“Oh, bloody hell!” she snapped in patrician tones. And then slammed her hand across her mouth as her eyes met his in the darkness.
CHAPTER NINE
Oh dear God in heaven, Maddy thought in sudden horror. What had she almost done? One moment longer, lying beneath him, and she would have been tupped before she knew it. She did her best to temper her instinctive glare. “Beg pardon, sir,” she said. “I don’t know what got into me. I’ll clean this up…”
Something white flew through the air at her, and she managed to catch it. “Use my shirt,” he said in his deep, distinctive voice. “There wasn’t that much water, and you can clean the rest up tomorrow.”
It was then she realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt. In fact, he was half-naked. Those short, yet somehow timeless moments she lay beneath him she hadn’t even realized it had been his bare skin pressing down on her sensitive breasts.
She stared at him, momentarily stunned. She had only Tarkington to compare him to, Tarkington and the sight of an occasional farmhand. Tarkington had been pale, almost white, and his skin had been surprisingly soft, she remembered in sudden dismay. There was nothing soft or pale about the captain. Even in the dim gaslight she could see the hardness of muscle and bone beneath his bronzed skin. Muscle and bone that had been pressed against her, and she realized her heart was still hammering, her breathing strangled.
“I suppose I ought to put a new shirt on,” he said in a lazy voice, as if he hadn’t been about to strip her of her clothing and what little remained of her self-respect. “You’d best soak that up before it leaks through into the room below. You don’t want to deal with Mrs. Crozier.”
She tore her eyes away for a moment, then dropped to her knees, pressing the fine cambric to the puddle of dark, dirty water. There hadn’t been much in the bucket, though she hated to ruin his shirt, a shirt that was still warm from his body and smelled like cinnamon and the sea. And then she looked up again to see his back as he was reaching for a new shirt, and she froze.
He was scarred. Not whip scars, as many sailors bore, but other, myriad wounds, some deep, some shallow, but bad enough to have left the marks of abuse on his strong, wiry body. But those were commonplace next to the strange picture that covered his left shoulder and snaked down his side.
A tattoo. She knew sailors often got them, just small blue marks on their arms or shoulders, but this was something very different. It seemed to be a cross between a snake and a dragon, and it was full of colors she’d never seen before. The scales seemed to glow in the gaslight, reds and blues and greens, moving as he moved, a sinuous dance across his muscles. She simply knelt there and stared at him in mingled awe and astonishment. And something else, something she ref
used to recognize. If he touched her again she wasn’t sure she could summon her moral outrage.
She scrambled to her feet. He must have felt her eyes on him, or maybe she’d made some involuntary sound. He turned around without putting on his shirt, and she could see that the tattoo reached over the top of his shoulder, one scaly, beautiful claw pulling at his skin. Oh, God, he had nipples, she suddenly realized. She’d forgotten that men had them as well, though in their case they were useless. Useless, but fascinating. It had been too dark to see Tarkington, but his cool skin had been covered with pale fur, whereas Captain Morgan had nothing but a faint trace of dark hair disappearing beneath his breeches, and he looked warm enough to…
“That’s Ren,” he said in a conversational tone.
She knew she must look like an idiot as she stared at him blankly. “I beg your pardon?” She knew it sounded too upper-class once the words were out, but she had to hope he hadn’t noticed. Even though she suspected the captain noticed everything.
“My tattoo,” he said. “Her name is Ren. She comes from the Japan Islands. Their dragons are a bit different from ours.” He moved marginally closer to her. “Ren is an elegant specimen, but I should warn you; she eats little girls for breakfast.”
Good God, why should that start a strange warmth in her belly? She rallied herself, belatedly, trying to draw her gaze away from the mesmerizing dragon. “Then it’s a good thing there are no little girls in this household.”
His smile could almost be called predatory, and he still held his fresh shirt in his large, capable hands. “I’m not sure Ren knows the difference. Though she does like being petted.”
All right, this was getting to be too unnerving. “I didn’t realize we were trading with Japan.”
“England wasn’t at the time. When we sailed there we weren’t under the flag of any country.”
“You mean you were a pirate.”
His mouth curved up in a faint grin. “I prefer privateer. You’re very knowledgeable about my career. Did you have any other questions?”
He was close, too close. If she turned to run he could simply reach out with his long, strong arms and stop her. But if she backed away from him he’d know she was scared. “When were you there?” she said, then realized a maid didn’t ask such questions. Nor stand there like an idiot staring at him. Remembering that when she was young she’d wanted to run away with pirates or the gypsies, and here she had both in one irresistible package. But she didn’t have those daydreams any longer, she reminded herself.
The captain didn’t appear shocked at her impertinent question. “Five years ago. Just before I took up with Russell Shipping.”
He made it sound as if he’d been her father’s partner, not his employee. Though indeed, she remembered her father’s particular affection for this one captain of his. At least until the end, when he’d suddenly withdrawn his command and left that cryptic note. “Never trust a pirate…”
He came closer, so close that she backed away without thinking about it, almost knocking over the bucket again. “Aren’t you going to ask me the next question?”
“What next question?” she said dazedly. There was no place she could move, except forward, toward him, toward the warm, seductive length of him. She was so tempted. When he kissed her she forgot everything, her rage, her sorrow, her doubts. All that existed was him, and God help her, she wanted him.
What was wrong with her?
He leaned forward, his mouth almost brushing her ear, and her entire body felt as if it were on fire. “Did it hurt,” he whispered. For a moment she thought he was asking her a question, and then she realized his meaning. She jerked away from him, trying to pull her scattered brain together, and she met his hooded gaze with the best version of limpid interest she could summon. Not this man, she reminded herself.
“Well, did it?” she asked. “They do tattoos with needles, don’t they?”
There was just the faintest light of amusement in his dark eyes. “It hurt like bloody hell.”