Then he began to touch her. The side of her leg, from her knee, up her thigh to her hip. Further, up her waist and alongside her heaving ribcage. Eliza kept her eyes clenched shut and her face tilted hard to the side as she twisted and turned. She knew her struggles were futile, but she simply could not acquiesce. When he pushed himself a little higher on his elbow, however, and
slipped his warm palm up to cup her breasts, she went absolutely still.
“Cyprian—” The words she meant to say died in her throat when she met his burning gaze. His hand moved in a slow, sultry circle, and Eliza fancied that she felt every one of his work-hardened calluses stroke across her puckered nipple.
She gasped, a small, sharp intake of breath, as the most sizzling wash of lethargy stole through her. Lethargy that put to rest all her protests while another feeling that was hot and alive and, oh, so wonderful took over her entire being.
He made that circle again, molding her breast to the curve of his hand, and this time he moved his fingers across the straining tip. One, two, three, four—all his fingers flicked over it, each more arousing than the last. Then his thumb moved back and forth, and she turned her face away once more.
He was doing it. He was making her willing and God help her, she couldn’t ignore it. His thumb worked back and forth slowly, teasing the tight peak to new levels of excitement. But he moved it too slow. Too slow.
“Cyprian …” She murmured his name again. Was it a curse or a plea? She could not say. But she knew she wanted to cry. From frustration. From a yearning so intense it must surely kill her. From a heart that was breaking.
“Eliza,” he whispered against her ear. “Do you like that, sweetheart?” His thumb moved a little faster and to her chagrin, a tiny whimper escaped her lips. She liked it far too much.
He nuzzled past her hair and began to kiss her ear, to nibble on it and run the tip of his tongue along it and even inside it.
Another whimper broke free. She could hear the rush of blood in her veins and her own labored breathing. Then his hand abandoned her breasts and moved down
between their two bodies. He fumbled for a moment—to open the front of his breeches, she realized when the heated length of his manhood pressed against her thigh.
She tossed her head restlessly, but he caught her mouth in a hard kiss that demanded every bit of her attention. His lips parted hers; his tongue pushed fully into her mouth, starting a rhythm she recognized at once.
It was going to happen and she … she was glad. No, more than glad. She felt as if the world would come to a complete standstill if they could not finish this act that he’d initiated.
Though he yet restrained her hands, Eliza arched up into the kiss. She was succumbing to him; he was making her willing, just as he’d threatened from the very first. But from some wellspring of feminine knowledge —something come from her very bones, or maybe from her soul—Eliza knew that even in surrender she could find her own manner of triumph.
So she kissed him back, mimicking the possessive way he thrust and withdrew. She met his tongue and they dueled and danced—and she felt his arousal grow even harder. Her hands twisted in his relentless grasp until she could stroke her fingertips across his knuckles.
He was not idle either. His free hand slipped between their bodies, and after sliding his palm up and down between her legs, parting the soft curls with his fingers, he deepened the caress.
The whole world came to an abrupt halt—or else tilted off its axis. He slipped one finger deep with her, then out and up, drawing her own moist heat to slide across the inflamed nub hidden there.
Which was worse—or better—she wondered as sensations too powerful to endure rippled through her body. When he slid right up inside her, she felt as if she were melting. When he touched that small spot, she seemed
to erupt. Both sensations were too wonderful, too exquisite …
His grip slackened and one of her hands turned so that she clasped it to his. Palm to palm, with fingers entwined, she held onto him. He raised his head, breaking the kiss, and for one long moment of perfect union, their eyes met and clung.
“Eliza—” He broke off as if he did not know what to say. Then he shifted, just a little, and she felt the hot, probing tip of his manhood against her. In the golden candlelight they poised that way, their bodies ready to join, their eyes already having done so. But he did not move; he just devoured her with his hot blue gaze.
Not until she arched, drawing him closer, did he finally begin the excruciating pattern he’d taught her before. Thrust and withdraw. Enter and retreat. It was as if he’d been waiting for her permission—or more likely the final sign of her capitulation, she thought, as the remnant threads of their battle lingered.
But the rising passion between them pushed the last of their earlier struggle into the background. They fought a new battle now. Together. On the same side. Their bodies strained together, a harmonious rhythm, hot and damp and ever faster. Their hands held tight, both of his clutching hers now, palm to palm. Soul to soul, she preferred to believe.
And for that moment she did believe it. As the apex neared, as they rushed faster and higher, until she had no choice but to leap out into the unearthly void with him, she knew their souls had connected in a way that could never happen with anyone but him. Love, desire, happiness, and the search for forever all came together in that blinding burst of passion. He thrust over and over and over, filling her with the finest gift a woman could ever hope to have from the man she loved.
The man she loved.
In that instant Eliza knew she loved him, and that she
wanted a child from him—no matter the cost to her life in the years to come. And there would be a cost, she knew. She would have to trade her old life away for one that was scary and unpredictable.
Finally Eliza understood Cyprian’s mother and why she’d had no regrets. When you loved a man there could never be regrets.
H
e stayed with her all night. And in between brief, entangled naps, he made love to her again and again. It was as if he were proving his rights to her, his possession of her. But Eliza did not mind. Every time he touched her, every time his lips or fingers or tongue explored some new and highly sensitive portion of her body, she felt as if she too were possessing him. For his violent anger of before had dissipated into an exquisite tenderness. She’d done that. She comprehended little enough else about him, but she knew that everything between them had changed the moment she’d begun to stroke his hand.
She sighed now and rolled over, fitting her back against Cyprian’s strong, warm body, but keeping her eyes closed against the early morning light. With an echoing sigh he turned too and pulled her close so that her derriere nestled against his groin. When he flexed the hot length of his manhood ever so slightly, she let out a sleepy chuckle.
“Are you laughing at me?” he growled, a husky morning caress against the back of her neck.
In lieu of an answer she wiggled her backside against him, and when he responded with an involuntary thrust against her, she giggled again.
Before she knew what he was up to, he’d rolled her onto her back and lay over her, propped up on his elbows. It was a position she’d learned to love.
Smiling, she slowly opened her eyes and met his devouring gaze. “Don’t you ever get tired?” She ran her hands along his side and then around to the lean muscles that rippled down his back.
“You’re killing me,” he admitted with a wonderfully wicked grin. “But I can’t do anything about it. My life is in your hands.” Then the banked fire in his vivid blue eyes leaped to flame. “What would you do with me if I put myself entirely in your hands? And what would you have me do to you, Eliza?”
At once the most erotic visions crept into her mind. Them together upon the fore deck of the
Chameleon,
near the figurehead of the woman and the serpent. Them naked and lying upon a nest of fallen sails and riggings. The two of them tangled in the ropes. Him tangled; her tangled.
Embarrassed color stained her throat and cheeks, and she averted her eyes. How could she even imagine such a thing? She could not meet the intensity of his eyes. Then, as she stared elsewhere—anywhere—it gradually dawned on her that they were in his grand bedchamber. In
his
huge bed.
As if a chill wind had suddenly blown over her, a shiver ran up her back.
“Well?” he persisted. He smoothed an errant curl back from her cheek, then wound it around his finger and gently tugged. “What would you ask of me, my sweet mermaid?”
She turned her head, but there was no teasing in her tone now, and the color had drained from her face. “How did we get here in your bedchamber?”
His expression stayed determinedly pleasant. “I brought you.”
“When?”
His knuckles slid up and down along her jawline. “I think it was after you made love to me that last time.” He smiled down at her. “Does it really matter when?” His head lowered, as if he meant to kiss her, but she turned her face away.
“It matters to me.” She pushed at him, then scrambled out of the bed when he let out an exasperated breath and obligingly rolled away. When she realized she was naked, however, and that none of her clothes were in the room, she began to panic. She grabbed at the first thing she saw—his jacket—and though she would have preferred anything else, she donned it as fast as she could. Then, wrapping the loose lapels across her chest, she faced him.
He lay on his back, propped up on the pillows. But he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he faced the ceiling with one arm flung across his eyes. Was he so disinterested in her feelings as all that? Eliza’s fury magnified with this new hurt.
“You knew how I felt about this.”
“But there’s no need—”
“I didn’t want Aubrey to see us—” She broke off, angry and humiliated.
“For Christ’s sake, Eliza. The boy’s going to see a whole lot worse than the two of us before he grows up.”
But that callous remark only raised her ire to a new pitch. His words might be true in the larger sense, but Aubrey was still a child and he was her responsibility.
“No matter my reasons, you knew I didn’t want to share this room with you,” she accused him once more.
He let out a sigh. “I thought last night might have changed your mind.”
“Oh really? Now who’s behaving like a … like a … a whore?” she sputtered. When he moved his arm and glared at her she glared right back. “Isn’t that what whores do, use their bodies to get for themselves what they can’t get any other way?”
“Damnit, this is hardly the same thing, and you know it!” He flung the sheet back and stood up, as naked as a man could be—and more beautiful than he should be, she noticed, though unwillingly. “You’re too damned obsessed with whores. First you’re one, then I am. Son of a bitch, why can’t you just see things the way they really are? We both wanted what happened last night. And we’ll both want it again tonight!”
She stared at him a long, awful moment. There was a certain truth to what he said, but that was not the point. She steeled herself. “I wonder if your father used that same argument with your mother.”
She knew at once that she’d struck a nerve, for his face darkened in fury. “Leave them the hell out of this.” He bit the words out.
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
He let out a vile oath, but Eliza could not rejoice in her little victory. A wave of utter sorrow struck her then, and she felt suddenly exhausted. This was all so hopeless.
She lifted a hand toward him, then let it fall to her side. “I won’t share this chamber with you, Cyprian. I won’t. And nothing you do or say is going to change that—”
“Do you want me to marry you?” he snapped. “Is that it?”
When she only stared at him, struck speechless by his unexpected words, he went on. “If I marry you, will you share this bedroom with me then? Because I warn you, woman, I don’t hold with the custom of separate suites for a husband and wife.”
If she were married to him she’d never want to sleep anywhere but in his arms. But … but what about love? What about all the other emotions that a marrying couple should share? She’d had a half-hearted betrothal once before. Though Cyprian’s reasons for making this frustrated offer of marriage were nothing like Michael’s,
they were just as disappointing. Even more so. She loved Cyprian, she admitted with a sinking heart. But he only desired her.
“I … I’m not sure that marriage is a very good idea,” she muttered, tightening her arms across her chest. Then she turned and fled toward the door. Her heart was shattering and she needed desperately to be alone.
But Cyprian was too fast. He caught her and wheeled her around to face him. “You don’t think it’s a good idea?” he repeated. “Why?”
Eliza lifted her chin and pressed her lips together, trying hard to stop their trembling. Why couldn’t he ask her to marry him as if he really wanted her to? Outside a bird called in high-pitched tones. But in the stone-walled house all was silence.
“My … my father would never allow it.”
“To hell with your father. This is between you and me.”
Because you don’t love me!
she wanted to cry. But instead she said the only thing she could think of. “We have nothing in common.”
His dark brows arched. “We have sex,” he drawled out sarcastically. His hand jerked his jacket down on one side, baring her shoulder and the upper swell of one breast to his eyes. “We have hot, steamy sex.”
“That’s not enough!” she cried.
“Hell’s bells!” He shoved her away from him. “I must have been crazy to think a spoiled little girl like you—” He broke off and turned, then snatched up his breeches and pulled them on, one angry jerk at a time. When they were on he fixed her with a piercing glare. “You’ll make the perfect wife for this fiancé of yours. You’ll wear the right clothes, know the right people, give the right sort of parties. And in between times, while he makes his long-winded speeches in the House of Lords,
you and your latest lover can fuck each other’s brains out.”
She winced, not at the profanity, but at the gruesome picture he painted of society life. “No, I would never—”
“Oh, yes, you will. The first time you catch your esteemed Michael with his pants down in one of your friend’s beds, you’ll do it, all right.”
“Not everyone is like that!” she cried. “Just because your father—”
“My father.” He let out a chilling laugh and shook his head. “My father is the perfect example. He’s living proof that everything I’ve said is true. Even you can’t deny that.”
“He’s just one man.”
“One man who happens to be your uncle.”
“My uncle—” Eliza stared at Cyprian as she struggled to comprehend what he implied.
My uncle?
Slowly she became aware that her heart was pounding faster than it should. Her mouth had gone dry and she licked her lips to moisten them. Cyprian turned away and reached for his shirt, as if he wished all at once that he hadn’t revealed that. But he had, and now, as Eliza watched him gather up his boots, she felt a growing horror. Cyprian was Uncle Lloyd’s son? But if that were true, then that made Aubrey his … his half brother!
“But, I don’t understand. You’ve … you’ve stolen your own brother?”
He raised his head and stared at her with a face wiped clean of any emotion. Neither anger, nor pain, nor even lust showed in his night-blue eyes and carefully controlled features. “My half brother. I suppose that makes us cousins.”
“Only by marriage,” she answered automatically. “But Aubrey—”
“He’s my half brother and I’ll do a damned sight better job raising him than Haberton ever will.”
“But he’s a Haberton too. And so are you,” she added, still stunned by his news.
His eyes narrowed. “I’ll never be a Haberton,” he swore.
“But you
are
.” She moved toward him as it all began to make sense. But he stopped her with his next words.
“Would that make me acceptable in your eyes, Eliza? If I carried the Haberton name and held the same place in your precious society that Aubrey is supposed to inherit, you’d jump at the chance to marry me, wouldn’t you?”
“That has nothing to do with anything,” she began, but he cut her off with a cynical snort.
“Doesn’t it?” His eyes raked her with insulting thoroughness, making her uncomfortably aware of her near naked state. She clutched his coat all the tighter about her and tried to gather her scattered wits.
“Cyprian, you have to let Aubrey go,” she said, trying to refocus on the main issue again.
“No.”
“But what’s the point of this now?”
“The point, my dear Eliza, has not changed in the least. Your uncle—my bastard father—has lost his most prized possession. His one male heir.”
Eliza didn’t quite believe that, however. She pinned him with her eyes. “But things have changed, haven’t they? You never expected to like Aubrey, did you? You told me once that you would make Aubrey into the same sort of monster that Haberton made of you. But you can’t do that anymore, can you? You can’t torture your half brother.” She gave him a bitter smile. “You’re not quite the monster you make yourself out to be, Cyprian Dare.”
She saw the hesitation in his dark eyes—or she thought she did. He bent down to put on his boots before she could be sure. When he straightened again, however, he was the commanding captain of the rogue
ship,
Chameleon,
self-assured and devoid of any emotion save for vengeance.
“Would you like me to prove to you again what I’m really like, Eliza? Would you like me to throw you down on that bed, and take you against your will?”
She swallowed hard. “It … it was never against my will,” she whispered, praying she could break his icy control with that soul-baring admission.
But he only gave her a cold smile, edged with bitter triumph. “I told you from the beginning that I like my women willing. If they’re not willing, then I make them willing.”
His words were like an arrow to her heart. Was that what he’d done with her? Was that all it was? Eliza was too confused to be sure. He’d asked her to marry him—but maybe that was only to put an end to her objections about sharing his bedchamber.
Terrified by how he might answer, she nonetheless had to ask. “What … what were your true intentions toward me?”
There was a long awful silence, and she thought he did not mean to answer. She shivered as gooseflesh prickled her arms and her exposed legs. Gone was the warm, exciting lover of the night just past. In his stead towered the man who’d stolen her and Aubrey from their beds. Vengeful. Frightening. Yet still, she knew she loved him.
Finally he spoke, no hint of emotion in his voice. “At first I thought you were a nuisance. Then I decided you’d be a useful messenger.” His eyes moved over her but in a cool sort of appraisal that seemed to measure her value as some commodity. She shivered again. “In the end I decided you’d make an entertaining diversion. Life at sea tends to get boring,” he added as a final thrust to her heart.