Stormfire (44 page)

Naked beneath Sean's blankets and her own, Catherine regained consciousness in her bunk. Despite the covering, she was cold, her mind and spirit were as an arctic waste. No tears were left now. Nothing except a terrible alienation. Even being alive meant nothing. Culhane had been ready to kill her. Why hadn't he? Was it for the same reason her thoughts had reached his, like a child seeking a reassuring hand, even when she hid from him? Reached for a hand that held a dagger. Papa . . . don't. Don't think. Thinking hurts.

Holding her head, she sat up and huddled against the bulkhead. The cabin was dim, the twilight murky with promise of a storm. Land was nowhere in sight and wind whined nastily in the rigging. Thunderheads mounted in a squall line on the southern horizon and the
Megan's
bow dipped clumsily into troughs, spray blowing high over her deck. On the horizon was an approaching sail, one of the few they had encountered this far north. Tiredly brushing away clinging cobwebs of thought, she dully watched it through the porthole.

The sail became a mass of sails, tall and commanding. A merchantman? A cruiser. The Irish had no cruisers. Catherine fought to clear her head. She had to gain the vessel's attention. The lantern thumped against the bulkhead. A light. But there would be no chance to use it long enough to be spotted unless . . . A small hatchet was mounted on the wall below Culhane's bunk. Silently she unhooked the lantern, then shook it; a healthy slosh answered. At the helm, visible through the partly open doorway, Culhane was watching the cruiser and beginning to veer subtly away, knowing
Megan
would be unnoticed once the squall line struck.

Barefoot, Catherine moved soundlessly about the cabin. She laid the hatchet on Culhane's bunk, then fished in the food bag for the flintbox. Using a blanket to shield the glow, she waited until the cruiser loomed closer, then lit the lantern and took a firm grip on the hatchet.

Intent on the warship, Culhane did not see his hostage until she was already through the forward hatch; then it was too late. In one stroke of the hatchet she severed the main halyard, burying the blade deep in the mast. With an ominous ruffle, the mainsail dropped in a leaden tangle of canvas and rigging, slamming him to the deck and sending the boom slashing out of control. Catherine swung the lantern in a high, wide arc and tried not to think of the man who might be injured. Tried not to think of what a British tribunal would do to him.

Stunned at first, Sean lay tangled under the sail, then began desperately to fight clear as he heard the muffled lash of raindrops against the cloth. Swearing, he pulled a knife and split the sail. Catherine, still signaling, saw him emerge from his trap much sooner than anticipated. She wrenched at the imbedded hatchet. He warily closed on her. "Douse that light!" She jerked at the hatchet; it stuck solid. No longer trying to wave the light, just trying to keep a footing on the slippery, lurching deck, she backed toward the bow. Sean watched tensely. A wild-eyed, beautiful siren bent on destroying him, she was desperate, trembling with cold and fear. At any moment she might lose her balance, even jump. "Want me dead that badly, little one? Here, catch!" Knowing she would snatch at it and poised to hurl himself forward to pin her down, he sent the knife skittering across the deck.

She grabbed fast enough, almost losing her grip on the lantern, but he was forced to freeze in midlunge just out of reach of the glittering blade poised all too professionally at his belly. She had learned more in captivity than he realized. "Kit, you're going to have to use that knife if you bring in that cruiser. I'll not swing from a British yard-arm."

"Take the dinghy but don't come any closer." Her tone was flat, although her teeth were clenched from cold and rain that lashed her dripping body. "I've nothing to lose."

"Nor have I," he said softly. "Only you."

"You were going to kill me," she spat.

"Yes."

"You should have. It would have been over for both of us."

"Is that what you want? Then use the knife." His advice was quiet, almost brotherly, and she watched him with wary uncertainty. "Shall I help you make up your mind? I'll never let you go, girl. Not while I breathe. If you don't kill me, I'm going to take you and go on taking you. I may even give you a child. And if you run away from me, I'll bring you back. If you want to be rid of me, it's now or never."

Her heart raced sickeningly as her desperation grew. The cruiser loomed closer.

"Don't be afraid. I won't stop you. Take your revenge and be free. It's only the matter of a moment." Clutching a shroud line above his head, he leaned toward her, rain- soaked shirt flapping about his bare chest as lightning snapped across the sky. His voice was seductively soft. "We're close as an embrace. Kiss me with the knife."

The weapon slowly backed for the lunge, its point glinting with a razor's wicked edge.

"Now, Catherine. Strike now, or yield."

She thrust the knife forward, but at the last moment looked into eyes that reflected the storm. This strange, brooding man had become part of her. Frighteningly, he needed her now, though she had denied him in rage and pride as he had her. Even if she died by his hand, she could deny him no longer.

As the knife clattered to the deck, a fleck of crimson over the Irishman's heart smeared against her breast as he swept her into his arms and crushed his mouth down upon her cold lips, kissing her as if the tempest raging about them were centered in his soul. He paused to kick the lantern overboard, then picking her up, moved quickly across the careening deck to the cabin's shelter. He laid her down, then swiftly tore free of his sodden clothing. Lightning illuminated the cabin. Their hair dripping in points, they looked long at one another while off the starboard bow a British man-o'-war labored north through the storm. As her stern light disappeared, Sean's mouth plummeted down on Catherine's and she answered his raging desire with equal hunger as she drew him down onto the tumbled blankets. Their wet, slippery bodies met and moved in wanton heat that raged like the storm howling about their battered craft. Passion rose in fiery waves pouring over the edge of the world, a descent into the inferno, bodies locked in a fusion of molten desire. Ice and fire. He possessed her with a tender savagery that not only claimed victory but wreaked annihilation.

For a long time they lay still joined, Sean's dark head resting on Catherine's breast. As the storm slowly abated outside their drifting sanctuary, she touched his damp, curling hair, reveling in its thick softness. Lifting his head, he gazed into her lambent eyes with a wonder his shadowing.lashes could not veil. A slow, boyish smile softened the hard lines of his mouth. "Shivering sea witch," he murmured, brushing her lips with his. Gently he explored her face with his fingers as a blind man might, as if he had never seen it before and might never again. "Yea, thou art fair," he breathed. "I fear I'm caught in some siren's spell, for your starry eyes are not of this world, sweet witch, and I shall ever see them, dazzled, dreaming."

She smoothed the damp hair from his temples. "And what of my Sea Beast? When I look into his eyes, I see no wolfish gleam, no fiendish glare, but a man, and such a man as I've never known. I. . ." She fell silent, a shadow crossing her face.

"You wonder when the reprieve ends," he supplied with a trace of his old bitterness.

She stopped his lips with a quick, clinging kiss that scattered his troubled thoughts like dead ashes. "We've gone beyond promises. Everything but this moment."

She drew his head down and his hard body reclaimed hers with a fierce yearning that aroused her own longing to a dizzy pitch, then slowly fulfilled it with piercing, welling intensity until her cry was swept away with the wind.

As Catherine buried her face in. his neck and drifted peacefully into dreamless sleep, Sean, staring into the dark, watched fitful lightning play over the still-angry waves.

When dawn rose over the quick-running, sullen seas, he left her sleeping and, naked as an ancient mariner, went up on deck. Wet teak slapped under his bare feet as he surveyed the debris of sail and rigging choking the cockpit. With the severed halyard clamped in his teeth, he climbed up into the swaying rigging. Though he worked quickly at the damage, he grew chilled almost immediately. Perversely, he wanted the discomfort, the astringent of spray and wind on his skin. Least of all did he want to look down and see Catherine staring up at him like a brazen pirate wench with black hair whipping about her naked body. She eyed his nudity with a glance that made his blood run hot. Half angrily he growled, "Put on your clothes, girl. You'll catch a chill."

"You're evidently in no danger," she teased, a dimple appearing in her cheek as she surveyed his long, supple limbs and bronzed, lean frame with the appreciation of a woman proud of her lover.

He flushed and swore under his breath. One night of pleasure and the bold little baggage was as coolly appraising as a Paris madam.

He swung in midair from a ratline to a stay and slid down to land with a scowl at her feet. She swirled a playful finger in the black, curling fur of his chest. "I'm so glad you didn't persuade me to kill you. If I'd been brought to trial before my feminine peers, I should have been hanged outright as a traitor to my sex."

"God help us all if women ever sit in court!" he snorted derisively to distract her from his all-too-eager response to her touch. Damnation! There was no justice in the world when a man could not disguise his interests while a woman could toy until kingdom come without turning a hair.

Catherine looked up impishly, trailing her fingers along the fine line of fur that traced down his belly. "Sir, do you suggest that justice in capable hands might be too equally dispensed, or that women aren't sensible? Only an insensible woman could deny the upright evidence of your appeal." Her lifts curved mischievously.

He firmly plucked her fingers out of his pelt. "If you don't want to be pitched overboard for a water sprite, keep your itchy little fingers to yourself." He moved to the halyards, and a cool, teasing voice came from behind him. "Actually, I had thought of perfecting my backstroke in a more pleasant fashion."

"Damned if your mouth doesn't need another soaping!" Angrily he turned, and somehow she was all soft in his arms, the boat's rocking under his feet only part of the dizzying effect on his runaway senses. Swearing softly, he pulled her upward, hard against his nakedness, and kissed her roughly until she was breathless. Lowering her to the shining mirror of the deck, he took her under the sky, swiftly, urgently, until a shuddering, sweet, swelling agony seized them both and left them clinging tightly, spent and trembling.

Rising slightly, Sean looked down at her exquisite face like a golden, exotic flower against her disheveled hair. .Her eyes under their long lashes still smoldered with tiny fires that made him want to take her again although his body could not immediately answer his craving. "It's no good, Kit," he said reluctantly. "We have to go back. Another storm's coming."

The fires guttered in her eyes and the old look of tension returned. "Sean . . ."

"Look, if I thought this rigging would take another beating, I'd head straight out to sea. Do you think I want to take you back there now?"

"It's not the rigging. You're as much a prisoner as I."

"I have responsibilities, Kit. Lives depend on my facing them."

"Is it responsibility? Or revenge and ambition you're loath to forget?"

His jaw tightened and he quickly got to his feet, pulling her with him. "That's part of it." He held her close, his lips against her hair, his voice half-angry, half-pleading. "Kit, trust me a little. Try to understand . . ."