Sea Fire (26 page)

“God, you drive me crazy,” he whispered in her ear, his mouth moving up from its titillation of her breast to lovingly explore the inner recesses of the shell-like structure. Cathy could only moan her reply, because his hand had at long last moved to the place where she wanted it most: the warm golden nest between her thighs. For an instant her thighs clamped together, wanting to deny her the enchantment that only Jon knew how to give her, but as his finger unerringly found all the right places her legs slowly spread wide for him. Still he didn’t take her, although the feverish thrashing of her body begged him.

Jon pressed butterfly kisses to her closed eyelids, her temples, her cheekbones, and even her soft mouth, but he refused to linger. Cathy’s hands curled restlessly against his broad shoulders, then moved down to run mindlessly through the thick black hair that covered his chest. Its roughness rasped at her soft palm. Cathy loved the sensation. Unthinkingly her fingers followed the dark trail over the taut muscles of his belly to the thick bush that surrounded his fiery hardness. Cathy, gasping and writhing under the tormenting caress of his hands, determined to practice some torture of her own. Her fingers closed gently around the throbbing member, then tightened.

“Oh, God. Oh, Cathy!” he groaned, as her hand began to move up and down. His breathing deepened and thickened until he was panting. Still Cathy showed him no mercy. She toyed with him as he had with her, until he lay flat on his back, groaning, with her leaning over him.

“Am I better than Sarita?” she demanded fiercely, the little demon breaking through the guard she had set around him. Jon’s eyes
blinked open, and his lips parted for a reply. Cathy gave him no chance to speak. Instead, driven by a smoldering rage that was not red in color but a bright, bilious green, she bent swiftly until her mouth took over where her hand had been; she was determined to make him totally, completely hers, to leave her mark on him for all time.

“God, don’t stop,” he groaned when she lifted her head at last. Cathy remained poised over him, her blue eyes glittering cat-like at him through the gloom.

“Am I better than Sarita?” she demanded again. Jon sucked in his breath with a rattling shudder.

“God, yes,” he muttered thickly. Triumphant, Cathy lowered her head once more.

When his seed spewed hotly forth, she felt as if she had won a prize. Gloating, she released him, to sink back against the pillows. Beside her, she could feel his sides heaving as his breath slowly fought to regain its normal rhythm. A small smile curved her lips, and she closed her eyes for sleep.

“Not so fast,” said his voice softly in her ear, and Cathy was jolted awake by the feel of his hands parting her thighs.

“What . . . ?” she stuttered. She could feel her face turn fiery red as he moved so that he was kneeling between her spread legs, his hands drawing them with steely strength over his shoulders. God, he couldn’t mean to . . . ! She had never permitted him to do such a thing before, and he, intent on pleasing her, had not forced the issue. It was indecent, it was obscene. . . .

It was also heaven. Cathy gasped and quaked under the hot tutelage of his mouth. Writhing, crying out her pleasure, she was soon lost to all shame. When he would have lifted his head, her hands came up to clutch his rough black hair, holding him to her.

“Am I better than Harold? “he demanded throatily in his turn. Cathy, half out of her mind with longing, sobbed out her answer.

“Yes, oh, yes.
Oh, God, yes!”

His mouth returned to its work with a vengeance, and he took her almost savagely. Cathy went over the brink again and again and again. If he would only stop, she thought once, exhausted by the violence of her body’s response; then, as the tremors began to build once more, she changed that to, If he would only never stop: if this ecstasy could just go on and on forever. . . .

Finally he lay for a moment between her legs, not moving. Cathy, eyes closed, skin still quivering, felt as if she had died. When he heaved himself up and over onto his side of the bunk, she seemed to sense the movement from a great distance. She felt as if she was floating, floating. . . . She scarcely noticed that he didn’t even bother to say good-night.

The next thing Cathy knew, she seemed to be swimming through dark, tropical waters. She was far beneath the surface, and she knew she had to get to the top or drown. With all her strength she tried, and just as she thought her lungs would burst from lack of air, she made it: gulping, she sucked in great breaths of air, and opened her eyes.

For just a moment Cathy didn’t know where she was. Instead of lapping waves, she was surrounded by soft beams of sunlight filtering in through smeared glass portholes. Beside her a warm body breathed rhythmically, plainly deeply asleep. Cathy moved her head until she could see that body, and immediately she recognized Jon. And hard on the heels of that recognition came mortifying memories. The whole appalling night replayed in her mind. She thought of what she had done, and turned bright fiery crimson from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. Then she remembered what he had done, and she wanted to curl up and die.

After a few moments of trying, she realized that it was impossible to die on command. She was going to live, and to live with that night as an inerasable part of her past. She thought of facing Jon, and felt butterflies flutter wildly in her stomach. Never before in
her life could she remember feeling so embarrassed.

And sticky. Cathy felt sticky all over. Her skin seemed to adhere to the sheet, to Jon’s bronzed flesh beside her, to itself. She felt positively unclean. She had to have a bath, now. Quietly she rolled out of bed, wanting to delay waking Jon for as long as possible. Until she actually saw his knowledge of the night they had just passed in his eyes, she could refuse to think about it. She could just push it out of her mind.

The water in the pitcher was cold, but Cathy didn’t mind. Standing in the center of the tin tub, she slowly poured it over herself. Then, taking the cake of soap from its place on the washstand, she began to carefully rub it into her skin. She worked with deep concentration, willing herself not to think of anything except the task of getting herself clean.

How long Jon had been watching her when she became aware of it, Cathy didn’t know. Her naked body silhouetted against the light streaming in the portholes, she merely turned her head to find his gray eyes fixed on her. The expression on his face puzzled her, and she frowned inquiringly. His mouth was bracketed in harsh lines, his lips set cruelly straight. And his eyes were hard and filled with a terrible light as they met her innocent gaze.

“How long did you think to keep me in ignorance of the fact that you’re pregnant, Lady Stanhope?” he gritted. Cathy realized with a sinking sensation that he was blazing with uncontrolled rage.

ten

I
—I. . . .” Cathy stuttered, caught completely unprepared.

“Pray continue,
Lady Stanhope
,” Jon sneered softly, drawing out the title until it seemed to flay her.

Cathy swallowed, knowing that she had left her explanation too late. She should have broken the news to him, not left him to find out for himself. Quickly she poured the remaining water over her body to rid her skin of the soap, caught up the towel, and wrapped it around herself as she stepped from the tub. The cloth barely covered her most intimate places, leaving her long slender legs and creamy shoulders bare. Cathy didn’t even consider the brevity of her attire as she combed her fingers abstractedly through her long hair, letting it tumble in a thick golden mass down her back. All her thoughts were concentrated on how best to propitiate Jon’s clearly sizzling anger. Surely he would see, once she had pointed it out to him, that for the sake of their children it was time to bury the animosities of the past, and get on with the future together.

“I’m waiting,” Jon growled ominously. Cathy bit her lip, brought abruptly out of
the reverie she had inadvertently fallen into.

“And don’t try to deny it,” he added, his voice harsh. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

“I wouldn’t dream of denying it,” Cathy said quietly, her blue eyes meeting his stormy gray ones with apparent serenity. “I’m proud of it. I want this child.”

“You—bitch!” Jon grated, the lines around his mouth whitening angrily as he heaved himself into a sitting position. He sat there, on the edge of the bunk, naked, his black hair wildly mussed and his lean face dark with several days’ worth of unshaven beard. “You stupid whoring bitch!”

Cathy’s eyes widened angrily at this uncalled-for abuse. She glared at him, her soft mouth set in a straight line, her little chin tilted defiantly. As he stared furiously back, he almost audibly ground his teeth.

“I won’t be spoken to in that way!” Cathy informed him haughtily, growing angry in her turn. “I’m sick of your filthy mouth! Why shouldn’t I be glad to have this child? It’s mine!”

“That’s the one thing that’s not in doubt,” Jon muttered angrily. Then, louder, his eyes boring into hers, he added: “Did Harold know of your interesting condition before you—uh, took leave of him so abruptly?”

“No, of course not,” Cathy answered impatiently, her temper subsiding a little. After all, it was only natural that he be shocked, and first reactions are apt to be unreliable. Why, she herself had been appalled when she had first realized that she was with child. When he had had time to consider, he would undoubtedly view the prospect of fatherhood with more equanimity. Look how he doted on Cray. . . .

“I didn’t know myself, then,” she added.

“Poor Harold,” Jon remarked unpleasantly, his gray eyes glittering like twin knives. “You’ll have to write and let him know. He’ll be delighted.”

Cathy felt her jaw
drop. She stared at Jon for a moment, speechless as his implication sank home.

“You’re not suggesting,” she squeaked when she could once again form words, “that this child is—is
Harold’s
?” Her voice rose incredulously on the name.

“You’re right—I’m not suggesting it. I’m stating it.”

“You swine!” Cathy breathed, blue fire seeming to shoot from her eyes as they fixed him. “Harold never touched me! The child is yours, damn you!”

Jon rose to his feet in a sudden lithe movement. He stood glowering at her, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“You don’t expect me to believe that, surely?” he asked with a bite. “I think you must be forgetting that I saw with my own eyes Harold—uh, not touching you.”

“He was trying to consummate our marriage,” Cathy hissed. “Which I never let him do. I pretended to be seasick—
seasick
, do you hear?—from the first night of our marriage until you came and dragged me away like the brute you are! Only the night when you came, he had found out that I was not really sick at all. He was trying to force me, but you got there before he succeeded. Believe me, there is no possible way this child is Harold’s!” She underlined the last sentence. Jon’s lip curled.

“I wouldn’t believe you if you swore it on a stack of Bibles!” he snarled. “If—and you notice I say
if
—what you say is true, why the hell didn’t you tell me before? Why wait until I find out that you’re with child? Mighty convenient, that.”

“You made me angry,” Cathy told him, striving to hold onto her temper. In her wildest imaginings, she had never dreamt that Jon would refuse to acknowledge paternity of her coming child. If it weren’t for that child, and Cray, she would tell him to take a long walk off a short pier, and take a great deal of pleasure in doing it! How dare he continually think such dreadful things of her?

“You were so ready to assume that I had betrayed you,” she continued bitterly. “
Why should I set your mind at ease? If you didn’t know me well enough and trust me enough to know that I wouldn’t do a thing like that, then there wasn’t any point in trying to convince you otherwise. You said you loved me: what a joke! When you love someone, you trust them, you don’t immediately believe the worst of them, like you did with me! Ever since you first took me—I was a virgin, I might remind you, and you did it very much against my will—you’ve suspected me of infidelity if I so much as smiled at another man! I’m sick of reasoning with you! Believe what the hell you like!”

“Oh, I will,” he said nastily. “I’ve listened to your lies for long enough to know that you spew them as naturally as breathing! You’ll never convince me that Harold didn’t bed you. God, I doubt that you even put up a token protest! You forget, I know just how much you enjoy being ridden by a man: you’re hotter than any whore I’ve ever had! You can’t go for two days together without spreading your legs. I’m surprised Harold even bothered to marry you: I’ll wager anything you like that he didn’t have to wait until the ring was on your finger before sampling your charms. I know I didn’t!”

“You low-down dirty bastard!” Cathy cried, incensed. “The only reason you didn’t have to wait is because you raped me, you cad, and you know it! Otherwise I would never have come within arm’s length of you—a pirate, and a criminal! You weren’t—
aren’t—
fit to hold the door to my carriage. You’re nothing but scum!” She was so angry she was visibly shaking.