The Wayward One (The De Montforte Brothers Book 5) (22 page)

She took a deep breath and let her hand drop, lightly to his shoulder. To the gold epaulet that capped that bulging expanse of muscle, the silken thread soft beneath her fingers. He raised his head. Put the pen down.

What am I doing?

“No longer angry with me?” he asked softly, tilting his head to look up at her.

“I was wrong to pry. Besides—” she shrugged. “You’re a male.”

“Aye, last time I checked.”

“And males sometimes prefer to keep things inside. I should know… I’ve spent my life living with four of them.”

He corked the bottle of ink, wiped the pen and pushed the log book aside so that his entry could dry. “We all have things we don’t like to talk about. Things that cause pain simply by givin’ them voice. Things we’re ashamed of, even.”

Her hand was still resting on his gold-threaded epaulet. Propriety demanded that she remove it. Her own will told her to let it stay and besides, the captain was making no move to dislodge her touch.

“So where do we go from here?” she asked, her fingers beginning a slow kneading of his shoulder beneath the dark blue cloth until she felt the great muscles relax.

“Is there a ‘we?’”

“There is as long as I’m still aboard this ship.” Mustering her courage, satisfying her curiosity, she let her hand wander closer to his neck, gently rubbing the stiffness out of his muscles as she gazed down at his wildly-curling black hair. He had tried to tame it into a queue, but the thick, spiraling tendrils had a mind of their own, springing out of the queue, curling around his ears, his forehead, his face in wild abandon.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday and it’ll be here before a body knows it,” he said softly, and leaned his cheek, rough with the day’s bristle, against the back of her hand. It was a gesture of acquiescence. Trust. Encouragement.

“Yes.”

“I had a thought last night,” he said quietly. “Thought I’d bolloxed this up good by abducting the wrong de Montforte, that I was wrong to take you and not yer brother. And maybe I was. I regret the scandal this will cause ye back home, regret that it might well indeed ruin ye, but there’s one thing I don’t regret, Lady Nerissa, and that’s having had the chance to know ye.”

She looked down at his epaulet. “It has been…an adventure,” she allowed. “I’ll not soon forget it.”

He turned his head slightly, just enough that he could look up into her eyes. “Ah, but will ye forget
me
?”

She was silent for a long moment. Her hand still rested against the base of his neck, a curling black tendril of his hair brushing her knuckles. She was just about to remove it when he quietly reached up and laid his own hand over her own, keeping it there.

“Will ye, lass?”

She met his gaze with resolution, and felt something huge and painful grip her heart. “I will never forget you, Captain O’ Devir.”

For another long moment he remained quiet. He reached out and shut the log book and just sat there staring at it. His mouth was tight. She could almost hear him thinking. At last he turned in his chair so that he could look up at her, and she saw then that his eyes reflected the sudden, unreasonable sadness she felt in her own heart.

“Can’t say as if I’ll ever forget you either, Lady Nerissa.”

“This—this friendship, or whatever it is we share…it is an unexpected complication, is it not?”

He smiled. “A complication, but given the circumstances, not unexpected.”

“Tomorrow, I will be reunited with my family and you will sail back to America. Should you make it back across the Atlantic with the explosive, or even without it, your life, Captain O’ Devir, only stands to get better. Mine on the other hand…” she made a helpless, defeated little sound that wasn’t quite laughter, but a reflection of the hopelessness her future held. “Mine will be one of uncertainty, memories and longing.” At his look of deepening regret, she hastily added, “And don’t think for one instant it’s all your doing. It was destined to be that way the moment you brought me aboard and showed me there’s more to life than genteel boredom. That my heart still knows how to beat, that I am capable of responding to a man, perhaps even…even to have feelings for him.” She looked unflinchingly into his eyes. “Soon, Captain, we will have parted, never to meet again.” She looked down. “Of course I will miss you.”

He let another long moment go by before he finally spoke.

“I could give ye somethin’ to remember me by,” he said softly.

He turned fully around in the chair, taking her hand and bringing it down to his lips until they feathered against her knuckles. His gaze met hers, his intent clear.

“…. Something more than…just a kiss?” she whispered.

“Aye, lass. Something more.”

She did not move away. Did not show outrage or insult, but simply closed her eyes as his tongue came out to touch her knuckles, first one, then the next, moving down her hand all the way to her little finger. He turned her hand over and kissed the underside of her wrist.

Nerissa’s eyes opened wide.

Captain O’ Devir merely smiled and looked up at her through his long, long lashes. And then his lips moved down the heel of her hand, past her palm and out to the tip of her little finger and once there, pulled it deeply into his mouth and sucked it, hard.

Nerissa flushed, the breath catching in her throat. Sensation gathered in her nipples, between her legs. And now Captain O’ Devir was getting to his feet. Unbuttoning his long blue and white uniform coat, taking it off and putting it over the back of the chair he’d just vacated. He turned and reached for her.

She all but plunged into his embrace.

Desire flared like fuel on a bonfire…her female body responding to his tough, hardened male one which made her feel deliciously small and protected, which smelled good, which felt good, which
was
good as she allowed herself to be pulled close to it and his arms, thick, brawny, hopelessly powerful arms—a man’s arms—went around her.

A man’s arms.

She felt herself growing warm and wet between her legs as she pressed herself against him. The bar of his forearm was an iron vise around her back, his hand against her shoulder blades and now following the curve of her spine, cupping her buttocks, and pressing the length of her up against his own. Oh, damn him, damn herself, how she wanted him. Craved him. Ached for the touch of his skin against hers, the feel of him against her, inside her, all around her. He was giving her that but it did nothing to soothe that craving and only made it worse, pushing her toward something she sensed but did not understand. She caught her lip and pressed her forehead against his chest, flushing hot with longing as his finger traced the seam of her bottom through the breeches and moved purposely down to that insatiable place between her legs, wiping it, pressing it, through the breeches. Nerissa sank down against his fingers, the craving becoming unbearable. His hands drifted to her hips, pulling her back onto unsteady feet. She did not protest. Her eyes drifted shut, and a soft moan came from deep within her throat as she wound her arms around his neck and raising herself on tiptoe, met his lips with her own.

This was not a tame, chaste kiss like the ones she’d known from Perry. Oh, no…this was a harsh, demanding, take-no-prisoners onslaught of his mouth against her own, his body against hers, fierce and unrelenting and driving her head back even as his hand, again rubbing her bottom through the breeches and causing her to go dizzy with sensation, forced her closer and closer until she was pinned against the hard swelling in his breeches. The feel of that thick, rigid flesh against her own femininity, his mouth forcing her lips apart until his tongue drove between her teeth and sought her own, the brutal strength of his arm behind her back, all hazed together in a whirling blur of sensation and she pressed her breasts hard against him, pushing her fingers up into the wild, unruly locks of his hair.

She pulled away, her body throbbing in places she hadn’t known existed, her breath coming in hard pants through her mouth and the ache between her legs crying for his touch.

Was it possible to get any closer to another human being?

Of course it was.

And she knew it as well as he did, and wanted it with a desperate certainty that didn’t bear questioning.

“Captain O’ Devir—”

“Ruaidri,” he said hoarsely, nuzzling the hair at her temple, the top of her cheekbone.

“Rory?”

“Ru-ah-ree,” he repeated impatiently, his tongue coming out to touch, to taste, the delicate skin of her ear and trace its shell-like perfection.

She was back in his arms again, his jaw rough with stubble beneath her fingertips, his hair coarse and wiry as she plunged her hand up through his wildly curling mane and freed it from its queue to spill around his broad, powerful shoulders. Her fingers explored the feel of his cheeks and jaw. His hands roved down her back, framed her hips, and she suddenly grabbed for his shoulders as he lifted her as easily as if she were an empty jar. She pulled her legs up, wrapped them around his hips as he walked and locked her arms around his neck, watching the deck now moving beneath her from over his shoulder.

“Y’ ought to hate me, lass.”

“I ought to, but I don’t.”

“I’m not in the business of ravishin’ beautiful young women, even if they are English.”

“Sometimes a woman wants to be ravished, Ruaidri. Just once.”

“Do it right and a woman’ll want to be ravished a whole lot more times than just once.”

“Maybe we only have ‘once.’ We will never see each other again, after tomorrow.”

After tomorrow.
Why did those two simple words and the thought of being back with her brothers, back in her quiet, predictable, ordered world, cause her heart to feel as though someone had just speared it with a dull knife?

After tomorrow.

He carried her to the stern windows, stopping along the way to retrieve a bottle from a drawer in his desk and two tin mugs, both hopelessly dented. The sensation of being in such huge, powerful arms made her a little breathless, made her feel small and sheltered and deliciously protected. Holding her against himself with one hand, he put the bottle and mugs down, yanked the light canvas cushions from the stern seat and tossed them to the deck flooring. He set her down, unbuckled his sword belt and put it aside. She took off the midshipman’s jacket. A moment later they were both lying on the cushions, stretched out alongside and facing each other.

She propped herself on one elbow, gazing into his unfairly beautiful, long-lashed eyes that made him look innocent and harmless. She had seen the rough edges that made up his character, she had sensed the restless, predatory coil just below the surface. There was nothing innocent or harmless about this man, this man she sensed was as dangerous as any of her brothers.

Propping the side of his head in one hand, he reached out and grasped a long blonde hank of her hair, smoothing it between his fingers. “I want to make love to ye, lass.”

“I…want you to, Ruaidri.”

“Ye know what it entails, don’t ye?”

She blushed but forced herself to be bold. “I know…certain things. And I’ve been…touched before.”

“Have ye, now?” He was smiling with just one corner of his mouth.

“Of course it was nothing more than a touch. And it might have been quite accidental, really. I’m a lady, Captain.”

“I see. Do ladies lack the same desires that other females have?”

“I’m not an ‘other female,’ so I don’t know.”

“Hmph.” He let go of her hair and with one finger, traced the curve of her jaw, down to her throat, causing her to suppress a little shiver of desire. “Well, I’ve never taken a highborn English lady to me bed, but I can tell ye right now, Lady Nerissa, that ye’ve got the same parts an’ pieces as any other whether she be an Irish barmaid or an American seamstress, and I know very well how to make those parts an’ pieces work. To sing together in harmony, to bring ye such pleasure that ye’ll think ye’ve died and gone to heaven.”

“Confident, aren’t you?”

“Always.” He smiled, and uncorking the bottle with his teeth, splashed spirits into each of the two mugs. He raised his own. “To you, Lady Nerissa. And unforgettable memories.”

“To…us,” she murmured, and boldly bringing her mug to her lips, tipped it up, took a sip—and felt fire raging all the way down her throat, as though she’d swallowed a razor.

She slammed the mug down, gasping, sucking in breath that was afraid to enter the same space that that—
liquid
had just passed through. Tears streamed from her eyes. As she coughed and gagged, Ruaidri also sat up, pressing the mug back into her hand, laughing as he bade her to take another sip.

“I’m not drinking that foul stuff!”

“The second sip’ll be easier. Ye’ve already broken ground with that first swallow.”

“What
is
this?”

“Irish whiskey.” He took another swig from his own mug. “It won’t kill ye.”

She could feel the path of fire all down the back of her throat, down her esophagus and all the way to her stomach. But she was a de Montforte. She was not going to be cowed by a bit of Irish whiskey. Resolutely, she took another sip, grimacing behind the mug itself.

“You are correct,” she allowed, resisting the urge to cough. “The second swallow isn’t so bad. Probably because my throat is now lined with scar tissue from the first one.”