16. Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Marguerite paced the narrow length of the cabin, counting her steps. Three to the bulkhead. Turn. Four back to the door. Pause. Adjust the lamp. Smooth the coverlet—again. She had thought about this. She knew what she was offering and what she expected in return.
She glanced at the clock with a soft, incredulous huff.
Of all the hours her pirate duke should have demanded .
. . Midnight was meant for spells unraveling and girls discovering that perfection came with conditions.
It was the hour when illusion ended, and reality demanded its due.
She was no princess. She had loved before.
Had negotiated affection, accepted its terms, paid its price.
And yet—
Her heart beat faster, traitorous and light, as if it had not been briefed. It behaved absurdly, like the heart of a girl standing at the top of a staircase, skirts gathered, breath caught, as if midnight were not an ending at all, but an invitation.
She stopped by the table and pressed her fingers to the wood, grounding herself.
This was not a fairy tale. This was a temporary alliance, entered into with eyes open and clauses clearly defined.
She had agreed to joint operations. Nothing more.
Her body, yes—she had conceded that. Desire was manageable.
Appetite could be satisfied and dismissed.
Her heart, however—her heart was neutral territory.
That was the line. But how did a woman protect herself from a pirate who looked at her with those green eyes, as if the color had some magical ability to unravel her?
She would be present. Generous even. But she would not reach for him first. And she would not share her past. Her eyes flickered to the little chest above the vanity, and she quickly averted her gaze.
And above all, she would not imagine a tomorrow.
These were sensible provisions. Necessary ones.
Footsteps sounded outside the cabin, and her pulse sped. When had she become this . . . aware of herself? The warmth under her skin, the faint ache low in her belly. Well, then, it was better to feel desire than none at all. Mutual enthusiasm, after all, made for far more successful negotiations.
The clock ticked, each second a knock.
She drew in a steadying breath, schooling her features into calm. When he came through that door, he would find her composed, articulate, and very much herself. She would offer what she had agreed to offer—no more, no less.
The clock struck twelve.
And Marguerite—who had never been a princess, who had cared and lost and learned—stood very still, heart racing, poised not to lose a shoe but to gain what?
The latch turned.
The door opened.
And there he was.
Tristan stepped into the cabin and shut the door behind him.
Her hands curled at her sides as if her body, treacherous thing, had already decided to surrender ground she had sworn to defend.
He looked . . . freshly claimed by the sea.
His hair was damp, curling at the ends. His shirt clung to him in places it had no business clinging.
Both of them stood there, breathless, as if the walk from opposite sides of the room was an ocean.
She gestured toward the small table by the wall. “I . . . I did not know if you had dined.” The words came out far too formal for the way her pulse had begun to misbehave. “So I thought . . .”
He did not look at the food.
“You’re wet,” she said, then winced inwardly at the inadequacy of the observation. “Did you—did you take another bath?”
He nodded once. His gaze was fixed on her mouth.
“For heaven’s sake,” she whispered, “you will catch a cold on my account.”
He stepped closer and brushed a kiss against the corner of her lip. “If I hadn’t, I would have been here three hours sooner.”
Her knees went weak. His mouth found hers, and she melted into his heat. He kissed like a man who knew exactly how long he had waited. She answered, every carefully drafted provision scattering like loose papers in a high wind.
When her breath faltered, he pulled away.
“Marguerite, I will only do this if you want it too.”
This had to be a negotiation tactic. Men did this—they removed the structure so you had to reach for them without it, which gave them the power.
Except . . . He was looking at her so earnestly. She was very good at reading faces, and his was doing something young and uncertain. He had said the true thing, and he was waiting to see the cost.
“But we have a bargain, and I promised that—”
“It does not matter to me.”
The little coal inside her, the one he lit with the epaulets, the one she had been pressing her hands against, pretending so hard it was not there, caught fire, and the warmth spread.
“I do not know how to want something without a contract protecting me from it. But I want this,” she said, sliding her hands up his chest.
One step in, and his mouth covered hers, hands framing her face as if he feared she’d vanish if he touched anything else.
Heat burst low in her belly, and she grabbed his shoulders, felt the wet linen cling to muscle. His tongue swept in. She stumbled. He caught her waist. She pressed closer. His jaw was locked, his breath measured through his nose, as if he were holding a line with both hands in a gale.
He made a noise—deep, almost a growl. It vibrated through her ribs.
The door was solid at her back, and he was solid at her front, and between the two, there was no room left for provisions.
Tristan gripped her hips through the robe and pulled her flush against him, and she felt exactly how long he had waited.
Heat shot through her. Good, she thought, with the last competent corner of her mind. This she could manage. Fast was manageable.
He dragged his mouth to her throat, and she tipped her head back against the door.
“Marguerite.” Her name in his mouth, pressed into the skin below her ear.
He found the hem of her robe and slipped his palm up the outside of her thigh. When he reached her hip, he lifted her leg around him, and she felt the cold of the door at her bare calf and the heat of his hip against her inner thigh and the precise geography of what he wanted.
She exhaled against his neck. Yes. This. Quick. A transaction with mutual benefit and a clear endpoint. She could return the robe to her shoulders when it was done, pour them both water from the pitcher, and locate herself in the familiar landscape of afterward.
His hand moved between them, and his fingers found her core. She gasped—the sound embarrassing in its nakedness—because he discovered immediately that she was slick and wanting and entirely legible.
“God,” he said.
Her face burned. She turned it against his shoulder. His hand withdrew, and she heard the rasp of his falls, and then his erection was pressing against her mound. She exhaled and tilted her hips to meet him.
He pressed into her. The blunt head breached her, and already she knew she would not survive the rest. Her head fell back against the door. Above her, the lamp swung, light crossing the ceiling in slow arcs, and the hull groaned around them.
Tristan braced his forearm against the door above her head. He held there, barely inside her, his chest expanding against hers with a shuddering breath.
She shifted, trying to draw him deeper.
He caught her hip at once and pinned her still.
“Tristan.” Her voice had gone thin. Too bare. She steadied it with effort. “You may finish.” Before she lost anything she could not recover.
His body went still in a different way, as if some line had snapped taut inside him. Then he withdrew.
She pressed her shoulders back against the door. “What are you doing?”
He closed his hand around her wrist and drew her away. “I will not have you against a plank of wood.”
She blinked at him. “What is wrong with the door? It is solid,” she continued, because apparently interrupted coitus made her conversational. “And conveniently vertical. Also, it has the advantage of being already behind me.”
“Marguerite.”
“And if your objection is one of comfort, I assure you I am perfectly able to—”
He laid two fingers over her lips. Every unfinished argument died there.
“Do not mistake me. I intend to use every hard surface in this cabin before we reach Naples,” he said. “The door, the table, that chair if it survives us.”
Her breath caught.
“But not for this.” His thumb passed over her lower lip. “Not while you are bracing yourself like a woman waiting to pay a debt.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“Shh. I just want to see you, Marguerite.”
He peeled the silk from her shoulders. The garment whispered down her arms and pooled around her feet. Marguerite stood in her corset before the duke, while his gaze moved over the ivory silk, the neat lacing, the hard little discipline of whalebone from breast to hip.
He touched one lace. “Pretty.”
It was more than pretty. The corset shaped her into something composed, desirable, manageable. Proof that a woman might lie beneath a man and still keep some part of herself arranged.
“You may keep it for now.”
“Oh, thank you. I had not realized I required permission to—”
He caught her by the waist, lifted her as if she weighed nothing, and carried her to the bed.
It was the opposite of diplomacy, being picked up and relocated mid-argument.
No negotiation, no treaty, no delicate exchange of concessions.
He assessed, decided, and acted, like a captain altering course before the storm could argue.
Marguerite ought to have resented the efficiency.
Unfortunately, some treacherous region low in her body appeared to have no objection to tyranny.
The mattress dipped beneath her. He came down over her, kissed her once, then dragged his mouth along the upper edge of the corset, then lower, over the rigid ivory plane where her breath had nowhere to go. His lips paused at her stomach, just below the last stiff inch of silk.