Seduced by the Scoundrel (Danger and Desire 2)

‘Luc?’ It came out as a quaver.

‘Are you afraid of me?’ He came upright with a speed that took her unawares, caught her in his arms, turned her and had her pressed against the door before she could say another word. Her nostrils were filled with the scent of man and fresh sweat and black powder smoke; her body quivered with an anticipation she could not control. ‘Because you should be. I want to take you here, up against this door. Tell me no. Tell me no, now.’

One hand was in her hair, the other palmed her breast with possessive urgency. His mouth on her neck was hot, fierce, and her blood responded, all the tension and fear and triumph of the night merging into a fire that consumed the last shreds of restraint.

This is what I want: this, him, now. Nothing else was real, nothing else mattered except the moment, and the next few moments, in Luc’s arms. My hero, my man.

Her hands were in his hair, trying to bring his mouth to hers, but he was intent on dragging her clothing off and she vanished, blinded and struggling, into the thick wool to emerge, naked from the waist up. She blinked in the lantern’s light as she pushed her hair from her face so she could see Luc, reach for him. But he dropped his hands and stepped back, pale under his tan.

‘Oh, my God.’ He stared at her as if he was seeing her naked body for the first time, then lifted both hands and cupped her breasts, moving close so he could look down at them, as though they were treasures he had found and could not quite believe. Her flesh felt heavy and swollen in his palms, but he did not move more than his thumbs, caressing slowly across the hard, aching points of her nipples.

‘Luc.’ It was a whisper, but it brought that deep grey gaze to meet her eyes. ‘What … what do I do?’ Her aunt’s lecture on Marital Duties had not included this quivering in her belly, the ache between her legs, the desire and the need. It had included nothing that did not involve lying on her back in the dark and submitting to embarrassing and probably painful intimacies.

His eyes went dark and his hands still and then he released her, turned, slowly, and dropped his hands to the chart table, bent over it like a man in pain.

‘Nothing. You do nothing,’ Luc said and heard his voice harsh with barely suppressed fury that was directed at himself, not at her. She was probably ruined. Probably. He could not take her until he had tried, and failed, to rescue her from the consequences of all this. He had made her his responsibility, fool that he was.

Behind him Averil was silent for the time it took her to draw in two, very audible, breaths. Then she said, ‘Why are you angry? You do not expect a virgin to know what to do, do you?’

She was always thinking—when he allowed her to and was not addling her senses with lovemaking—always, always, courageous. ‘I am angry at myself,’ he said, wrenching his voice back under control. ‘Get dressed before I lose my mind again and forget that you are an innocent.’

‘My friend Dita says that men become amorous after danger or excitement. It seemed rather strange

to me, when she said it.’ Averil’s voice faded, then strengthened, and he guessed she had pulled her clothes back over her head. ‘Is that what it is?’

‘My inability to control myself?’ Luc asked. The lines on the chart under his spread hands came back into focus. He was supposed to be sailing this damn brig, and getting it and the French prize and the captured papers back safely, not ravishing virgins in the cabin.

‘You seem quite capable of controlling yourself,’ Averil said as she came round on his right side and sat down on the edge of the bunk. Her voice was steady, but one look at her white face and the slashes of colour on her cheeks told him that she had sat down because her legs were about to give way. ‘Eventually,’ she added. For a hideous moment he thought she was going to cry and his stomach, already knotted with guilt and lust, gave a stab of pain.

‘You give me an opportunity to excuse myself?’ Suddenly it felt as though speaking in French would be easier, for him, but from her accent it seemed unlikely that she would be fluent enough to follow what he was struggling to understand himself. ‘I was fired up. I had been fighting and we had won. And, yes, some primitive creature inside me needed to take a woman—my woman—in triumph.’ My woman. She is not my woman. I do not have a woman. I will not think of her like that. I will not care.

She was silent and he wanted to drop his eyes from that clear, troubled gaze, but that would be cowardice. ‘I had been frightened for you, and angry because you had put me in a position where I might not have been able to protect you. I required, I suppose, to assert mastery and that is one step from forcing you.’ Which is no doubt why I feel sick. That and aching frustration.

‘Your woman?’ Averil said as though he had not spoken those last sentences.

He could not unsay them. Nor, he realised, did he want to. He wanted her, wanted to be the man who took her virginity. He wanted to keep her and teach her … everything. ‘You are not anyone’s,’ he said at last, making the effort to behave like an English gentleman. ‘You are your own woman.’

‘Not according to the law,’ she pointed out with painful clarity. ‘An unmarried woman belongs to her father in every practical way.’

‘You are of age.’ What was he arguing for? He wanted to make her his.

‘I have an obligation,’ Averil said. ‘A duty. And I have been forgetting that.’ And this time a tear did roll down her cheek. Appalled, unable to move, to touch her, Luc watched her dash it away with an impatient hand. No others followed it. ‘I don’t know—is this, whatever this is—’ she waved a hand vaguely, encompassing him, the cabin, her own disordered clothing ‘—is it usual? Is this why unmarried girls are chaperoned so fiercely?’

‘I do not know, I have never experienced this before,’ he snapped and saw her shock at his tone. ‘I have never dallied with an innocent.’

‘Oh. Dalliance.’ She gave a light laugh and turned her head. He could no longer read her face. ‘A pretty word. If that is all it is, then there is nothing to worry about, is there? I must just learn to flirt and not take this all so seriously. Why did you come down here, just now?’

‘Why—? Don’t you want to discuss this?’

He wanted to, even if she did not. He needed to understand what she felt for him and what it meant.

Averil shrugged, an elegant turn of her shoulder reminding him that she was a lady, despite her seaman’s clothing and her tangled hair. ‘There is nothing to discuss, is there? We have controlled ourselves, you have remembered that you have a ship to navigate, I that I am betrothed. Don’t you recall why you came down?’

‘I came to look at the charts,’ he said through gritted teeth. How was this little innocent tying him in knots? It was like being outwitted by a kitten, only to discover it was a well-disguised panther.

‘Hadn’t you better do so?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to hit the rocks again.’ She said it lightly, but he saw the shadows of controlled fear behind her eyes. Despite what had happened the last time she had been on board a ship she had stowed away on the frail pilot gig and then thrown herself into a sea fight. There was nothing wrong with her courage, that was certain.

‘We’re in deep water now and well clear here of any rocks. I was expecting to sail for the mainland, but now I know I can trust the Governor I can go to him on St Mary’s—which will mean we can lay hands on our man without fear of him getting wind of this and escaping. I need to find somewhere for the brigs to hover while I’m rowed into Hugh Town in the pilot gig.’