For the Taking (11 page)

She was a little too conscious of how brief the bikini was, conscious of the way her breasts jutted and the way the thin straps defined her shoulders, but knew she would only draw attention to the fact if she changed.

Loucan wore shorts, too, and a chambray shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulder seam. That just emphasized the powerful shape of his upper arms, and Lass found it hard to look away.

“Hungry?” he asked her casually, but for once she wasn’t.

Her emotions were too raw tonight, and had translated into a churning feeling in her stomach. As Loucan had planned, they would leave the harbor tomorrow morning at first light, and it would take them around ten days to reach Pacifica.

Ten days with Loucan on this boat.

The sleek craft wasn’t nearly big enough. And maybe Lass was wiser than he was in this way.
Maybe it was the very fact that she was so inexperienced compared to him. She could see the truth more simply and clearly.

They would end up sleeping together.

“I’m not hungry yet, but you eat,” she told him. “Please don’t wait.” Her heart was jumping wildly in her chest. “I’m just going to sit out here for a bit.”

And try to work out how I’m going to handle this.

“Go ahead,” he answered.

He disappeared inside the cabin. Lass sat deliberately with her legs dangling over the stern of the boat so that she had her back to him. A few minutes later, she smelled bacon frying and heard it sizzling in the pan.

I could wait,
she thought.
I’ve waited long enough! Within a day or two, the tension between us will be so tight it’ll snap with one accidental touch, and how can we avoid that on a boat? He talked about distractions, but wanting each other like this and tying ourselves in knots to stop it from happening would be the biggest distraction of all.

Instead, she could make things easier for both of them.

I could seduce him tonight.

If she dared.

Just the thought of it made flames lick inside her, made her crazy heart jump harder, and filled her with such a mixture of longing and terror that she could hardly breathe. The growing heaviness in the air didn’t help, and a few minutes later, she heard thunder. She looked beyond the lights of the harborside town and saw a flash of sheet lightning against the treetops.

Within five minutes, crashing rain had driven her
into the cabin. Loucan looked up from the scrambled egg he was scooping onto slices of toast. “Getting a little damp out there?”

“Just a bit.”

The temperature had dropped, too, and the rain had started so suddenly that she was already half-wet. She shivered, and knew that the convulsive movement would draw his gaze to the flimsy bikini top. Her nipples were hard from the cold, and when she hugged her arms around herself, the gesture lifted her breasts and made them look fuller.

He didn’t say anything.

The cabin itself was warm and cozy. Far too cozy, just as she’d known it would be. When she sat down opposite him at the table, she felt his bare knees brush hers. Once more, she saw ten days on this boat stretching ahead of her. Ten days of trying not to touch each other. Ten days of their bodies filling the same small space. Ten days of eating together, and knowing he was sleeping in a bunk bed just one thin wall away from hers.

Loucan was kidding himself. Big time.

“The rain’s stopped. I might see if—”

“I’m going to check our mooring. Just in case it’s gotten—”

They spoke and moved at the same time, and collided midsentence. His arms shot out to her elbows to steady them both, and his deck shoe came down hard on her bare toes. She gave a hiss of pain and bent to grab her throbbing foot just as he looked down to see if he’d done any serious damage. Their foreheads cracked together, and Lass saw several pretty yellow stars.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped.

“My fault. I’m really sorry. Are you okay?”

He was still holding her, and her body was drawn to his like a magnet. Earlier, out on the deck, she had believed that there was a decision to be made. She’d thought she would have to take her courage in her hands. But when it happened, it wasn’t like that. Instead, it was so easy and obvious that there simply wasn’t any other choice.

Looking up at him, she reached for his neck and slid her fingers around to his nape in a caress that was slow and tantalizing and deliberate. A little shaky, too, if she was honest.

She said softly, “I’m fine, Loucan. I’m feeling no pain.”

And then she pulled him closer and kissed him.

At first, his mouth didn’t move. Lass brought her other hand up to his face and rested both palms lightly against his jaw. Her lips soft and slightly parted, she tilted her face a little and printed her kisses with slow, purposeful pressure. He tasted salty and warm and perfect, and she couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else in the world but in his arms.

His hands responded to her sooner than his mouth. She felt them curve over the bare skin just above the waistband of her shorts. They were impatient hands, not content to rest. He pulled her hips against him and only then, at last, did he start kissing her back.

Sweet relief flooded through her, and a sense of confidence and triumph that made her dizzy. What would she have done if he’d somehow found the strength to push her away?

“Lass,” she heard him mutter. “I don’t think I can…I don’t want—”

“If you think for one second,” she said fiercely,
“that we can stop this—that I’m going to
let
you stop this—you’re so wrong! I dare you to even try. I dare you to tell me it’s even possible!”

She was right.

With every eager, inviting touch of her mouth on his, Loucan knew it more fully. Ten days on a boat. Virginal Lass showing in her body everything she felt and everything she wanted. He would hardly be a man if he didn’t respond. That stuff he’d said to her after their wedding ceremony a few hours ago was total nonsense. They would both burst into flames if this need went unconsummated, when by mer custom and law it was their full right to do so.

“Teach me, Loucan,” she whispered. “Help me, and show me what to do. Reading about it, imagining it…that’s not the same. I need you to show me.”

“Yes. Oh, yes!” His words were just a rasping of breath across her mouth.

The thought of catching her up on fifteen years of inexperience might have daunted him. Instead, it made his blood sing in his veins. Ten days wasn’t the endless interval he’d considered it a few minutes ago, it was the blink of an eye. Nowhere near enough time to give Lass what she deserved.

And as for tonight…

For a long time he just kissed her, slowly deepening the joining of his mouth with hers. He lifted his hands to her breasts, touching them softly through the stretchy fabric of her bikini top, tracing his finger around the low-cut neckline. He touched her through her shorts, as well. Laying his palm over the mound at the joining of her thighs, he could feel her rising heat.

Her skin was incredibly sensitive. Her breathing
was already fast and shallow with pleasure and need, and when he unfastened the clip at the back of her top and took her fully into his hands, she gasped.

And this time, she recognized his own state of arousal at once. Hands on his hips, she moved so that their thighs were locked together. She began to rock her hips, tentatively at first. It drove him wild, and when he told her so, she laughed, kissed him harder and rocked more sinuously.

He tasted salt and wetness on her cheeks. Dear heaven, was she crying?

She was.

Good tears.

He pulled away far enough to look at her, and found that she wasn’t ashamed of them. She was smiling at the same time. “Don’t stop,” she said.

“You were right,” he muttered. “I couldn’t if I tried.”

“Let me touch you.”

She reached for his shirt and unfastened the first two buttons, then he helped her pull it impatiently over his head. Two more buttons snapped off. Loucan stood motionless as she ran her hands over the muscles of his shoulders and back and chest. Her eagerness heated his own blood still further, and he ached to feel the pressure of those full, tightly peaked breasts against his body.

Hearing a fishing boat coming by, he reached out and shut off the cabin light. With a full moon still rising in the sky and washing its blue light in through the cabin windows, they could see each other clearly. That was important. For her, too, he could tell. Her green eyes had darkened and she wasn’t ashamed of her pleasure in watching him.

She wanted his eyes on her, too. Her body spoke this fact more clearly than any words. She didn’t try to hide the lush responsiveness of her breasts, and when he brushed his fingers lightly over her nipples, she closed her eyes and dropped her head back and moaned.

“Let me see you. Let me touch you,” she said a few minutes later, and Loucan felt her hands working at the front of his shorts.

He helped her, and in a moment he was naked and she could see—and feel—exactly how aroused he was.

He swallowed hard. Almost any other woman of her age would have known what to do. Lass didn’t. She wasn’t thinking about results, she was just exploring, and that was far more erotic than he could have imagined. Her fingers were tentative, curious, delicate, and when they left him after a timeless interval, he wanted them back. What was she doing?

Taking off her own shorts. And she wore nothing underneath.

“Lass,” he croaked. “Here?”

“Saves moving.”

“But—”

Pushing with her hands, she lifted her bottom onto the edge of the table, then stretched her arms back and braced them behind her so that her breasts jutted more invitingly than ever.

She knew it, too. She knew exactly how full and lush and touchable she looked, every inch of her. At the same time, she was blushing and he loved that.
Loved
it. Oh, he’d suspected—
known
—how sensual and responsive she would be, but he hadn’t expected
her to lead the way like this, with such a captivating combination of daring and nerves.

“Not like that,” he told her, through the tightness in his throat. “Sit up. Right on the edge. Let me—”

“No, Loucan,” she whispered. Her arms wound around his neck. “Show me,” she begged him. “Don’t tell me.”

“Show you?” he repeated. “Oh, yes, I’ll show you all night long.”

She wasn’t leading anymore. Neither of them had the patience for that. He held her thighs as she wrapped them around him and they both disappeared into a world with no time, no words, nothing but their two bodies moving together.

It was two in the morning before either of them slept, entwined together on a bunk bed that should have seemed way too narrow for two. Loucan’s last waking thought was that he never wanted to let her go.

W
hen Lass woke up, the boat was already moving. She could feel the subtle vibration of the engine and the shallow rocking motion of the hull in the water. She lay there for a moment, her body still replete and pleasurably aching with the aftermath of Loucan’s lovemaking.

There was no regret. Not for what they’d done, nor for the fact that she’d made most of the moves. Loucan had liked that. She was certain of it. She could still see the hot light of appreciation in his eyes, still feel on her skin the way he’d taken hold of the intimacy she’d begun to create, and powered it to a tumultuous finish.

More than once.

She should be feeling exhausted. Instead, she felt alive and bursting with energy. Rolling from the bunk bed, she wrapped herself untidily in the striped sheet and went to the adjoining cabin to find some clothes.

The tiny porthole showed that dawn was barely be
ginning to color the eastern sky. In the darkness, she was too impatient to spend long looking for the right garments, and contented herself with a black bikini, hip-hugging white shorts and a stretch cotton sweater with a pattern of tiny red flowers.

When she reached the deck and came up to Loucan at the wheel, they were just leaving the narrow mouth of the harbor. The sky was getting brighter, but there was a mist on the water, and it was cold.

He put his arm around her shoulders at once and kissed her, his mouth tender and slow. “Ready for this?” he said.

“Yes,” she promised carelessly.

She wasn’t thinking very far ahead. At the moment, feeling as she did the way they fit so perfectly together, nothing seemed impossible, as long as he was with her. The boat seemed to float across the water, and Loucan’s touch turned her bones to sweet whipped cream.

He kept his arm in place around her waist, and she leaned against him, content to watch the way he controlled the boat with such confidence, the way it cut through the waves, and the way the sun rose and burned away the morning mist.

“Want some breakfast?” he said eventually.

“Love some,” she answered. “You can go below deck, of course, can’t you? I don’t know much about boats. You can set it on cruise control, or something, right?”

“Or something, yes.” He grinned. “Have you got something in mind for me to do instead?”

“Well, breakfast, like you mentioned, and then…”

“Yes?”

“You’ve got some books on hand, I noticed. And a couple of, uh, games we could play.”

“Monopoly or Scrabble might be nice,” he agreed.

They both knew he was teasing her. Finally she collapsed into laughter.
Literally
collapsed. Laughter, on top of the whipped cream feeling in her limbs, made all her joints begin to buckle. But Loucan held her up and kissed the strength back into her body, and they didn’t get down to breakfast for another hour….

Tomorrow.

With the cooperation of ocean and weather, they would reach Pacifica tomorrow, Loucan knew. He wished that some freak tropical storm would brew up and blow them a thousand miles off course. Alternatively, a shipwreck would be good. They could swim together to the nearest uninhabited island paradise and wait to be rescued. If no one ever came for them, because no one knew where they were—a little detail that he could take care of—there’d be no complaints from him.

He and Lass had just spent the most incredible nine days together. The summer weather had cooperated fully, sending the right winds their way. They’d spent most of the journey under sail, and he’d had to use the motor only a few times to increase their speed when the wind dropped overnight. He’d taken advantage of the currents he knew so well, and they’d moved faster than any commercial vessel could.

They’d called in at a couple of ports on the way, to restock supplies of food, fuel and water. Both times they’d used it as an excuse to relax a little, exploring the environs of the port, browsing in a few stores and
then stopping to eat at a pretty restaurant overlooking the water.

Any other couple would have called it a honeymoon.

Loucan didn’t dare.

He suspected how close Lass had gotten to falling in love with him. He knew that, for her sake, he should be doing everything he could to prevent it happening. Instead, he watched it growing inside her, the way he sometimes watched storms building at sea.

It was a beautiful sight, Lass Morgan falling in love. It made her eyes brighter and her mouth softer. It made her aware of her own body. Sometimes, she seemed to get an attack of shyness, and he loved the way she would hug a sheet up to her chin, or make him turn his back while she washed herself up on deck. At other times, she was as bold as brass, and would anoint her naked body in moisturizing sunscreen and lie in the sun for hours, knowing he couldn’t help watching her.

They ate picnic meals on deck, or drank hot chocolate in the cabin late at night, and talked about a hundred different things, and he got to know her better than he’d known any woman except Tara, so long ago.

No, better than Tara, too, he decided. Because there was more honesty between him and Lass than he’d ever permitted himself during his marriage.

The one thing he hadn’t been honest about was the way he felt.

He couldn’t love her.

Maybe she didn’t realize yet that she wanted him to, but soon she would. Loucan held traditional views in that respect. An emotional woman like Lass
couldn’t give herself to a man for the first time, make love to him over the course of ten passionate days and keep her heart free. A man found it easier to do so. Loucan desired Lass, respected her, wanted only the best for her, but he couldn’t love her.

He couldn’t afford to.

He had to keep his head and his heart clear in order to know what was best for Pacifica. He had to stay focused. The closer they got, the more the needs and problems of his country began to weigh on him. The alliance he’d made with Lass had political, not personal, goals, and it would be dangerous to both of them if he forgot the fact.

It felt as if he’d been away for a long time, and he began to question his own decision to handle his quest for Thalassa this way. Once he had found her, should he have tackled the whole thing more directly? More brutally? Should he have just kidnapped her and headed for Pacifica at full speed? He’d wasted more than a week on gaining her trust and overcoming her fears.

And he could have made this journey in eight days, not ten, if he’d pulled out all the stops. Instead, he’d lingered those two times on shore, loving the way she responded to the exotic cultures of Fiji and Tahiti, deliberately delaying their journey to give her pleasure.

Within a day of my meeting her, she’d gotten to me more than I intended,
he thought, watching her.
How did I let it happen, when I started out so cool and so clear about my goals?

It was late in the day, and once more she was stretched on her stomach on the deck, no clothes in sight, lazily turning her skin to a gorgeous honey-
gold. One look at her and he wanted her, and a moment later, when she stretched and rolled onto her back, lifted her head and smiled at him, it was all he could do to keep standing at the wheel.

“Hi, Captain,” she said softly.

His hands tightened on the curved piece of chrome and he didn’t return her smile. His anger at himself was building every moment. The time had come to get this whole thing back under his control. He checked his navigation charts and adjusted the boat’s course, noting figures for latitude and longitude that were getting closer and closer to those of Pacifica.

Behind him, the sun had begun to drop into the ocean with a speed that told him they were near the Equator. Only in higher latitudes were sunsets a lengthy phenomenon. Tomorrow, at around eight or nine in the morning, they would arrive at the tiny, uninhabited atoll where he could, in a pinch, leave his boat in safety for several weeks. From there, an hour or two of swimming would bring them to the secret kingdom of Pacifica.

A dozen questions jostled for prime position in his mind. Where was Joran right now? Whose side was the man claiming to be on at the moment? And how many people in Pacifica understood, as Loucan himself did, that Joran was only out for his own gain? Was it safe to tell Phoebe, Kai and Saegar to come visit, with their new partners?

“Is anything wrong, Loucan?” Lass asked.

“No, everything’s fine,” he lied. “Just checking our new course.” He forced himself not to look at her, and picked up his train of thought from where it left off.

Lass hadn’t yet handed over her section of the key.
Not that they’d talked about the key much. He hadn’t actually asked her for it. When he did, how complete would her trust turn out to be?

She must realize that Kai and Phoebe and Saegar had had an easier decision when they’d given him theirs. For each of them, it wasn’t about putting the final piece in place. The seal that opened the door to the treasure of Pacifican scientific knowledge could only operate with all four pieces in place. If Lass didn’t give him her key, however, he’d have to write off half the purpose of this trip, and his claim to be the best leader for his nation would be far less strong. Unless he entrusted the decision about the key to her.

Meanwhile, in Pacifica, anything could be happening.

“I could get us something to nibble on before we start dinner,” she offered.

“I’m not hungry, but have something if you want.” He made the words as casual and cool as he could.

Her face fell. She was so sweetly easy to read. She wanted him in bed. Or maybe just a chance to kiss and talk and make each other laugh. Both of them had gotten very good at all of those things.

Maybe he shouldn’t be so hard on himself, Loucan decided.

He’d married her, and they’d consummated their vows. If anything could make a woman trust a man, it was that. A couple of months ago, if anyone had asked him, he’d have said he’d be open to sleeping with the unknown Thalassa for this reason alone. A pregnancy would be a convenient bonus, as well.

Now, he had to struggle to remind himself that he was so directed, so cold-blooded. He hoped, too, that
there was no baby growing inside her. He didn’t want to bind her to him or to Pacifica in that way.

“Show me Pacifica on the map,” she said, after a moment of silence.

“It’s not on the map,” he growled. “This is a map made by people who don’t know Pacifica exists.”

“Okay, so show me where on the map Pacifica would be, if people knew it existed,” she said patiently.

There was no edge to her voice, and Loucan knew he was being unreasonable. Being something he wouldn’t even say out loud in her hearing, because she had such a sweet, clean mouth and almost never cursed or swore.

“Here,” he said. “Southeast of Hawaii.”

He made a tiny crescent on the chart with his thumbnail, and she leaned closer to look at the spot. She smelled like ice cream and sunscreen and salt, and the bare arm that brushed against him was hot from the sun and dewy-soft from the moisturizing cream she’d applied. The little detail of her nakedness was hard to ignore, under the circumstances, but he did his best.

“And right now, we’re here.” He made another mark on the chart, only this time his thumbnail slipped and instead of a tiny indentation, there was a hole. He swore under his breath—again—and tried to smooth down the triangular tear with little success.

“That’s close,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“Tomorrow morning, we’ll leave the boat,” he answered. “We’ll reach Pacifica by lunchtime, swimming the last twenty miles across the coral reefs.”

He caught her sharp intake of breath, and remembered that she and her mother had been swimming
the reefs together when Wailele was killed. Hardening his heart, he pretended not to notice that Lass was fighting the memory, and didn’t give her the support she probably wanted. She was strong enough. She would handle it.

“I think I’m getting burned,” she said, after another interval of silence. “I’m going to get dressed.”

“Lass…” Her name slipped out without him wanting it to.

“Mmm?”

“Never mind.”

With a tiny shrug and an even smaller smile, she disappeared below deck. When she came back a few minutes later, she was dressed in light cotton pants and one of those snug-fitting T-shirts that left him in no doubt as to what her body did to him.

“
Now
can you talk?” she said immediately. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”

“That you distract me incredibly when you’re naked? I didn’t think you needed me to tell you that again.”

Her face tightened, and her voice was deceptively calm and sweet. “I just asked you, Loucan, not to pretend. Something’s changed. When you looked at the navigational chart and saw how close we were to Pacifica. Even before that.” Her voice grew husky, but she fought her tears, won the battle and went on. “Something…just changed.”

How much was he prepared to hurt her? Loucan wondered.
When
was he prepared to hurt her? Now, deliberately, when at least she’d have the chance to get over it with some privacy? Or later, in Pacifica, when he wouldn’t have to tell her anything? She would discover all on her own just how little time he
had for her when there were more important concerns that took precedence.

The second choice might save him an awkward scene, but at the same time it would leave Lass even more vulnerable.

Now. It had to be now.

He at least owed her that, after the way they’d spent the past nine days. It rocked him to discover how attuned they had become to each other’s words and moods. She’d picked up on the subtle signs of his changing focus, and he had no trouble now seeing her wind her emotions in tighter and tighter coils.

“Nothing’s changed,” he said, as cool as he could be. “The honeymoon’s over, that’s all. When we reach Pacifica, you’ll have a certain part to play as my new bride. Public appearances, in which it’s vital for us to show our united commitment to peace. But in private, I won’t have much time for you. Not the way we’ve had on the boat.”