“You wished something?” he inquired.
He spoke in that tone of lazy amusement that she found so irritating. Abby followed the direction of his gaze and saw that her hand was outstretched toward him as if to initiate the very caress she had been daydreaming of. A tide of scarlet swept into her cheeks. She sought to counteract the truth by improvising quite cleverly.
“A piece of fruit,” she said hurriedly, turning her attention to the assortment he had provided.
His disbelieving laugh sent a most intriguing sensation chasing down her spine, but he obediently held out an orange, its peel already removed, its juicy sections laid open on his palm.
Abby took only one section and carefully bit into it. The sweet juice ran down her fingers. Riley’s gaze went from the orange in his hand to her mouth and then to her fingers. There was something in that look that set off a riot of sensations inside her and turned the game more provocative yet. She had never imagined that the simple act of eating could prove so sensuous.
She looked back into Riley’s eyes, searching for evidence that he was as shaken as she by this strange allure. Their gazes caught and held. Convinced by what she saw, Abby took another section of orange.
Slowly, ever so slowly, fully aware of Riley’s blazing eyes, she delicately bit into that piece and then another, allowing the juice to gather on her hands until they were sticky with it.
Her gaze still captured by his, her confidence strengthened by the catch she heard in his breath, she touched her tongue to one finger, savoring the sweet juice as she savored his rapt attention. At his harsh, indrawn breath, she drew the finger into her mouth, licking it clean, wondering at the wild trembling she felt deep inside.
As inexperienced as she was in such matters, she could almost anticipate the eventual outcome of this taunting game she played. Her entire body quivered at the thought of it.
True to her imaginings, when she was finally through, Riley took her hand and touched his tongue to her palm. That most intimate, unexpected contact sent shivers of delight dancing through her.
Then mimicking her own actions, he carefully drew each finger into his mouth, clearly savoring the last lingering taste of the orange and the daring intimacy. Abby’s own senses reeled from the wickedness of it.
He gazed at her, his own eyes hooded. “Did you enjoy...” He hesitated for just a moment, long enough to allow her imagination to run wild, before concluding, “Did you enjoy the orange, my lady?”
“It was most—” she, too, hesitated “—satisfying.”
“Odd, that is not how I found it at all. I would have said stimulating.” His hot gaze raked over her. “But it has left me feeling...unfulfilled.”
Abby’s blood had turned to fire in her veins, and with it came an outrageous new level of daring. “Then perhaps you should have your own orange, Captain Walker,” she suggested mildly.
He smiled ruefully. “That is not at all what I would taste, if given the choice, but for now I can see from the willful set of your delightful chin that it will have to do. Will you feed it to me?”
“You cannot manage on your own?” she asked in a voice that was irritatingly breathless.
“I could, of course,” he agreed. “But knowing that the orange came from your hands would make the experience more pleasurable, I am sure.” He held out another whole, peeled orange. “Please, my lady.”
With a mixture of anticipation and reluctance, Abby took the fruit and held out a section. Expecting him to claim it with his fingers, she was surprised when he took it in his mouth, his lips grazing her fingers again in the process. Those same disturbing, fascinating sensations curled deep inside her, and with each piece of fruit he accepted, he drew her fingers more deeply into his mouth. The sensations turned darker and more devastating until Abby was trembling with a mysterious need she couldn’t explain.
She knew she should have been shocked, that she should have protested. She recognized that she was playing with a fire that could rage out of control at any moment, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. There was an inevitability to what was happening, as if these flirtatious caresses were leading to something she had yearned for her whole life.
Oddly, there seemed nothing strange about finding that this stranger was the one who aroused such heart-stopping sensations, either. While they had met under the most unlikely circumstances, she was quite sure that they were soul mates. That recognition was something that had come to her in an instant. It was proof that no amount of time could make the wrong person right, while the right man was recognizable in no time at all.
“Lady Abigail?”
“Yes, Captain Walker.”
“I have a very great yearning to kiss you,” he said quite matter-of-factly, though his gaze was anything but calm.
Her pulse ricocheted wildly. “Is that so? What is stopping you?”
“The conviction that one kiss would never be enough.”
“I must admit that I, too, feel it would be difficult to stop with a single kiss.” She sighed, then brightened. She would not let this chance die so easily. “We could experiment and see for certain.”
He regarded her intently. “And what if we are correct? What then?”
Heady with her newly awakened feminine power, she said boldly, “You are a gentleman, is that not true?”
He laughed at the suggestion, the sound echoing off the walls of the small cabin. “I am a pirate, my lady. No one would mistake me for a gentleman.”
“But you saved me from Higgins,” she protested.
“Perhaps it
