Pirate Wolf Trilogy (27 page)

His hands,
clamped rigidly around her waist, began to tremble with the force
of his own aroused passions, and with another smothered oath Dante
lifted her into his arms again, snarling a soft threat into her
mouth that kept her limbs wrapped tightly around his waist. He
carried her inside the cabin and directly to the bed, each step
increasing the friction and the urgency between them.

A moment, no
more, was all he wasted tearing aside the last flimsy barriers of
their clothing before she was lying naked beneath him. He was
poised between her thighs, hard and thick and pulsing with
eagerness, and then he was inside her, breeching the last of her
doubts with the swift, invasive heat of his body. Her lips parted
around a gasp—a gasp that was startled into a soundless cry of
disbelief and awe as he filled her, filled her, filled her so full
and taut and deep, she had no time to brace herself as the first
wave of pleasure swept through her, shattering all perceptions of
pleasure that had gone before.

He thrust again
and again, and the heat was so fierce, the sensations so shockingly
explicit, she clutched at the rigid muscles of his arms. But they
were still slick with oil and her hands skidded down to his hips,
holding him fast, arching feverishly into one rich torrent of
pleasure after another.

Dante’s
body echoed her every spasm. She was supple and hot, unbelievably
sleek and greedy, pulling him deeper and deeper into the tightening
fist of her sex. He was not surprised to find he had awakened a
fiery passion within her; he
was
surprised by the intensity of the heat pouring into his own
loins, by the helpless urgency fueling his every thrust. The
taunts, the challenges, the game of cat and mouse he had played,
had been deliberate. He had played it because he was a man and he
had gone without a woman too long, and he had played it only for
the pleasure of stalking something wild and untamable and bringing
it to ground beneath him. He had not expected to want more than a
swift, perfunctory release. He had not expected to
feel
more. And yet he did. He was
trembling like a loose sheet of canvas; his bound and reinforced
edges were unraveling, fraying more and more with each startled cry
that broke from her lips.

An ache he had
not felt in too many years to recall began to govern each stroke,
each gust of ragged air torn from his throat. He wanted to feel her
wrapping herself around him, he wanted to see her flushed with
passion, racked with pleasure. He wanted to take her to the highest
peaks of ecstasy and beyond, and he wanted to share that ecstasy
with her, soak himself in it, drown himself in it.

His heart
thundered in his chest, his blood pounded in his veins, and he
could hear her name whispered over and over on his lips. He could
feel his body gathering in upon itself, channeling all the heat,
the power, the feverish hunger, into nothing more noble than the
savage rise and fall of his hips.

As Beau arched
up beneath him, he threw his head back and braced himself on
outstretched arms, stiffening, shuddering in the throes of an
orgasm so bright and brilliant, it was all he could do to keep from
roaring his pleasure out loud. As it was, he was helpless to hold
the smallest part of himself back as he spent himself in a
white-hot and seemingly endless climax within her.

Beau was
melting. Trembling. Quivering like a silk pennant on a shiver of
wind. Dante’s solid presence was still inside her, thudding against
dewy folds of flesh that had gone slack and buttery with shock. Her
hands were still grasped to his hips and her legs were locked
tightly around his. His breath was warm against her throat, his
body was heavy and damp and, where it was wedged between her
thighs, as reluctant as she was to relinquish the gentle rocking
motions that were bringing them slowly back to reality.

A final
satiated groan brought him to a languid halt. He was all chest and
arms and rock-hard thighs and he must have felt her trying to shift
slightly beneath him, for he lifted his head out of the crook of
her shoulder and thoughtfully transferred some of his weight onto
his elbows.

Sometime
between being outside and coming inside, the candle had died and
there was only moonlight bathing their features. His face was a
mixture of pale light and shadow, mostly the latter because of his
hair, which had become as wild and tangled as her own.

“Well,” he
murmured, and then just “Well,” again.

Beau searched
for something equally profound to say, but her tongue seemed to
have become too clumsy to do more than keep company with her teeth.
Her hair was spread across the bedding, and her legs—one was wedged
against the cabin wall and the other had nowhere to go but off the
side of the bed—felt chafed and tenderly abused along the inner
thighs. A movement out of the corner of her eye caught her
attention and she turned her head slightly—with Dante following the
motion—to see a pair of hose snagged on the corner of the chart
table where he had tossed them.

Reading the
consternation in her eyes, Dante bent his head down and nibbled
gently at the corners of her mouth. “You will have to forgive me,
mam’selle, if I was a tad overeager. It has been a long time and my
… manners … may have been somewhat lacking.”

“You tore my
shirt,” she said, frowning. “And threw it overboard.”

“It was worth
the price of a replacement,” he murmured, running his lips along
her chin and down the supple length of her throat.

“A belt and a
knife as well.”

“I’ll buy you a
dozen more. For that matter, you are a wealthy young woman now, you
can afford to buy your own and to throw them overboard after each
time you wear them.”

Beau let her
senses track the progress of his mouth as he nuzzled her temple,
her cheek, the tight, damp curls that lay below her ear. A smile
curved her lips and for one mad, irrational moment, she wanted to
thank him, for he had done his best and she had survived, emerged
with all of her faculties intact. She could breathe, think, react,
reason. She could regain control again.

The moment
passed and the smile became an open-mouthed sigh. His lips were
around her breast, grazing impudently on her nipple.

“Are you not …
the least bit sleepy, Captain?” she asked dreamily.

“Truthfully?”
He paused and warmed her skin with a slow roll of his tongue. “No.
Are you?”

Beau
contemplated her answer while she watched his mouth take a
meandering course from one pinkened nipple to the other. If
anything, she felt remarkably exhilarated, even though seconds ago
she could have sworn every muscle and bone in her body had melted
away to nothing.

His tongue made
a final, wet revolution before his dark head came up and he gazed
thoughtfully at the lushness of her mouth.

“Because if you
are”—his hands twined around the silky ribbons of her hair and the
heat of his body pressed forward, stretching and swelling within
her—“I am afraid you are going to have to tolerate my ill manners
again. And possibly again after that.”

Beau’s great
golden eyes shimmered up at him. Her hands skimmed lightly around
the strong column of his neck and threaded themselves with equal
conviction into the glossy black mane. “Father would say good
manners are required only at the Queen’s table.”

“Your father is
a wise man.”

“Yes,” she
whispered. “I know.”

PART TWO

THE WIND
COMMANDS US

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

The
grappling lines between the
Egret
and the
San Pedro de Marcos
were cast off two hours after sunrise. There was plenty
more cargo in the holds of the Spanish galleon, valuable cargo that
would have brought a small fortune with the London merchants. But
there was simply no room left onboard the
Egret.
They had already made one hard decision to dump
the weightier bars of silver overboard rather than leave it on
the
San
Pedro
to benefit the
Spanish king. After the gold was loaded, what little storage space
that remained was saved for the lighter, more exotic, and therefore
more profitable bales of pepper and cloves.

Jonas Spence
had already been on deck when the sunrise spread orange and pink
clouds across the horizon. Spit had come to fetch him when the last
available cranny had been stuffed and sealed. Crews had been
working all through the night on repairs; and with their holds
bulging, their next priority was to put as much open sea between
the two ships as possible.

With the
Marquis de Moncada dead, command of the
San Pedro
had fallen to the next senior officer, one of the
two who had been in on the original discussions of surrender in the
captain-general’s great cabin. His name was Recalde, and he had
been standing less than a pace from Moncada when Dante’s shot had
torn away most of the Spaniard’s face. He would not soon forget the
name of either Jonas Spence—as Dante had given it—or the
Egret.

Spence had been
carried on deck to supervise the ungrappling. Thomas Moone had
still not fashioned a new limb, and as the irascible captain was
already bleary eyed and thick tongued, there were few men brave
enough to venture onto the foredeck where their bullish captain
hobbled along the rail roaring orders until his face was as red as
his beard.

Used to her
father’s temper, Beau appeared on deck ten or fifteen minutes after
Jonas but preferred the company of Billy Cuthbert and her charts.
It would be her job to plot the course least likely to be
intercepted by any ships sent to hunt them down, not to mention the
many predators from England, Portugal, or France who regularly
stalked the sea lanes looking for easy prey. Dante’s guns would act
as somewhat of a deterrent, as would the obvious signs of a battle
hard fought and won. Even so, Beau would have preferred a little
heavy weather and stronger winds to hasten them on their way.

Before
the confrontation with the Spaniard she had estimated they were
three weeks out of Plymouth, but that was also before adding
several tons of plunder to their ballast. Their speed would suffer,
as would their maneuverability; there would be a detectably heavy
difference in the way the
Egret
responded to orders from the helm. But she was fixed with a
new arm for the tiller, stouter and stronger than the first, and a
crew determined to reach the shores of England with their newfound
wealth intact.

The last
transfer between the
San Pedro
and
the
Egret
may not
have been the most valuable in terms of monetary compensation, but
to some on board the English galleon, Doña Maria Antonia Piacenza’s
presence was as comforting as Dante’s demi-cannon. She crossed the
ladeboard with only her duenna and Geoffrey Pitt as escorts. Her
two other maids had, for lack of any comfortable quarters to house
them, been left behind. She was permitted to bring only three of
the twenty-three leather trunks that held her personal possessions
and, for her protection, was assigned hastily cleaned and
reconfigured quarters opposite the captain’s great cabin. Beau’s
tiny sail locker and the weapons armory were consolidated into one
cabin and refurbished with a bed, a washstand, and Persian carpets
taken from the
San Pedro.

It was
one of the few times Beau’s head came up from her charts. She stood
by the after rail and watched as Geoffrey Pitt led the tiny duchess
across the planks, one gingerly taken step after another. She was
bundled head to toe in a hooded velvet cape, with only a suggestion
of huge frightened eyes and a pale face peeping out from the circle
of fur trim. Her gloved hand was clutched to Pitt’s arm as if it
were a lifeline. Equally dainty satin-slippered feet stepped down
onto the deck of the
Egret
with all
the confidence of a bird fluttering to its doom.

Dante had said
Pitt was smitten by her beauty, so it was no surprise to see him
acting so protectively and attentively. It was surprising, however,
to see some of the weathered tars doff their caps and stare, with
their mouths gawped open and their normally lewd and ribald
catcalls choked back into their throats as the Duchess of Navarre
passed.

As chance would
have it, she had to pass directly under where Beau was standing in
order to make way to her cabin. The large eyes, darting every which
way in trepidation, looked up and, for a moment, registered shock
at seeing another woman on board. The hood slipped back and the
creamy white, heart-shaped face was exposed. And if all the
sweetness, innocence, and virginal naïveté were not cloying enough,
a traitorous breeze pushed aside the edges of the duchess’s cape
and revealed a gown of polished lavender silk beneath. The hem was
decorated a foot or more with a banding of elaborate gold tracery;
the overskirt was parted almost to the waist and pinned back to
display the elegantly brocaded petticoat of dark, rich rose. Around
her neck she wore a crucifix, the cross positioned directly over
her heart; around the impossibly narrow span of her waist, she wore
a long, jeweled belt, the ends falling in a cascade of rippling
gold links.

Beau looked
down at her own dull hose, shirt, and doublet, none of which could
be called perfectly clean or perfectly whole. Her hair was once
again pulled back and fettered in a braid, leaving nothing to
camouflage the large blue bruise on her forehead or the scabbed
crease that ran into her scalp. Her hands, where they rested on the
rail, were tanned and weather-roughened, the nails chipped and
stained. The palms, at least, were minus a few layers of calluses,
but the rope burns had left them as red as if she had dipped them
in crushed berries. Her mouth was probably no better off, having
been suckled and kissed for the better part of the night. Her chin
and throat were tender as well, chafed by an irreverent jaw
stubbled blue-black with coarse hairs.