A Pirate's Wife for Me (2 page)

Leaning down to nuzzle her ear, he crooned, "Ah, darlin', I'm the one who taught you those moves."

She struggled. "Swine."

"That wasn't what you called me the last time I held you."

She hated him so much. The hatred twisted in her gut, depriving her of everything but pure, unreasoning instinct. She slammed her booted foot down on his instep.

He grunted in pain. "Damn it!"

Releasing one arm, he twirled her like a dancer into her bedchamber, and followed behind. Without taking his eyes off of her, he slammed the door with his boot.

She was strong, with long fingers and wide palms, and shoulders that looked broad and smooth on those rare occasions when she wore an off-the-shoulder ball gown.

He was stronger, with callused hands and shoulders that strained at the seams of his plain white shirt.

She was independent, used to defending herself if she had to, and she frequently had to.

He … she didn't know what he was.

He stood with his fist on his hip. "Do you like what you see?"

He wore black trousers that molded to his narrow hips and muscled thighs, and scarred black boots that looked as if they'd seen adventure aplenty. "No."

"That's too bad, because I like what I see very much." His gaze slid up over her like a warm, soft caress. "You've changed, darlin', and all for the better."

She calmed herself and weighed her odds. He was inside the room with her and obviously bent on mischief. She needed a cool head and a sensible strategy to come out of this unscathed. She could do that. These last years had been spent teaching herself how to think before she spoke, how to look before she leapt. "You have no idea how happy it makes me that you, of all men, so choose to honor me." Deliberately, she took a stance to challenge his. "Or maybe you do. What brings you here?"

"I brought your trunk up." He gestured toward the door at his back. "You attacked me and I was forced to abandon it."

"I meant here, in Poole."

He smiled, if that slight upturn of the lips could be called a smile. "I told you. I'm the Cap'n."

The Cap'n. The man whom Mr. Throckmorton said she should serve? No. Oh, no. "I don't believe you. Why would you be the man I should … I should … ?"

Now he smiled for real, his teeth sharp and white. "Obey?"

Without expression, she retorted, "Report to."

"Because I'm the leader of this mission. Because I know how to prepare. I know how to fight." He strolled to the center of the chamber. "I'm the captain of a ship."

"I suppose, knowing your character and proclivity for wickedness, that your ship would be a pirate ship?"

"Of course. Fight and steal. It's what I've learned to do well."

"My brother was the most honorable of men. He educated you. Trained you. Then you betrayed him with me, and betrayed him yet again by becoming a common thief." She paced her words judiciously, wanting to impress on him her meaning — and her resolution. "If fighting and stealing is all you do well, you're a disgrace to Kiernan's name."

"Ah, but I do one other thing well." Taran smiled again, this time a smile that sent a warm warning. "You can attest to that, can't you?"

His cavalier reminder of a time long past, made her want to attack again.

But no. She would not give him the further satisfaction of knowing how easily he could still stir her to passion, even if that passion was purely rage. As warm as his smile was, hers was chilly. "A gentleman would not remind me. But I forget. You are not a gentleman."

"If you think a gentleman wouldn't remember that day, and that night, you are still a little innocent. I remember every moment." His every word mocked, yet he managed to sound sincere. "Your untutored eagerness. Your tongue in my mouth. Your naked body, twining around mine."

She wanted to cover her ears, to block the madness he evoked, but that wouldn't block the memories.

The firelight flickered on the walls of the small hut. Taran lifted her above him, placed her on his hips, and in a guttural voice commanded, "Take me."

Eagerly, she obeyed, caressing his sculpted chest with her fingers, smoothing his abdominal muscles with her flattened palm … wrapping his penis in her hands and stroking it while the man below her strained and cursed. Rising over him, she slowly, gently, placed him at the entrance of her body and sank down …

Crisply, she said, "You are an ass."

"You told me you loved me. You begged me to teach you everything I knew about the love between a man and a woman."

"You knew nothing about love and everything about treachery."

In the voice which, like fine wine, had grown richer and deeper with age, he said, "I've continued to learn … about love. Let me redeem my reputation."

"No. I thank you." She took a breath. The room was stifling, small and cramped with Taran taking up the space. She had come here wrapped in her hard-won confidence. He sought to strip it from her. He would not succeed. "A pirate can't be working for the British Home Office."

He circled the room, looking at the bed, fiddling with the catch on her carpetbag … not knowing a pistol resided beneath her pillow. "The English will use a thief for their own purposes."

So Throckmorton had said. "But surely the Home Office desires to utilize Englishmen."

"The Brits only care that I'm useful." He moved again, this time toward her. "You're not English, either, my sweet."

She slid away. Some might call it retreat. She called it good sense. "No, Scottish born and bred, but you're not even that."

"What am I, then?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. His faint burr was imperceptible to the ear … unless you were Scottish. And she
was
Scottish, born on the isle of Mull into the Clan MacLean and raised as the treasured sister of the respected clan chieftain. Men and women from all over Scotland came to visit Castle MacLean, and none of them sounded like Taran. He spoke English, Spanish, and French like a native, yet buried deep in his voice was the faintest wisp of an accent she could not place.

Strolling toward the window, he looked out, and she had the impression he saw much more down there in the muck and the dark than she did. "Three years I lived in your household," he said, "and you never asked me where I was born."

"You wouldn't tell me." In truth, she hadn't cared about his nationality. Her only care had been his fine young body. "So where
are
you from?"

"Cenorina."

She stared at him. Cenorina. An archipelago of islands east of England and south of the Channel Islands. An independent principality ruled by the same family for four hundred years. The place where she must go to complete her mission.

She actually felt the blood drain from her face. Her lips moved. "Cenorina." But she made no sound. Her lungs weren't working. She couldn't get air.

He observed every fluctuation of color and every change in respiration.

She hated that. She wanted him to know nothing about her. Nothing.

His eyes were as cool and gray as the winter sea. "Perhaps you ought to sit down."

"No." Sit, recline, relax in any way in his presence?
No
.

"Aye, I'm from Cenorina." He seemed proud of his heritage, and bitter, too. "That puts a different complexion on it, doesn't it, my lamb?"

The air came rushing back into her lungs. "If you had a lamb, you would roast it and serve it in a stew."

"You judge me harshly."

"I judge you fairly." She judged him as he deserved to be judged.

"I know every inch of Cenorina terrain. It is a place of mountains and hot springs, of wild shorelines and herds of deer. I know the palaces and the villages. I'm Throckmorton's main contact for this mission." He pulled the window shut and loosely latched it. "So it would be best if you went back to London and told Throckmorton to send me the proper staff."

How dare Taran presume to know what she was capable of? "I am the only one who can complete this task. I have entry into the governor of Cenorina's household. Sir Maddox Davies sent to the Distinguished Academy of Governesses for … staff."

"Sir Maddox Davies, the governor of Cenorina, who has no wife or children, sent for a governess?" Taran voice rose incredulously.

"For a housekeeper. The academy provides all kinds of services, and has a reputation for providing excellent domestics. I am the new housekeeper."

"You?" He burst into low, scornful laughter. "A housekeeper? You don't know the first thing about --"

Two long steps brought her to stand in front of him. Poking her finger into his shirtfront, she said, "Yes … I … do. When my mother remarried, the burden of caring for Castle MacLean fell on me. Just because you weren't there to witness it, Taran, doesn't mean I didn't succeed."

He stopped laughing, but he surveyed her with an intimate smile that sent shivers down her spine. "That's my Caitlin. You always recover quickly."

"Cate."

"What?"

"I am Cate now. Not Caitlin. Not the little fool you knew before. I am Cate."

"Cate," he repeated. "I like that. It fits you. And … Kiernan would kill me if I allowed you to go on this mad adventure."

All unknowing, Taran had jabbed at a tender spot. Abruptly, her fingers shook, and she tucked them behind her back. "Kiernan spent years wanting to kill you. Why should anything be different now?"

"Why, indeed?" Taran caught her shoulders in his grasp. He gazed into her eyes as if he would hold her through the power of his words. "Nine years. Nine years is a long time. I thought I'd forgotten you, Cate. when I saw you walk across the tavern tonight, I knew I was only fooling myself. I could never forget you."

CHAPTER THREE

Cate stood unbending,
holding every muscle rigid. "Am I supposed to be impressed that you remember me at last?"

"You were always one who valued action above all." Taran lowered his lips toward hers. "Darlin', remember this?"

She slammed her forehead toward his mouth.

He jerked his head back barely in time. "A tussle, lass? Is that what you like now?"

"I don't like anything now." With a swift upward swing of her fists, she broke his grip on her arms and strode across the bedchamber. "Since you left me tied to that bed, I've spent half of my time evading jackasses like you who think I need a man. I don't need any man. Certainly not one who abandoned me, never to return."

"Yet you still want me."

"I would have to be a mooncalf to still want you." …Yet she did. And she hated him for it.

Her heart raced as he stalked her across the room. Her body remembered what it was to be his, and that body, too long without the touch of a man, hummed with excitement. She had thought she was long past the time when everything in her responded to a man. She had thought loneliness, humiliation and defiance had replaced every sweet, womanly need. But her heart pounded, the fine hairs all over her body rose, and a fine sheen of perspiration covered her skin. Her agitation was all Taran's fault. No other man had ever made her want with all the fierce desire in her nature.

But these years of independence had taught her to think on her feet. Briefly, she considered the rope ladder. No. The window stuck. So she moved toward the bed. Toward the pistol.

"I was kidnapped." He watched her with anticipation gleaming in his gray eyes.

"Kidnapped? You mean someone wanted you dead beside Kiernan and me?" she jeered.

"Yeah. It was my —" He took a dive at her, caught her around the waist, tumbled her on the bed.

She landed face down, head toward the foot of the bed — not what she'd planned – kicking and screaming like some helpless maiden in a morality play.

He landed on top of her, his front to her back, spoon-fashion. Using his whole weight, he subdued her until her struggles had stopped and she could only yell.

"Do you think that shrieking will bring someone running?" He laughed. "Listen to the men. My men."

The music from below got louder, and from the stamping and cheering, she guessed they were dancing.

"The taproom is lively now, and likely to get livelier. The doxies have arrived, those sailors know the danger of this mission, and they're determined to wring every drop of enjoyment out of each remaining moment."

She was a sensible woman. She stopped screaming, and concentrated on her options. She had only one: the pistol, which remained far away, at the head of the bed.

His hand skated between her neck and the mattress. His fingers caressed the vein that pulsed in her throat. He slid his fingers into her hair, held her so that one side of her face was turned to his, and kissed her forehead, her eyelid, her cheek, her jaw.

The faded, striped coverlet stretched endlessly away from her. Far beyond the reach of her fingers, she could see the pillow. She wanted so badly to be there, to hold the smooth cold metal in her fingers and with it force him to leave.

His warm breath slithered across her skin, and the scent of peaches and brandy formed an intoxicating mix. He glided close to her lips, but she bared her teeth and with a chuckle, he moved on. He kissed her neck: the sensitive place behind her ear, the pale, soft skin that showed above her collar. His tongue, that wicked tongue that had taught her so much about pleasure, slid along her earlobe, and he drew it into his mouth and lightly scraped it with his teeth.