Virgin Star (34 page)

He hadn't understood how much it meant to him until he saw it. She felt safe, for the first time since the suspicious day she landed on his doorstep; she felt safe surrounded by miles of sea and all of his men. This precious happiness seemed to increase each day, and the more it increased, the more he knew he could not, would not snatch it from her. "Now, Sean." Butcher had pointed his finger at him. "This be exactly what that good doctor meant. She gets better each day, and darn if she's not remembering more and more each day. One of these days she's going to wake up and remember everything. Now the last thing she needs is to find herself in that bed—"

"Butcher! Let us save these less than scintillating morality lectures for the day you don a vicar's cloth and address a congregation of dry-rot spinsters, their beardless husbands, and their mealy-mouthed brats. If you think I care to hear of probity and virtue from my friends—" He had stopped, realizing what he was saying to one of his dearest friends. "I'm sorry. Of course you are right. Find out what slop Mister Slops dreamed up in his nightmares last night, will you?"

Butcher called it correctly. Shalyn did indeed seem to blossom. After ten days of smooth wondrous sailing, the Wind Muse had rounded the cape. Then the weather had changed; the ship passed through the violence and storms of the most dangerous waters on earth. The exhilaration and thrill of the constant battle against nature had taken many forms, everything from trying to keep feet planted on deck to hoisting a wind-torn sail to its masts as sheets of rain fell from a black sky. As his crew had discovered, Shalyn was as fine a sailor as any of them.

Presently he tried to recall his vow to cherish her well-being and just keep her safe. Yet the girl standing so near him in naught but a thin cotton shirt and long hair was irresistible. Far too irresistible. "Shalyn," he said, staring at the tempting press of her breasts beneath the shirt as she backed into the rail of the ship.

The hard wood offered some small support to her shaky knees and she grasped the rail with her hands, wondering wildly why her feet would not obey the edict to run. She stared at his amused gaze with the helpless fascination of a newborn bird caught in the mesmerizing stare of an interested snake, and indeed they had played a dangerous game of hunter and hunted all week, with his crew coming in firmly and thankfully on her side. If it weren't for the watchful and kind men of his crew, she might have been 'long gored by the randy cap'n," as Talman gamely put it.

They were alone now ...

"You know it has been many, many years since I last remember being titillated by a woman's dress. Or lack of such." He leaned against the ship's rail, separated from her by less than an arm's length. The intimate brush of his gaze felt like the warmest caress. She swallowed, feeling the rising rhythm of her heart and pulse—-an exacting measure of his proximity and perhaps more accurately, his attention. For she had his full attention. He wore only breeches. A warm night breeze swept his long hair from the width of his shoulders.

Why, oh why was she so afraid?

"Nor have I ever wanted to kiss a bedraggled woman in the darkness of a night at sea on my ship."

"Bedraggled?" she questioned weakly as if it might be the important point.

"Shalyn, look at yourself," he said, one long arm braced against the rail. "Your hair." His free hand went to the hair falling in chaotic disarray down her back past her waist. She felt the intimate brush of his hand over the shirt and she closed her eyes a moment, forgetting to breathe. "You're certainly not dressed to meet the king now, are you?"

She searched the handsome face to see his humor. "Yes. You see, I ... I was sleeping. I didn't think anyone would be about and—"

Why was she trying to explain?

"Shalyn." He chuckled. "I am not complaining. Why would I? Especially when this shirt allows me to see right through to the treasure beneath, a vision I've imagined maybe a thousand times or more in my dreams."

Slowly she crossed her arms over herself. "Seanessy ..."

She said his name as a plea. For help. To let her go. The last thing he felt was mercy, and he told her so with the brazenness of his stare. She tried to meet his gaze but her eyes faltered, her lashes lowered. He reached a hand to her arms and gently brought them to her sides. Softly, but with a firmness she could not escape, one hand slipped over the small of her waist and around her back, drawing her closer, as his other hand, light as a feather, traced the contours of her slender form beneath the shirt. A rush of feathery shivers made her grasp. Her hands reached uncertainly to his arms.

"May I, Shalyn? Kiss you?"

He did not wait for a reply. He leaned over and gently touched his lips to hers. Once ... then again. “Say yes, Shalyn..." The whispered words and his warm firm lips hovering just over hers with a lover's tease fueled the pace of her heart and blood as he lightly molded his mouth to hers. The kiss, like the question, was a warm invitation to answer a dream too long denied. Her answer came in the soft pliancy of her mouth, a slight parting. His splayed fingers on her face tilted her head back so he could get a better hold on her mouth.

The warm breeze could not touch the wild ravishment of his kiss as he aligned her body against his, needing to feel, to touch all of her. He broke the kiss but for a moment. "Shalyn, put your arms around my neck. Better," he said as he lightly kissed her mouth before gently forcing her lips open and kissing her again.

A kiss without end. She didn't know she clung to his neck as if he were her lifeline, she didn't know anything except the pounding pleasure of his kiss. They might have been thrown off the deck and into the dark sea, and still she would have been clinging to him as she floated on a sea of bright colors...

His hands fitted around her bottom where he lifted her up onto the rail. The rail, she sat on the rail, one push separating her from a fall into the sea, and yet all she knew was the hard pressure of his male hips between her open and parted legs.

A hot gush of warmth rushed from the spot. She clung even tighter to his neck. His whole body tensed with a struggle for control as he forced her head back and moved deeper into the moist softness of her mouth. A shocking series of tremors exploded; a small cry issued from deep inside her, dying in their joined mouths.

He broke the kiss. "Oh yes and yes," he said as his lips grazed the velvety softness of her arched brows and closed lids, before he gently caught her lower lip in his mouth. He watched her small surprised gasps of pleasure as his hands slid sensuously over the shirt, letting the heat of his fingertips slowly penetrate her skin like a tonic. The shirt teased him unmercifully and he reached for the buttons. "We don't need this now, do we?"

He parted the shirt from her breasts. "Oh Lord, Shalyn, you are beautiful..." She felt the intimate brush of the warm night air before the warmth of his palms over her breasts. She gasped with a tingling pleasure and said his name in another plea.

He answered with a kiss. From the sea of shimmering colors an image formed to warn her, an image so shocking it made her pull sharply away, and with a gasp she stifled a scream. It sounded in a frightened whisper, a cry for help.

"Shalyn?"

"No, no, I can't—" She shook her head, looking as mad and tormented by it as she felt. Color drained from her face, her heart pounded alarmingly, she couldn't catch her breath as her hands reached in desperation to the sides of her head. She closed her eyes tight to shut out the image of waves washing over Seanessy's head. Just his head—

The image exploded in a burst of blinding white light...

"Shalyn—"

He caught her in his arms and with shock and horror he stood for several long seconds staring at the limp and motionless body. His thoughts turned in frantic circles until he felt the brush of Oly's fur on his legs. And then suddenly he was racing...

Loud snores filled the space. A dozen hammocks swung with each lift and fall of the great ship over the gentle swells. One dim lamp rocked from the ceiling. Seanessy found the right hammock.

"Wake up." Seanessy lifted his bare foot in a swift, though light kick to the sleeping man. "Wake up, old man."

Toothless woke with a start. He opened his eyes to the uncertain darkness, and when he spotted the captain holding the sleeping lass, he swung his feet to the floor. "What? What is it?"

"Shalyn fainted!"

A number of the sleeping men turned over with loud unpleasant grunts. A few came awake, but only to curse. Toothless tried to rouse himself to the occasion, but he had long ago passed the age when he felt chipper upon being wakened from a dead sleep.

Dead sleep, he thought, rubbing his scratchy chin, an apt description of the state. With effort he concentrated on his captain long enough to see his worry.

"So what?" the old man said crossly. "Half the time women start drawin' enough air to float when they see you; I'm not surprised one of 'em went and fainted."

"Toothless:..."

His name sounded in a warning. Toothless tried to put his mind to the lass. "Is.she still breathin'?"

"Aye, but—"

"Well, she's doin' a sight better than I am!" He coughed as if to illustrate the comment. "What was she doing before she passed out?"

The question surprised Seanessy. "We were enjoying each other's company—"

"Oh, were we now?" Toothless interrupted, amused and irritated by this, dismissing Seanessy with a wave of his hand. "And the lass forfeits yer game by passin' out before yer ruddy jack took her sweet ace? And ye went and woke me up for that?"

"Just tell me if she's going to be all right, will you? Or are you so worthless that I'll be better served tossing you seaside and donating your pension to the Retired Maritime Officers’ Foundation?"

Toothless stood up. He examined her face. He checked her pulse. He politely buttoned the top buttons of her shirt. He offered up a smile of pure farce; his boldness owed itself less to his long friendship with Seanessy than to the fact that Sean's hands were occupied. "Would ye be wanting me to wake her so ye can-.”

Seanessy rolled his eyes with a disparaging shake of his head. "I only wanted to ascertain if she was well or ill, if I should be concerned. She seems so maddeningly delicate at times, and after all the good Doctor Rush said about not letting her become excited—"

"Captain," he interrupted yet again. "I'm not the best man to instruct ye on the handlin' of a untried lass, but I'd wager she might survive long enough if ye just let her come up for air once in a while ..."

The men listening chuckled.

After a few well-aimed barbs, Seanessy swept the girl from the ribald comments that followed. He quickly brought her to his bed in the unlikely event that she woke and needed help. He carefully lifted the covers over her sleeping form. With some greater effort, he squarely faced the fact that he wasn't going to have her. At least not tonight ...

The Wind Muse had come up the east coast of the Dark Continent rather than sail straight across to where the duke's island sat in the mouth of the Straits of Malacca. Dawn spread in lovely colors of pink and gold, shining through low clouds. Gentle swells lifted the ship—"like being rocked in a woman's arms," Cary, one of the gunners, said as he sipped a hot cup of morning tea at the rail with Butcher.

In the captain's quarters, Seanessy was just waking from a familiar dream. In this dream Shalyn danced before him, naked, gracefully, erotically, and just as his desire reached a feverish pitch and he could take no more, he leaped up and reached out to take her into his arms. Only to watch her dance away into darkness. He felt a surge of desire as, desperate to snatch her back, he gave chase into this dark tunnel.

He wanted that girl!

Only to find himself surrounded by laughing human skulls drawn from her nightmares. Furious and enraged, he knocked first one away, then another and another. As fast as they appeared in the darkness he smashed them with all the force of his fist. The skulls rolled into the black night still laughing as Negro voices echoed eerily: "We see her, we see her ..."

"Where?" -

"Chasin' the virgin star..."

The same dream every blessed morning. Seanessy sighed, sitting upright in the hammock and planting his feet on the floor. Shalyn still slept in his bed. He stepped to the side and looked down at her sleeping face.

The morning light accented her loveliness more than usual, somehow...

A line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet sounded with bitter humor in his mind: "Dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy." How bloody true.

Except for the part when Shalyn disappeared into darkness. He thought again of Edward's recounting of the Frenchman waving her picture and promising a fifty-pound reward. Now the question was: had Kyler placed her picture in the London papers and already killed this merry Frenchman, whoever he was? Or, had Kyler dismissed the whole intrigue once he discovered Shalyn missing? He wouldn't know until a message made its way to Malacca...