Elizabeth Grayson (30 page)

While she considered what he’d said, Chase stripped off his shirt and boots, made short work of his trousers and underdrawers. He hoisted himself into the captain’s berth and pulled the sheet up over him. Once he had, he turned to see if Annie was watching.

She’d turned away instead and was pinching open the row of whorled steel buttons at the front of her bodice.

“You need any help?” he asked her.

Ann glanced at him, flushed when she realized he was teasing—and naked—then turned away.

Once she’d opened the very last button, she hesitated. Then, with her back still to him, she eased the closefitting jacket down her arms.

All Chase could do was stare at that pale expanse of nape, the fragile symmetry of her shoulders, at the sweep of her spine and the row of laces that strung the edges of her corset together. When he had her within his reach, he was going to tear that corset away, and graze every inch of that warm, ivory flesh with kisses.

But then Ann turned to him, still mostly dressed, and he couldn’t think of anything else to do but shift deeper into the berth and extend his arm in invitation.

“I’m lonely up here,” he whispered.

Ann hesitated, nodded, and stepped out of her shoes.

“It’ll be all right, Annie,” he whispered as she stretched out beside him.

“I know it will.”

Her absolute trust reminded him just how patient he needed to be with her, how gentle. How hard it was going to be to wait when he was hard and heavy with his need for her already.

Still, he gave her time to settle in before he reached across and teased one of the hairpins from her hair. She wasn’t fast enough to push it back in place, and he stole another.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do this?” he murmured as he drew more of the pins from her hair. “How long I’ve wanted your hair loose around your shoulders?”

Ann laughed and gave her head a quick little shake that sent her tightly wound chignon unfurling down her back.

Chase combed the tangle back from her face then savored the cool, silky slide of those honey-brown strands against his skin. He wrapped a ribbon of tresses around his palm and wound her closer.

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Annie, or how long I’ve wanted to be with you?” He bent his head and kissed her slowly, relishing the fullness and the texture of her mouth.

She kissed him back, the brush of her lips was hesitant at first, soft and light. But as her courage grew, her kisses became an exploration of his mouth—and his intentions. Of his desires—and her own. Then seeming satisfied with what she’d discovered, Ann nestled closer.

The friction of mouths and bodies tangled together seemed to kindle a fierce, hungry need in both of them. Their hands strayed, lingering and possessing. Their mouths merged; their kisses gathered intensity. Pressed chest to chest and thigh to thigh, heat spiraled up between them.

“Oh, Annie,” Chase murmured against her lips. “I’ve watched you all these months, watched you the way a man watches the moon in the water. He’s enchanted by its radiance, mesmerized by its beauty.” He trailed trembling fingers down her back. “He longs to reach out and touch the moon, but he’s afraid.

“He knows that something so wondrous can’t be real. He knows that if he tries to catch the moon in his two hands, he’ll ruin everything.”

“Oh, Chase.”

“That if he tries to claim it as his own, he’ll destroy everything that’s beautiful in his life. Everything he cherishes.”

He recognized the edge of longing in his words, but he wasn’t sorry he’d spoken. This woman was his wife. He loved her beyond all else, and now that she was here with him, he had to tell her what she meant to him.

In the half-light Ann’s eyes shimmered with tears. She raised her hand and brushed his lips with her fingertips. She contoured her palm to the curve of his cheek.

“Oh, Chase.” He could hear her voice waver. “I don’t want to be the moon in the water anymore. I want you to touch me and hold me. I want you to make love to me.”

“Annie, are you sure?”

As if to show him how she felt, she clasped his hand in hers and pressed it into the hollow above her heart. “I want to be your wife tonight. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure.”

He leaned over her and kissed her, tasting the salty tang of tears at the corner of her eye, the downy-soft skin at the crest of her cheek, the delicate crease at the corner of her mouth. He nibbled along her jaw. He licked her ear and smiled as she squirmed against him.

Holding back his baser urges, Chase fluttered kisses along the length of her throat. He laved the delicate half-moon hollow at its base, sketched a slow, moist line down her chest with the tip of his tongue. He paused to loosen the satin string at the neck of her chemise and breathed sultry heat across her breasts.

She was so lovely draped across his arm, her chin tilted to grant him access, her damp, rosy lips parted in wonder. “I didn’t think you could make me feel—like this.”

“Like what?” he asked, teasing her again.

“So warm,” she confessed, “yet like I’m shivering inside.”

He knew just how that felt, and his blood surged with wanting her. “Annie,” he promised. “There are so many things I want to show you.”

He teased open the ribbon at the neckline of her chemise and brushed the tissue-thin lawn aside. The full bloom of her femininity spilled into his palm. Her flesh was lush and warm, the nipple ripe and puckered from Christina nursing. He lowered his head and circled the wide, dusky-pink areola with his tongue.

Ann arched against him. She tangled her fingers in his hair and offered up even more of herself.

He took what she gave him, yet yearned for so much more. He wanted her willing and unencumbered beneath his hands. He wanted to kiss every inch of her, to clasp the fullness of her hips and buttocks in his hands. He wanted to draw her against him, claim her as his bride, and initiate her to the pleasures marriage could afford both of them.

He made more promises as he reached for the hooks at the back of her skirt and pinched them free, as he loosened the tapes at the waist of her petticoats, as he eased her skirts and petticoats away. It took some tugging, some whispered consultations, and a good deal of cooperation to loosen the laces on her corset and draw the garment over her head. When she was free of it, he teased her lawn drawers down her hips.

But when he reached to lift the hem of her chemise, Ann grabbed his hands. “Please,” she implored him. “Please!”

“It’s all right, Annie. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”

He smoothed his hands the length of her back, molded her to him as if he were sculpting clay. He loved the sweet solidity of her against him, the faint lavender tang that clung to her skin, and the silken warmth of her throat.

As they lay together, Ann touched him, too. She spread her small, cool hand against his breastbone, and he wondered if she could feel the jarring of his heart. She scuffed the hair on his chest with her fingertips, then followed the flow of it down his ribs, down the midline of his belly to where the bedsheet blocked her way.

His erection rose hard and full beneath it as he shifted toward her, courting her with soul-deep kisses, with murmured endearments, and gliding caresses. He eased closer, and when he sensed the desire well up between them, he whispered her name and rolled over her.

Panic shrilled along Ann’s nerves. The world went white
around her. The smell of camphor burned in her nostrils.

Ann struck out blindly, frenzied, flailing, kicking, trying to buck off the man restraining her. She wouldn’t be crushed and manhandled, held down and violated ever again. She clawed at the arm that clamped around her waist, at the man who bound her to him.

Abruptly he rolled onto his back, dragging her with him.

Ann sprawled over him trembling, coming back to herself one sense at a time. She recognized Chase’s voice calling her name, smelled his woodsmoke scent surrounding her, felt his callused hands stroking the length of her back.

“Easy, Annie,” he consoled. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Ann’s memory of her night with Boothe was still too vivid, too close. For a moment it had blotted out everything else.

“Don’t you know I’d never hurt you....”

... the way he hurt you. Ann knew Chase hadn’t spoken the words, but she heard them in her head as if he had. He didn’t know
—couldn’t know—
what had happened to her. Still, he seemed to understand how much she needed to be calmed and comforted.

“Annie, you’ll always be safe with me.”

Ann willed the fear away, let the beating of his heart against her own, soothe her. She was safe to stretch along the length of him, safe to press her lips to his, safe to let him enfold her and kiss her back.

As their mouths brushed and their bodies tangled close, a faint, familiar humming tuned up in her. As they kissed it intensified, becoming an insistent mumble of awareness, a slowly rising timbre that set her nerves to trembling. It seemed to vibrate the length of her spine, reawakened a deep, rich yearning in her. It was what she’d felt that night at the point—the night she’d turned away from Chase because she was afraid.

Now she refused to turn away. She felt sure of herself and brave enough to chance whatever came.

Chase must have sensed that boldness because he lifted his hips against her. As his arousal nestled between her legs, pressed hard and hot against her mound, the humming in her became a chorus. A wave of sensation ruffled the surface of her skin. Her breath caught in her throat; her heart fluttered. The heat in her belly seeped down into her loins.

Something powerful and female awoke in her, something that was hungry and atavistic and soul-deep. She
wanted
him.

Ann tipped back on her knees and straddled his hips. She rose above him, glorying in what she’d discovered within herself.

“I want you.” She spoke the words with joy and awe. A brazen thrill swept through her. “I want you!”

Chase looked up at her, his heart in his eyes. “I want you, too, Annie.”

He breached the hem of her chemise, and beneath the drape of the lacy undergarment he slid his hands up over her. He grazed her thighs and hips, cupped her breasts and feathered her nipples with his fingertips.

He engendered a rich and powerful voluptuousness in her.

He stroked from the arch of her ribs to the small of her back, rode the swell of her buttocks to the inner curve of her thighs. He caressed the nest of curls at the apex of her legs—then began to stroke more deeply. He opened that soft, mysterious part of her with the pads of his thumbs, as if it were the petals of some rare and exotic flower.

Ann closed her eyes and sank into the sensations. He sought her tiny, tender places, her secret, sensitive places. Her suddenly wet and wanting places. She seemed to be melting inside, going malleable and damp with something she was beginning to recognize as desire.

“What are you doing to me?” she murmured, startled by the slurred throaty sound of her own voice.

“I’m making love to you, Annie,” he whispered. “Didn’t I tell you it would be wonderful?”

Before she could think how to answer, he touched her in a way that sent shivers bursting the length of her back. Her head went light and the very core of her flesh constricted, mingling the intensity of longing with the incipient promise of pleasure.

“That’s only a taste of what’s to come, Annie,” he promised her. “Will you let me show you all of it?”

Ann could do no more than nod, do no more than shift her weight as he pulled away the sheet that had separated him from her. She became acutely aware of the sinuous warmth of him along the inside of her legs, of how big and hard his manhood was pressing against her.

How easy it would be for him to take her if he wanted her. Instead he hesitated, offering her a choice.

“Annie, are you sure?”

“Yes,” she answered on a sob. “Yes, I want you.”

They brushed intimate flesh to intimate flesh, and when he clasped the flare of her hips and eased her over him, Ann was ready.

As he penetrated her feminine core, she waited for the pain to come. But there was only a fullness, a rightness, a breathless sense of completeness. Never in her life had Ann experienced a connection so deep, a bond so profound.

Ann quaked in awe at being one with him, and now that she was, his kisses seemed more intense. His caress left a lingering afterglow. The endearments he whispered into her mouth set her head to spinning.

Never had she felt more deeply, more purely.

With the brush of his hands against her skin, with the lift of her hips against him, they wove yearning into wanting, tenderness into need. They caught a slow, sinuous meter that seemed to resonate in each of them; a graceful sequence of movements that made the delight Ann had felt at being one with him more ardent, more intense.

“I’ve imagined making love to you just like this a thousand times,” Chase whispered, his voice feverish with desire.

Ann’s eyes drifted closed and she lost herself in wonder. Only Chase could touch her like this, mind and heart, soul and body. Only Chase could make her feel so safe, so beautiful, so utterly cherished. Only Chase could draw her from desire to desperation, from fervor to frenzy.

Their harsh breathing tore the quiet of the night. Their whispered endearments mingled with their gasps of pleasure. Their need for each other grew and grew.

“Oh, Annie,” Chase cried out, and the sound of her name in his mouth seemed to call her home.

Ann came apart in his arms. Delight condensed inside her. It burst at the base of her belly and spun along her nerves in a spangle of shivers. It rose in her, awakening a kind of incandescent freedom, a kind of shattering elation, a kind of intemperate joy that she had never imagined she could feel.

Chase cried out her name as he reached his peak and they gave themselves over to the wild, fierce splendor of fulfillment.

When Ann came to herself a good while later, she was spilled across Chase’s chest, boneless and spent. She felt his hands move with almost unbearable tenderness to smooth her tumbled hair, and she reveled in the serenity and joy between them.