The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (39 page)

“What shall I wear?” she asked without guile, her body shining with damp iridescence, her hair, down to her elbows, a dark wet blanket.

“I have trousers. A shirt.” No bindings for your breasts. Thank God. He stiffened, his cock definitely intrigued by the idea that he might enjoy the sight of her nipples outlined beneath white cotton.

“Where are they?” she asked, her eyes traveling the room when he could not seem to take his eyes from her full, moist mouth.

He strode around her to his shelves, yanking down a loose shirt and a plain pair of yeoman’s pants he’d often don in warmer climes. As he dropped them in her arms, he frowned trying to keep up the ruse of his irritation with her. “You’ll have to wear these until we dock in Baltimore. There is nothing else…and even if I thought my crew might have more, I would not ask for fear they’d guess we have a woman abroad.”

She took them from him.. “I understand, and I’m most grateful.”

He turned on his heel. Best to stay away from her and any kindness he was tempted to show her beyond the norm. He cared for her. Too much.

He wanted her. But he didn’t.

Dejected, Sirena spun away from him and sat in his chair. Clutching the sheet around her, she shoved back the urge to shed tears. They would not help her here. Though she had used them to get her way with other men, she would not stoop so low here with Mark Stanhope. He was of finer cloth and merited her better nature.

Biting her lip, she poured herself coffee and downed half the cup. The taste thrilled her, warmed her and reminded her that she had not eaten in two days. Her gaze fell upon the bowl of stew cooling on the tray. Potatoes, carrots and mutton studded the broth. She picked up the pewter spoon and told herself to go slowly, not devour the meal. The first taste was soft, fragrant heaven and she tucked in for another bite.

“Don’t eat too quickly,” he warned, and she swiveled to see that he had not left her for his bath but had stood to one side of the sheet to watch her. “You’ll throw it up. Drink a bit more. That will help.”

She nodded at his kindness. “Thank you.”

This time he did turn away to disappear behind the sheet. But as he raised the cup to her mouth, she saw that he did not completely vanish from her sight. She arched a brow. My turn to enjoy your looks, Captain.

In relief, he stood facing the tub. Then, he turned his head toward her.

Challenging me to be as bold as you? She inhaled, oh so delighted that he knew she watched him. Her lips tipped upward in a wicked smile.

As he unbuttoned his shirt, she sipped her coffee. “This is very good,” she said without thinking and admired the flaring lines of his rippling arms.

She saw him freeze.

“My cook,” he told her, “was a gunner in your Navy until he joined us two years ago.”

“Then he is one of the sailors our Navy wants to impress again into our service?”

“He is,” Mark said as he stepped out his breeches.

“I’m surprised your father was able to buy his freedom.”

“The earl of Stanhope is a remarkable man. Able to grow, change and admit his faults. I will never say another word against him as long as I live,” he told her as she noted the interesting protrusion from Mark’s loins. His shaft was long and thick and standing very tall.

She sat forward, the sheet not showing her anything new this close, but her heart wishing it would. Want me, do you, Mark?

He lifted a long leg and climbed in the tub. He turned, faced forward, and she mourned the loss of the sight that proved he desired her.

She fell back in the chair and gazed into the dark depths of her coffee. Starving for sustenance of a kind she could not have, she picked up her spoon and took a bite of the stew. The warmth filled her with gratitude for Mark’s care, but made her all the more bereft. She took another bite, questioning her own boldness to desert her home and all she knew. She had come so far, risked so much, hoping she could escape the confines of her life. She had pinned her hopes on her own resourcefulness. And she had gotten as far as his storage vaults. She rubbed a hand over her forehead. Sick with tension at what she’d accomplished, she worried about what she hadn’t achieved. She hadn’t won him over to her viewpoint. She’d been a fool to think a man like Mark Stanhope, bold and brave as he was, would simply aid her because he desired her.

She scoffed at her naivete. She had been deluded by the desire she saw on his face. It was one thing to want a woman, but quite another to help her change her life.

She dropped the spoon, caught up the sheet to her chest. She would not cry. Not now. Not here.

She clamped a hand over her mouth, a sob wrenching her. Swiping at her tears, she doubled over in her chair. How could she have been so foolish?

“Oh, Christ, Sirena, don’t cry.” Strong arms drew her up, wrapped her into a warm, wet body. “Don’t please.”

She scarcely knew how she stood on her feet, but she nuzzled her face into the smooth warmth of his shoulder, shuddering. “Mark, I did not come here to make you do anything you do not wish to do.”

He pushed her hair back and lifted her face up to his. “I wish to make you happy, help you.”

“I am no harpy. No woman to bend a man to her will. That’s not why I’m here.”

“I know.” He enfolded her, his lips on her forehead. “I know you wish to be free. All men, all women should be. Must be. Your coming to me to gain that is not a problem for me, Sirena. This in you makes me proud of you, for you. Look at me. This is true.”

As he brushed tears from her cheeks, she stared at him . “I came here now not merely because I knew you were in Dover and leaving England. Your presence here was no convenience for me, Mark.”

He stilled, no breath escaping him. “Why then?”

“I came because I had to know, had to learn if you cared for me at all.”

“Could one meeting become so bright a lure?” he asked, in his voice a measure of surprise.

“For me it was.”

“And me as well.”

“I asked about you. Your sisters-in-law. Your father’s friends. They spoke as highly of you as I imagined they would.”

He brushed her hair back from her face. His mouth curved down in sadness. “I learned about you from the same people. I told myself to want you was a fantasy. It still is.”

She slid up in his arms, her mouth an angel’s breath away from his. “But now I am here.”

His blue eyes turned dark as stormy seas. “Proximity does not make seduction fair.”

“Much in life is not fair. To tie me to a man I could never love was not fair. To impress you in the service of a country not your own is not fair. Often, what is fair and right is what we do for ourselves.”

He shook his head, his eyes bright with pride in her. “You are bold.”

“I must be. Do not question what I feel for you.”

“Sirena—“

“Let me not question, Mark,” she pleaded on a whisper. “Let me know.”

He cupped her chin, his gaze tormented. “If I do that now, there will be no turning back.”

“I do not wish to return to anything or anyone I knew before.”

“You know not what you ask. My desire for you is living, breathing thing. And honor would demand that we remain together. I have not the right to promise you what I do not have.”

“You mean land? Money? A title?”

“They were what you were brought up to value.”

“And what were you brought up to value, Mark Stanhope?”

He inhaled and stared at the beams. “Resourcefulness. Ambition.”

“Freedom?”

“That too.” He smiled down at her.

“Let me have that too. With you. Here.”

He threaded his fingers through her hair and drew back to look at her. “I do not wish to ruin you.”

“I fear I am already ruined for any other man.”

He trembled as he crushed her close. He swooped down and claimed her mouth with his own. Once. Twice. A breathless third time. Brushing, tasting, caressing hers, he made her cry out for what she had known in her heart was true from the first night she’d seen him across the ballroom.

“Mark,” she rose on her toes, the sheet around her dropping to the floorboards, the touch of his skin on hers a fire to her soul. “Darling Mark, this is what I came for.”

“These past weeks, this,” he growled as he inserted one strong thigh between her two, “is what I have dreamed of.”

She squeezed his leg with her thighs, and inside her loins, she felt a gush of hot, wet desire. “I want you in no way that’s demure.”

His lips spoke on hers as one hand supported her beneath her nape. “I want you in all ways that are wicked.”

She smiled, kissed him fast and hard, then rubbed her breasts against his marvelous broad chest. “Teach me to be wicked.”

“You need little instruction, minx.” Growling, he bent her over his arm and put his open mouth to her throat. There, just beneath her chin, he nibbled and licked. “My fondest desire these past few weeks has been to see you naked.”

She swooned, in heaven at his words. “And here I thought you were indifferent.”

His tongue blazed a trail of liquid fire down her chest as he took one of her breasts into his hot, fierce mouth. There, he sucked on her with such swift force, she gasped. He pulled away, his sapphire blue eyes ferocious as he peered down at her and tweaked her nipple. “Does this feel like indifference?”

Fighting for breath, she hung on to him for sanity in a reeling world and shook her head. “More like—” Dare she name it? “Obsession.”

“I will show you its meaning,” he vowed and swirled a hand down her ribs to splay his fingers against her quivering stomach and into the wealth of her nether hair where he stopped. “I will leave none of you untasted, untouched. Look at me, Sirena.”

The sight of him impassioned and captivated melted her.

“Stop me now, if you will not give me every piece of you.”

“Show me your obsession that I might show you mine.”

With a cry of triumph, he swept her into his arms and took two strides to his bunk. There, he gently laid her down and braced above her, took her mouth with his own demanding one. His lips met hers one way, then slanted another. She met him kiss for kiss, gasp for gasp.

He pulled away, smiling down at her. “Christ, you’re eager.”

“I have waited weeks,” she teased, her hands tangled in his soft brown hair.

“Wait no more.” He grinned, straddled her, then let his gaze travel her naked body until his expression stilled, his eyes darkened and his hands lifted both her breasts. “Just feel.”

He thumbed her nipples gently, as his private parts nestled near her sex. His fingers pinched her, sending sparks of need to her breasts and her groin. His lips perched above a nipple, and his tongue licked her tip.

She bucked.

He laughed.

She squirmed. “The other one needs the same.”

“Of course it does. Here, let me soothe you,” he whispered as he graced her other nipple with the same ardor. One hand wended its way down her ribs and cupped her hip. He spread her thighs with a nudge of a leg, then sank his fingers into her damp hair. “I want to kiss you here. Brand you.”

“Mark me,” she told him. “I am aflame to have you there.”

He trailed kisses down her torso, stopping at one rib to nuzzle her, at her mound to bury his nose in her hair, and then at the seam of her opening. “Let me in, sweetheart.”

She spread her legs wide, and he groaned as he sank lower, putting his mouth to her labia.

With two fingers, he held her wide for his kiss, for the lave of his tongue, for the pinch of his fingers to some special spot that had her whimpering and rising, demanding that he give her more.

“Shh, I am here,” he crooned. “Here to love you. Love you well. God, you are so swollen. So damn wet. Glistening with cream. All mine,” he told her as he traced a fingertip around her core and made her squirm and moan. “You feel like finest satin and you taste like lemon and desire. Want a taste?”

Delirious with pleasure, she stared at him as he offered her two wet, fragrant fingers. With fire in her gaze, she raised her head and licked him like a hungry cat.

“Oh, Christ,” he groaned, dropped his forehead to her chest and undulated so that she felt his cock probe between her thighs. “You are so wonderful.”

“Fuck me, then tell me that.”

He lifted his head, his blue eyes at first shocked, then amused and besotted with her words. “My lady, you have a saucy tongue.”

“You inspire me, Captain.” She caught him by the nape and rose up to kiss him deeply. “Show me by more examples how talented a tongue can be that I may reciprocate in kind.”

Fired by her words, he put one hand between her breasts, pushed her to the sheet and scooted down the bed. Two hands to her tender flesh, he spread her legs so wide they dangled over the edge of the bunk. Then he put his mouth to the top of her seam. “This pretty portal has a secret beneath.”

She wiggled in anticipation.

He rolled back her swollen tender flesh. “There is a pearl here of great value. One my lips can adore with kisses, like this.”

She undulated at his warm delicate sips of her tender flesh. Her body filled with fluid fire.

“One my tongue can tease, like this.” He rubbed her pearl with a rough lash of his tongue.

“Ahh, Mark.” Her fire sparked higher, hotter.

“Shh,” he stroked her intricate folds to make her rise up, wild with need. “This pearl is made for my mouth, my fingers and your joy, darling. I can suck on it,” he said and demonstrated so that she bit her lower lip in abject need. “It grows larger and needier.”

She whimpered, her hips flexing on the bed.

“You want me inside you here,” he said on a ragged voice, then inserted a long finger inside her core. “Oh, god. You are so tight, darling girl, I can not hope to get inside.”

“Fill me up!” she gasped, and her hips rose off the bunk.

“Aye, I’ll take you. All of you. Past your maidenhead here into a world a pleasure.”

“Quickly,” she demanded and plucked at his massive shoulders while he stroked her and drove her mad with need. “No more delay!”

“Oh, my sweetheart,” he whispered as he rose above her, hooked her thighs over his hips and placed the tip of his cock near her channel. “Come away with me.”