Mariah's Prize (16 page)

“Give me a full report on the wounded in the morning, Andrew,” he said as he bent down to lift Mariah, one arm beneath her knees, and cradle her. She lay there limply, with none of the fight and fire she’d shown when he’d carried her over his shoulder earlier. God, had it really been this same day?

Macauly shrugged.

“Och. There’s nothing I can’t tell you now, if you” — “In the morning,” repeated Gabriel firmly.

“Not before.”

He took her to the cabin and sat her on the bunk, and this time, he remembered to close and latch the door after them. He poured her a glass of rum and placed it firmly in her hands.

“Drink this now, poppet,” he ordered, and as he stood over her, hands at his waist, she did, coughing only once at the bite of the liquor.

He took the glass and bent before her so their eyes were level. Gently he smoothed her hair from her face.

“Are you certain you’re unharmed, Ma-riah?”

She nodded, breaking her gaze from his to look at her clasped hands, letting her hair fall on either side of her face like a curtain to hide behind. She had been so certain he’d died that the relief of having him back, alive and touching her so gently, was almost overwhelming.

With a sigh, he rose and pulled his filthy shirt over his head. Mariah watched as he bent over the washbowl, his legs spread wide against the sloop’s roll, pouring pitcher-fuls of water over his head and shoulders as he scrubbed away the. black smudges of gunpowder and the blotches of other men’s blood. The water highlighted the pattern of his muscles, droplets glistening in the dark hair of his chest and arms and on the pale crisscross of the old scars. How had he managed to escape unmarked today while others around him had been maimed or killed? She thought again of the surgery and shuddered, the rum churning uneasily in her empty stomach.

“I thought you were dead,” she said so softly that he turned expectantly, waiting for her to repeat it.

She lifted her chin and shook her hair, her hands twisting in her lap.

“When you didn’t come, I thought you were dead.”

“But I did come, didn’t I, poppet?” He smiled, coaxing her to trust in him.

“As soon as I could. And I most certainly didn’t die.”

With the bowl in his hands, he came again to kneel before her. He dipped the towel into the water and carefully began to wipe away the grime from her tear-streaked face. The water was cool, his touch gentle, and she felt the tension and fear that still coiled within her begin to slip away.

“We won, you know,” he said. He trailed the damp cloth down her throat and lower, across the tops of her breasts, and she shivered from the mixture of sensations, the cool water on her warm skin, the roughness of the cloth.

“You haven’t asked, but as owner, you should be pleased.

We had to jury-rig the foremast, but we’re only a few days from Bridgetown. “

He took her hands in his and lowered them into the water. With bayberry soap he washed away the blood from the surgery, forcing her hands to relax as he slid the soap between her fingers, working them between his own. In his hands her own looked like a child’s, tiny and pink, the tips wrinkling from the water.

“This whole long day, you were always in my thoughts,” he said quietly.

“I missed you. Though I knew you had to be safe, when I couldn’t find you I nearly finished what the French had begun and tore the sloop apart.”

“You came for me.” She smiled slowly, the first time since he’d found her. She lifted her hand to touch his face, water trickling down her wrist.

“You said you would, and you did.”

“Aye,” he whispered hoarsely, turning his lips to meet her soft, moist palm.

“Now try to keep me away.”

Q^SAy^Q “u rlow could I ever send you away?” asked Mariah softly, smiling shyly as his lips nibbled at her palm, his beard rough and his mouth gentle, and her heartbeat already beginning to quicken. She had always thought of kissing as a pastime confined to lips, but with Gabriel she was rapidly learning how little she knew about what passed between men and women and how much he could teach her.

“You’ve never yet given up your cabin to me.”

She turned her hand to stroke his jaw lightly, with just her fingertips, too unsure of herself to dare more. With the gunpowder soot cleaned away from his face, she could see the lines of weariness etched deep into his features, the grief for the men he’d lost that tugged his mouth downward even as he smiled at her in return. What she had seen today was nothing compared with what had been a part of his life for years. Too many years. He had first made war on the Spanish when she was scarcely more than a baby, and again , she felt the gap in their ages yawn between them.

“You tried to warn me before we left Newport that we’d be in danger,” she continued.

“I didn’t want to hear it. You were right, I did behave like a spoiled child.”

“Ah, poppet, you’re not so very wicked.” He liked how she touched his face. He wanted very much for her to touch the rest of him the same way, but he didn’t want to frighten her.

“Though I’ve given much thought to nipping you over my knee with your skirts turned up.”

Her fingers stilled on his jaw. She frowned, trying to look stem even as she blushed. “/ may not be very wicked, Gabriel, but you are.”

“True enough.” His smile faded and the teasing left his eyes.

Pleasurable though it was, he owed her more than banter.

“I’m sorry, Mariah, for Macauly and the surgery, what you saw and all the rest.

I’d meant to spare you that. If you’d only stayed in the hold”— ” I couldn’t. ” By the candlelight, her eyes were troubled, so dark beneath the lashes they were almost black.

“I feared for you. If you’d been hurt, I wanted to be there with you. That’s why I was there with poor George Clarke.”

“Few men are so fortunate to die with a lady’s hand on their cheek to bring them peace.”

She shook her head sadly.

“No, Gabriel, you don’t understand. I’m not that good. I was looking at George, and I saw you. I told you I feared for you.”

She saw him, not her Daniel, and he discovered that he cared that she had, cared a surprising, alarming amount. The plain truth, if he’d admit it, was that he cared for her and everything about her.

“We’re quite a pair, Mari ah West,” he said softly. He took both her hands in his, rubbing her palms with his thumbs before he drew them forward and placed them on his chest. He watched as she swallowed, her serious gaze following her hands to his chest.

“Fighting and worrying seem to be all we’re capable of doing together.”

“Not quite.” Beneath her fingers she could feel his heart racing at the same insane pace as her own. She scarcely noticed when her lips parted on their own as her breathing grew ragged, or how the cabin seemed to have grown warmer and warmer despite the stem windows open to the evening breezes. She only knew that touching him, learning his body, fascinated her. Still trapped beneath his hands, her fingers flexed against his chest and tangled in the dark, curling hair. Slowly she slid her hands free of his and upward, across his shoulders, exploring his body even as she wondered at her boldness.

She lowered her eyes, reluctant to let him see her uncertainty. Though she longed to show him how much he meant to her, the memory of how badly she’d blundered with him that night at the mill haunted her, the painful politeness he’d shown to her as he’d driven her back to Newport. She didn’t want that to happen again. Miserably she thought of the tall, beautiful Dutch woman in the amber dressing gown who’d so clearly been Gabriel’s last mistress at Crescent Hill. She would have known how to please him.

“Oh, Gabriel, forgive me,” she said forlornly, her chin dropping lower against her chest with shame.

“I don’t really know what comes next.”

“If it’s any solace to you, sweetheart, neither do I.” Could she truly have so little notion of how potently charged, her inexperience was to him? He could think of nothing beyond how he wanted to lose himself deep in all that blessed innocence, deep in her small, lush body. He wanted to forget who he was and what he was and the death he’d brought today with his orders, forget everything except his pretty little poppet.

“Would you please hold me then, Gabriel?” she asked in a whisper.

“Hold me and—and kiss me like you did before?”

His body tensed and hardened with the unspoken promise in that tiny plea. But as he rose to his feet and lifted her with him, her hands still linked trustingly around his neck, he couldn’t help but wonder if she realized the extent of what she was offering.

He lay her on the pillows beneath him, her face small and serious against the dark cloud of her hair, her cheeks already flushed with a desire he was sure she didn’t yet fully comprehend. But he did. Though she couldn’t know, his experience told him this was going to be different from what he’d shared with any other woman. Very, very different, and he couldn’t wait.

“This time I won’t stop at kissing, Mariah,” he said, the shaky control he had on himself making his voice harsh.

“Not now, not after today.”

“What makes you think I’d want you to?” Carefully she traced one finger back and forth across his chin. His wet hair slipped forward across his face. A single droplet of water fell on her cheek, and she smiled crookedly. He had barely touched her at all, yet already she felt the warmth building in her body. “I could have lost you forever today. Tomorrow’s no more certain. Now, here with you, is the only sure thing I have.”

“Now?” He kissed her lightly, his lips barely brushing over hers as his wet hair grazed her cheek.

“Now.” Impatiently she arched up to claim what he’d so teasingly offered. At once his mouth crushed down on hers, the hunger they’d held back for so long too fierce to deny any longer. The fire she remembered returned to bum in her blood, and the dizzying heat only increased as his tongue swept deeper into her mouth. She clutched at his shoulders, her fingers digging deep into the hard muscles as she twisted beneath him. He was so much larger than she was, so much stronger, and she loved the feel of the length of his body pressed against hers.

She threaded her fingers through the wet black silk of his hair and pulled him closer, savoring the taste of him. She felt his hand slide along her side to find her breast, cupping her fullness through her gown. He made a growling noise deep in his throat before he lifted his mouth only a fraction from hers to whisper, “You’ve too many layers for me, love.” He shifted his weight to one side and began to unlace the front of her bodice, his long fingers deftly tugging the cording free of the eyelets.

“You’ve done this before,” she noted breathlessly, faintly accusing, her eyes never leaving his. She shrugged herself free of the sleeves and shoved the bodice off the bunk, then wriggled out of her skirt once he’d untied the waistband for her.

“You’re more accomplished than most ladies’ maids.”

“A useful skill for an impatient man,” he murmured as he ran his tongue lightly around the pink shell of her ear.

“And I am impatient.”

In her hurry to dress earlier she’d left off her stays, and now only the thin linen of her shift lay between her breasts and his chest.

Gently he rubbed his palms across the darker tips of her breasts through the linen, feeling how they tightened and peaked at once and how the pulse at the base of her throat quickened. The girlish simplicity of her shift, with her initials cross-stitched neatly at the neckline, touched him, so much at odds with her passion-clouded eyes and lips swollen from his kisses. In Bridgetown he’d buy her a shift of the sheerest, finest cambric he could find, trimmed with lace and’ silk ribbons, a shift fit for the woman she would this night become.

He hooked his thumb in the shift’s neckline, easing it farther down over her breasts as he let his nail brush across her skin. She shivered with the sensation, sighing restlessly.

“That’s not fair, Gabriel. I can be impatient, too.”

Feeling impossibly daring, she trailed her hands along his chest, down lower across his belly until she reached the buttons at the fall of his breeches. She grinned with gleeful triumph, but her fingers lacked his expertise and he soon was forced to complete what she’d begun. As he turned and stripped off his breeches, Mariah pulled her shift over her head, swiftly, before she lost her nerve. She’d never been naked before anyone, woman or man, since she’d been a child, and she’d never in her life seen a man without his clothes. But when he turned toward her, she forgot her shyness, lost instead in the sight of him. Nowhere on earth, she decided as she held her arms open to him, could there be a more beautiful man, and tonight he was hers to love.

Now when he lay with her, there was nothing between them, no barriers to dull the sensation of her breasts against the rough hair on his chest or to hinder his hands as they roamed the length of her body.

Everywhere he touched she felt her skin bum and the ache low in her belly grow, and when he kissed her now there was only a raw urgency that made her cling feverishly to him. When he moved between her thighs her legs parted naturally for him, and when he touched her, sliding across her wet, swollen heat, she gasped, her eyes wide as she arched against him. Swiftly he lowered himself to meet her, and instinctively her legs curled around his back, drawing him deeper.

With his last bit of conscious thought, Gabriel prayed her pain would not be great then drove deeply into her. She whimpered and hugged him tighter, while he forced himself to be still so she could accustom herself to him.

“There, poppet, it’s done,” he gasped, kissing her quivering, closed eyelids.

“My fine, brave Mariah.”

She was so hot, so sweet around him, that long moments passed before he realized her whimpers were from pleasure, not pain, and the subtle rocking of her hips was urging him onward, not struggling to escape.

And that though innocent she always seemed, there’d been no maidenhead, no final barrier to block his way.

Then he felt her thighs tighten around his waist, and he thought of nothing beyond the incredible need she raised in him. His thrusts were as relentless as her passion as she moved with him, her small body as fevered and fierce as his own as together they reached for the pleasure each could only give to the other. When the peak came and he felt the unbelievable intensity of his release, she was there with him, her wild, broken cries the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard as she twined herself around him. In that moment he could pretend that nothing else mattered in the world except Mariah West, and that that world was the finest he could ever imagine.