Mystic Memories (9 page)

Cara reached across with her napkin and attempted to blot the spill, but he waved her off. She settled back into her seat, letting the napkin drop to her lap while she watched him clean up the mess.

As the ship rolled on another wave, the cabin tilted farther than before. The serving platter slid into her plate, which knocked the stem of her glass. As it toppled, she grabbed to save it. A fraction of a second too late. Instead of spilling onto the table, the red wine sloshed over the lip of the glass, arced through the air, and splattered across the surprised face of the captain.

He let loose a string of curses and mopped his face with his napkin. Then he stopped abruptly, as if remembering his manners in the presence of a woman. The glare in his blue eyes leveled on her.

She bit her lip. “I am so sorry. I tried to stop it, but I wasn’t fast enough.” Even though she wanted to chuckle at the absurd comedy of errors, she knew the wisest thing to do at the moment would be to respect his seriousness of the situation. After all, he was her host.

Cara didn’t need extrasensory perception to know the man was livid. From the way his narrowed, accusing gaze pinned her, he obviously suspected the wine had been deliberately thrown in his face.

She held up her palm in testimony. “I swear I did not do it on purpose, Captain . . . sir.” His angry stare remained unchanged. “Honest! The boat tipped and—”

He pushed his chair back and stood, then raked his stained napkin down the front of his jacket in an attempt to clean it. The effort didn’t do much good. The wine had soaked into the navy-blue wool. Turning away from the table, he shed the coat and tossed it on the bed. Standing in profile, he acted as if she weren’t there and stripped off his damp shirt as well.

Growing up on sunny Southern California beaches should have made her a little more blasé about the tantalizing view of muscled biceps and pecs, not to mention the flat, tight abs on Blake Masters.

But the sudden thud of her pulse and the erotic images that flashed in her mind were anything but blasé.

Lord, he had an incredible body. Coming to her senses, she reined in her unexpected reaction.

His upper right arm was tattooed with a wide band of geometric shapes. Wrapping around his thick biceps, the symbols looked like something from the South Sea Islands. She watched him step to the bureau, presenting his back to her.

Covering her mouth, she held back a gasp at the faded scars between his shoulder blades. The crisscross of pale lines was a shade lighter than his deeply tanned skin. Neither reddened nor puckered, the scars didn’t appear to be recently acquired. Still, the thought of him enduring physical torture, however long ago, sent a shiver down her spine. Unable to look at the ugly marks without wincing, she dropped her gaze to the tattoos of black triangles and other marks that circled his waist.

Cara wondered what kind of man could be beaten so severely as to leave scars, then willingly tolerate the pain of having his skin pierced and dyed with native symbols.

Her curious thoughts evaporated as Masters lingered in front of the open drawer. From her earlier look around, Cara realized he was staring into an empty space. Apparently he had forgotten that he’d lent her his last shirt. Just as with the dishes, she couldn’t say anything without revealing that she’d peeked into his private things.

“I need a shirt,” he growled more to himself than to her.

“That you do.”
Before I go crazy
. She imagined she could shock him with her modern-day boldness.

He glanced around sharply. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it is not polite to stare?”

She masked her embarrassment, mimicking him with a bit of his own medicine. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it is not polite to strip off your shirt in front of a lady?’ ’

“A lady? Yes. A woman masquerading as a man? No.” He came over to the table with his stained shirt clenched in one hand.

Naked from the waist up, he looked like a leading actor in a classic pirate movie. Even better. Her heart did a quickstep thump-thump at the delectable sight of his sun-darkened body. Tempted to reach out and touch the dusting of dark hair on his bronze chest, she kept her hands in her lap. Out of his view, her fingers twisted the napkin into a tight knot.

“So . . .” Although she hated to admit it, his words stung. “If I am not a lady—in your eyes, that is—then what exactly do you think I am?”

His glower deepened. “I have not yet decided.”

“I am not—” Her mind scrambled to find the proper euphemism rather than a blunt term that would sound vulgar coming from a woman. “I do not prostitute myself, sir, if that is what you are thinking.”

She combed her fingers through her short hair, feeling the stickiness from the salt water. Lord, she probably looked like a punk rocker who had spent an hour in the mosh pit.

“I may look odd,” she admitted, “but given my strenuous circumstances, I hardly think impersonating a man in order to find my son should disqualify me as a lady.”

The captain draped his shirt over his arm to free his hands so he could applaud. “Brava, madam.”

She wasn’t quite sure if he was praising her guts or her performance or both. It was difficult to listen to her intuition, thanks to the major distraction of his bare chest.

“My clothes should be dry enough by now.” She rose and went to the corner of the cabin where her shirt and trousers hung. “If you’ll give me a few minutes of privacy, I can return your shirt.”

“That won’t be necessary. I will borrow one from Keoni.”

She looked back and her gaze zeroed in on his flat stomach. Averting her eyes was a struggle, but somehow she managed. “Would you mind doing it now? Getting the shirt that is.”

“There is one slight problem, however . . .” One corner of his mouth lifted in a mischievously crooked smile. He held his arms out to the side as if she might not have noticed he was practically undressed. Fat chance! “If I leave my cabin in my present state, I might give the wrong impression to my crew regarding our private dinner engagement.”

For one brief, crazy moment, she considered letting him walk out of there. She didn’t care what his men thought of her. Let them spin yarns down in the fo’c’sle till dawn. Glancing at the disastrous mess of dishes and spilled wine on the table, she could easily guess the tales of torrid sex between the handsome captain and the widow woman. Her vivid imagination created an erotic picture in her mind, bringing a hot flush to her cheeks.

“Turn around,” she commanded, reaching for the top button at her throat. When his gaze fell to her shaking fingers, she repeated, “I said ‘turn around’ . . . sir. My things are still damp, but I’ll wrap myself in a blanket until you come back.”

He gave her a lazy nod. And a slow smile. She waited, but he made no move to do as she asked. There was an invitation in the depths of his deep-blue eyes. Oh, how she wanted to accept.

Here she was in a time that wasn’t her own, lusting after a man who lived—no, lives—nearly two hundred years before she was born. In a remote part of her mind, she wondered whether she could have suffered a bump on her head and dreamed up this raggedy yet dashing stranger.

But she wasn’t dreaming. She knew all of this was happening to her. Pretending it wasn’t real would not make it go away. She’d learned that difficult lesson in childhood when her oddity had made her the butt of jokes and taunting remarks. While she hadn’t been able to do anything to change the painful rejection, she’d eventually understood the controlling fear of the unknown. Living with her mystical gifts had taught her to accept unexplainable situations that would drive a normal person to insanity. Granted, this time-travel experience was the biggest leap she’d taken yet.

Despite her attraction to the captain, she could not risk her mission to find Andrew by falling for this man, no matter how much he made her heart pound and her knees go weak.

Don’t ask of me what I can’t give, Blake.

As if he’d heard her plea, he pivoted and strode to the table. Keeping his back to her, he began to clean up the mess. As he set the dishes to one side, she kept her eyes on him and unbuttoned the shirt, wondering if he would turn back around at any moment, wondering if he would prove to be a gentleman or a cad. A wild side of her that she hadn’t known existed opted for the cad.

When he removed the tablecloth, she felt naughty anticipation tingle in the depths of her body. She found herself wishing, hoping he would turn around to see her slide the shirt off her shoulders.

Watching him replace the plates, she felt the cool air in the room swirl around her bare breasts and imagined the feather touch of his fingertips on her heated flesh. The seconds ticked by as he reached for the candlesticks, the last thing to put back in its proper place.

A battle raged within her. She was crazy to want a man as much as she wanted Blake right now. It was insane to jeopardize her reputation, however much he questioned her virtue. Only a whore in this day and age would have sex with a stranger. And only a fool in her own time. No, she couldn’t give in to this earned lust. And that’s all it was. Not love. Not caring. Just physical craving. By God, it’d been way too long . . .

Cara quickly grabbed for the blanket, then realized to her embarrassment that it was still on the bed. She clutched the shirt to her chest to cover herself. “Don’t move. I forgot to get the blanket.”

“I’ll get it for you.”

“No!”

He ignored her command and retrieved one of the gray woolen blankets, then held it high so it blocked his view. She slowly walked up to him and presented her bare back. His arms encircled her as the blanket came around her shoulders with a gentleness that touched her soul. His warm breath caressed the side of her neck, making her long to rest her head against him, to let him hold her in this sheltered cocoon. The moment seemed to last forever, but it was over in a single beat of her heart.

When he turned her to face him, she clutched the blanket together with one hand. With her other, she gave him the shirt.

Wordlessly, he slipped into the garment, his eyes never leaving her face. “I wish I could trust you, but I don’t,” he confessed, his voice taking on a sadness. “There is no one—save Keoni, perhaps—who is beyond my suspicion.”

“Even me.”

“Yes, especially you.” His gaze traveled over her features as if trying to figure out a perplexing puzzle. “I have a feeling you are not the person you say you are.”

Tamping down her own fear of being revealed, Cara reached out and touched his forearm. She had meant to console him, to find words to lessen the pain of his lost memory.

But the dark vision arose like an evil curtain. Looming. Frightening. Making her dizzy and nauseous. She couldn’t show alarm. Not this time.

Keeping her tone as steady and normal as possible, she admitted, “I’d like to help you remember, if you’ll let me.”

“What can you possibly do?”

“Usually talking about it can trigger suppressed memories.” She laced together half-truths with her little knowledge of the subject. A white lie was still better than telling him she was going to read his past through her touch and telepathically send it back to him.

“Suppressed memories? You have a strange vocabulary.”

“I picked up odd sayings in the foreign countries where my parents were missionaries.”

Easing her hand into his, she gave him a slight smile of encouragement. “Close your eyes and try to think of a pleasant memory in the distant past. Concentrate on the picture and tell me what you see.”

He balked, looking at her as if she were mad. “I will not close my eyes. Nor will I indulge your curiosity.”

As he stared defiantly at her, Cara felt the heat of his palm against hers. A tingling sensation climbed up her arm like a vibration of electricity. It wasn’t what she had expected. There was a primal feeling about it. Predatory. His desire for her swirled through her mind. Her eyelids shut out the candlelit room as she experienced his struggle to suppress his heated longing to claim her.

His thoughts became her thoughts. His racing heartbeat matched its rhythm with hers. Their shaky breath synchronized together as one sound. Like a moth drawn into a dangerous flame, she could not stop her own response to the carnal enticement.

Without a seductive word or touch, she was drawn toward him, closer and closer, until she felt her body lean into his. He released her hand and slid his arms around her. His mouth found hers, tentatively brushing their lips. Uncertainty quickly vanished into a deep and demanding kiss.

In her mind’s eye, she saw the image of him making love to her. Wanting desperately for it to be real, she felt the escalating passion of their union of body and mind. On the brink of losing all control, she knew if he were to take her now, she would give him anything he asked and more.

His firm hands gripped her bottom, pulling her into him, pressing his arousal against her. Cara dropped the blanket to the floor. Emotions spiraling out of control, she ripped at his shirt, pushing it upward until her bare breasts touched his flesh. His moan of pleasure hummed through her veins.

Slowly she moved backward, each step bringing them closer to the bed. He kissed her eyelids, her jaw, the curve of her neck, his ragged breath echoing in her ear.

Gone was all the earlier rationale against the very thing they were about to do. Nothing else mattered right now. At this moment she didn’t want to think of yesterday or tomorrow.