The Captain's Caress (34 page)

“You can’t really expect me to believe the two of you sat around her boudoir discussing the sea while the marquise slept demurely in the background.”

“I was never in Constanza’s bedroom, and her husband doesn’t know any more about ships than you do, although he’s an admiral of the Spanish Navy. God, he’s an ass! No wonder Spain is losing her empire.”

“Where did you go then?” she asked, confused. “Everyone knows you didn’t stay at the hotel.”

“I went back to the ship,” he said, as though the answer were being pulled from him. “Didn’t you guess?”

“How could I when I never saw you?” Summer was afraid to believe him, but she couldn’t bear the thought that he might be lying to her.

“I couldn’t have fooled anybody if I’d blabbed to everyone.”

“I don’t think I qualify as just anyone.”

“That chattering fool Chichi would have spread the news all over town in less than a day.”

Summer was forced to admit that was true. “But why did you do it?”

“You still don’t know?”

“No,” she replied, in a hushed voice.

He drew her so near she could feel his hot breath on her cool skin. “It was the only way I could keep my promise not to touch you.”

“At least you could have told me you weren’t spending every night with the marquise.”

“I wasn’t sure you were interested.”

“When I didn’t see you, I thought you didn’t care anymore.”

“I was
trying
to attend to the ship’s business.” He laughed humorlessly. “Smith practically ordered me to stop chasing all over the city and spend more time looking after you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re mine.”

“But you don’t particularly like me, remember?” Summer studied his cravat. “I’m just a body with a pretty face.”

“I never said anything that foolish.”

“You certainly did, and a lot more I won’t mention.”

“You know it’s not true.”

“No I don’t,” she whispered, more softly than before. “You never told me.”

“I’ve told you now.”

“You’ve only said a lot of meaningless words. You haven’t said anything to make me believe you’ve changed your mind.”

“I brought you here, didn’t I?”

“You could have brought hundreds of women here for all I know.”

“I went to the trouble of hiring the most lavish suite in the largest hotel in town, bought you trunkloads of clothes. Everything I did was for you.”

“You haven’t done
anything
for me,” she said, wondering what she could say to make him understand. “Everything you did was for you, for your pride in possessing me, your pleasure in admiring me, even your revenge against Gowan.”

“I don’t understand you,” he said aggrieved. “You’re beginning to sound like Smith. Have you two been putting your heads together to plague me, because if you have I’ll tan your hides.”

“There you go again, forcing people to your will without even questioning whether they might not know more than you do.”

“I don’t bend people to my will,” Brent protested.

“But you do, even Smith. What can anybody else expect when you treat the person who’s most important to you like that?”

“He’s not the most important person to me,” Brent said impatiently. “You are.”

“I didn’t know that.” Summer made a noise that sounded like a sob. “How could I when you’ve never bothered to tell me?”

“But you had to know it.”

“No I didn’t. Remember, I’m the one who thought you were spending your nights in half the bedrooms of Havana. I’m not in on your little secrets.”

“It’s not a secret.”

“What’s
not a secret?”

“That I love you.”

“You don’t!” Summer tried to keep her turbulent emotions under control. “You’ve let the wine and the moonlight go to your head.”

“I know what I feel,” Brent said, his voice rising. “If I say I love you, I love you.”

“Is that an order?” Summer asked. A choked sound escaped her as Brent suddenly swept her up into his arms and crushed her to him.

“No, you hard-headed spitfire. It’s a declaration. I love you, do you hear me? I love you like a man loves a woman he wants to keep by his side forever. I love you because you’re beautiful, because you have the most inviting body I’ve ever seen. But I also love you because you’re a termagant and I can’t get you and your craggy temper out of my mind. I dream about you, and I spend every waking minute wondering where you are, what you’re doing, and what lucky fool is close enough to reach out and touch you, to hear you laugh, to see the way your eyes sparkle when you’re happy, to watch a smile curve across your lips, or enjoy the way your eyes crinkle when you’re about to say something clever. I’m a man with a raging fever and there’s no cure. The more I’m around you, the worse it gets. But when I’m not with you it’s worse still. I can’t sleep and I can’t eat. My crew had begun to wonder if they shouldn’t start looking about for a new captain. I paced the deck, I lost my temper without reason, I shouted and gave contradictory orders, and worst of all I haven’t been with another female since I set eyes on you.”

“You really
do
love me.” Summer strove to keep from giving way to hysterical happiness.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last half-hour, you adorable little idiot,” Brent said roughly. “I love you so much I ache all over just thinking about it.” Summer threw herself into his arms and covered his face with kisses, laughing and crying at the same time.

“And I love you, too, you big dumb ox. I’ve loved you almost from the beginning.”

“Now who’s telling lies?” he said, holding her even closer.

“Truly, I’m not. I tried to hate you for quite a long time, but I couldn’t. It was your loyalty to Smith that utterly destroyed my resistance. After that I was so hopelessly in love with you that I was jealous of every woman you looked at in Havana.”

“How could you think I would really look at anyone when I had you?”

“How was I to know you could live like a monk for weeks on end?”

“I’ve been going to sea for ten years, my poisoned-tongued Aphrodite. We’re away from port for months at a time.”

“Tell me again that you love me,” Summer begged.

“I love you,” Brent declared.

“Say it as though you mean it,” she demanded.

“I love you, by God,” Brent shouted, and sweeping her into his arms, he turned and mounted the terrace steps. “But I prefer to show you.” He recrossed the terrace in a few strides, carelessly brushing the table with Summer’s trailing gown and causing the wine glasses Pedro had set out to fall to the flagstones and break into tiny fragments.

“I can’t wait any longer. Having you in my arms is more than a man can bear. I will do something wild if I don’t make love to you. Tomorrow I may restrain myself, but tonight I’m going to make love to you until dawn.”

“If you pull the curtains, we won’t know when it’s morning,” she said teasingly.

“I may not stop when the sun comes into the room.” Brent welcomed the look of invitation in her eyes.

“Don’t ever stop,” she pleaded. “I dreamed that someday you’d say you loved me. Now that you have I can’t hear it often enough.”

“I’ll tell you at least once every day.”

“Every hour,” she said, floating on clouds of buoyant bliss. “I want to hear it when I wake up and when I go to sleep. I want to hear it in the wind, feel it in the air around me. I don’t ever again want to have to ask myself if you love me.”

“You won’t have any doubts,” he said, placing her on the bed and beginning to unbutton her dress. “I will devote all my time to proving to you that no one in the world means as much to me as you do.”

Summer helped Brent slide the dress down over her body, and within seconds she lay before him as Nature intended her to be seen. Brent stared at her in awe, unable to believe that anyone could be so beautiful. She grasped his hand and pressed it to her warm flesh.

“Are you going to join me,” she asked shyly, “or are you going to stand there gawking all night? I thought you were a man of action.”

“I never refuse a lady.” Brent shed his clothing without regard for strained seams and popping buttons. As he climbed into the bed, Summer enfolded him in her arms.

He kissed her deeply, and she responded with such burning intensity their bodies were driven to become one. Their limbs entwined, and the heat coursing through their bodies increased tenfold as it flowed from one to the other.

Brent’s tongue raked her mouth and kindled in her a chord of response deeper than anything she had experienced. She flung herself at him, determined to become so much a part of him that he would never be free of her. Her fierceness had its birth in an unspoken fear that their love, removed from the hard realities of the world and declared in the isolation of the island, was too fragile to last. But something deep within her urged her to plunge into the vortex of this maelstrom, and her stormy passion was all the more compelling because of her desperation.

Brent met the challenge boldly and recklessly, marveling at the depth of love she was revealing. He loved her more than life, even more than his revenge. He knew he wanted to be with her forever, that he would never feel complete again without her. He was an adventurer who had taken her against all odds; he would hold her the same way.

They made love with an animalistic frenzy, each attacking the other, driven to insensitivity by the force of their own fevered passion, and their consummation was a brutal release of pent-up desire. Exhaustion only made their need more unbearable, but they were freed of their dammed-up energies.

They had destroyed the last barrier that kept them apart, and as their overheated senses cooled and the desperate rush to dash themselves on the rock of their passion subsided, they achieved a truer perception of the feeling that had come to exist between them. No more would they thrash aimlessly about, trying to search out the seat of their emotional needs in a game of sensual blindman’s bluff. Their urge for physical fulfillment had been tested in the much larger crucible of their love, and had become just a part of a relationship no less powerful because it was complex.

“I always dreamed of what it would be like to lie with the man I loved,” Summer said softly. “Here, far away from the outside world, with your arms around me, I feel totally at peace.”

Brent touched her cheek. “I had no idea that two people could feel this way. I don’t think I wanted to, not after seeing how much my mother suffered.”

“You should have left me on the
Sea Otter
and sailed away as fast as you could.”

“I could no more have left you than I could have given up my own ship. I was hypnotized by that first vision of you stepping out on deck so proudly.”

“I would never have known it from the way you treated me.”

“Knowing that you were destined to belong to Gowan was a blow I couldn’t endure. I was determined that you would be mine.” Summer snuggled closer to him.

“Are you always so determined in your pursuit?”

“I never bothered before. If things didn’t go my way, there was always someone else.”

“There was never anyone else for me,” she declared. “I had almost resigned myself to spending the rest of my life running the plantation for Father.” She held more tightly to Brent. “I never dreamed that I would be dragged willy-nilly from that ship by a wild-eyed pirate, and held captive in his cabin for weeks. That kind of adventure only happens in story books.”

“I remember numerous complaints about beasts, bullies, and people who bend the rules to suit themselves.” Brent chuckled.

“You were heartless, but I never could stay mad at you for very long, even when you were behaving like a medieval warlord.”

“Every time I looked at you I wanted to take you in my arms and hold you forever. My mind dwelt on the sight of your bare shoulder, the feel of your skin, even your crooked grin when you were up to mischief.”

They reached out to each other, two souls crossing the abyss and leaving behind all desire to exist separately. They knew a gentleness they had not known before, a certainty that they were no longer entities, no longer alone. They could share without the need for words, achieve satisfaction through each other, give in the certainty that they would receive in return.

They now knew the meaning of oneness. They had acquired a deeper understanding of their love, and of each other. No matter what they must endure, they would not be torn asunder.

Chapter 30

Summer woke to sunlight streaming through the windows. She was strongly tempted to stay in the large fourposter, but as she stretched with feline grace, she was drawn to the lifegiving warmth of the sun. Her room, at the front of the house, provided her with an uninterrupted view of the terraces that descended to the sea. It was a breathtaking sight, and she sank down onto a bamboo chair, hardly able to believe she could be so happy.

After weeks of doubt, worry, and fear, the island was a sanctuary, a quiet cove where she was protected from the whims of Fate by the one person she loved above all else. It was still hard for her to believe that Brent loved her as passionately as she loved him, but a thrill of exhilaration raced through her, swift as lightning, every time she thought of his strong arms or his hot, demanding lips.