Almost a Scandal (33 page)

He was glad he hadn’t known. Glad he had thought her safe, in the boat. God knows how he would have faced the Frenchman if he had thought her in danger. “That is why I ordered you to stay in the boat, Sally.”

She looked at him sharply, as if she were ready to argue, but instead, she lowered the pugnacious angle of her chin and chose her words carefully. “And now you know why I will be so happy to change back into a boy.” Her tone was determinedly light, as if she were trying not to antagonize him by a return to their previous argument. “It was nice enough being a girl, but you didn’t seem to mind me being useful as much when I was in my uniform and wearing trousers.”

Nice enough?
That stung, though he hardly thought she meant it to. “Well, I must admit I was wrong. You were useful enough wearing skirts when you sat atop me and all but bared yourself for those soldiers, weren’t you, Kent?”

Embarrassment flamed across her face before she turned away and ran her hand roughly through her hair, in a rather masculine gesture of mortified frustration. But as he watched the long strands slide through her fingers, he found he didn’t want to tease her anymore. He was sorry he had let his damned fear get the better of him, because now he wanted nothing more than to pull her to him, and touch her, and simply be with her in whatever little time remained to them.

But she had moved away, just out of his reach. Her voice was tight and quiet. “It was the best I could think of at the spur of the moment. And it worked, didn’t it? And they were a very long distance away. They couldn’t see anything, not really.” She covered her mortification by reaching over and poking at his wound. Viciously. “You need to put a dry bandage on that.”

“Have a care, Kent. If it will make you feel any happier, you can put those damned skirts to use now, by ripping them to shreds for bandages.”

“I think I will do.” She fished under the quilted skirts, and in a moment the petticoats dropped into a puddle at her feet. She flipped them into the air with a neat kick and caught them handily, before she sat on the deck next to him and commenced rending the fabric into long strips. A sharp little nod of her chin was all her concession. “You’ll have to take the jersey off.” Then her eyes shot up to meet his briefly before she added, “It’s not as if I enjoyed it.”

Oh, but Col had. He was almost ashamed of the base lust that had filled his gut at the sight of her poised above him in the little boat. Almost. But he was furious with himself for having been so furious at her. He had no idea of what such a display must have cost her. “I know, Sally. I’m just sorry I got us in a situation where you felt you had to do it.”

His apology seemed to hone some of the bristles off her anger, and she busied herself with the bandages while he gritted his teeth and pulled the jersey carefully over his head.

She sucked in a breath at the sight, but began wrapping fresh—or at least as fresh as could be expected given the day they’d had—lengths of cotton fabric around his arm. “Look at you,” she chided. “How ever are you going to keep your promise now?”

“My promise?”

“Exactly.” Her voice fell to a very small whisper. But he heard every word. “You
promised
me that if I helped you burn down the town you would make love to me. I can still see the glow of the city from here.”

Blind need slid under his skin more effectively than the bullet had. He clamped his jaw together to keep from making a low, inarticulate sound of want.

She looked so incongruously prim, sitting there by his side in the moonlight, daring him to use up all the unspent lust inside him. Daring him to allow her to do the same. But he had nothing left in him of tenderness.

“Not done playing with fire, are we?” He took up the nearest length of rope, pointed the bow straight out to sea, and lashed the helm on course. And then he turned to her. “I’m already halfway there, but you’ll need to take those off before you choose the softest plank.”

He could see the shock of excitement pass through her. Her mouth fell open, and her breath began to come in shallow, fast gasps of air. Above the scoop of her bodice, her breasts began to rise and fall with increasing urgency.

But she didn’t hesitate. Her hands went immediately to the tapes at her waist, instead of the neckline, and she stepped away from him and then simply let her skirts drop.

And she was completely naked from the waist down. Just as he had known she was when she had sat atop him in the skiff. Just as he had been thinking all the way down the river, and across the bay, and for every single instant since.

But now he didn’t have to imagine. He could see her long, bare, naked legs, and the flame of ginger hair at the apex of her thighs. And then in a show of supreme defiance, she peeled off her bodice, ripping the laces apart, and threw it into the pile of her skirts. And then, with one fell swoop, she kicked the whole of her women’s clothing overboard.

By the time the costume hit the water, he had shucked his trousers and was on her, picking her up in his arms and carrying her down to the deck.

She was as bold as he needed her to be. She didn’t shy away from the contact, his Sally Kent. She wrapped her legs around him, clinging to him like a vine, strong and tensile. When he had her on her back, she was already open to him, and all he had to do was bury himself inside her scalding heat.

Col had to shut his eyes to blunt the force of the sensation, the excruciating pleasure of being inside her, of having her beneath him.

The easy camaraderie of their first encounter was gone, and in its place was something hot and furious and needy. Something carnal. Something that made her hook her ankles together behind his back, and pull him into her with a force that left them both breathless.

It was all the unspent fear and anger and frustration of the night. It was physical excitement and emotional exhaustion. If he kissed her, over and over, his mouth delving deep into her, he would not have to think. He would not have to feel the jangling fear that had twisted his gut into a vicious knot. He would not have to confront how important, how dear, Sally Kent had become to him. How necessary.

So he gave himself over to the lust that rose like a gale within him. He let her fist up his hair and pull his mouth down upon hers. He welcomed the unabashed hunger that had her pulling at his lips with her teeth and digging her hands into his shoulders.

He kissed her back with the same ferocious animal need, sweeping his tongue into her open mouth to plunder and twine with hers.

There was nothing more of slow surprise or delicate wonder. There was only heat and friction and open, greedy need. The skin over his bones felt hot and tight and his lips felt as if they would blister from the scald of her kisses. But still he wanted more.

He wanted to obliterate the gaping hole of fear within him. He wanted to go back to the way it was before, and at the same time stay right where he was, tangling his body with hers. He wanted to see her, to use what little time was left to them basking in the glory of her vibrancy.

He rolled onto his back and set her on top of him, so he could spread her hair out and let it run through his fingers. It fell like a russet curtain of silk, stained with the dark, dangerous scent of fire and ash.

Need clawed its greedy hands higher and he tangled his hands in her hair, to pull her mouth to his, as if he could press his ferocious hunger upon her. As if with his kiss he could obliterate the worry. Because if he didn’t, it would eat him alive.

*   *   *

Sally pushed away from the almost bruising pressure of his mouth. She was gasping for breath, and grasping at the frayed edges of her sanity. The irrational hunger and need crowded out all thought, until she was nothing but raw, undiluted, unrefined feeling. Until she felt the edges of her very self blur and bleed into his, and she couldn’t tell where he started and she left off.

But sitting up brought her no distance, emotional or physical. Instead, it brought a jolt of pleasure so strong it ripped through her. A bolt of bliss so fierce and so needy, she could not contain the cry that broke from her mouth. She grabbed his shoulders to steady herself, even as she ground down against him, feeding the flame of greedy friction that grew stronger with each movement at the joining of their bodies.

“God, look at you,” he muttered, and she had to close her eyes against the sharp force of the bursts of saturated pleasure sparking under her skin.

“Please,” she begged. Her voice held nothing but want and greed, and though she knew what she wanted, she didn’t know what she asked of him. She only knew that she couldn’t control the intensity of the need coursing through her like flood tide. She didn’t know how to tame the wild instinct to push herself against him where their bodies were joined, and at the same time kiss him and touch him and feel the heat and strength of his body wrapped around hers.

But he wanted it, too, for he rose up as well, lifting her knees and holding her to his bare chest, so they were face-to-face. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried herself in the exquisite friction of her nipples brushing against the heat of his chest. In the rasp of his whiskers against her cheek as she rubbed herself against the side of his neck. In the pleasure coiling ever higher in her belly every time she rocked into him. In the salty taste of his skin on her lips.

And then there was nothing but the feel of his strong hands on her hips, urging her against him, over and over, higher and higher, until at last the bliss exploded under her skin and she was gone, flying and floating above on the weightless tide of her love.

She came back to herself reluctantly—almost resentfully—watching with a sort of remote detachment as he carefully disengaged their bodies, and lay back upon the deck and pulled her into his arms.

They floated along for a very long time, content in their silence, their still-naked bodies wrapped together under the velvet blanket of the night sky.

But as much as she wanted the interlude to continue, to stay suspended in time and space, she knew they couldn’t stay that way forever. And so did Col.

“Sally. I have to ask you. If I took the boat and let you take the sloop, would you go?”

“To England?” she asked slowly, unsure if he was giving her any choice. “No. Don’t make me go, Col. Please. I don’t want to go.”

Col blew out a long breath. “But surely you can see— We can’t go on, not like this. If you went, I could tell them Richard had died, or been captured, since he is presumably alive, somewhere in England. But it will solve all our problems.”

However much she hated to be described as a “problem,” Sally could admit to the soundness of the plan. She could in all probability leave Col safe—there was irony in that word—in the boat, still tailed off the stern, and sail the sloop back to England on her own. She could even sail to the very mouth of Falmouth Bay and anchor in the Channel in front of Cliff House, and slip home and go back to being Sally Kent with no one the wiser. She could see it clearly.

But she simply didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be Sally Kent, sitting at Falmouth with nothing to do, and no one to be but herself. She didn’t want to sit and wait and wonder at what Col, or even Ian or Will or Damien, might be doing so far away from her, across the sea. She wanted to continue to watch Col do it in person, to stand by his side and sail with him.

She didn’t want to give him an answer.

“What more do you have to prove, Kent?” he prodded. “You’ve proven yourself as a sailor—the equal to any of your brothers at their age, I’ll daresay. But it’s only going to get harder from here on. It’s only going to get more complicated. More dangerous. You know we
can’t
—” He began to repeat his warning, as if he needed to remind himself as much as her. “I can’t afford to worry about you. I can’t afford to let my concerns about you overshadow or take away from the hundred other things about which I’m meant to be vigilant.”

“I can look out for myself. And I can look out for you as well. I can,” she insisted. “If you’ll let me. I can work, Col. We can work together. Please. Don’t make me go back. There’s nothing there for me to go back to.”

He said nothing else, just pulled her close and held her against his chest where she could feel the slow, sure beating of his heart counting out the minutes of their time together. Nothing, not even their hearts, could stand still. They would have to move on.

They didn’t speak of it again. Sally re-dressed herself in Richard’s uniform and became a midshipman once more. Col put on his lieutenancy along with his coat and brought the sloop alongside
Audacious
just as the dawn was lighting the sky in the east, bringing them a sunrise colored with a cloak of smoke and ash.

Captain McAlden greeted them on the quarterdeck. “Mr. Colyear, you are very welcome back aboard. Come and tell me what you accomplished in Brest. We could see fires from five miles out to sea. Well done, sir.”

“Thank you, sir.” Col was quick to acknowledge her assistance. “Mr. Kent was of inestimable value.”

“Just as I thought he would be.” The captain included her in his congratulations. “Well done, indeed. You must come and tell me all about it over a breakfast. No doubt you are hungry. But first—” The captain had moved to the lee rail to inspect their prize. “Let us dispose of the yacht quickly. We have new orders to rejoin the fleet as part of the inshore squadron off Cadiz. An unarmed yacht is a midshipman’s command. I will leave it to you to choose, Mr. Colyear.”

“Send Kent, sir.”

The moment the captain had made his request of Col, she had expected it—knew he would feel compelled to do it. But still, his ready suggestion of her name cut her to the quick.

Yet this time, Captain McAlden did not accede to Col’s wishes. He looked at Col sharply, but if the captain was recalling the last time Col had suggested something similar when the xebec was the prize to be disposed of, he did not say. “Did you not say Mr. Kent was of inestimable help?”

“Yes, sir.” Col was quick to agree, but he said no more in defense of his suggestion, and he continued not to meet her eyes. “There is alternatively Mr. Gamage, sir, but I will leave it for your decision, sir.”