Teresa Medeiros (44 page)

As Gerard approached like a stranger from the shadows, the diary slid from Lucy’s numb fingers to the floor. She stood her ground, refusing to be on anything less than equal footing with this man. An involuntary gasp escaped her as his face loomed out of the darkness. Its compelling planes had moved beyond mere handsomeness into an irresistible promise of Satanic beauty, stripped of compassion and utterly devoid of conscience.

He cupped her cheeks in his palms, his fraudulent tenderness making her shiver with perverse yearning. “One scream would probably bring my entire crew charging to defend your virtue. Wouldn’t that gratify you?”

“I remember a time not so long ago when one scream brought
you
charging to defend my virtue.”

Her absolution for the one sin he had not committed came too late. His thumbs pressed lightly against her lips, warning her that he would tolerate no reminders of his days as her knight-errant. “It seems the Admiral doesn’t care how I get my pound of flesh. Or from whom.”

Lucy had expected no less. She bowed her head, but the Admiral’s betrayal had lost its power to inflict mortal damage. She felt only a brief sting, a wistful grief for all the time spent dreaming dreams that would never come true. She’d been held in bondage just as Gerard had—for nineteen long years. Held hostage to the Admiral’s whims, his vanity, his selfish determination to make her life a sacrifice for her mother’s sins.

Well, Lucy Snow was done with sacrifices. What she did from this moment on, she did for herself. And for her future. She tipped her head back, giving Gerard the full effect of her haughty stare. “Have you come to ruin me then, sir?”

His hands dropped from her face as if scorched by her bluntness. She sauntered just out of his reach, knowing she’d been granted a brief reprieve, not a full pardon.

“I’ve never been debauched by a pirate before,” she said, pressing her advantage. “How would you prefer to proceed? Shall I drop to my knees and plead prettily for my virtue?”

His gaze strayed to her moist lips. They tingled beneath his invisible caress. “That should do … as a start.”

Lucy pressed the back of her limp hand to her brow. “Or shall I fall on the bed in a graceful swoon”—she shot him a naughty glance from beneath her
lashes—“waking only after you’ve had your way with me, of course?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “An excellent suggestion. Although I’d prefer you to awaken
while
I was having my way with you.”

His evocative drawl sent tendrils of heat curling through her veins, giving her the courage she needed to stride directly toward him, her arm drawn back as if to deliver a stinging slap. He caught her hand perfectly on cue, just as she had known he would, his grip unyielding but without a trace of brutality.

She blinked up at him in guileless surprise. “I do hope I haven’t offended you. I thought you might enjoy a show of spirit. A flailing about of the limbs, if you will, to give you an excuse to overpower me and demonstrate your superior strength.”

Triumph surged through Lucy as Gerard’s eyes darkened with grim bewilderment. Using her captive hand as a lever, he snatched her against him, wrapping his other arm around her waist. “What in the bloody hell are you trying to do, woman? Provoke me to murder?”

Lucy shook a loose tendril of hair out of her eyes. “Why should I have to provoke you? After all, you’re the scourge of the North Sea, the enemy of all that is noble and good in humankind. Why, the very whisper of your name terrifies the hardiest of sea captains and chills virgins’ blood to ice. I’m only asking you to prove your mettle, sir. To show me what caliber of villain you are.”

Lucy’s sharp, mocking words were at direct odds with her posture. Instead of recoiling from the hard, ruthless planes of his body, she melted against him, rubbing the softness of her breasts against his heaving chest with the gentle insistence of an affection-starved kitten. She canted her hips to cradle his own, almost
faltering at the inescapable evidence of both his power and his need.

She had accused him of being a gambler, but she was about to issue the riskiest challenge of her life. She tipped her head back until her lips were only a breathless whisper from his. “Do your worst, Captain Doom.”

His reaction was not what she’d expected. His hazel eyes flamed with jealousy. A frisson of lingering fear shot down Lucy’s spine. Had she summoned a dangerous creature of darkness into her arms simply by saying his name?

His fingers bit into the worn cambric sheathing her back. “Is that who you want, Lucy? Your darling phantom? Captain Doom?”

She shook her head helplessly, reaching to touch his bearded jaw, but he caught her hand, blocking her caress with even more desperation than he had blocked her blow. “Who’s going to make love to you tonight, Lucy? Me? Or Doom?”

Her voice trembled. “You.”

“Who am I?” he whispered fiercely, as if her answer would determine the absolute truth.

She searched his face, knowing it capable of reflecting both cruelty and tenderness, cynicism and hope, the basest of hatreds and the purest of loves. He could call himself whatever name he chose, but she would never again see him as two separate entities. He was simply the man she adored, with all of the complicated strengths and flaws inherent to his character.

Her fingers curled gently around his own, softening his grip. She brought their linked hands to his cheek, rubbing the back of her hand against the beguiling prickle of his beard.

“Gerard,” she confirmed. Then more softly, as if
the incantation could somehow banish all the harm they’d unwittingly done each other. “Oh, Gerard.”

Gerard was paralyzed by the tenderness in Lucy’s eyes. The loving acceptance of all he had been, all he was, all he would ever be. He felt as if she’d given him back something he had lost in those dark, dank years in that French prison by the sea. Something more elusive than just his name or his pride or even his freedom. She had told him at their first meeting that the soul was eternal, but he’d never really believed her. Until now.

He turned her hand, bringing it to his mouth to kiss each delicate knuckle in turn. Her eyes misted with emotion as he slowly lowered his lips to hers. He’d come to her seeking damnation only to taste salvation in the intoxicating nectar of her kiss. He drank of it deeply, its flavor made all the more potent by the risk she’d taken in offering it to him.

As soon as Gerard’s lips touched hers, Lucy knew what had been absent from Kevin’s stolen kiss. Tenderness. Longing. A passion so strong it made Gerard’s powerful masculine body quake with want. Lucy remembered the exquisite care he had taken with her in the gatehouse, the selfless restraint that had given everything, but asked nothing in return.

She wrapped her arms around his lean waist and buried her face against his shirtfront, needing privacy for what she would say. “You don’t have to take the time to … to seduce me. I know you’ve waited six years for this.”

He cupped her jaw and gently tilted her face to his. His solemn gaze searched her features. “I’ve waited thirty-one years for this. For you.”

For you
, Lucy silently echoed. Not for some deft, buxom beauty who could ease his grudging celibacy with the elusive skills taught only by experience. But
for her. Shy, awkward, inexperienced Lucy. His revelation endowed her with confidence, making her heart sing to the remembered melody of a Viennese waltz.

“Are you certain?”

His crooked grin laid her heart bare. “I’ve waited six years. I’ll be damned if I’m going to rush you now.”

As if to prove his words, he moved away from her to light the lantern. The sight of him enveloped in its tawny haze made Lucy’s throat tighten with yearning.

For once, Gerard wasn’t afraid of the dark, but entranced by the promise of the light. He wanted to bathe every curve and hollow of Lucy’s luscious body in its revealing flame. He no longer wanted to come to her as a faceless phantom in the darkness, but to watch each nuance of pleasure flicker across her delicate features as she cried out his name in a plea for sweet release.

As Gerard began to disrobe Lucy, she stood utterly still, afraid to even breathe for fear of shattering the magic of his hands on her. His warm lips soothed her temple as he raked his fingers through her hair, scattering the taut braids. He slid each button of Tarn’s shirt through its mooring as if it were a ribbon of lace gliding through a silk chemise.

His hands drifted downward to the waistband of her breeches. His throaty words vibrated against her ear. “I liked you better in
my
breeches. I loved the thought of the fabric caressing you everywhere I couldn’t.” He reached around to cup one of her buttocks in his palm, giving it a provocative squeeze. “Here.” He nuzzled two fingers of his other hand into the hollow between her legs. “And here.” The coarse fabric abraded her, making her even more sensitive to his touch. She clung to him, gasping with raw pleasure.

Gerard’s hands drifted over her once more, his
skills so refined that her clothing melted into nothingness. The cool air struck her fevered flesh, pebbling her nipples into throbbing buds that ached to be soothed by his tongue.

As the sham of Lucy’s masculine garments fell away, Gerard had cause to regret his rash promise to woo her. He might have endured the pouting beauty of her pink-tipped breasts. Might have withstood the temptation of her narrow waist and gently flared hips. But when Tarn’s breeches slid down her slender legs to pool at her feet, his flesh surged against the constraints of his own breeches with a violence that made him groan.

Lucy Snow was blond.

Everywhere.

Not even in the vibrant fantasies that had sustained him through his sleepless nights at Ionia had he imagined such pale, flaxen perfection. He wanted to bury himself to the hilt in those ethereal curls. He dropped to his knees, burying his burning face instead against her beautiful breasts.

Lucy was alarmed by the ferocity of Gerard’s grasp, his heartfelt groan. She sifted the unruly hair at his nape through her fingers, intrigued by its unfamiliar texture. “Are you all right? Have I hurt you?”

He strangled out a laugh. “Mortally, I fear.” She shivered at the provocative scrape of his beard against the sensitive skin of her belly, the underside of her breast. “But I don’t mind as long as I can die in your arms.”

Her arms welcomed him as his heated lips drifted over the swell of her breasts. Had she honestly been fool enough to believe his tongue would soothe her? He wielded it with diabolical skill against her throbbing flesh, flicking and teasing until her nipples tingled and ached beneath his sweet torment. When they were
both rigid and glistening with the balm of his ministrations, he claimed first one, then the other, suckling her fiercely until her thighs clenched in an ineffectual effort to douse the answering tongues of fire licking between them.

He stroked the backs of her knees and she collapsed against him, straddling his lap. Gerard wrapped his arms around her, unable to suppress a rumble of pure joy. “A naked, blushing, oh-so-proper Miss Lucinda Snow dumped in my unworthy lap. Have you checked the calendar? It must be Christmas.”

“You don’t deserve any gifts. You’ve been a very bad boy this year,” Lucy mumbled into his throat, pressing against him to hide as much of her nudity as she could. Her shyness worked to her disadvantage. The contrasting textures of his clothing tantalized her bare flesh, making her writhe in frustration.

“Ah, but you’ve been a very good girl, haven’t you? So there’s no point in both of us suffering on my account.”

With that devilish observation, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. Without him, its opulent splendor had seemed lonely and forbidding. With him, its sensual promise of luxury was fulfilled. As they sank as one into its feathered depths, Lucy tugged Gerard’s shirt from his shoulders, hungry for a taste of his golden skin.

Her open mouth glided down his throat to his collarbone, coming to rest against the circular ridge of scar tissue carved by her own hand. She pressed her lips to it with a soft sound of dismay.

“Don’t,” Gerard whispered, drawing her head up. “I deserved far worse. Let’s just be thankful you have such dreadful aim.”

“Oh, I’ve excellent aim,” she confessed. “I just couldn’t bear to stab you in the heart.”

He pressed her palm to the beguiling warmth of his chest. She could feel his heart thudding against it. “You would have come up empty for you’d already stolen it.”

As his lips leisurely caressed hers, Lucy’s nimble fingers danced down the remaining buttons of his shirt, freeing him from its restraints. He rubbed his chest against the inviting softness of her breasts, his crisp whorls of hair both tickling and torturing her sensitive nipples. His husky groan mirrored her own breathless delight.

He sucked in a bracing breath as her adoring hands drifted lower as if to sculpt the flat, muscular planes of his abdomen, his lean flanks, hesitating only when they reached the waistband of his breeches. She might have let her curiosity overrule her bashfulness had he not captured both of her wrists in his panicked grip.

“Not yet, angel, or all my noble intentions will be for nothing. Let’s not test my restraint, shall we?”

Gerard had no such similar qualms about testing
her
restraint. If she had thought the scrape of his beard against her belly beguiling, the prickle of it skating down the silk of her inner thighs maddened her to distraction.

She tugged helplessly at his hair, torn between delicious anticipation and mortification. “Please don’t. You mustn’t do such a wicked thing.”

His warm hands splayed against her thighs, coaxing them apart. “Oh, but I must. Wasn’t it you who so boldly invited me to ‘do my worst’?”

His worst proved to be her sensual undoing. All of her inhibitions melted beneath the scorching heat of his mouth. His clever tongue taunted her, whipping her into a frenzy of indescribable pleasure. Her deep-throated moans seemed to be coming from the mouth
of a wanton stranger. She arched off the bed in mute plea, and as reward, his blunt, graceful fingers joined the dance, stroking hard and deep the moist, throbbing places his tongue couldn’t reach.