Bound by the Heart (5 page)

"Yes, Mr. Thorntree has already enlightened us on
your manner of justice, Captain. I hardly think it worthy of boasting."

He walked a few more paces into the cabin. "I
might remind you that you were pulled out of the ocean in the middle of the
night—from shark-infested waters—and allowed to stay on board my ship purely
out of the goodness of my heart. At least ten of the so-called degenerates on
board dove into the water without thinking of the risk to their own
necks." He paused and took a deep breath. "For someone so free and
easy with her insults, you should learn the basic meaning of the word
gratitude."

Summer was not daunted. "For someone so free and
easy with his lectures, you should learn the meaning of the word courtesy.
Common decency, sir, decrees that you convey us to a British port
immediately."

"Not likely, madam."

Summer flushed hotly. "Then if your purpose is to
detain us—"

"Yes?" He arched one black brow.

"If that is your intent, be warned, sir: If any
harm comes to Michael Cambridge, I will not rest until I see you hung as a
pirate and miscreant."

"Assuming you live to see anything at all,"
he countered dryly.

Summer clenched her hands into two fists by her sides.
"How dare you speak to me like this!"

"Have a care I do not dare more, Governess,"
he snapped angrily, and headed back to the doorway. "As to your bath,
unless you have something of interest to barter with other than a sharp tongue,
I suggest you do what the rest of us do: Take a dive off the side in calm
waters."

"Barter!" she cried. "I have nothing to
barter with."

"No?" He stopped with his hand on the jamb
and glanced back. He studied her with a maddeningly contemptuous smirk, giving
each tear in her pantaloons, each pucker and strain in her wrinkled smock a
pointed assessment. "I can think of one or two things offhand that might
interest a desperate man."

She gasped and bent over to snatch the fallen quilt up
off the floor.

"I should have expected nothing better from you,
Captain," she said disdainfully, wrapping the quilt tightly around
herself. "I was told you Americans were
all
desperate little men with few
values and no moral fortitude. I see now the evaluation was, if anything,
charitable."

Wade's eyes narrowed to slits and something very much
like a snarl threatened deep in his throat. "By God, I should have left
you to the sharks."

"I might have preferred their company," she
said succinctly.

Wade stared long and hard at the mutinous set of her
mouth. At the best of times he was not known for possessing an excess of
patience. The fact that it was a woman testing his limits—a paid nanny who
should have known better than to flaunt airs—well, it was enough to make him
smile, almost to laugh. And Summer, white with righteous indignation, badly
misread the tight slant on his lips and gave her tangled blonde hair a haughty
toss of dismissal.

"You may leave me now, Captain. I shall call if I
require any further assistance from you or your lackeys."

The thin veneer of civilization vanished from Wade's
dark eyes. He expelled the breath from his lungs and closed the partially open
door with a bang. She saw him reach up to the bookcase for a brass key. She saw
him twist it in the lock and return it to its perch on the top shelf.

"What do you think you are doing?" she asked
in a low voice.

He strode across the cabin to where she was standing,
and before she could react, curled one arm around her waist, one beneath her
knees, and swept her off her feet. He carried her struggling and shrieking to
the bed and dumped her unceremoniously on top.

Summer scrambled to cover herself and pressed as far
against the wall as she could go.
"What are you doing?"

He grinned slowly and in one smooth motion had his
shirt lifted up and over his head.

"Showing you just how charitable we Americans can
be, Governess."

Summer stared at the sun-baked expanse of his chest,
at the muscles in his arms that flexed as he lowered his hands to the fastening
of his breeches.

"You wouldn't dare," she gasped.

"Wouldn't I? As a pirate and miscreant, pray
tell: what would stop me?"

"You're . . . you're
insane!"
she cried.

Wade laughed and caught her wrists before she could
slash her nails across his face. He twisted both arms behind her back and
trapped them there with one calloused hand, while the other made short work of
what remained of her tattered clothing.

She shrieked and squirmed to break free of his grip.
"No! Damn you . . . no!"

Wade covered her mouth with his, silencing her. The
kiss was long and bruising, allowing her no escape and very little breath with
which to fight him. The hand holding her wrists forced her flat on the bed and,
in the next wild heartbeat, he was stretched out alongside her, his leg thrown
across the top of her thighs to restrain the frantic thrashing.

Summer screamed to no effect. His lips were crushing
her, smothering her every sound; his tongue lashed her like a wet, hot flame,
distracting her, confusing her. She lunged furiously against his weight as she
felt his lower body shifting. She screamed again, wide-eyed and horrified as
she realized his breeches had been loosened and flung aside.

Without the slightest hesitation or apology, Wade took
advantage of another reflexive twist of her slender body to insert a knee
firmly between her thighs. Summer writhed and shrank from the unwanted
intrusion, but even as her body tensed against it, she could feel the startlingly
hard and determined length of him begin to slide forward.

She groaned with disbelief and despair. This was not
supposed to happen. Things like this were not supposed to happen, not to her!
She tried to think of Bennett, of how it should have been, would have been had
they both forgotten themselves that night in the garden, but the reality of
being filled and stretched and molded to accommodate the swollen presence of
Morgan Wade's flesh stripped every other consideration from her mind.

There was a fleeting moment of hesitation on Wade's
part when he met with an unexpected shield of resistance, but his anger carried
him forward, acknowledging her whimper of pain with a sound that was only half
curious, wholly dismissive. And not the least regretful as the action shocked
her lithe young body into clenching even more tightly around him.

Summer gasped . . . and gasped again with the
realization that her mouth was free and had been for several moments. Her
wrists had been released as well, but there was nothing she could do other than
curl her hands into tiny, furious fists. She knew she should scream, or cry
out, or do something—
anything
—to protest the injustice of having had something so
precious stolen away so perfunctorily . . . but who could she appeal to? Wade
was the captain, the governor, the king on board his ship. To him she was a
mere governess, no better than a servant, and therefore fair game for his
absurd little lessons in obedience.

She clawed his shoulders out of rage and frustration
and felt a small measure of satisfaction in hearing him curse. She ground her
teeth and pressed her head back against the linens, her body straining with his
thrusts time after time until she was forced to move with him just to ease the
excruciating tautness. And, just when she thought she could not possibly bear
any more, he threw back his great black mane of hair and parted his lips in a
soundless cry, his body shuddering and convulsing through a series of mighty
spasms.

Then there was only the weight of him collapsing over
her, and the slippery, liquid heat of him draining away the menacing urgency of
his flesh. Summer's senses were still reeling. A strangely disquieting tension
shivered over the surface of her skin and she could swear her blood had thinned
to the consistency of hot oil where it pounded and hummed through her veins.
Her thighs ached where they were wedged apart and her arms were limp in defeat,
her fists resting on the bunched muscles of his shoulders.

He appeared to be in no hurry to move, not even when
he heard the muffled half-sob she could not quite stifle in her throat. After
an agony of waiting, he raised himself slowly onto his elbows and studied her,
the same maddening smirk as before playing across his lips.

Summer lay perfectly still, hoping he could sense the
absolute loathing of him that seeped through her every pore.

"You should have told me you were a virgin,"
he said casually.

"Would it have made a difference?" she
snapped.

Wade's gaze slid down to the luscious, slightly
swollen redness of her lips.

"Probably not. My manners tend to suffer when
I've been too long at sea."

Summer's eyes blazed with sparks of green fire, but
she refused to respond to his arrogant mockery. Her attention focused instead
on where her hands still rested on the darkly tanned shoulders. She jerked them
away as if his flesh had suddenly burst into flame, noticing as she did so, a
trail of fresh blood smearing the hard muscles.

Tears that needed no provocation welled over her
lashes when she saw the damage her nails had inflicted on the injured palms of
her hands. The two partially healed burns now had a row of tiny half-circlets
of blood where the points of her nails had assisted her through her ordeal.

Wade frowned and maneuvered himself free. "What
have you done to yourself? Let me see."

"Leave me alone," she cried softly.
"You have done enough already. Just leave me alone."

He swung his long legs over the side of the bed and
walked to the washstand in the corner, scowling anew when he discovered the
pitcher empty. Seeming not to notice or care that he was naked, Wade unlocked
the door and left the cabin, returning some moments later with fresh water
splashing over the pitcher's brim. He tipped some into the washbasin and came
back to the bed.

"Let me have your hands."

"Go to the devil, Captain Wade; to hell, where
you surely belong."

He glanced up and she saw the quick flicker of anger
give way to amusement. "Pretty language for a governess. And you've more
spirit in you than would be safe for any man to show me."

"Any man would not have to lie here and suffer
the indignity of rape," she countered bitterly.

"True enough. But then, any man who spoke to me
as you did would be dead by now."

"A pity you did not offer me the choice,
sir."

"You place a higher value on your maidenhead than
on your life?" He snorted derisively. "A notion common to your
gender, but one which I could never understand."

"Possibly because you place so little value on
your own gentlemanly code of honour?"

There was enough sarcasm in her voice to sweeten a
month's worth of rum rations, and Wade grinned. "I merely saw a challenge
and accepted it. To a surprisingly satisfactory end, I might add. One that was
not expected. Now, give me your hands."

She snatched them out of his reach. "What do you
mean: not expected!"

Wade sighed. "Madam, you have the pout and
disposition of a child. A spoiled child at that, and I have never found much
pleasure in disciplining children. You have proven to be the exception."

Summer's jaw dropped. "Your arrogance is not to
be believed!"

"Nor is your ignorance. Now give me your hands
before I take them."

Summer glared at him a moment longer before slowly
uncurling her fists and presenting them. The quilt she had hastily gathered
about herself again took an alarming dip over her breasts before she was able
to catch it and pin it beneath her arms, but he was already engrossed in
dabbing her cut palms with the moistened scrap of towel and seemed not to take
notice.

His touch was far gentler than she would have supposed
it to be, and Summer grudgingly found herself watching him from under the sweep
of her lashes. Another thing she realized was that Morgan Wade was not as tall
as she had presumed him to be. He was certainly well above average, but not the
towering giant that had been burned into her mind from the first sighting on
the deck. The tremendous breadth and strength in his chest and arms was real
enough though. He had made her feel crushable. Crushed. And his hands . . .
they looked hard enough and strong enough to smash timber into kindling, yet
they had stroked her flesh like warm velvet gloves.