Scarlet Butterfly (3 page)

Damn! After a long, hot, quiet summer, the season was about to change. And the thing that Sean Rogan hated most in life was change.

As predicted, the storm had settled offshore. They’d be lucky this time, catching only the fringe rain that accompanied it. Sean checked the masts again and secured the inner workings of the schooner. He was tired and wet, and even a little cold.

Cold
. The woman. She was covered only by a sheet.

He covered the distance to his quarters in a second, then slowed to a tiptoe as he reached the bed. In the darkness he could hear her, but he couldn’t see without a light and he was reluctant to wake her. Cautiously, he reached out and touched her shoulder.

Icy cold.

Damn, he didn’t want her around, but he didn’t want her to freeze to death either. He searched for a blanket, found one, and covered her. She didn’t move, didn’t respond to his touch or the noise he was making. Maybe she was dead.

Sean groaned. If he wasn’t already in the spotlight, he would be if some woman had sneaked on board and died. The press would rehash all the painful events of the Rogans’ lives, including the death of his sister. No, this intruder couldn’t be dead. He heard her breathing. But she wasn’t warming up, either.
When a second blanket made no change, he took a chance and shook her.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty, are you okay?”

Her only response was a moan and a single word that she whispered over and over.

He leaned down, touching her lips with his ear before he could understand.

“Cold—cold.”

He’d never wanted a phone, never needed one. Until now. He couldn’t get to his truck without exposing her to the elements and more shock.

As a blast of cold air swept across the cabin, physically shoving him to his knees on the bed, the answer came to him. Almost without a thought he shed his shirt, swept back the covers, and slid beneath them, pulling the woman into his arms. Heat could be transferred body to body, even to someone suffering from exhaustion and chills.

Sean began to massage the woman—gently, once he felt the fragility of her body. The silk garment was all she was wearing; no panties, no bra—though a cursory examination of her body suggested that she had little use for a bra.

Her head found a place beneath his chin and nestled there, her soft hair a faint tickle on his chest. He shifted her, pulling her even farther over his body. Her right arm fell limply beside her, the other curled around his neck.

Sean took a deep, ragged breath. He was suddenly doing his part to raise the temperature in the room. More than that, his body was proffering its own rhythmic massage, pulsating against the inner part of the woman’s thigh, in spite of his attempts to still his response.

Although she showed no awareness of what was happening, gradually a slow warmth crept over her skin. She was coming back to life, and Sean wondered briefly what she’d do if he allowed himself free reign to hasten the process.

Outside, the storm continued, the wind whipping from one direction for a while, then changing to the other. The
Butterfly
rode the turbulence well, almost as if there were a hand on the wheel helping her.

The girl shifted. Sean caught her and pulled her higher, then let her slide back to her former position. The movement caught her slip and held it around her waist, allowing the soft curls of her pubic hair to tangle with his own. Her nipples pressed into his chest. Her breath came in little puffs now, and he felt it whisper against his neck.

Almost without his being aware of it, he moved his arm farther over her, across her back, curling his fingertips over one small breast. Beneath the silk garment he felt her nipple pucker, and the corresponding jerk of response in that portion of his anatomy caught between them.

Sean groaned and tried to adjust their positions. But the movement only brought him closer to the part of her that he wanted most desperately to explore.

He felt such a tightening, such primitive lust, such overwhelming desire that it was all he could do to stop himself from rolling the woman on her back and plunging inside her. The thought of making love to her took over his mind and, like a physical presence, pressed against his temples, bringing pain.

Pain that jerked him back to reality.

Pain that sliced through him and for one moment
brought a sense of great loss. He didn’t know whether the tears on his cheeks were his or had fallen from the face pressed against him. But he felt the wetness, and as if he were in some distant place, he struggled back.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, caressing her breast and her lower back and leg. “I won’t hurt you. I didn’t take care of Beth, but I’ll take care of you.” He repeated the reassurances over and over again, until at last he, too, was calm. And without knowing that he was doing so, Sean closed his eyes and slept.

The parrot, mysteriously covered once more, remained uncharacteristically quiet.

The storm raged through the night. Limbs broke off and fell to the ground. Logs and pieces of timber thrashed by the water slammed against each other and swirled back the way they’d come. The river rose and spilled over its banks, flooding the road and washing the lightweight red car into the rising swamp.

The ship rode the changing currents, cushioning the two passengers like a cocoon. Finally the wind calmed, leaving only a steady rain that pelted the deck in a symphony of gentle sound.

The scents of pipe tobacco and wildflowers permeated the cabin. The woman slept, sensing that she was safe, protected, cherished. The
Scarlet Butterfly
fluttered on the tips of the waves, and eventually, just before dawn, became still.

Carolina dreamed they were in a hammock, she and her imaginary lover. Their bed moved back and forth, folding them together so that she was lying on top of him. She sighed in contentment and rubbed her face on his chest, relishing the caress of springy hair on her cheek.

“Nice,” she whispered, feeling his knee slide between her legs. She’d dreamed of him before, her captain, but never so vividly, nor with such pleasure.

She felt warm and safe, treasured by his touch as his fingertips left the breast they’d been holding and moved lower. A warm breeze nuzzled her hair—no, not a breeze, but his breath, which, like her own, had quickened.

“See,” she wanted to say to her disbelieving friends, to the father who’d protected her as long as he could by selecting her friends, subduing her will, and ignoring her when she’d voiced the need to stand on
her own two feet. He meant well. He loved her. After her mother died he’d showered all his love on Carolina. But now that her illness had been conquered, that love was killing her.

See, I knew I’d find something—
it, him
.

With a wiggle, she adjusted her body so that his hand could slide lower, to the coil of heat that was spinning outward. More, she decided, wanting him to cover her with the hardness of his body. Wanting …

As if he’d heard her speak, he slid her from his body to her back and turned to follow her. His lips planted little moist kisses down the side of her face. His hands touched and examined and sought out every spot that gave her pleasure.

Carolina had always wanted to believe that she could feel such sensations. She’d always hoped that her father was wrong when he’d tell her she was too delicate to lead the life of a normal woman. But for a very long time, she’d believed him.

Until she’d found out that he’d lied about her imaginary childhood illnesses. There’d been nothing out of the ordinary wrong with her then. He’d been overprotective out of fear, because he hadn’t wanted to lose her.

Carolina moaned and timidly reached out to touch the body of the lover who’d come to her in a dream. His bare skin felt warm and wonderfully real. Braver now, she allowed her fingers to move up his neck, across a face prickly with the stubble of a beard, and upward to full lips that parted and captured a fingertip.

She gasped. He pulled gently, sucking, setting off waves of pleasure that ran down her arm and collided
with the sensation moving upward from the place his fingers had found.

Her body seemed to vibrate. She couldn’t hold herself still as she felt the pressure of his fingertips, fanning over her stomach and below, cautiously, as if she were fragile, in danger of being bruised.

“More,” she whispered. She wanted more. Pulling her finger free, she skimmed her hand down, ruffling the chest hair, the coarser thatch below, until she reached—

Carolina came suddenly awake. Her gaze met a pair of startled eyes directly over her, brown eyes, eyes so brown that even the watery light spilling from behind her couldn’t penetrate their darkness.

He wasn’t a dream lover. He was real.

“What the hell?” he said, pulling away and dragging the coverlet to the floor as he stood.

Carolina let out a little scream and skittered back against the cabin wall. “What are you doing? Where are your clothes?”

Sean followed the woman’s gaze with horror. What had he been doing? The last thing he remembered was trying to warm her. Warm her? Maybe, but he was the one who was hot and aroused—and horrified.

“My clothes? Lady, these are my sleeping quarters, and I sleep buck naked every night. I believe I’d be correct in saying that it’s you who is out of place. How’d you get here, in my bed?”

Carolina didn’t know how to answer. There was much that she didn’t know, including why the man who’d rescued her, taken her into his bed, and cared for her so tenderly was talking to her as if he were a monk and she’d just stormed the monastery walls.

“It was you,” she whispered, grabbing for the sheet and trying to force out words that seemed to hang in her throat. “You rescued me and brought me here.”

“Me? Rescue you?” He stiffened, muttering a curse. “If trying to bring you back from the dead is rescuing you, I apologize.”

“You should.” Relief turned her muscles weak and evaporated her thought process.

Sean stared at her. Lord, she was beautiful. All he wanted to do was reclaim his place in the wonderful dream from which he’d been jerked. His intense disappointment was out of character and out of control.

“I’m thinking it would have served you right if I’d dumped you overboard in the storm and let the river wash you out to sea.”

She gasped, and he knew he’d been too harsh. He wasn’t angry with her—it was his actions that had unsettled him.

“Now just a minute, Mr.… what is your name?”

“Rogan, just Rogan, as if you didn’t know,” he snapped, trying to gather his senses.

He’d been wrong when he’d called her Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty was much too passive. His first impression, the adventurous Goldilocks, was more like it. Even now, after waking in bed with a strange man, her face flushed with passion, she wasn’t backing down.

“I didn’t,” she said, straightening her shoulders defiantly. “But if you’re Sean Rogan, you’re the man I’ve come to see.”

Given the absurdity of the situation, her choice of words elicited a genuine laugh. He was beginning to enjoy her brave demeanor. “So you’ve come to see
me? Then look, because I’m not in a position to hide much.”

He wasn’t. She had to hand it to him: He didn’t even try. He was magnificently male. The erection gradually subsided, though his size was still—arresting. Any other man might have been embarrassed at the diminishing physical expression of his manhood, but not Rogan. He simply rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet and waited.

“I’d like to get up now, Rogan,” Carolina began. “I find it exceedingly difficult to carry on a reasonable discussion under the circumstances.”

“Yes, it’s the circumstances that I’d like to talk about—you in my bed, in my arms—”

“Yes, well, it wasn’t my doing,” she snapped. “What did you do with my clothes?”

“I did nothing with your clothes. Your slip seems to be in place, if you lower it from around your neck. I don’t know where you came from, but dressed like that, you must have really had an interesting going-away party.”

Carolina felt her composure give way. Fencing words with this dark-haired, angry man was well and good, but she was woefully inexperienced in foreplay, wordplay, or male-female play in general.

But what had just happened between them had been a two-way street. She’d been giving as much as he, and the sudden separation was causing a physical reaction not unlike the one that occurred when her medication needed repeating.

His surprise was as evident as her own, though she couldn’t understand why he claimed not to know what had happened to her clothes, or how she’d gotten there. She might not have known the name,
but those strong arms had brought her on board and—

On board
, he’d said. The schooner. “I’m on the
Scarlet Butterfly
?”

He nodded. “Of course. Isn’t that what you intended?”

“Oh, yes. Yes! Yes! I made it!”

His brother had been right. This had to be the woman—the fruitcake who’d asked all the questions. Sean shook his head and turned to rummage in a drawer for a pair of clean shorts. He stepped into them and pulled them up his muscular legs with little regard for his audience.

“You made it,” he agreed. “Too bad your car didn’t. It would have saved me a long, hot walk. I’ll be in the galley. There’s a bathroom through that door, or what passes for one on a ship. I’ll give you five minutes to get out of my bed and join me. I want some explanations.”

Carolina watched him leave the room adjusting the waist of his shorts. She felt the tension, as well as the temperature, drop as he left. At least he’d decided to admit that he’d brought her. So he had been sleeping when he’d … Well, she’d been sleeping too. She let out a long, uneven breath and felt her body complain over the loss of comfort. No, if she were honest, it wasn’t comfort that it wanted—it was something more. Suddenly the idea of dressing appealed to her, as did as the smell of coffee that came wafting down the steps a short time later.

Coffee, and was that pipe tobacco? Too bad. Smoking was a bad habit for such a fine specimen of a man. Carolina sighed. Who was she to caution him about health? She’d never done anything to make
herself ill, but she had been anyway. Still, except for the loss of some weight and a lot of hair, which was only now beginning to grow back, she’d survived.