The Pirate and the Pagan (68 page)

In the morning when her brother Spider arrived, she couldn’t believe the change in him. He was so tall and broad; the boy had disappeared forever and in his place stood a man.

“I sold Roseland to him.” Ruark laughed. “You’ll have enough to do looking after Helford Hall.”

Spider grinned. “He sold it to me for five gold crowns so I could afford my own ship with my profits from Madagascar.”

“You have no regrets about the voyage then?” asked Summer.

“Of course I have regrets; I missed out on the war!”

Summer smiled, understanding at last. “Ruark planned it that way to keep you safe for me.”

Spider looked at her keenly. “I’m going to say this, Cat, whether you like it or not. I hope to God you’re ready to stop leading a dissolute life, racketing about London. You’re as thin as a damned rail. I don’t think you’ve tried very damned hard to be a good wife and mother either.” He looked pointedly at Ruark. “If she were my wife, I’d be tempted to take my hand to her backside. If you give her an inch, you know, she’ll take whole bloody mile.”

Ruark tried unsuccessfully to conceal a grin. “You’ve no idea how much I’ve been tempted to take my hand to her backside.”

She slanted him a glance and a fierce wildness pulsed in her blood.

Spider stayed for lunch and Summer allowed Ryan to sit at the big table with the adults. She could see that her brother and her
son were already fast friends and her heart swelled with thankfulness for all her blessings until she thought it might burst.

    In the afternoon Ruark slung a hammock for her in the secluded part of the garden that was the most headily fragrant. She lay back in it obediently and Ruark sat on its edge gazing down at her. She lifted her hand to touch his clean-shaven cheek. “I can’t understand why I never guessed Rory was you,” she said, remembering the unshaven beard and the zigzag of white hair. “Why did you play such a damnable trick on me?”

“I couldn’t breach the antagonism between us. After I lost my damnable temper and said all those cruel things to you, I regretted it almost immediately. But it was too late. Every time we spoke, we fought like cat and dog. You were much more amenable to Rory. You were completely yourself—no lies, no subterfuge. You certainly weren’t about to let Ruark make love to you, so I seduced you as Rory.”

“Have you any idea how guilty I felt about having an affair?” She searched his face, then her lashes dropped to her cheeks. “I almost died when I discovered I was going to have a baby and didn’t know which of you was the father.”

He studied her face, so exquisitely lovely in the dappled shade of the flowering almond. “You confessed to Rory you didn’t know which of us was the father, but I noted with amusement you didn’t breathe a word to your husband,” he said with a teasing light in his green eyes.

“Oh, Lord,” she breathed, “I didn’t dare.”

He looked at her quizzically. “Darling, were you afraid of me?”

Her lashes went up. “Yes, a little … perhaps more than a little.”

He dipped his head to steal a very gentle kiss. “But surely you’re not afraid of me anymore, are you?”

“Of course not,” she breathed. “Well, perhaps just a little,” she admitted.

He lifted her hand to his mouth and placed an intimate kiss in her palm. She raised her hand to his temple and ran her fingers through his hair, where his scar was hidden. She wondered how she’d missed feeling it when they’d been first married. Perhaps subconsciously she had known Ruark and Rory were one. She’d never really know the answer. “So it was you who rode into the raging Helford River to save your father.”

“Our damnable tempers were so much alike. He went to his death before we had healed the rift between us,” he said ruefully. “God’s flesh, the same thing almost happened to us,” he said, fiercely gripping her shoulders. “I’m so sorry I made you afraid, threatened you, said cruel things to you.”

“Did you have our marriage annulled?” she asked him quietly.

He groaned. “Of course not, sweetheart. You are my heart’s desire. Surely by now you know my bark is worse than my bite?”

“Mmmm,” she said with a little moue of longing, “you haven’t bitten me lately.”

In spite of his good intentions, desire was running rampant through his blood. With a great deal of willpower he tried to bank the fires within, for he did not think she was ready yet for lovemaking. In a light teasing voice he said, “Someday I will show you how to make love in a hammock. There is a knack to it, you know.”

She slanted him a provocative glance. “What’s wrong with today?” she tempted.

His laugh was slightly ragged as his hands closed about her tiny waist. “Little pagan!” His fingers easily spanned her and it reminded him just how gentle he must be with her, lest he hurt her. Slowly, slowly, he undid the fastenings on her gown and slipped at off. It fell to the lush green grass with a whisper and was soon followed by her shift and stockings. Her mass of silken curls came just to her shoulders and they both remembered in that moment how her hair had been long enough to cloak her breasts whenever she was naked.

“Don’t move,” he begged, “I’ll be right back.” He selected the largest cream-colored roses he could find and plucked an exotic scarlet hibiscus flower. With tender hands he placed a rose upon each breast and tucked the vivid blossom in the lovely dark curls between her legs. Summer has been so anxious about Ruark’s reaction to her thin body, but suddenly he had made her feel utterly beautiful and she loved him for it. She sighed as he worshiped her with his eyes.

“This garden is lovelier than Eden, I warrant.”

“And you are lovelier than Eve … who was that legendary enchantress who was thought to be Eve’s mother? Lilith, that’s the one … a true pagan, I’ll warrant.”

He quickly removed his clothes and lowered himself carefully into the slowly swaying hammock. He cautioned himself again to go slowly, to take his time with her. He clenched his fist on nothing,
wondering if he was insane to think he could remember caution once he’d touched her. He lifted her into his lap as they lay back in the hammock, nuzzling her neck and letting his hands gently explore her slight curves.

All the most vulnerable parts of her body were open to his seeking hands when they lay this way. He caressed her skin, murmuring, “Sunshine … silk … sweetness … scent.” He breathed deeply to inhale the delicious fragrance of her. As they lay beneath the heady pink almond, lazily swaying in the hammock, he knew an exquisite torture. Each time the hammock swung, her buttocks moved slightly against the tip of his swollen phallus, until finally he cried out with the sheer pleasure it gave him.

He took her hand to his lips, kissed the palm, and traced his tongue along the curves of her fingers. “I love to touch you and taste you and I know you love it … want it.” He guided her hand down to the place where the scarlet blossom lay. He took her fingers and dipped their tips deeply inside her. Then he took those honey-drenched fingers to his hot mouth and sucked her sweetness from them.

“Oh, Ru, the things you do to me make me feel wicked as sin.”

“I hope so,” he murmured, repeating the erotic act.

Her other hand slipped beneath her buttocks to close over his imperious hardness, and as her fingers teased him the world went dim around him. Her fingers caressed him with the delicacy of butterfly wings, feeling his shape and long thick dimensions. “Oh, God …” he gasped. “How I’ve missed waking up naked in bed with you.”

She slid over so that her breasts pressed into his hard-muscled chest, their bellies touched and the length of his marble shaft lay between her legs, against her hot moist cleft. She had been without him so long, she felt her whole body was fiery with a combination of shyness and pulsing need.

He moved gently up and down along her cleft, slipping deliciously on the moistness that was spreading into her tight curls. His tip, like carmine velvet, penetrated her and she cried his name over and over for the sheer pleasure of tasting it on her lips. “Ru, Ru!”

His rigid head slid and pleasured her in a more gentle way than she’d ever been loved in her life. She arched up to him, stretching and straining her mouth to reach his so he could cover it with his
demanding kisses, but his mouth, too, was so tender with the deep love he felt for her that her mouth wasn’t even bruised.

She spread her legs as wide as she could and pressed down onto him, but his hands were so gently firm he would not allow her to impale herself upon him and risk hurting her. A few times he felt as if he was losing control, but his iron willpower enabled him to regain it even in the face of his great need. He had always encouraged her to cry out her needs and be vocal in their lovemaking, as indeed he himself was. He could tell by her moans and little cries that she needed to be brought to fulfillment, so with strong tender hands he lifted and lowered her hips onto him gently, not allowing deep, full penetration.

Summer was almost mad with a frenzy of need. Finally she realized he was watching her face intently, then as he lifted her body each time, he watched his shaft go up inside her and withdraw again. He didn’t wish to miss one single expression of pleasure on her face as he made love to her, while the bees droned in the blossoms above and the erotic rhythm of the swaying hammock brought them to their final bliss in a delicately sensual fashion. She clung to him shuddering for a long, long time and the nectar of their love felt warm and slippery between their fused bodies.

As their blissful days together blended into a week he knew he had never known such happiness. If they were in a room with other people, they began by making love with their eyes. Then he could not resist touching her, kissing her, caressing her, but always with such infinite gentleness it had a poignancy about it. Before Ryan’s bedtime they always retired to their bedchamber with him so the three of them could spend a private, intimate hour together.

Sometimes they played on the floor with him or sometimes all three romped on the great bed, with Ruark only pretending to be fierce. He was as gentle with Summer as he was with their baby, his heart almost bursting in his chest with the love he felt for them.

Tonight Summer lay stretched upon their bed in her nightgown, watching Ryan raptly as he sat on the floor playing with her jewels. Ruark knelt on the bed behind her and, wrapping one possessive arm about her, drew her back to lean against him. With gentle hands he lifted her hair so that his lips could feather kisses from her nape down her back. He glanced at Ryan. “Apparently he is particularly partial to rubies, like his mother.”

Summer laughed softly. “Jewels aren’t as important to me as they used to be.”

“Mmm, that’s too bad,” he said, his mouth against her back, “for I have a waterfall of diamonds I’ve been waiting an eternity to give you.”

She slanted him a glance over her shoulder. “Well, perhaps you can persuade me to take them, if you bribe me.”

His hands began to caress her gently and his voice became low and husky in anticipation of their bed play. “Let’s put Ryan to bed and then I’ll do my utmost to make you model the diamonds for me.”

Ryan made the usual protest, so they allowed him to keep the rubies to play with until he was tucked into the sturdy cradle in his own chamber. Mrs. Bishop shook her head in wonder as Lord Helford swept his scantily clad wife in his arms and carried her to bed. Oh, they might be all lovely-dovey for a while since they’d been parted so long, but she knew them well enough to know that one of these days the sparks would fly and they’d have another fight to end all fights, and she’d lead him a merry chase all over England or God-knows-which country. There would be the threats and the jealousies and the screaming matches at the top of their lungs, then he’d take her to bed and bend her to his will and tame her again. A calm, peaceful life wasn’t the Helfords style at all.

Alone in their bedroom, Ruark dangled the waterfall of diamonds in his fingers, playfully tempting and seducing her to let him make love to her in return for them.

“That would be wicked of me,” she protested innocently.

“Didn’t they teach you in church that the devil makes wickedness attractive for the sole purpose of corrupting the virtuous?”

She looked at him from beneath half-closed lids. He was a reckless breed of man who had taught her to commit her sins in the grand manner, disdaining pettiness.

“I’ve decided to have them after all,” she said, reaching out a hand.

“Uh-uh—you have to be completely naked before I’ll let you wear them.”

“Unfair! If I’m to be naked, so are you,” she decreed.

He grinned his wolf’s grin and wasted no time in throwing off his garments. Freed from the confines of his tight breeches, his great manroot sprang up, filling, expanding, hardening, and quivering with anticipation. He drew her so close against his body
she could see the tiny image of her face reflected in the black pupils of his eyes. With reverent hands he drew off her nightgown and gently clasped the diamond waterfall about her slender throat. Then his lips touched hers in a gentle kiss.

She slid against him provocatively and whispered, “Ru, I’m tired of you touching me with gentleness.”

He drew back and looked down into her face. Suddenly his emerald eyes were stained black with passion as he took her meaning.

Her lips half parted beneath his. “Lord God, I think I’ll die if you don’t take me, take me!”

Her language acted like an aphrodisiac on him. She’d seemed too fragile both in body and spirit for him to be savagely demanding in his lovemaking, but now she was making demands of her own and he couldn’t wait to satisfy those demands. He swept her up and carried her in front of the great mirrored wardrobe so she could watch his body make love to hers. He set her down in front of him and turned her to the glass. “See how lovely your breasts look adorned with a waterfall of diamonds?”

“Mmmm,” she said, deliberately moving her bum against his erection. She smiled as she heard his great intake of breath above her ear. Then her eyes widened as she saw his hand come between her legs from behind to cup her whole sensitive mound of Venus. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched his hands, capable of such brutal strength, toy and play upon her body so intimately. In that moment she learned what women had learned down through the ages … that a man wasn’t devastatingly attractive and irresistible unless he was dangerous.