The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (15 page)

His mood was unusually somber, and after he helped her undo the fastening of her gown, he actually turned his back and allowed her some modesty while she stepped out of her skirts and underthings and pulled a nightgown over her head.

She slid beneath the covers of the bed while he readied himself to sleep in the hammock he’d been using since they came onboard. She turned to face the wall, trying not to look at him either, but she felt his presence as surely as she felt the looming of that enemy ship.

He grunted quietly as he pulled off his boots, but after that he made no noise, not even the noise of climbing into the hammock.

What on earth was he doing, if not getting ready for sleep?

When she could bear it no longer, she rolled to her other side, and found him standing stock still in profile to her, head bowed. His coat and neckcloth were off, but he still wore his shirt and trousers. His hands held the ropes of the hammock, halfway through the act of tying the knot that would pull it taut for sleeping, but he made no move to actually fasten it.

How long had he been standing frozen like that?

And looking so desperately sad?

She sat up on one elbow. “Sebastian?”

For a moment, he said nothing. Then his head swiveled slowly towards her, and he looked almost surprised to see her there. “I’m sorry,” he said, and his mouth curved up in a smile that somehow made him seem more melancholy than ever. “I thought you’d already fallen asleep.”

She shrugged. “That seemed a rather wasteful thing to do, considering we may have only a few hours left to live.”

She’d meant it as a joke—a dark joke, granted—but his smile vanished as though she’d slapped him.

“Rachel,” he said, his voice going very low. He stepped closer to the bed, gripping the canopy rail with his hands, leaning in over her. His face was so terribly serious. “Rachel, I—I truly am sorry.”

“For waking me? I told you I wasn’t—”

“No, damn it all. For
bringing
you here. For all of this.” Even in the soft lantern light, his eyes seemed to blaze. His manner, though, had no trace of his usual lordly scorn. And his voice was
earnest
. Unnervingly so. “I should never have . . . I shouldn’t have allowed any of this to happen.”

Now she sat up all the way, letting the blankets fall to her waist. “What is it exactly you think you allowed to happen?” she said, with as much dignity as someone wearing nothing but a nightgown could muster. “Let me remind you, I came on this mission because I wanted to. You couldn’t have stopped me if you tried.”

“You came to avenge your sister. Not to throw your life away.”

“And what could it matter, if that turns out to be the cost? My life was as good as thrown away long before now. This was my one chance to make it worth something.
Is
my one chance. That ship hasn’t attacked us yet. We may win the fight.”

His expression was unreadable, but strangely gentle. “Perhaps.”

“You told me yourself the crew are mostly former British Royal Navy.”

“True enough. They are well trained, and will all fight hard. And you spotted that ship early enough to let us move out of immediate range. We might even lose it during the night.”

“Do you think there’s a reasonable chance?”

“The French are canny, and the currents here give us less freedom than we’d like to slip away, but there is always a chance.” He attempted a smile again. “I want to get you to Vigo, Rachel, believe me. You would—you’d like it there. The safe house where we stay, it was the closest thing to a home Sal had.”

He hadn’t mentioned this before.

“It was?”

He nodded. “Her books are all there.”

Her
books
? A wash of tender pain went through Rachel’s chest. Yes, of course, wherever Sarah’s books were, that would have been her home. Apparently, Sebastian understood that about her.

An urgent longing filled her, to see the place, to hold the books themselves, to know where her twin sister’s mind had traveled in all those years they were apart. How cruel if she got this close only to end up beneath the waves.

Her fingers dug into the blankets. Of course, life never had difficulty being cruel.

It had taken everything else from her over the years—her parents, whose faces her memory could scarcely conjure anymore, Sarah, Mr. Rapson, even the little village of Rookshead, which had at least become familiar if never exactly beloved. Really, she should be used to it by now.

“Now where is your optimism, sweetheart?” Sebastian asked. “You look so glum, all of a sudden.”

She shrugged. “I feel . . .
lonely
. That’s all.”

“Lonely?” His brow furrowed, and he leaned in a little closer over her. “Not frightened?”

“Both, I suppose,” she admitted.

“Well, there’s no cause to be lonely. I’m right here.”

His gaze fixed on hers, a searching glance, his usual guardedness gone. In anyone else, she’d have called the expression kind. It
was
kind, maybe—sympathetic, even.

And all at once, she realized: Sebastian had suffered losses, too.

He’d lost Sarah, of course, just as she had. But that cynical exterior of his spoke of older pain than that. Much older. He never spoke of family.

Ah, why did it take me so long to see?
He’s lonely, too
.

A sudden, strange impulse filled her—she didn’t want to lie in this bed alone. “Will you wait here with me?”

“Of course. I’m not leaving. Not until dawn comes.”

“No, I mean
here
.” She patted the bed. “Beside me. Lie down with me.”

Several emotions seemed to cross his face, and he let out a sigh. “I’m not sure that’s wise, sweetheart.”

“Wisdom’s cold comfort at a time like this.” Her eyes beseeched him. “
Please
. I don’t think I can bear it otherwise, just lying here waiting for that battle to come.”

At that, he heaved another breath, and then he nodded.

She raised the blankets and shifted backwards to make room for him, and lay down. Given how furious she’d been with him just a few hours past, it should have seemed odd to be welcoming him in beside her, but then again, the constantly shifting nature of her relationship with him had never ceased to surprise her. No doubt if they lived to see another day, he’d find some way to outrage her again, but for the moment, it seemed better to call a truce.

The dip of the mattress as he slid beneath the blankets, the whisper of his hair against her pillow, the warm scent of him filling the small space of the bed, all that
was
a comfort. And when he put his arm around her, pressing his palm to her back, and when his legs settled gently against hers, all the rest of it—the ship out in the darkness, the French enemies who wanted to kill them, the loneliness—began to ease away.

And only the two of them remained. Safe where they were.

His other arm draped along the top of the pillow, the inner curve of his elbow nestling the top of her head, and his fingertips began to stroke along her cheek, gathering loose strands of her hair and brushing them back behind her ear. Gathering and brushing, in soothing repetition.

The rock of the sea felt lulling now.

Her breathing fell into rhythm with his. She let the sensations spread through her, calming her heartbeat, loosening the tension in her limbs.

He was looking into her eyes again, with some depth of feeling she wasn’t sure how to name. “How did you come to be the way you are?” he said softly, his fingers still brushing her face softly, even after all her curls had been tucked away. “I don’t know that I’ll ever make sense of you.”

“I’m not much of a puzzle. You’re the mysterious one.”

He shook his head, and his lips curved in a teasing smile. “Not me. I’m really a very simple man.”

His pupils looked almost violet in the lantern light, his hair burnished gold. And all she could think was,
there’s nothing simple about any of this, or about you
.

But what she said was, “Kiss me.”

She hadn’t planned to say it, but there it was.

He studied her long and hard, his breathing unsteady. “Is that really what you want?”

She let her eyes rove over him. When they’d been together in his coach, he was dressed so formally in his tight velvet jacket and his waistcoat, with his neckcloth covering his throat. He looked so much more human now, in just the loose linen of his shirt, his neck and the top of his chest bared, his hair tousled. And, just at the moment, she needed rather desperately to feel human, too.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s really what I want.”

He sighed, and for a moment she felt sure he was going to deny her. But then, the hand that had been cradling her back came up to cup her face. And he rolled his body towards her, closing the small space between them, and pressed his mouth to hers.

His kiss this time betrayed a strange yearning, different from the fiery need she’d felt in it before, but as demanding in its own way. His fingers speared into her hair, tilting her head to give him deeper access to her mouth.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and drew him tight against her. If this was all the time they had, if everything was going to end in a fiery blaze tomorrow, she wanted this,
needed
this.

As their bodies pressed together, the absence of his jacket and waistcoat meant she felt far more of him, too—the heat of his body through the thin layers of linen they wore, and the hard contours of his torso. The powerful muscles of his back shifted and bunched under her hands. The hard plane of his belly tightened as hers fit against it.

And the heat of desire flared through her again.

They both had more freedom of movement now than in the coach, and a thousand possibilities seem to suggest themselves to her at once, of the ways she could touch him, the ways he could touch her.

This time she was the one to probe with her tongue between his lips, she was the one to let her hands explore, moving down the tantalizing groove of his spine, finding the hem of his shirt and lifting it to feel the hot and silken skin beneath. She missed the tension of his thigh against hers, the way she’d felt it when she’d straddled him, and so she slid her leg atop his, her calf hooking behind his knee to bring him closer.

And he was losing no time working her thin nightgown up her thighs, sliding his hands beneath it to skim up her belly, up over her breasts. His fingers found the hardened peaks of her nipples and laid claim to them, stroking and squeezing and kneading, sending sharp sparks of pleasure through her. All the while, his tongue did battle with hers, his mouth almost bruising her lips.

The need was raw between them—the loneliness, the anger and the fear, all the emotions that had been careening through them all day, fed the flames, and she knew he was losing control as rapidly as she was.

He shifted his body, rolling her onto her back, and the leg that had been atop his was now pushed aside as his hips settled between her thighs. He was aroused again, hard as he began to grind himself against her, but at such a different angle from before, with his weight adding to the pressure, adding to the pleasure.

She wanted to feel what she’d felt before, that impossible, wild tension, that ecstatic release, but
with
him this time, both of them careening over the edge.

Was it that same for men as it had been for her? It must be, if they sought out the company of women as shamelessly as she knew they did. And,
oh
, she wanted to see Sebastian in that state. She wanted to make him fly apart. She wanted the two of them to feel it together.

She pushed her hand between them, working it between her hipbone and his, trying to reach the fall of his trousers. He shifted slightly to give her room, and with trembling fingers, she undid a few of his buttons, enough to slip her hand inside. His flesh was hot, and with his fall partially undone, jutting out against her touch.

He gasped as her fingers wrapped around his thickness, and as she slid her hand up along his remarkable length, he soon began to groan, his mouth moving from her lips to the curve of her throat so he could draw more air. He rose off her slightly, bracing his weight on his knees and elbows to give her more freedom to explore him.

It was a pleasure to do it. He was so hard, yet so wonderfully smooth, as silky as the inside of her plum silk gown—a striking contrast, like a fist clenched beneath a satin glove. Stroking him was nearly as satisfying as being stroked herself, especially since it had him moaning and arching his back, giving her an extraordinary sense of power.

But Sebastian was Sebastian—he wouldn’t let her have all the control for long. He shifted his weight again, and one of his hands went between her legs. His fingers skimmed between her folds, and at the moment when he felt how wet and hot and slick she was there already, his hardened flesh pulsed against her hand.

He knew her now, knew what she liked, knew just how to touch her, and within moments he had her shaking and moaning herself, her hips bucking upwards.