Midnight Mistress (29 page)

A tap on the shoulder drew his attention. He turned around and met the unamused gaze of Senhora de Varzim. “No, Signor.
Beijo
.”

Kiss. “But I just did—”

She shook her head.
“Beijo.”
And with that, the whole crowd started pounding on the tables and chanting in unison.
“Beijo. Beijo. Beijo.”

Juliana tapped her toes impatiently against the sand. “Unless you wish to stand here all night, I suggest we get this over with.”

With the whole village conspiring against him, he hadn’t much choice but to play out his role of conciliatory husband. Grimacing, he tilted her chin toward his, intending to give her a perfunctorily ardent buss and leave it at that. Surely he could restrain his passion for her for one little kiss.

Some women’s eyes were the windows of their souls, but for Juliana it was her mouth, and when he brushed her firmly closed lips he tasted all the anger, uncertainty, and pain bound up in her heart. Unable to resist, he brushed them again, savoring the sweetness that was headier than any port wine, aching with the pain that was the foundation of both their souls. The crowd around him had quieted, and he knew that the kiss had satisfied them. He could walk away now without regrets, knowing that he had behaved honorably toward her. He had not defiled her beyond repair. He had not
robbed her of her innocence. He could walk away now. He needed to walk away now.

And the sea would turn to desert before he could willingly leave her. He lowered his mouth for a third time and her lips parted beneath his, and from that instant they were both lost.

She could never remember exactly how she ended up in her bedroom, or exactly what became of Connor’s shirt or her blouse, but it hardly mattered. What she did recall was Connor’s kiss, an endless, savaging caress that turned her knees to water and her blood to fire. She clung to him like a leaf in a whirlpool, spinning faster and faster as she was sucked into the center, driven by his heat, his power, and her own building need.

They fell together into the covers, an awkward move that only increased their desire. He tasted her deeply, lavishly, exploring her most tender recesses and enticing her to do the same. She felt places inside her that she hadn’t even known existed blossom into lush, throbbing life. She buried her face in his hair, breathing in his hot, musky smell. Breathing
him
.

She stroked his back, loving the way he was made, the coiled strength of his muscles, the soft thunder of the groans that he uttered whenever she touched him. He needed her as much as she needed him, and the knowledge filled her with a hunger that grew fiercer with every frantic beat of her heart.

“God, I’ve wanted this,” he growled against the edge of her mouth.

“Me, too,” she said, or tried to. The words seemed lodged somewhere in her throat. She tried to free them, but her effort ended in a gasp as his hand stroked the side of her breast. A bolt of pleasure shot through her, igniting a scorching fire in her center, but even in the midst of her passion a prick of conscience needled her. “Connor, I confess. I … I did plot to seduce you.”

His teeth and tongue savaged the tender lobe of her ear. “You don’t say.”

“Yes, ’tis true,” she admitted, though her shallow breaths made coherent words difficult. “It was calculated, duplicitous, and—oh, yes,” she groaned as his hand covered her breast, and mercilessly kneaded the sensitive bud into a taut peak. Lightning shot through her, turning her inner flame into an aching, hungry beast.

“Please,” she breathed. “This is … not honest. I seduced you most … ah, please, now the other … most dishonorably. Will understand if … God, you feel like heaven … will understand if you want to end this.”

Slowly he lifted his head, and gazed down at her with tender, burning eyes. “The only dishonor is mine, Princess. I’m going to ruin you. And God forgive me, I don’t care.”

She lifted her fingers and gently caressed his scarred cheek. “You could never ruin me. I’m yours. You’re mine.” She ran her nails down the tight, coarse curls of his chest, as if to prove her ownership. “I was made for you.”

She didn’t know if the sound he made was a laugh or a cry. He lifted himself off her, his gaze stark with all the uncertainty and loneliness she’d seen in him on the first day they’d met. “I vowed to protect you. Always. But instead, I’ve torn you from your life, destroying your past and your present, and probably your future. I’ve taken so much from you.” He traced his fingers along the length of her arm, as if he could not prevent himself from touching her, and said in a voice rife with self-loathing. “Now I’m taking your innocence from you, too.”

For months after her father had taken him in, she’d found Connor sitting alone on deck, staring off at the horizon with eyes like open wounds. He fought off everyone else’s help, but when she sat beside him and took his hand, he didn’t pull away. She lost count of the number of hours they’d sat that way, still and silent, two hurting children finding their healing in each other.

Deep down, they were still searching for the healing they could only find in each other.

Connor had not made any promises about the future. She’d asked for none. They might never have more than tonight. She knew she was taking the scraps of the feast, but a starving woman did not ask questions. Tenderly she took his face between her hands.

“Shall I tell you of my future? In a few days I will return to London, to a terrific scandal that will fade as soon as another indiscretion comes along. I will go back to the line, but in time I’ll be sucked back into the world of routs, balls, and the giddy pleasures of the upper class. I’ll fill the hollowness inside with a whirl of activities, until I’m wed to a man I will not love, but who can give me a family and children to fill the emptiness. No, don’t protest—you know it to be true. ’Tis the fate of women of my position, the brood mares for the titled class. I was born to it and I face it as I must. But—” She bit her lip, her voice wavering for the first time since she started. “ ’Tis a terrible cold life, Connor. I need the memory of our love to keep me warm.…”

“Hush,” he said as he brushed away tears she didn’t even know she was crying. He lowered his mouth to her cheek and kissed away her tears one by one. “The past and future are nothing to us. This night is all that matters. This night, when we belong to no one but each other.”

He drew her into his arms. Once again she was caught in the magic, the mystical binding that fused them together like two halves of a single sun. His mouth and hands were everywhere, coaxing and caressing, claiming every part of her as his own. She was warm, hot, burning like, a living flame. He caressed her into a frenzy, stripping away the last of her clothing and the last of her fears. His mouth moved lower, possessing first her breast and then her stomach. Unsated hunger drove groans of passion from her throat, groans he covered with a renewed, ravenous caress. Then he stroked his hand down her body, delving into her throbbing, intimate center as his mouth claimed her animal moans.

“You’re so sweet. So tight. Give yourself to me,” he whispered
urgently. “For this one night, Princess, pretend you’re only mine.”

She wanted to say it was not pretend—that she
was
only his, and always would be. But she was past words. She rode his hand, bucking and writhing in the passion that burned for him, only him. She gave herself up to his caresses, opening herself to him with a joy so rich that she thought she’d die from the beauty of it. And without even a thought of maidenly modesty, she stripped down his breeches and caressed his fullness with the same ruthless tenderness that he’d shown her.

He groaned, gripping her wrists and pinning her wanton hands to the sheets. “Do that again and this will be over before it begins.”

“It will never be over. Not for us. Take what is yours. What’s always been yours.”

They looked into each other’s eyes, hearts revealed without shame or shadows. In a dance as old as Eden, she raised her hips and he moved over her.

“God, you’re small,” he groaned, his voice ragged with need. He entered her just an inch, holding himself in check with iron control. “So innocent. Pure. Have no right—”

“Love gives you the right. I love you, Connor. I love—”

She gasped as he penetrated her, claiming her body as his love had claimed her soul. The quick pain was a small price to pay for the joy of having him inside her. Clinging to his shoulders, she felt a shudder pass through him, and thought what a miracle it was that a world-weary man could find peace in her body. She fell back on the pillows and sighed contentedly, knowing that she’d finally reached the pinnacle of a woman’s fulfillment. “That was wonderful,” she breathed.

His low chuckle rumbled through her like thunder. “Trust me, Princess.
Wonderful
is just beginning.”

He moved inside her, slowly at first, but building in speed with each powerful stroke. He drove into her, sending sheets of white-hot energy crashing through her with the force of a
tidal wave. Her world became a red haze. Her body accepted him again and again, caressing him intimately, firing his passion by drawing him deeper with every thrust. Tenderness was discarded. Gentleness was a memory. She arched wildly beneath him, destroyed and remade with every thrust. The only thing keeping her from breaking apart was the burning intensity of Connor’s ice-and-fire eyes.

They moved together, two bodies and one heart, forged together in their love. She clung to his sweat-sleek body, knowing that this was what she was made for, what they’d been made for. He pushed her to the edge of madness, driving her into the oblivion where nothing existed but her love for him. Then, after he’d watched her fulfillment blaze and die in her eyes, he shattered her again with the power of his own release.

“You are damn lucky,” Connor growled as he toyed with a strand of her wildly disheveled hair. “If I’d had any idea what that body of yours could do, I’d have had you locked away in a convent school, with nuns, and high walls, and large dogs.”

Juliana sighed and snuggled against his chest. “Yes, and you’d have had as much luck at that as you did ordering me not to climb the volcano on that South Sea island. You were always such a bully. But I might have gone to the convent, if”—she peeped up as him, her voice laced with wicked mischief as she added—“if you had kept a key.”

He threw back his head and gave a lusty laugh. God’s teeth, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this content. Cradling Juliana against him, tenderly stroking her hair and laughing with her, pleasured him almost as much as taking her.
Almost
, he thought, closing his eyes as he savored the memory of being inside her. In his vagabond life he’d known dozens of women in countless ports, and had foolishly
believed that he was experienced in love. But nothing had prepared him for what he’d found in her arms.

What had previously been a simple act of physical release became an act of worship and discovery. For the first time in his life he had made love instead of just having sex, the difference as vast as the ocean to a drop of rain. She’d been heaven in his arms, paradise to his soul, so giving, so sweet, so pure … and, if her hand on a strategic part of his anatomy was any indication, she was also one hell of a fast learner.

Gathering his wits, he reluctantly pushed her away. “Be still. We have already done it twice.”

Silvered moonlight slanted through the window, illuminating her expression of disappointment. “So two is the usual number?”

Usual?
Nothing
was usual when it come to Juliana. If he’d allowed her clever fingers to work their magic a moment longer she’d have discovered that his body was more than willing to make her his a third time. But he was still captain of their course, and right now he needed to think with his mind, not his body. “Juliana, I want to make love to you the way I want my next breath, but I can’t because—” He gritted his teeth, wishing like the devil that he didn’t have to say the words. But someone had to say them, and he was still her pledged protector. “We cannot make love again because it is very nearly dawn, and I have to … well, the particulars do not matter. What does matter is that in a few days I will have to leave you.”

The killing truth cut deep into his soul. However, it did not seem to bother Juliana one bit. Instead of dissolving into tears, she tilted her head and laid a finger alongside her cheek. Connor knew the look, and it filled him with almost as much dread as the coming morning.
Christ, she’s plotting again
.

“Yes, I have been pondering this situation,” she said thoughtfully. “You stole the dispatches because you wanted money. Well, I have a way for you to gain a fortune and not
break a single law in the process.” She lifted her chin, obviously vastly pleased with herself as she pronounced, “I am going with you.”

“The hell you are.”

“Don’t take that patronizing tone with me, Connor. I have made up my mind. I am going with you because I belong by your side. We shall be married at once.”

Connor gaped at her, her words catapulting him into heaven and hell at once. “That is … impossible.”