth, his body pulsing deep within hers.

She grappled her arm around his neck and pulled herself flush against him, glorying in the long strength of him and the delicious friction of his chest against hers, as she wrapped her legs around him. She slid her fingers into his glossy, dark hair, fisting up the black curls, holding him to her so she could fill her desperate longing for the taste and feel of his lips on hers, pressing into her, hard and deliberate.

There was nothing of subtlety or finesse in him. Or in her. She was ungovernable in this hungry need that rose up inside her. She gloried in the firm grasp of his hands against her bottom guiding her to him. She dug her own hands into the sure strength of his shoulders, holding on to him as wave after wave of drowning pleasure crashed over her.

Above her, Col looked as if the bliss would consume him. His head was thrown back and he was gulping in air, as if he had to shut his eyes to keep it all contained within him. But still he smiled.

This was her Col. This was the memory she had carried within for six long years, this man who laughed and loved and learned everything with such dedication. With such beauty and power and strength. The movement of his body grew stronger, more emphatic, and so did the tantalizing pleasure. Everything—every feeling, every thought, every need—intensified, and left her greedy and grasping at each riotous burst of sensation, each tempting pulse of blissful delight, straining to reach some greater portion of bliss.

“Sally. My God, Sally.” Her name on his lips was all she needed to urge her on forward down the river of her desire, to propel her over some unseen edge.

She was drenched in bliss, drowning, sinking until she was fighting the dark undertow of need, straining and kicking her way to the surface. And then everything changed, and ended, and began. Bliss detonated within her and she was floating at last, warm and sated, and free.

*   *   *

She might have dozed; so strong was the feeling of languor that she felt as if her very bones had melted in the heat of their conflagration. Col had rolled off her slightly, to relieve her of his weight and let her breathe, but still he held her close. One arm was wrapped around her middle and the other was tangled in her hair, tethering her to his warm side.

He needn’t hold on so tight—she wasn’t going anywhere. Indeed, with long hours of daylight stretching ahead, there was no place else she would rather be than naked in his equally naked arms. She wanted to make the delicious intimacy, the heady feeling of being enclosed by his strong protective arms, last as long as possible.

She nestled closer, rolling so she could rest her head on his chest, and hear the solid cadence of his heart thudding slowly back to normal beneath her. Except that it accelerated slightly the moment she let her hands play across the smooth skin of his chest. Curiosity, and perhaps some small vestige of feminine instinct hidden deep within, urged her to trail her fingers around the circumference of his flat nipples. Just the thought of how she had felt, of the exquisite sensations that had cascaded through her own breasts when he had done exactly that same thing to her, sent a spasm of want spiraling deep into her belly.

“Playing with fire, are we?” His voice rumbled through his chest and directly into her ear.

“Yes.” She smiled against the smooth curve of his chest. “My fingers are already singed, and I don’t have any butter, so I’ve got to find a way to ease them somehow.”

“Umm.” He turned her away from him and gathered her back against his chest, rolling them to their sides. His arm encircled her waist from below and his leg was thrown over her hip, enveloping her in his warmth. “A well-known cure for burns. But I think I may know just where to get some butter. And honey.”

His fingers opened to splay and press into her belly, urging her back against his growing arousal, and Sally felt every muscle tauten and tense with anticipation, as his mouth nuzzled against her nape.

“Do you?” She could hear the needy gratification in her voice, the edge of breathlessness wondering for what was to come.

“Oh, yes.” His voice echoed quietly from just behind her ear, as he slowly loosened the fist from her hair, and skated his palm down, across her collarbone and through the valley of her breasts, over the flat plane of her belly and lower, until his fingers teased the rim of her navel.

Sally wanted to stretch and curl up all at the same time, but he held her fast, so the quivers shook themselves deeper under her skin.

“You like that, do you?” She could feel the teasing smile in his voice.

“Almost as much as I like you.”

“Almost?” His hand trailed lower, sliding into the curls at the apex of her tightly clenched thighs. “Perhaps I can do something about that. Perhaps…”

His clever articulate fingers slid into her folds and Sally could feel the slick moisture of her body rise to his touch, easing his passage.

“Col.” His name was both benediction and prayerful plea.

“Yes,” he murmured in answer, and speared another finger into her along with the first, filling her with need, cupping and holding her at the threshold of yearning.

“Col,” she said again, because she had nothing else to say, no words to encourage or plead with him to continue, to help fill the aching void that opened within her at his slightest touch. The void that only he could fill with his body.

But somehow, he understood. Or perhaps he was deviled by the same hungry demons, by the same yawning need. He withdrew his fingers from her heat in order to ease her thighs apart, his hand gentle but insistent on the inside of her knee.

In another breath Sally felt the velvet probe of his body against her entrance, and she arched her head back as pleasure pulsed across the surface of her skin and he slid deep into her body.

Her exhalation was a gasp, of gratified shock and wanton delight. She had known that such a thing—such a position—was possible. Indeed, it had been impossible to grow up in her world, with its dockyard whores and ’tween deck doxies, not to understand that human congress could take such a shape. But she had no earthly idea of how it would
feel
to be so utterly and entirely possessed by him. To be so surrounded and subsumed by him, the smell and taste and texture of him, that she felt the very air she drew into her lungs had come from him.

It was fierce and primitive and undeniably arousing to feel such possession. To feel a part of him. To feel, as her need pushed her over the brink, that at long last, they had become as one.

*   *   *

Col made love to Sally Kent until the dusk began to settle over them, and the ebbing rush of their breath echoed from the stone walls of the loft and made him aware, once more, of where they were. And what they were supposed to be doing. Of what they had just done.

God Almighty. What
had
he done?

They had been at it for what felt like hours and his breeches were still tangled around his ankles. His shirt and waistcoat were nowhere within sight, he had flung them off with such abandon. His coat he didn’t even remember removing. And his heart was still hammering away like a carpenter in his chest. He was completely done in.

And he had never been so glad.

“You have straw in your hair.” Her voice was nothing more than a wisp of sound, but he could hear the gentle warmth and the sweet intimacy. He turned to regard her beneath him, all vivid beauty and honeyed warmth.

He didn’t have the heart to rush. After what they had done, another moment or two hardly mattered. And once they left, they would have no further chance at this lovely closeness, this glorious, naked intimacy. He rolled onto his side and reached for her. To keep her near. “Shows what you know. It’s hay. And it’s in your hair, too.”

“Is it?” She exhaled another smile and reached up to comb her fingers through her gorgeous, blazing mane to find the offending pieces.

“Here, let me.” It was just an excuse to run his fingers through the vibrant waterfall, and let the rough silk slide through his fingers.

When had he become such a sensualist?

The moment Sally Kent had climbed aboard, and his life and everything else—self-discipline and restraint—seemed to have gone over the rail. But now it would be easier. They had it out of their systems. They could concentrate on the tasks at hand, now that they had put paid to this infernal attraction once and for all.

Speaking of which. “I’m sorry to say this, Sally love, but we need to press on.”

“Of course.” She began reaching for discarded items of clothing.

He rolled onto his back and began to hitch his breeches on over his hips and button up the fall. She smiled at him over her shoulder and she looked so appealing, so sweet and soft, it was everything he could do to keep putting on his shirt instead of pulling her back beneath him and taking her again.

Goddamn his eyes. What had he been thinking? He had just tupped Sally Kent, the sister of his oldest and closest friends, on the floor of a barn, and he had barely gotten his boots off.

And he wanted to do it again.

The heat washing his torso ought to be shame. He ought to feel scorched by it. He ought to be rehearsing his apologies. He, who had never been rash and impetuous, had been just that, making love to this tumultuous, irresistible girl without any thought as to where they were and where they had to go. No thought at all as to the consequences.

“Kent. Sally,” he corrected. “I— Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She smiled and turned away, and began to collect the rest of her scattered clothes, rising to walk across the room in all her naked glory, completely unaware of her effect. Or her effect on him.

If he didn’t know better, he wouldn’t think it her first time. She was handling this business of being ruined with far greater aplomb than he appeared to be. By all rights, the virgin daughter of such a man as Captain Alexander Kent ought to be tearfully expecting a proposal.

The thought of fathers in general, and that father in particular, chilled the breath in his lungs. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t—I shouldn’t. I should have known better.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I regret—”

“Don’t.” Her voice was low and soft, but decisive, and Col had been in the senior service long enough to know an order when he heard it. “Please.” She smiled, but he could see the sheen of tears at the corners of those wide gray eyes. “I can stand anything but regret. I know it was a mistake. But it was a glorious one. And I don’t ever want to regret it. Ever.”

Col knew he ought to say something to comfort her, to reassure her that he felt no regret, but Kent wasn’t the kind of person who wanted empty assurances. She would see through them in less time than it took him to spout them. Especially now, with the impossibility and danger of their assignment looming before them, with their very lives in mortal danger. It did not seem to be the most propitious time for a proposal. Yet there were other dangers. “What about the consequences? What if—”