She closed her eyes, blotting out the sight of his shadowed face, the merciless blue eyes narrowed at her and the mocking twist of his mouth. His hand slipped over her breasts, caressing them beneath the cotton nightgown.
“I don’t want to stop, love. And if you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit that you don’t really want me to stop. This is the one thing we’ve always had between us, this obsession with each other. Christ, I fought it long enough, tried to pretend it didn’t exist, but I was only fooling myself. I want you, Ginny. I always have.”
Half despairing, knowing that she was fighting a losing battle, that her body would override her anger with him, she made no protest when he kissed her, a long consuming kiss that roused her to unwilling passion.
“Damn you,” she said again, but it sounded like an endearment even to her own ears. Steve laughed softly.
“Yes, I’m damned, but so are you. We’re both damned. It’s our natures. Open your eyes, Ginny. Look at me. Yes, like that. I want to watch you while I make love to you….”
Her gown was gone suddenly, pulled away to land in a white drift on the floor. Steve sat back, legs bent under him, his eyes half-narrowed with desire as he stared down at her. His voice was hoarse. “God, you’re so beautiful—so goddamn beautiful.”
“Steve…” Feeling choked by emotion, she lay still as he touched her, his hands dark against her palely gleaming body, caressing her small breasts, the flat of her belly and then the red-gold curls at the juncture of her thighs. For a moment he was a stranger again, the man who had taken her virginity so long ago, the same man who had abducted her, tormented her, loved her with such violent intensity for nine long years. The breath caught in her throat painfully and her chest rose as she dragged in air.
She wanted to protest, to demand answers to the questions plaguing her, but suddenly his tongue was in her mouth, seeking, ravaging her senses and driving out every thought but the rising need to be one with him. Relentless hands on her body, cleverly finding her secrets, touched her intimately, sliding inside her to thrust with lingering strokes that summoned gasps. Then he pressed her thighs apart and pulled her legs over his shoulders while she lay in helpless surrender and need….
Looming over her, his face shadowed, fickle light from the lamp casting a subdued gleam on his shoulders and highlighting him against the gloom beyond, he held her with his hands on her breasts, palms shaping them, his lean fingers teasing her rigid nipples into hard knots. When she was gasping, writhing under his touch, he bent, his tongue searing into her like a hot iron.
Ginny cried out, her hips arching, and she found her hands tangled in his dark hair, holding his head as she moaned and shook helplessly. Release burst in trailing, fiery streamers, and he slid his body upward to cover her with his own as she collapsed in a shuddering heap.
“Hold me, Ginny.”
Obeying, feeling heavy, as if her body were weighted with lead, she lifted her arms to wind them around his neck. He entered her then, with a swift, savage thrust, his body pounding into her with relentless urgency until she began to respond, the fire reigniting, banishing lethargy and shadows, banishing everything but Steve.
It’s always like this…I’m lost when he touches me….
11
Sleepy drifts of fog slipped over the wet cobblestones leading down to the docks, muffling the sounds of hooves and wheels. Ginny stood in the shelter of their carriage in the dark hours before sunrise. Her face was pale in the murky light, eyes green and sleepy, lashes casting a faint shadow on her cheeks as the fitful glow of a lantern swept over her. Misty fog dampened the folds of her hooded cloak and skirts so that they clung to her legs, outlining the curve of hip and thigh. Tendrils of copper hair had escaped from her hood and clung wetly to her cheek.
Even in the dim light, her mouth looked bruised, still passion-swollen. Steve looked away from her, from the swift, questioning glance she flung him. Damn Bishop anyway. It always ended like this; Ginny was right.
“Amigo,” Paco said, coming up behind him, “we can board as soon as you’re ready.”
Familiar shipboard sounds closed in around them in the soupy light of glass lanterns. Ginny hadn’t said a word to Steve since they’d left the leased house on Royal Street. He’d done his best to exhaust her, and seemed to have succeeded.
A crewman escorted Ginny to their cabin, and she didn’t even glance back at Steve as she followed, disappearing down the narrow hatchway with a silence that left him both relieved and suspicious. It wasn’t like her to be so quietly accepting. Anger was expected, temper flashing in her eyes as she railed at him, not this unnatural silence.
“She has changed, amigo.” Paco said aloud what Steve was thinking. He gave him a swift glance.
“Maybe. Or maybe she’s just changed tactics. I’m still not sure what her motives are, or if she’ll end up being more trouble than help.”
“Bishop may think she’ll be useful, but I never have liked involving women. They’re too unpredictable, and your wife is one of the most unpredictable females I’ve ever met. I’ve never forgotten that day in Mexico when she drew her knife on Concepciόn, or how well she could handle the weapon.”
Steve grinned. “I’ve always wondered—what were you doing when Ginny and Concepciόn were fighting? Why didn’t you take the knife away?”
Shuddering, Paco shook his head. “I have a strong sense of self-preservation that does not permit me to be fool enough to try to take a knife away from
