Chapter 16
Culross had known Meghan would eventually be the death of him.
Be it when her family caught up with him at some point in his life.
Be it the mutiny she would make of his ship.
A man didn’t ruin three innocent ladies and live to be an old, white-headed fellow.
It was very much beginning to look a lot like now. The cause of his expiration—this close to joining his body with hers, only to be barred just outside.
So close his cock throbbed against her damp curls, begging shamefully. Please. Let me in.
Culross buried his forehead against Meghan’s and fought the urge to groan.
He stilled.
Except brow to brow brought him nose to sweet freckled nose. Their lips were so close. Her breath all minty-sweet like a peppermint treat he wanted to keep in his mouth and suck all day whispered with his.
His chest rose and fell more quickly.
She had praised the taste of him.
He slid his lips a fraction closer—testing. Almost tasting.
Hope. Please say never mind, continue as you were.
“A-August?”
Meghan’s mouth trembled. Not the delectable quiver either. Rather the one that shot like a rusty arrow to an already infected wound.
“You d-did not say. Does that mean it is a ye—?”
“No!”
Goodbye cockstand.
Punishment indeed.
Meghan’s mouth trembled into a smile.
Hope sprang anew, as did his very relieved cock.
Her voice emerged all trembly to break a bloody heart he wished to God he hadn’t discovered.
His muscles rolled and rippled under her light touch; that sweet virginal tap was the most erotic thing he’d felt in his bloody life because of how damned unaffected—
“August?” Meghan whispered. “August, are you sleeping?”
He lay there a moment and gave the coward’s way out a serious think.
Culross would have likely done it too, if there had been even the slightest assurance Meghan would not drive a hole through his arm with all her tapping until she got the answers she wanted.
Linnie meant nothing. She had been entertaining. She had also been…just a woman. A means to an end.
A fellow couldn’t exactly say that to his future wife’s sister.
Blast and damn the bloody McQuoid family. Couldn’t they have seen Meghan was there for Culross all along? A perfect match, in spirit, in humor. In strength and courage?
Instead, they had foisted the bloody eldest sister and…and…
You couldn’t have seen her yourself?
He couldn’t, because Meghan taught him to see.
Meghan sighed, a very, very long one.
“A real sigh?” he asked from under his arm.
He felt her nod at his side.
He sighed.
“A real one,” Culross confirmed before she asked the question.
Culross wanted to speak about anything other than Meghan’s sister. He would rather perform a drizzling and unpick all the gold threading from every fabric, braid, or fringe in the Archdales’ possession.
Culross felt her pull away before she moved.
Then Meghan was gone.
She scooted out from under him, and then, pulling her knees into her chest, she folded her arms around them.
August pushed himself over and joined her at the side of the bed.
They sat in silence.
He hated it.
And Culross did not hate it for the reason he wanted to be hilt-deep inside her—though there was that too—but because stilted silences and anguished stretches of quiet never existed between them.
Culross angled his head enough to take all of her in.
His innards twisted.
So bloody forlorn.
He was tormented with self-imposed frustration: with himself for past decisions. Recent ones. All his mistakes before Meghan had been a road map of pain that led directly to her.
Culross pinched the dull pressure built up at the back of his neck. He watched the estuaries pass, the brig moving slowly, when all he wanted was to fly to Gretna Green and get something right with Meghan.
This crime, the one that left his proud, unbendable Meghan questioning, was an accidental one. The other, he was sitting on now and withholding until he—they—worked through their past. Otherwise, this fragile thing formed could end before it even had a chance.
Meghan went still.
“Do you know why I wanted her?”
Meghan gave something between a shake and a nod.
A small corner of his mouth lifted.
His courageous girl. Brave but telling him with that forlorn little tilt that she did not want to be.
“Your family’s flair for the romantic preceded them. It took nothing to ascertain what they sought: expand their shipping connections.” He turned a palm up. “Ah, but how does a family who ascribes to ideas like love matches reconcile their ruthless aspirations with what and who they really are?”
His mouth tightened.
“I never ascribed to feelings.” His mouth curled around that word out of habit.
Culross willed her to understand.
“I grew up on the sea. I lived on the sea. I’ll die on the sea. I wanted one thing, and one thing only—a merger.”
August stopped and looked to the broad stern windows overlooking the wake—the coastline continued fading. The water widening.
“I didn’t care and I told your family what they wanted to hear,” he said somberly. “They wanted a love match. I could do that. A charming word here, a grin there. A…” He grimaced. “Touch.”
Meghan’s face crumpled.
And his heart buckled and broke for it.
Culross refused to look away. He suffered with her.
“I am no different than any of the other nobles who want the right match. It could have been you.”
There was a strange ball in his throat, one he needed to clear several times.
“I couldn’t give a damn less about your sister,” he said tiredly.
Culross lifted a bunched fist.
“I wish it had been you,” he whispered harshly. “But it wasn’t.”
And that could not be changed.
Meghan rested her cheek against his shoulder.
“Because then there would be no war.”
He dropped a kiss atop her mountain of curls.
“Because then there would not be a ghost between us, Meghan, and right now—”
There would be no diabolical plot that left her sister and cousin hurt and would eventually eviscerate Meghan.
He wanted to start over. Wanted to go back to a casual business conversation where—
His chest heaved.
“And right now, Meghan,” he said raggedly, “it would be only me and you and this moment.”
Culross fisted his hands and squeezed them—
A satin-soft palm covered his.
“Three times,” Meghan murmured.
He stared at her.
“You know that,” he said.
“I wondered if you knew that.”
His chest ached. To know she had seen him, and he had failed to know what he wanted most was right before him.
Culross caught Meghan’s fingers and drew her around, bringing her to face him.
“I love you.”
Her breath caught.
“I love you so damned much.”
Meghan’s breath hitched. Her eyes slid shut, but not before the light in them touched Culross all the way to his soul.
Meghan went onto her knees, turned his face, and kissed him.
Look at that. Culross had delivered her back to the clouds with nothing more than three words.
“I love you,” he repeated, his voice hoarse.
He guided her under him.
Her beautiful face gleamed from the loving he had already shown her.
Meghan searched his face.
“Why do you always look at me as though I am going somewhere?” he murmured.
“Because you always do.”
“I always did.”
Culross kissed her deeply.
“But now you are staying,” she breathed.
If you will let me.
Dread, that stealer of joy, slithered in.
Determined to crush it, he moved down her body. He licked the sweat from her freckles as he went.
“I need you like the very air I bloody breathe, Meghan,” he said shakily when his head rested at the altar of her womanhood. “I do not even recognize myself.”
Meghan pressed a shaking hand to his cheek.
“I love you this way.”
The scent of her musk flooded his nostrils; she drove him mad.
Smoothing his palms up and down the gorgeous expanse of her thighs, he splayed her for his worship.
“I will give it all to you. Anything you want. Everything you need.”
He cradled the right globe of her buttocks in one hand and used the other to part her legs wider.
“Is it my entire mouth you want?” August whispered against her sodden curls.
“I-I d-do s-suspect it will be one of those naughty things I enjoy.”
He welcomed her honesty; wrapped in that breathy way was an added gift. A welcome one, but unnecessary.
“Or do you like when I tease you with my tongue?”
With that same blade of hot flesh, he licked a path, erasing the remnants of her slick desire.
“Wh-what about b-both?” she ventured, her eyes worried, like he really wouldn’t give her it all.
Then, filling his hands with her buttocks, he brought her mound against his mouth and feasted.
Meghan cried out; her hips shot up.
Culross curled his fingers more sharply under the curves of her bottom, and she gripped his head. Moaning, she rode his tongue.
He licked her. He slid his tongue inside her sopping channel over and over until tears streamed from her cheeks and sharp cries pulled from her throat.
His shaft throbbed. His body begged for its own surrender. He hungered even more to serve her.
“I love the taste of you, Meghan,” he extolled, pausing in his ministrations just long enough to get the naughty praise out—praise she flourished under.
Panting, Meghan rocked her hips into his face.
His answering chuckle was a low velvet rumble.
Meghan cried out half in longing, half in torment.
“You’re driving me mad, August!”
Another low laugh rumbled but dissolved as she dragged her fingernails up and down his back, marking him.
August sucked a sharp rasp of air into his lungs.
“Who is it you want, Meghan?”
While he lapped her honey, he reached up and filled his hands with her breasts.
“Mmm,” she keened. “You.”
His ballocks gathered tight.
It could not be just him caught in this conflagration. If he was to be destroyed, he’d have her catch fire with him.
Groaning like the wounded animal she’d turned him into, he applied himself even more to his efforts.
“Who do you need?”
Every breath he took scraped his chest and throat raw.
“Oh, August. It is you. Only you,” she whispered. “Please.”