Steamed (26 page)

I consulted the navigation charts, making note of the course I would need to enter into the navigator. “Hmm?”

His eyes positively danced with pleasure. “My engine will be primed and ready to go, as well. If you’re up to seeing a third set of genitalia for the evening.”

I smiled. There really was nothing to be said.

“
H
ere you are. Now, why did I have a feeling I’d find you here, Jack?”

I stopped imagining Octavia flat on her back, writhing beneath me, urging me on in that husky, breathy voice she had, and smiled. “Because you’re a very intelligent woman, that’s why. Have I mentioned that I think smart is sexy?”

She blushed, just as I knew she would, closing the door to her cabin in a pretty confusion that never failed to delight me. “I can’t imagine anyone would find ignorance attractive, so it makes sense that the opposite must be true.”

“You don’t like being complimented, do you? It’s something I’ve noticed about you, Tavy. Usually feelings of inferiority accompany that sort of mentality, but I don’t think you feel that way.”

“Then you would be wrong,” she said with a primness that, again, delighted me. “I feel less than secure on a number of issues. This engaging in sexual acts while standing is one example. I wish I had a pamphlet on it, Jack. I wish I could see some diagrams about where one’s hands go, and how one’s legs are to be dealt with.”

She was a mystery, my Octavia was, a woman who was both strong and yielding, sophisticated and yet naive. She had the manner of a prude, but once her passion was stirred, she was a wildcat, demanding more and more until I thought my eyes were going to roll back in my head and I’d just flat-out die of sexual gratification. She was a conundrum, a puzzle, and I loved every interesting facet to her intriguing personality.

And that was what worried me. “I’m no Alan Alda, you know,” I said as she moved over to a large brass-bound trunk and began taking off her clothes. “I don’t like quiche. I get bored at Jane Austen movies, and I’d rather have my ball hair plucked out than sit around discussing what I feel at any given moment.”

She paused in the act of pulling off her shirt, surprise and confusion written on her adorable face. “I beg your pardon?”

I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of her bed. I was, naturally, naked, and even though I felt it was important to make a few points, I couldn’t help but be pleased by the way in which her gaze lingered on me. “I try to be sensitive to a woman’s wants and needs, of course. I’m not a selfish pig, after all. I want to give you as much pleasure as you give me. But that’s just sex, and what we’re talking about here isn’t sex.”

Her expression was confused. “It isn’t?”

“No. You need help?” I got to my feet and moved behind her, peeling off her shirt and tossing it onto the chest, quickly loosening the corset strings as she’d shown me a few days ago, bringing my hands around to caress her tits before undoing the hooked part of the corset front. I moaned into her hair as she filled my hands, so warm and soft and mouthwateringly wonderful. “Oh, God, I’m never going to get enough of this, am I?”

“No,” she said on a long breath, leaning back against me, her hands covering mine as I kneaded the soft globes. “No, you never will.”

I breathed in the scent of her, something that held a faint hint of honeysuckle, but was mostly a pure, womanly smell that had my balls tightening with pleasure. “I’ve been in love before, Tavy. I don’t want you to think I haven’t, because I have.”

“Have you?” She shivered as I sucked on the spot behind her ear that always made her knees buckle. I loved her knees.

“Yes. I always hoped it would last, but it never did. I think it’s something to do with me, the way I work or the way I process emotions. I don’t blame the women—they gave it their best shot. I think it’s me.”

“Yes, yes, it’s definitely you,” she said, her voice becoming increasingly ragged as I slid my hands down, peeling off first the thin gauzy chemise she wore beneath the corset, then working the buttons on her skirt until I could slide it over her hips. It settled on the floor around her feet with a sigh that I echoed. “About this standing up—”

“This is important, Tavy,” I said, unbuttoning her petticoat to the long underwear she wore beneath the skirts, pushing them, too, down over her hips until she stood naked except for a pair of knee-high silk stockings, held up by a pair of garters. I turned her around, curling my fingers down around the plump lines of her ass, parting her legs until I could feel the heat of her, heat that glowed only for me.

“What is?” She was having problems speaking, her breath coming in short spurts as I dipped my fingers inside, teasing her soft flesh. “Merciful heavens, Jack! Do that again!”

A sense of possession shook me for a moment, the knowledge that this woman was mine, and mine alone. I rubbed my thumb in the circular manner she found so pleasing, feeling her passion clear down to my bones as she writhed and panted soft little breaths that made me as hard as a rock.

“It’s important that you realize that what we have probably won’t last. It never has before, and although you’re different, Tavy, completely and utterly different from any woman I’ve been in love with before, it never lasts. There’ll come a time when we both will be ready to move on. I don’t want you hurt when that happens.”

She quivered in my arms, her fingernails digging into the flesh on my shoulders, as I pleasured her. But a few seconds after I delivered my warning, her eyes snapped open. She stopped quivering. In fact, she downright glared at me, as if I’d done something to piss her off.

Before I could explain again that I was just trying to keep her from being hurt when the inevitable happened, she let go of my left shoulder, made a fist, and punched me as hard as she could in my gut.

“Hey!” I said, releasing her to rub my abused belly. “What the hell was that for?”

Her glare was truly monumental now. “I think I agree with you, Jack.”

Surprise felt somewhat hollow in my stomach. I rubbed it again, wondering if it was just because she’d hit me there that acknowledgment of the rightness of what I said felt so cold and clammy. “About us having no permanent future?”

“About it being more enjoyable to have your testicular hair plucked out than indulge in a discussion of your feelings.” Her fingers twitched, as if she wanted to start the plucking immediately.

I took a prudent step back. “I’m just trying to think of you. I’m trying to be sensitive and caring.”

“By telling me that the time will come when you will tire of me and look for another woman?”

I was lucky there wasn’t a large, heavy object within her reach at that moment, because I think she would have brained me with it if there had been. Clearly, she misunderstood how thoughtful I was being. “No, by telling you that I love you. It’s not easy for a man to say that, Tavy, or at least it’s not easy for me. But I do love you, and I know you want to hear that. I just don’t want you to think that it’s going to be a forever sort of thing, because based on my past history, it doesn’t last.”

She stopped looking like she wanted to kill me, a thoughtful expression settling across her face. Her lips softened as she considered me. “You love me?”

“Yes. I just said that.” I waited, but she didn’t reciprocate. “Er . . . did I mention how hard it is for me to say that?”

“Yes,” she said, continuing to look thoughtful. She moved over to the bed and sat, removing first her shoes, then her stockings.

“I don’t want to hurry you or anything, but now would be a good time for you to tell me you feel the same way, and then we can get on to the sex part of the evening,” I said, a little surprised that she hadn’t taken the hint. Normally she was so quick.

Her eyebrows rose. “You wish for me to tell you what?”

“That you . . . er . . . love me, too.” I suddenly felt vulnerable and winded, as if I’d been playing a game of dodgeball and someone knocked me backward with a ball to the gut. I didn’t like the feeling at all, but I couldn’t very well tell her that after I’d just explained that I didn’t want to talk about my emotions. “You do, don’t you?” I couldn’t help but ask, clearing my throat when the words came out unsure.

She was back to looking thoughtful. She rose and strolled over to me, her hips swaying in a way that sent a warm glow through the cold pit that was my stomach. There was something about the curve of her hips that drove me wild, something about that long, sinuous line that started at her rib cage, swept inward to her waist, then flared out in a curve that begged my hands to trace it. I wanted to simultaneously touch, taste, and bite her, marking her as mine, claiming everything that she had for me and me alone.

“I’m very fond of you, naturally, Jack. I should not have gone to bed with you if I had not been fond of you.
Very
fond. But if you are so determined that our relationship not be anything but the most fleeting of moments, then it seems to me that it would be the purest folly for me to indulge my emotions in anything but such a fondness, and an appreciation for the time we have together. Don’t you agree?”

The dodgeball hit me dead in the gut again. “No, I don’t agree. I think if one person loves someone, then that person should love the other person back.”

Her eyebrows rose again, damn them. “But there is no sense in that at all. Your way, both of us will suffer heartache when the time comes that we part. If I remain just fond of you, then only you will be heartbroken, and surely that has to be better than both of us suffering?”

Suddenly, I hated her cool, calm intellect. “The least you could do is love me back, Octavia. I just bared my soul to you! Do you have any idea how hard that is for a man?”

“Quite difficult, I’m sure,” she said, placing a hand on my chest. I was distracted for a moment by the feeling of her stroking the line of my pectoral muscle. “And I can understand your ire. I tell you what—every time you tell me that you love me, I will reciprocate. Does that sound fair?”

Relief filled my still-clammy-feeling belly. “Very fair.” I slid my arms around her, pulling her soft, warm, lush body against mine, bending my head until my lips steamed against hers. “I love you, Octavia.”

“And I fond you, Jack,” she murmured back.

It took a few seconds for the word to sink through the lust-induced haze that always seemed to grip me when I was around her. I reared back, scowling down at her.

Her brown eyes regarded me with frank amusement.

“You
fond
me?”

“I realize it’s not a verb, but I felt that under the circumstances we can be a bit free with the rules of linguistic syntax.”

At that moment, I knew fury as no man had ever known it. “By God, I am going to make you pay for that, woman.”

“Oh really?” Her head tipped to the side. “How?”

I grabbed her shoulders and hauled her up to me, kissing her fast and hard and not even letting her respond. I whipped my tongue into her mouth, sucked hers, and then released her just as she began to moan. “I’m going to make you love me! You’re going to love me so much that you’re going to want to die from it!”

She giggled at the words rather than looking horrified, as she ought. I had a nagging suspicion I was making a fool of myself, but at that moment, I didn’t care. I was filled with a righteous purpose, a holy grail that I would pursue to the end of time—she would love me as much as I loved her, or I would die trying.

“I see. And just how do you expect to make me love you?”

“Sex,” I snarled, grabbing her breast, immediately gentling the touch so I wouldn’t hurt her. “Lots and lots of sex. So much sex, you won’t be able to walk straight for a month of Sundays.”

“There is more to love than just sexual compatibility,” she pointed out with that annoying rationality that normally I adored, but just at the moment was as irritating as sandpaper on diaper rash.

“Do not mock my holy vow,” I said, spinning her around so she was against the wall of the cabin. I pressed myself against her, my body reveling in the feeling of her curves so soft and warm against me.

“Oh, it’s a holy vow,” she said, and I swear there was a giggle in her voice, although her face was almost without expression. “I see.”

“You don’t yet, but you will,” I promised, and had another go at her mouth. This time she managed to get her tongue back in time to twine it around mine, her hands moving down my back to my hips.

“Jack, there is something I read in the pamphlet, something that was mentioned as being particularly enjoyable to some gentlemen. I don’t see it, myself, but I am prepared to try if it would bring you pleasure.” Her voice was deep with arousal now, just the way I liked it.

I rubbed my hips against her, catching my dick between her thighs. I almost lost it all right then and there. “What is involved in it?” I managed to gasp out as her hands slid lower, to my butt.