Teresa Medeiros (5 page)

He swore under his breath. He might deny himself the bounty of her body, but he’d be damned if he was going to forfeit a taste of her luscious mouth. He leaned over and gently rubbed his lips against hers, feeling their sensitive contours ignite like dry tinder beneath an unquenchable flame. His tongue traced their tantalizing softness, priming them for his tender invasion.

A fist pounded the door. “Seventy-four-gunner approaching from the north, Captain.” The imperturbable calmness of his mate’s voice only underscored the terrible urgency of his message. “Channel Fleet, sir. Flagship
Argonaut.”

D
OOM STRAIGHTENED, BITING OFF AN oath. He gazed down at the girl’s treacherous lips, still parted and glazed with the mist of his folly. He regretted keenly that there was no time to find out if she was half as skilled a whore as she was an actress.

He cursed himself for nibbling at the succulent bait, giving Lucien Snow all the time he needed to hook him with the Channel Fleet. For one black moment he was tempted to surrender his last shred of decency and swallow her whole so he’d at least have a shuddering spasm of ecstasy to compensate him for his trouble. But as he gazed down at her trembling lips, one question nagged at him.

What if he was wrong?

What if the
Retribution
had simply blundered into the
Argonaut’
s course? What if the girl had never been intended as bait?

What if she were innocent?

Either way, he could hardly afford to indulge his ravenous appetites while his ship waged open warfare
on one of the Royal Navy’s seventy-four-gun flagships. The
Tiberius
, primarily an escort vessel, had been easy prey, surrendering without a fight. The
Argonaut
would not succumb so readily to his forced seduction.

“Shorten the sails and heave to,” he commanded.

His mate had never before questioned an order. There was puzzled silence from the other side of the door, then a hesitant “Aye, sir,” before his stealthy footsteps moved away.

Counting on the elements of mist and mystery to buy him time, Doom drew a knife from his pocket and knelt to saw at the girl’s bonds.

Lucy flinched, jerked out of her sensual daze by the burn of cold steel against her skin. Her lips still tingled from their brief, tantalizing brush with sweet disaster.

Doom wielded the knife with expert skill. The muscular breadth of his shoulders brushed her inner thighs as he squatted between her knees. His warm fingers encircled her ankle, bracing it so he could slice away the ropes.

He paused briefly to rub circulation back into her chafed wrists. “It seems we’re about to entertain uninvited guests. Friends of yours?”

She snatched in a shaky breath. “No, but I suspect them to be enemies of yours.”

“Who isn’t?” The weary resignation in his voice disturbed Lucy more than she would have cared to admit.

He jerked her up, but her numb feet refused to support her. She collided clumsily with his chest and he was forced to catch her around the waist to keep her from falling. They hung suspended in time, lips almost touching, breath mingling, bodies meshed in a dangerous harmony that rocked Lucy’s staid world to its foundations.

Possessed by a compulsion beyond the restraints of
caution, her hand crept blindly upward to explore the forbidden planes of his face. He drew in a sharp breath, but did not stop her. Her fingertips brushed the rough silk of his beard.

The ship lurched as it came about, throwing her away from him.

Flung back to sanity by the creaking protestations of his vessel, Doom caught her by the arm, more roughly this time, and jerked her toward the cabin door.

Lucy had no choice but to stumble after him, her fate sealed by his unyielding grip. They raced through the belly of the hold, the walls brushing her shoulders at each tortuous twist and turn.

She gasped in surprise when Doom’s strong hands closed around her waist and lifted. “Duck,” he commanded, shoving her up and through a narrow opening.

She obeyed, having no way of knowing if she’d just avoided rapping her head or losing it. As she was cast from the shelter of the hold, wind gusted around her, plastering her gown to her body and making her teeth chatter. When Doom emerged behind her, she could not resist pressing herself against his solid warmth, thankful for once that he was more substance than spirit.

Fresh shivers raked her as his arms enfolded her from behind. “Silly chit,” he muttered into her hair. “Girl as smart as you should know better than to get kidnapped in your nightdress.”

Puzzled, Lucy opened her mouth to ask him what he meant calling her perfectly respectable gown a nightdress, but he had already grabbed her hand and was dragging her toward another part of the ship. A strange exhilaration seized her. She felt as if she might race blindly at this man’s side forever, into danger, into
darkness, into the buffeting wind that snatched away her breath and whipped her hair across her cheeks.

Was this the wicked legacy of her mother, she wondered, the sinful weakness of the flesh the Admiral had always warned against? Or was it simply the surge of primitive excitement all sailors felt before storming into battle?

She tuned her ears to hear the
Retribution’
s crew preparing for conflict. She heard nothing but the ghostly wail of the wind and Doom’s boots pounding along the deck.

“Your crew?” she dared to shout over the wind. “Where are they? I can’t hear them.”

“I fear you’ve caught us making do with a skeleton crew.”

“Rather appropriate for a demon captain, is it not?”

Doom’s sure steps faltered and Lucy stumbled into his back. Catching both of her hands, he dragged her beneath some sort of shelter where the wind whistled instead of roared, and collapsed against something solid. She realized with a shock that he was laughing.

His hand cupped her cheek with more tenderness than she would have believed possible. “Ah, Lucy, I do believe I’m going to miss you when you’re gone.”

A muffled shout carried across the water. Doom stiffened. Reversing positions, he shoved her to a crouch.

“Stay here,” he commanded. “Don’t move or make a sound. Not one step. Not one whisper.” Then he was gone, leaving her shivering against the damp wood.

He was obviously a man accustomed to being obeyed. Such was his authority that Lucy cowered there for several minutes, head spinning and heart aching from his abrupt swings between tenderness and threat. Then his ominous words began to sink in.

I’m going to miss you when you’re gone
.

Her voice of logic, which sounded suspiciously like the Admiral’s, whispered,
You’ve been abducted by a ruthless pirate, Lucy. Where might you be going?

Cornwall? Chelsea? Heaven?

It made no difference how nice he smelled or how rich the timbre of his laughter. The man was going to murder her. And there she squatted, blind and passive, like a dull-witted mouse waiting patiently for the return of the tomcat who would devour her.

Stiffening with anger at her own stupidity, she reached up and dragged off the blindfold. The sea air stung her raw eyes. For a moment all she could see was more darkness, wavering through a veil of tears. She blinked them away to find herself tucked into the shadows beneath the foreboom.

A man stood less than three yards away, gripping the starboard rail, his broad back beneath its ivory shirt presented to her. Black breeches hugged his lean flanks, tapering into knee-high jackboots of polished leather. At the sight of him, Lucy’s heart thundered so loudly she was afraid he might hear it.

Hidden from view by the billowing shadow of a sail, he was watching the
Argonaut
inch along beside them to investigate what must appear to be an abandoned vessel. The mighty cannons of the navy flagship dwarfed the graceful schooner, yet Doom held his ground with no sign of fear, his patience more dangerous than a lesser man’s actions.

Lucy knew what she must do to save herself. Easing her fingers into her stocking, she drew out the letter opener, clenching the handle to keep it from sliding in her damp palm.

He was a murderer, she reminded herself. A thief. A merciless cutthroat. He’d been on the verge of ravishing her when the other ship had appeared, of proving her as weak and sensual a creature as her French
mother had been. Doom turned away from the rail. A ray of moonlight pierced the racing clouds.

Lucy bit her lower lip, knowing if she caught even a glimpse of his face, she would be lost. But the fickle moon was her salvation and his downfall. It dipped behind a cloud, dimming until he was no more than a bearded shadow, striding boldly into her trap.

Gripping the letter opener in both hands, Lucy plunged it toward his heart.

She could not bear it. In that whisper of silence between one of his unsuspecting breaths and the next, she slammed her eyes shut, deflecting the blade to his shoulder.

Doom sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. Her hands empty, Lucy dared to open her eyes, but she could see nothing more than the steely gleam of his eyes as he glared down at her in disbelief.

“Why, you treacherous little witch! You stabbed me!”

He ripped the weapon from his flesh, then wrapped his other hand around her throat and drove her back against the foremast, pinning her there by flexing one powerful knee between her legs. His artful fingertips tasted every frantic beat of her pulse. He towered over her, the darkness flooded with the harsh rasp of his breathing and the heat of his fury.

Lucy had been wrong. This man wasn’t going to send her to heaven; he was going to personally escort her to hell. The bloodstained blade in his hand caught an errant beam of moonlight.

I heard he carves his mark on his victims just like the devil he is
.

Although dreading the bite of the blade into her tender cheek, she swallowed her terror and turned her face away.

Doom tangled his hand in the hair at her nape and
turned it back, his voice a strangled growl. “Why, I ought to—”

Without warning, his lips seized hers, his tongue ravishing her virgin mouth in a kiss so dark and full of power that her legs buckled beneath the force of it. Her hands fisted in his shirtfront, clinging as she melted against him in helpless surrender. Her world narrowed to the forbidden taste of his tongue plundering her mouth, the spicy musk of his scent flaring her nostrils, the unyielding press of his knee between her legs, making her ache and tingle in places she’d never even named. His warm blood soaked the flimsy bodice of her gown.

A disembodied voice floated down from the heavens. “
Argonaut
’s comin’ about, Cap’n. We ain’t got much time.”

Doom tore himself away from her with a grunt of pain. Before Lucy could regain any semblance of reason, he had untangled her hands from his shirt and thrust her into the harsh arena of the open deck.

He advanced on her, swaying like a drunkard, letter opener in hand.

She backed away, feeling naked, exposed.

His shaggy hair whipped in the wind. The shadows of the rigging crisscrossed his bearded face, weaving a tantalizing latticework of truth and illusion.

“Give your father a message for me, Miss Snow,” he shouted over the roar of the wind. “Tell him Captain Doom is coming to collect his debt.”

He stalked her; she took another step backward.

“What do you want from me?” she screamed, her throat raw with fear.

“Surely you’ve heard of pirates making their victims walk the plank.”

She nodded mutely. Her back came up against the
starboard rail. He leaned forward until their noses touched. “Well, I haven’t any plank.”

The letter opener clattered to the deck as he snatched her up by the shoulders and kissed her again—briefly, savagely—before shoving her over the rail and into the sea.

Doom sank to his knees at the rail, losing the will to battle the strain of shock and pain now that the girl was gone.

“Cap’n!” Tarn called from his lookout position at foretop. He lacked the seasoning of Doom’s mate. His voice cracked with near hysteria. “Two ships comin’ in battle formation at port. We’ll be surrounded!”