“God bloody damn the popish jade to hell,” John muttered. “It would serve her well if they did grab her.'“ He stood up. “No, it's not her safety I'm that concerned about, but I won't have my men teased in that fashion. What the devil ails the bitch? She has her own bit of deck to take the air on.”
John strode forward to what had been his own cabin. He was icily polite, pointing out that if Donna Palacio wished to take the air, she was to confine herself to that portion of the foredeck that had been reserved for her use. She replied that she was bored and lonely, having been deprived of any company save that of the old steward. John agreed with her that the man was hardly a scintillating companion, but pointed out that if she were lonely it was her own choosing, since he had repeatedly invited her to dine with him.
“You?” Donna Maria sniffed, turning her back on him and flouncing across the cabin. “Do you think I place no value at all on my person? It is well known that English sea captains, if such they can be called, would rape their own mothers.”
Stung by this most unjust accusation, John leaped to his own defense.
“You bloody trollop, I haven't laid a finger on you! 'Sblood, if you keep mincing about my ship like a bitch in heat, the men will give you cause to shout rape soon enough. They're not the filth you call them but they are men and they haven't seen a woman in some time. Rape me no rapes, woman. Just stay the hell off my afterdeck!”
“Trollop? Bitch? How dare you, you vile beast!” Her eyes blazing like the Plymouth light, Donna Maria hurled herself across the cabin and struck him full in the face. She was slender, but she was not weak and the blow hurt. Robert bellowed and grabbed her arm, just as she was about to land a twin to the first slap.
“God damn it, are you mad? You've been treated as well as any woman could want. What the hell's the matter with you?”
She struggled in his arms, panting with rage.
“Treated well? You say you are a gentleman, but it's clear you know nothing of how to treat a lady. Dockside whores, yes, but not ladies.”
There was uncomfortably too much truth in what the Donna said, but Captain Fothering had neither the time nor the inclination to remedy his lack of education right then. Sharp, white teeth sunk into his wrist, and he cursed with rage and pain. Trying to throw her from him, he knocked them both off balance and they ended up in a heap on the floor.
The sailors were not the only one's who had been without female company, and as John felt the soft, wriggling body underneath him, he realized just how very long it had been since he had held a woman in his arms. He leaned up on one elbow, taking his full weight off the senora and let her catch her breath. Let her go he would not, until she had calmed down enough for him to feel safe from further physical abuse, and at any rate it was very pleasant to feel her warmth so near to him.
He looked down at her. Her dress had been torn in the fray, and one breast showed quite naked. Her hair had fallen down around her shoulders and her lips were parted as she gasped for breath.
The sight of that full, red-tipped breast, swaying slightly from the force of its own weight sent a hot stab into John's groin. He looked at her face; the parted lips, the half-closed eyes, the thick cloud of madly tumbled ebony. He bent his head and kissed her lips very softly.
The kiss lasted only a moment, but although it ended with a curse and renewed struggling on the part of Donna Maria, Robert was sure that even in that instant, he had been kissed back. He held her still and kissed her again. This time he pressed his mouth down hard, forcing his tongue between the white teeth (this last at the dire risk of his tongue, he well knew). For a moment the senora continued to struggle, then he felt strong, cool fingers grasp his neck, holding his face down on hers.
There was no mistake this time. Donna Maria clung to him, nibbling his tongue, using her own to caress his lips and probe deep into his mouth. John had been without a woman too long for this sort of thing to be taken lightly.
He moved his mouth away from hers and kissed the white neck, tasting the perfume of her loosened hair. He ran his mouth over her throat, her shoulder; kissed the soft, milk-white breast, the large, stiffened nipple.
Donna Maria moaned softly. She was breathing fast, but now it was not rage that caused her breath to catch in her throat.
“Donna Ibanez,” he whispered. “Maria. You are indeed in danger now, of being raped.”
She held him to her, murmuring. Searching, he found the laces of her dress, and standing her on her feet, he pulled it from her. Her underskirts took another moment (damn it, why do women wear so many clothes?) then she stood before him, naked and shaking.
Her breasts were large and heavy, her waist no bigger than his hand-span, her hips and long legs twin columns of moulded ivory. He too, was shaking as he yanked off his clothes. He held her to him, stroking the silken flesh of her back, her buttocks, her thighs. She sobbed softly, rubbing her body close against him.
He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bunk. Laying down beside her, he took her in his arms again. As he kissed her, he felt her teeth bite hard into his bottom lip, drawing blood. He pulled away, furious and bewildered, and saw that she was glaring at him with a pure, malevolent hatred.
“Damn you! Damn you, damn you, damn you! Don't you touch me! I am a decent woman. Pig! Rapist!”
Before he could overcome his astonishment at this new attack, especially after her considerable co-operation in the proceedings up until now, she reached up and pulled her nails the full length of his face. This was too much. John raised his free hand and laid it hard across the side of her lovely face.
“Do that again and I'll knock you senseless. You've been screaming rape ever since you came aboard, and that's what you're going to get.”
It had finally dawned on him that that's exactly what she wanted-what she had wanted all along. It completely absolved her of all responsibility for the act (a lady never fornicates with strangers), while allowing her to enjoy fully the pleasures of same. Her earlier anger at him has been occasioned by his quite unwelcome gallantry; her anger now was caused by the fact that she had had to help, to assist at her own violation. He almost laughed, but as he had just learned his first lesson dealing with ladies, he quickly decided that the second lesson was not to laugh in their beautiful, naked faces when their duplicities were caught out.
The slap had settled her down somewhat, but she still kept her legs tightly twined together. In the light of her recent ardour, John knew damned well that he could get those legs apart by specific means, but he also knew he wouldn't be thanked for it. Accordingly, he grabbed her thigh with one hand and pulled hard, forcing his knee between hers and finally succeeding in spreading them enough for him to roll between them. The performance, with all the attendant contact with the Donna's soft, full body, had roused John to a state of white heat. He was long past the stage of patiently working her up to his own pitch, but if she wasn't ready, she'd just have to suffer.
Lying full on top of her, he pressed his mouth hard on hers. For a moment longer she made a weak attempt at resistance, then John felt the warm, heavy lips part under his, and soft, strong arms went around his back and held him tightly. He reached down and guided his hard, pulsing rod into the opening of her cunt. He groaned aloud as he felt his shaft slide deep into her belly. Too long continence had given him a sore ache that this, and only this, could cure.
He no longer had to question her readiness. Her juices were so heavy that they flowed over his balls, drenching the thick, blond hair that covered his thighs. The hot sheath of muscle tensed and pulled on his cock as he lowered into her and her hips rotated madly under him. Once again John felt those lethal claws, this time digging hard into his buttocks, pressing him ever deeper.
She kissed him avidly, sucking on his lower lip. Her whole body was a symphony of motion, scorching John's chest and belly with the rich femaleness of her flesh. She turned her face into his shoulder, breathing hard and whispering in Spanish.
John buried one hand in the thick, sooty hair and slid the other under her bottom, pulling her up to him. There was a roaring in his ears worse than that from his own guns, and fire, hot and fluid, poured through his thighs. A charge that had been building up for many weeks surged up his shaft into the huge, swollen nob, and in two more strokes he felt it pour out of his body into the throbbing cunt of the Spanish woman. He cried out, deep and loud like a young bull, in an ecstasy of sensation and relief.
Had he but known it, Maria had been celibate for as long, or longer, than he. Not only were the feeble advances of her elderly husband incapable of satisfying her, they were actually so repulsive that she had long ago ceased to allow him his conjugal rights. Twice before she felt herself washed with John's hot gush of burning come, her own body had stiffened and burst in flaring, searing orgasms. Madre de Dios, she had been afraid he'd never take her, and she need him so!
