She pushed into his hand, but Cullen lowered his head and replaced his fingers with his tongue, wetting the thin fabric over her breast. When she bucked against him in pleasure, he maneuvered their bodies into a tight, curled position on the narrow bunk.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “It’s the wrong…”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “I’m not going to hurt you, Willa. I’m not going to do anything that would get you with child. You have to trust me.”
When she stiffened and tried to pull away, he stole another soft kiss and waited, willing his body to wait, like the fox who waits for the hen house to quiet down after dark.
The air below decks was close with all the sailors and their “guests” in the midst of a raucous party. At least that was what Willa blamed for the dizzy spin of her head. And then she realized she’d stopped breathing. She took a deep, clarifying breath and regained her bearings.
The narrow bunk that barely accommodated one sleeping adult now sheltered both her and Cullen, pressed together, nearly naked, in a hot, clammy heap.
The tender skin beneath her right ear burned from the last, lingering kiss Cullen had claimed. He’d asked her to trust him. And he’d promised not to get her with child. However, she feared the hard, probing part of his body now pressed against her bottom had other ideas.
His hand had stealthily lifted her nightdress just to the juncture of her knee where he now lightly massaged the skin behind the joint. Each gentle sweep of his fingers climbed a tiny bit higher on the back of her thigh. After what seemed a blistering eternity, he headed higher, this time on the inside of her thighs.
She let out a long sigh when he abandoned her upper legs and returned to what she’d hoped he would do. He once again suckled at her breasts beneath the thin muslin. Only this time he applied harder pressure which shot straight to her center. She forgot about her carefully constructed calendar of courses and curled into him, levering one long leg over his bare hip.
In one swift rustle, he pulled her nightdress over her head and tossed it to the cabin deck.
When she drew back as if scalded, Cullen claimed her mouth in a long kiss and explored the inside of her mouth with his tongue. His clever hands returned to her breasts which seemed to have taken on lives of their own, begging shamelessly for attention.
He levered his body over hers and moved her legs apart to accommodate him on the bunk. He moved lower, and just when she thought he’d betrayed her and would enter her body in spite of his promises, he made a quarter turn and plied the entrance to her mons with his thumb. When she jerked at his touch, he stopped and returned his attention to her breasts, suckling one at a time with soft caresses to the other.
At the same time, his thumb resumed circling slowly and gently at the small nub she’d discovered long ago as a center of pleasure for herself. Only now, his insistent, light pressure stoked an unfamiliar warmth that spread to her belly. This man was a menace to her self-control.
The glow of the rowdy party in the middle deck shone down the hatchway and imbued a faint light through the canvas walls of their cabin. She could see the blanket still hanging between their two single bunks.
Where was the level-headed Dr. MacCloud who had assured her a woolen coverlet thrown across a rope would be enough to keep them safe from temptation? That was her last rational thought before she fell apart in his arms with a moan when one long finger slid into her, and then two in wetness she was sure could not be coming from her own body.
Cullen would never understand women in general. Willa in particular was an enigma within a maze of unanswered questions. As a man and master of his own world, as most of his friends believed, he didn’t have to understand Willa. She was his, his to love and protect.
But Willa was not like a medical book he could categorize and shelve. Her resistance to being unceremoniously saddled with a husband, her resistance to being returned to her rightful place as a young woman, her resistance to conceiving a child - all of that he could understand.
But the woman he now held on his lap sobbed like she’d been deserted and betrayed, not like she’d been carefully pleasured for the last hour and a half. Unlike another part of his body which throbbed accusingly at the bare bottom of the sobbing woman. He wanted to continue to comfort Willa, but if he did not assuage his coarser self, there would be an unfortunate accident.
He planted a warm kiss on Willa’s tear-streamed face before quickly moving back to the safer side of the blanket. After attending to his own needs, alone and in the dark, he moved to their shared basin of water. He wet a flannel cloth and took it to Willa before returning to his side of the marital battlefield.
He crooked one arm to prop up the back of his head and stared into the darkness above his bunk. His mind darted from one inconsequential thought to another. Did they have enough packets of medicine to keep up with the demand for treatment of the pox during the long passage to and from St. Helena? Why did the
