Chapter 27 #2
It was his turn to pull back. His breathing was shallow and uneven—as though he’d been striving toward some impossible height. And Ruby—
How he wanted her. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she stared up at him, and he had to make himself look away from the Renaissance masterpiece that was his shirt stretched over her tits.
Nothing about this was as he’d imagined.
In his fantasies, as he’d sold the Delphinium and counted his coin, he’d thought to wed her someplace beautiful.
He’d envisioned a bed that would fit both of them, a cloud-tower of soft cotton and down.
He’d imagined iced wine and ginger cream, pictured himself licking things off various parts of her body until she was sobbing with need.
But he had this: a cramped cabin at the back of his ship, lifted in slow rolling waves by the sea. Ruby’s skin beneath his mouth. His heart, delicate as a soap bubble, resting in her palm.
“I want it too,” he said hoarsely. “God, I do. But the cabin—there’s only this godforsaken hammock—and I want this to be good for you, Ruby. I want it to be perfect.”
She was still gripping the back of his shirt, and her ocean eyes were fixed on his face. “I’m certain,” she said, “that between the two of us, we can think of something.”
He looked down at her: flushed and heavenly, soft spilling flesh and kiss-damp lips.
His wife.
“Oh fuck,” he said. “Ruby. Yes.”
He spun her away from him. He nudged her forward to the small table at the center of the cabin and pressed her down across it.
She caught his meaning. She grasped the wooden edge and leaned forward. Her breasts crushed against the table, and as she bent, he pushed the hem of his shirt up to reveal the tops of her thighs, her buttocks, her sex.
Touching her felt like an impossible extravagance.
Some holy luxury he’d never done anything to earn.
He stroked her until she was whimpering, and then he knelt and put his mouth to her slick seam.
He licked, caressed—used hands and tongue as her hips jerked against him and his body throbbed with need.
He felt the sobbed-out rhythm of her climax with a sense of wonder, with agonizing, tooth-grinding lust. His heart battered his ribs. His cock was so hard he could feel it twitch with every heartbeat, pressing against the waistband of his trousers.
She twisted to look back at him. “Malcolm,” she gasped, “please.”
“Yes,” he said. “God. Whatever you want. Anything.”
He kept on touching her, but he used his free hand to unfasten his fall. He gripped himself—Christ, Christ, this was going to be quick if he did not take care.
He got to his feet, dazed by the sight of her before him, pleasured, pink-flushed. He filled his palms with her buttocks, then reached beneath the shirt to find her waist, her back, the side of her breast. And then he pressed the head of his cock against her sex and did not let himself move.
She gasped a little. “Malcolm. What are you—”
“Wait,” he murmured. “Wait.”
He drew the tip of his finger along the outer curve of her breast and watched her tremble. And then the slow roll of the waves lifted the deck beneath them—canted his body into hers, pressing the head of his cock a bare half inch inside her.
And then the ship fell again, pulling him free.
She made a soft sound. Desperate.
His brain had gone white with need. Every muscle in his body felt clenched and aching, and bloody Christ, it was nearly impossible not to thrust into her.
But he wanted to wait more than he wanted to plunge ahead. He wanted to be certain, to be sure. He wanted forever, and he wanted it to begin like this: a slow, patient tide that came for them both.
He put his fingers to his mouth, wetting them, then slid them between her body and the table.
She went up on her toes to give him room, and he moved his fingers to her clitoris, listening to the sounds she made because he could not see her face.
He stroked her in little circles as the next wave came, and then the next, pressing him deeper, slow and slippery and searing, bare half inches at a time.
Oh God—it was bliss and agony to hold himself still. To fight the impulse of his body.
“Malcolm,” she gasped. “I want—” She whimpered, hips lifting as she sought to take him in. “I want—”
“I know,” he said thickly. “Oh fuck. Sweetheart. I know.”
It took a dozen waves before he was fully seated inside her.
Another two before he felt her thighs tremble and knew she was lost. Her body seemed to clutch at him, to hold him inside, clenching down again and again with her culmination.
He heard himself groan, and he might not have moved even then, except she turned her head to where his hand had come to rest beside her cheek and sucked the tip of his finger into her mouth.
His head spun. His pulse was pounding in his ears, in his prick, and he caught her hip in his free hand, clutched her tight, and thrust hard.
“Is that what you want?” he said raggedly.
“Yes,” she gasped. Her hips lifted higher as he slammed into her again. “Oh God. Yes.”
He took her harder—because she wanted it, and because there was nothing he would not do for her.
Nothing he would fail to give. He drove himself into her again and again, and only when he knew himself a heartbeat from his own climax did he withdraw.
He pressed her thighs together and emptied himself there, in the slick channel made by her arousal and his seed.
And when they both were spent, he brushed her sweat-darkened hair off her face. He leaned down across her so that he might press his mouth to the nape of her neck.
“I’m yours now,” he said quietly. “Body and soul.”
Please, he thought. Don’t regret it.