Dead After Dark (Companion #6.5)(67)

“Pirates?” She’d only read about pirates. What a romantic life he had lived.

“Yes. And they took me on. I was a strong lad. I learned the sea.” They pulled up the brocaded coverlet together. “Did you know that pirates elect their captain?”

“You were a pirate captain.” She believed it. It gave him that very dangerous feeling.

“I prefer to say I made my fortune in shipping.” He smiled a very attractive smile—almost a boyish grin. It was the first time she had seen it, and it was . . . dazzling. “We did well. I sold out. I’d learned mathematics in order to navigate, so I knew I was not stupid. I hired tutors to teach me the skills of a gentleman. Much easier than mathematics. Voilà, Drew Carlowe.”

He called himself Drew. Lovely.

He stood, surveying his work, but she knew from the way he frowned that he wasn’t seeing the bed. “I may have cared for Emily only for the revenge winning her would have wreaked on her father. Not something to be proud of. I would have made her a damnable husband if that was the reason I wanted to marry her.” He sighed. “I’d make a damnable husband to any woman, I suspect.”

“Some women don’t want husbands,” she whispered.

He looked up and his eyes were alight. Now she’d done it. They raked her body. “Why do you wear clothes like that?”

What did he mean? “I’ve always worn clothes like this.”

He came round to her side of the bed. He was stalking her, almost like the pictures she had seen of panthers, all powerful grace, deadly. “Those clothes say you know of sensual things. Most women would never dare wear them.”

“I am not most women.” That was true. She was not even human.

He took her upper arms in his hands, and immediately the sexual part of her began to throb with the beat of her heart. She was already wet between her legs. He just stared at her. “I don’t know what you are.” Oh, dear. His teeth were gritted, as against some pain. “And I don’t care.”

That was better.

“What is your name?”

“Why do you care about my name?”

“Because I generally do not make love to women whose name I do not know.” He laughed. It sounded on the edge of hysteria. “As a matter of fact, lately, I do not make love to women at all.”

“That’s not healthy,” she whispered. Wasn’t that true for her, as well?

The muscle in his jaw clenched. “Don’t play with me. I won’t force myself on you.”

“You needn’t. I’m of age.” Oh, yes. Centuries of it. “And I am not inexperienced.” Sex was the one thing she knew how to do. She’d done it almost constantly before this last year, as she and her sisters made Harriers for her father. She insinuated herself against his body and was pleased to feel the hard erection at his groin. She ran her hands lightly over the front of his breeches and felt him take a ragged breath. She was going to do this, consequences be damned. Not because it was her job, but because she wanted to do it. She was going to give this man, who had known pain and hardship in his life, a glimpse of ecstasy.

She pulled at the end of his cravat. The knot unraveled and she stripped it from around his neck. There were the two bites she’d left from yesterday, already healing. He was strong, this one. She opened the button at his collar. He was undoing the buttons at his waistcoat. She pulled the shirt out of his breeches and worked at the buttons at his cuffs. So many buttons . . . He pulled it over his head. Ah, yes. The light dusting of hair, the tanned nipples, peaking now in anticipation. She rubbed her hands over his pectoral muscles. All those years of hard work at sea had left him . . . impressive. He was pulling at the buttons on his breeches. She pushed him back against the bed, and he let her.

“Let me pull off your boots.” She was stronger than he was, though she couldn’t let him know that. They slid off as though they were loose.

He didn’t seem to notice, but pushed his breeches over his hips as she stripped off his stockings. His erection, freed, hung between them. She stood and let the tip rub against her belly as she moved her hands over his shoulders. The ridges of his scars almost broke her heart.

Surprise replaced the lust in his eyes, followed immediately by chagrin. He reached for his shirt. “I forgot myself. I . . . have scars which would be distasteful to a lady.”

“I saw them last night.” She took the shirt gently and tossed it on the floor.

“You’re sure,” he said doubtfully.

She nodded, suppressing a smile, and pulled his neck down. Heat flashed back into his eyes. She thought his kiss would be fierce with the need she felt in him. But he brushed his lips across her forehead, down her temples. Tiny kisses he placed on her cheeks, even as he slipped her dress from her shoulders. She pressed her breasts to his bare body, her own breath coming harder, and he found her lips. She licked his with the tip of her tongue. She felt his surprise and then he opened her mouth and deepened the kiss, probing her with his tongue. How she loved kissing. She had never kissed the Aspirants. In some ways it was more intimate even than intercourse. Kissing him was some signal that this was different than all that mechanical arousal she had engaged in to train the Aspirants and develop their power.

She slipped the clasp of her girdle, and it fell with a metallic jingle to the carpet. Her dress floated after it. It was just their naked bodies, hers wet and soft, his hard. His arms slid around her, even as his kisses made her almost dizzy with desire.