her hands into his hair. “Of course it is you.” She kissed him, but the need was too much, too painfully good in its intensity. She jerked her hips to him, his fingers a sweet agony in her. “Jin, take me now. Now. I cannot bear it any longer.”
“You will bear it.”
“
“You will not only bear it,” he said huskily, then finally-
She did not ask for more.
She begged.
She pleaded.
Upon an astounded, needing sob she cried for more. For she had never known this. She had never known any of that which he so beautifully gave her body. Yet each time he brought her to the edge, each time she thought he would give her what she craved, he did deny her. With his tongue hot and soft and devastatingly good he made her wild, with his fingers plunging inside her he made her helpless, until the pleasure was so great and continuous that only one wish tumbled to her lips.
“
That seemed to decide the matter.
She reached for him and he came to her, then inside her in one smooth thrust, surrounding her with his body and filling her with his hard heat. She choked back the joy of the pleasure, wrapping her arms about his shoulders. They were joined, finally, fully, and completely motionless save their breaths pressing her breasts against his chest.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, kissed her brow, her cheek, her throat. His hand trailed along her waist, circled a taut nipple, making her gasp and murmur his name and shift against him to feel him more, to revel in his presence in her.
Then, slowly, he moved in her, and he took what gift of pleasure she was able to give him, which as it happened was a great deal of pleasure. For, perhaps predictably (if either of them had paused to waste time predicting), their lovemaking did not remain languorous more than a moment. She drew him in, he sank into her, and they proceeded to prove quite definitively that it did not require a burning cane field, a frantic horseback ride, cannon fire, or even a staircase to inspire them to mate with the urgency of animals and the ecstasy of gods. The bed creaked furiously, she made sounds she had never before heard, he caused her previous gyrations beneath him to seem tame, and when it was over she felt fantastically sated and thoroughly battered. Additionally, four neat pink stripes were rising in welts across each of his shoulders.
“I have wounded you,” she gasped, struggling to fill her lungs.
“You have. Witch.” He seemed to be unsatisfied with the quantity of kissing that had already gone on, and now leaned down to press his mouth to hers again. But the caress of his perfect lips was nearly too much, the sweetly dissipating pleasure within her tender and unstable. Perhaps his excessive sensual teasing had overstimulated her exhausted flesh. But now with the leisure to feel his entire body against hers, again she trembled. Quite fearsomely.
“Your hand is bleeding again.” She stroked her fingers along his arm sleek with muscle. “You will wear a hook after all.”
“It will have been worth it.” He pulled off her and fell onto his back, taking her hand in his. Then for a moment he went very still. He released her hand, leaned over her, and drew a coverlet over her body. Without a word, he settled onto his back again.
She turned onto her side to face him, and curled her knees and arms tight to her. “I am not actually chilled.”
“You are shaking.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“Then sleep.” Lit only by the fading lamplight, his face and body were beautiful, his dark hair tumbled across his brow, black lashes low over ice eyes that could glisten with heat. A spot of crimson spread from the center of the single scrap of cloth on his body.
“I would like to tend to your wounds first.”
“They will keep until later.” His voice sounded quiet and deep, as though he were already descending into slumber.
“Don’t you want me to leave now?”
He did not look at her or even open his eyes. “No.”
She sat up, the covers falling to her lap. “I must dress that wound again.”
With an indolent, thoroughly uncharacteristic motion, he swept his forearm in an arc and laid his bandaged hand beside her, palm up.
“As you wish, harpy.”
Tingling warmth scurried around her belly. He seemed…
Carnal pleasures made men happy. Viola knew this as any woman would who had lived among men her entire adult life. Men were simple creatures, most of them, and when they were satisfied carnally-be it on food or a woman’s body-they were content. Still, as little as she understood Jinan Seton, she knew he was not a simple man. Happiness did not, she thought, come easily to him.
She slid off the bed and went to his luggage, where she found what she expected, fresh bandages and salve. Although earlier when she needed an excuse to touch him she’d taunted him about tending his wound, she knew no shipmaster would actually be that negligent. Certainly not this man. She returned to the bed and unwrapped his hand.
He seemed to sleep through her ministrations, although the wound must pain him; it was deep across, though a clean slice. It would heal well. She rebound it, then laid his hand on the counterpane. Next she dipped all four fingertips into the tiny pot of salve, leaned to his shoulder, and painted a path along the tracks she’d dug with her nails. His skin was taut and damp over firm muscle, and she wanted to linger and breathe in his scent, to continue touching him. Instead she repeated the salve on his other shoulder, then drew away.
The caress of linen bandage and warm skin on her naked behind arrested her.
She swallowed through her constricted throat. “You mustn’t use that hand now.”
“Kiss me.”
“I don’t take or-”
“Kiss me, I pray you, Miss Carlyle?”
She bent and did as requested as his fingers skirted the crease between her legs, then smoothed along her thigh to trail away. When she pulled back, his eyes were still closed, his mouth ever so slightly curved upward.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“For the nursing or the kiss?”
He smiled fully.
She pulled the coverlet over them, closed her eyes, and allowed the stars to lull her to sleep.
Chapter 17
Viola grinned, stretched, flinched from the wonderful soreness all over her body, and finally opened her eyes. Sunlight peeked through the draperies, casting the bedchamber in a hazy morning glow.
She sat bolt upright.
Except for her shift draped across a chair and herself in the bed, the place was empty of everything but furniture. The man with whom she had made passionate love mere hours earlier, who had hired this chamber for himself, might never have been there at all.
Viola sat for a moment quite immobile, considering how among the various foolish things she had done in her life, to have practiced this lack of forethought was perhaps the most foolish of all. Unwisely, she had not assumed that the moment the wager ended he would leave her side, no matter the circumstances.
