Another boom followed by the splash of a too-near cannonball.
Panic welled. She struggled against Alistair’s restraining grip. “Release me.”
His grip slackened immediately.
She ran.
“Jessica!”
Her chest heaved as she darted around the industrious crew and protruding capstans. Not since before she’d wed Tarley had she been plagued with an attack of panic of such magnitude. She was bombarded with memories of her father shouting … her mother’s cries … shattered glass … the whistle of a switch … the report of a gun … her own whimpers of distress … Her recollections blended with the bustle around her into a barrage of sound and sensation she couldn’t absorb. The commotion pounded against the one ear that could process sound, leaving her unbalanced. Off-kilter.
Reckless in her haste, Jess stumbled through the seamen in her way and increased her pace, desperate to return to the safety of her cabin.
Alistair slept fitfully and rose before the sun. He went on deck to work with the crew, needing an outlet for the aggravated energy that made him so restless.
Jessica had declined to take her evening meal in the great cabin the night before. And as the sun set on the new day, she had yet to appear.
What had possessed him to grab her as he had? What little progress he’d made since setting sail had been ruined in a few brash moments.
He knew the fault lay entirely at his feet. With the wind in his face and excitement all around, his blood had been hot before she appeared, and once she had, everything had coalesced into the irresistible urge to wrap himself around her and hang on.
He’d wanted to pursue her when she fled, but he couldn’t leave the helm. His disappointment in not seeing her at supper had been fierce. She enlivened the table with her skilled deportment and quick wit. Her forthrightness was a delight, and he relished watching how easily she enchanted the other men at the table.
He was debating the merits of seeking her out when her maid appeared on deck. The abigail’s dark hair was covered by a frilly cap, and a sturdy woolen shawl was wrapped around her shoulders. She waved at Miller, who gawked in the manner of besotted youth, then moved to the gunwale to gaze at the sea.
Alistair crossed the distance between them and greeted her.
She gave a quick curtsy in reply. “Sir?”
“I pray your mistress is well. She was sorely missed last night. If there is anything she requires, please do not hesitate to ask.”
She offered a reassuring smile. “There’s no ’elp for her, I’m afraid. ’Tis a year to the day since ’is lordship ’urried on to ’is reward.”
“Tarley’s death is what ails her?” He frowned. Jessica had left the deck so abruptly the afternoon before … surely he’d had some part in that distress?
“She just needs some time alone, I think, sir. She dismissed me and means to retire early. Everything will look brighter on another day.”
Giving a brief nod, he turned away. His jaw was clenched tight enough to pain him.
Bloody hell, he was jealous of a dead man. Had been envious for many years. Ever since he’d followed Jessica out of the Pennington woods and watched her seduce the very proper Viscount Tarley into satisfying the craving he’d roused in her. He had woken her passions, but Tarley had the right to sate them. The thought that history might have repeated itself yesterday …
Had the lush melting of her body against his made her hunger for Tarley?
Growling softly, he moved to the companionway and descended the stairs. He reached her door, ensured there were no witnesses, and then walked straight in.
He came to an abrupt halt. His brain processes stopped altogether. The sight greeting him stunned him to the point that it took a long moment to remember to close the door. But when the realization came to him, he did so quickly. One last look in the passageway before the portal swung closed assured him no one else had been granted the view shredding his innards to ribbons.
“Mr. Caulfield,” the object of his obsession purred. “Did no one teach you to knock?”
One long, slender, very bare leg stretched out over the rim of a copper slipper tub. Jessica was flushed from the heat of the bathwater and too much claret … if her slurred words, lack of modesty, and the bottle on the stool beside her were any indication. Her hair was piled haphazardly atop her head, giving her a disheveled, recently tumbled look embodying every carnal imagining he’d ever had about her. He was more than satisfied with the lush figure on display for him. She had lovely peaches-and-cream skin, breasts fuller than he’d pictured, and legs longer than he’d dreamed.
Bloody hell, his decision to indulge her by storing extra barrels of water for bathing had been a stroke of genius.
As his inability to speak drew out, Jessica arched one brow and asked, “Would you care for a glass?”
Alistair walked over to the stool with as much aplomb as he could muster with a raging cockstand. He collected the bottle, then drank straight from it. There was little remaining. And as excellent a vintage as it was, it failed to dull the sharp edge of his hunger, which was aggravated by his new vantage—he could see every inch of the front side of her.
Her head tilted back, and she looked up at him with slumberous eyes. “You are notably comfortable witnessing a lady’s toilette.”
“You are notably comfortable being witnessed.”
“Do you do this sort of thing often?”
Discussing past lovers was never wise. He certainly was not going to begin now. “Do you?”
“This is a first for me.”
“I’m honored.” He moved to one of the chairs at the table and wondered how best to proceed. The territory was unfamiliar to him. Yesterday, he’d pushed too far too soon. He could not afford to make a similar mistake today, and yet he was presented with a naked, inebriated, uninhibited woman he had been lusting after for years. Even a saint would be sorely pressed for restraint, and God knew he was far from saintly.
As Alistair sat, he noted the case of claret by the foot of the bed. The quantity spoke of a woman who occasionally sought oblivion. It troubled him to think she’d been so attached to Tarley. How could he compete with a specter? Especially one who had so perfectly suited her in ways Alistair never could.
“Are you preparing to join us for supper?” he asked in as casual a tone as he could manage.
“I shan’t be joining you.” Jessica leaned her head back against the rim and closed her eyes. “And you should not be joining me in my cabin, Mr. Caulfield.”
“Alistair,” he corrected. “So ask me to leave. Although you should have someone here to assist you. Since your maid has been dismissed for the evening, I would be happy to make the substitution.”
“You learned of my solitude and pounced straightaway. You are so reckless and impetuous and—”
“—apologetic about the upset you experienced yesterday.”
She sighed. He waited for her to explain. Instead she said, “My reputation is very important to me.”
Although it wasn’t said, he understood the implication that it was not a concern they shared. “Your good name is important to me, as well.”
One gray eye opened. “Why?”
“Because it matters to you.”
That lone, assessing eye might have been disconcerting if he hadn’t been determined to be completely honest with her. With a nod, the eye closed again.
“I enjoy the feel of your gaze on me,” she said with surprising candor. “That enjoyment is quite distressing.”
He hid a smile behind the rim of the bottle. She was an honest drunk. “I enjoy looking at you. I always have. I doubt I could change that. You are not alone in this attraction between us.”
“It has no place in either of our lives.”
Stretching out his legs in front of him, Alistair said, “But we are not in our lives now. Nor will we be for the next few months, at least.”
“You and I are very different individuals. Perhaps you think my paralysis that night in the Pennington woods hints at some deeper, more intriguing aspect of my character, but I assure you, nothing of the sort exists. I was confused and mortified; there is nothing of note beyond that.”
“Yet here you are. Traveling alone a great distance. Not by necessity, but by choice. I find that very intriguing. Tarley bequeathed you a source of great income. Why was he so determined to see you not merely taken care of, but exceptionally wealthy? In doing so, he provided you with the means to go in any direction you choose, while also forcing you to conduct business on a large scale. He shielded you with one hand, while pushing you into a new world with the other. I find that intriguing also.”
Jessica drank the last of the wine in her glass and set it on the stool where the bottle had previously been. Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees and looked at the door. “I cannot be your mistress.”
“I would never ask you to be.” He draped one arm over the tabletop, his focus narrowed to the wet curl adhering to the pale curve of her back. He was hard as a poker, throbbing and on display due to the tailored fit of his breeches. “I want no arrangement with you. I do not want to be serviced. What I desire is your willingness, your needs, and your demands.”
She turned those big gray eyes on him.
“I want to service you, Jessica. I want to finish what we began seven years ago.”
Chapter 6
Alistair could see Jessica considering his suggestion.
“I cannot fathom how it is,” she said at length, “that I am having this discussion with you, today of all days.”
“Is that why Tarley settled Calypso on you? Because he wanted to preserve you as his? Because he wished to leave you with no excuse to turn to a man to look after you?”
She turned her head and rested her cheek on her bent knees. “He was too dear a man for such selfishness. He told me to be happy. To love again. To make my own choice this time around. But I am certain he was thinking of marriage, not an affair with a man who dallies about promiscuously.”
Alistair’s hand tightened on his glass, but he wisely held his tongue.
“Men have so much more freedom,” she said on a long-suffering sigh.
“If freedom is what you seek, why marry again?”
“I have no intention of doing so. What purpose would it serve? I do not need the support, and since I am barren, I have nothing to offer men of suitable station.”
“Financial considerations are valid ones, of course. But what of your needs as a woman? Will you deny yourself the pleasure of a man’s touch forever?”
“Some men’s hands give nothing but pain.”
He knew she could not be speaking of Tarley. The rapport between them had been evident to one and all. “Of whom do you speak?”
She moved. Gripping the rim of the tub, she rose from the water like Botticelli’s Venus. Dripping wet and unashamedly bare. Her hands ran over her full breasts, then across her abdomen, her gaze following her own touch. When she lifted her head to look at him, his breath seized in his lungs. It was a siren’s look she gave him. One full of heat and longing and hunger.
“By God,” he said gruffly, aching. “You are beautiful.”
He was in a riot of lust, half mad with the need to spread her beneath him and sate the damned spurring longing that had haunted him far too long.
“You make me feel as if I am.” One slender leg lifted over the edge of the tub. The sinuous invitation in her movements wasn’t lost on him. It seemed drink also roused her passions.
“I can make you feel a great deal more.”
Her nipples were a soft rose hue and luxuriously long. Puckered by the chill of air on wet skin, they begged for the attentions of his mouth and hands. He stroked his tongue deliberately along the curve of his bottom lip, teasing her visually with a physical enactment of the thoughts smoldering in his mind. He could please her to madness. Sex had been one of his trades, and he was damned good at it. If she but gave him the chance, he could ruin her for other men. He was determined to do so.
She did not fail to register his intent or to assess his condition; the color of her blush deepened. Looking at her towel and robe, she seemed to consider whether or not she wanted to retrieve them.
If he could, he would help her with that, if only to restore some semblance of his sanity by covering her. But he couldn’t move. His body was not his own. Every muscle was tense and straining, while his cock hung heavily between his thighs.
“You see how much I want you,” he said hoarsely.
“You have no shame.”
“I would be ashamed if I didn’t desire you. I wouldn’t be a man.”
A faint smile curved her lips as she reached for the folded towel. “Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that I should want you as well. Every other woman is susceptible. It would be curious if I was not.”
His smile came with a host of wicked intentions. “Then the only question remaining is: what will you do about it?”
Jess paused with her fingers curled into the towel. It was madness that she should be standing before Alistair Caulfield without a stitch on. She did not recognize herself or the way she felt—uninhibited, greedy, empty.
What would she do about it? It was a sign of her ignorance that she hadn’t considered doing anything at all. However, faced with the choice of taking action or not, she realized she had power. She hadn’t thought of her fascination with Alistair in terms of balance of power at all. She had, in fact, felt quite powerless.
She released the towel and faced him. “If I wanted you to touch me, where would you begin?”
He set the bottle on the table and sat up with what appeared to be some discomfort. She could imagine why, considering the size of the erection so prominently tenting his smalls and breeches. “Come here,” he said in the rich deep voice she was enamored with. “I’ll show you.”