Impatiently his hands roamed higher, around her hips, as he pulled her closer to the edge of the bunk. She knew what would happen next, for her mother had told her that, too. But when she felt him touch her there, that most secret place between her thighs, she stiffened and instinctively tried to retreat.
“You know I won’t hurt you, Rusa,” he whispered, kissing her again to sway her reluctance. “Only joy, my darling, only pleasure, I swear it.”
His fingers moved more gently this time, gliding over her slick, swollen flesh, and she gasped raggedly as the first ripple of bliss swept across her, as wondrous as Mama had promised.
But what of the warnings and cautions that had come before the promises? Think, Jerusa, think! Are you ready to risk the price of love and passion without marriage to bless them?
“Ma belle Jerusa,” he whispered. “Ma chérie.” Gently he guided her legs farther apart, lifting her knees, and she shuddered at the dizzying pleasure, her eyes squeezed shut and her head arched back.
Will you risk it all for this moment, Jerusa? Shame and disgrace, your belly swelling with a fatherless babe beneath your apron?
Will you bear a bastard child to grow in misery, to suffer as Michel, your own darling Michel, suffered even before he was born?
Think, Jerusa, think, before he decides for you!
“No, Michel, please!” Panting, she tried to twist away from him. “I can’t do this!”
“Yes, you can, ma bien-aimée,” he said, ordering more than coaxing as he began to unbutton his breeches, his fingers shaking with his urgency. “Don’t say no to me now, little one.”
“No, Michel, I can’t!” she cried, her fear cutting through the haze of his desire. He was so much stronger, that if he wanted to take her against her will, she knew she’d be powerless to fight him. “We can’t!”
And though his whole body ached for release, he stopped. She lay trembling before him, her eyes heavy lidded with passion and her lips swollen from his kisses, her bare breasts taut and flushed, and her legs still sprawled wantonly apart. Despite what she said, here was the proof that her body wanted his, that she craved him with the same desperation he felt for her.
Morbleu, he would give ten years of his life to be able to lose himself in her! Unable to keep away, he reached for her again, his Jerusa, his salvation—
Desperately she shook her head, her eyes wild. “For God’s sake, Michel,” she cried, “do you wish me to become like your mother?”
He recoiled as if he’d been struck. Could his love alone do that to her? Drive her to madness and a solitary world of black sorrow, rob her of her happiness and her good name, destroy all that was joyous and beautiful in her life? Could he do that to the woman he loved more than any other?
He wouldn’t stay to be tempted and find out. She wasn’t his; she never would be. Swearing under his breath, he grabbed his shirt from where he’d dropped it, and left.
Jerusa found Michel at the larboard railing, staring without seeing at the pink glow of dawn to the east. He stood with his shoulders slumped and his arms leaning on the rail, his hair whipping back untied from his face and his untucked shirt billowing around his body like the sails overhead. For a man who had spent his life striving to be inconspicuous, such an open display of his feelings was unthinkable, and Jerusa’s heart wrenched to see him like this, knowing that what she’d done had left him so visibly despondent.
Carefully she felt her way across the slanting deck to stand beside him. He didn’t turn to greet her, still staring steadfastly out to sea. She would have been surprised if he’d done otherwise. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to him, but she did know she wanted to be with him now, and she prayed he’d want her there, too.
She gazed out at the coming dawn, the sun still no more than a rosy feathering in the clouds on the horizon. Despite her seafaring family, this was the first time she’d been on a deep-water ship, and the high-pitched thrum of the wind in the standing riggings, the constant creaking of the ship’s timbers and the rush of the waves were all new to her. After the tiny, close cabin, the wind and spray in her face felt good, helping to clear her thoughts.
Without turning, she dared to slide her hand along the rail until it touched his. “‘Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.’”
“Is that a maxim on all Sparhawk ships?”
“Not on ours alone, no,” she said, glad he’d answered. “You’ve never heard it before? ‘Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailors’ delight.’”
He glanced down at how their hands touched. “You English have a clever saying for everything.”
“And the French don’t?”
“Not nearly enough, it seems, or else I’d know what to say now.” He sighed and lightly brushed his fingers across her hand. “There was no excuse for losing control as I did. It won’t happen again.”
“Oh, Michel, please don’t!” He shouldn’t blame himself like this; until the very end she’d been every bit as willing.
When at last he looked at her, she was shocked by the mixture of pain and longing she saw in his eyes. “That’s exactly what you said to me earlier, ma chère. Thank God you did.”
“But I didn’t mean that we should never do—do such things again!” If only she knew the proper words to describe the intimacy of what they’d shared!
She was slanting her green eyes at him, her cheeks pink with more than the wind as she looked up at him from beneath her lashes with an unwitting blend of shyness and seduction so tempting that it tore at all his resolve and made him hard again in an instant.
“I took advantage of your trust and innocence, Jerusa. You can’t deny that.”
“You brought me more joy than I ever knew existed!”
His mouth tightened. “There’s countless other rakes and rogues able to do the same. It’s a skill that can be learned like any other.”
“I don’t believe that, and neither do you! What we shared—what we share—is special. I may be as innocent as you say, but there are some things that even the innocent can understand.” Impulsively she left the rail and held on to him instead, curling her arms around his waist.
“Jerusa, don’t,” he said, tensing. “You’re not making this easier for either of us.”
“Then think of it as more of your game, Michel. Let these sailors think Mrs. Geary is so besotted with her husband that she cannot bear to be apart from him. Better that than a public falling-out.”
Sacristi, she was right. There’d be talk enough among the crew of how he’d come stumbling on deck like a drunkard. He didn’t need to fuel their gossip any further by pushing his “wife” away.
“This I can do, Michel,” she said softly, her lips close to his ear so he could hear her over the wind. “Because this isn’t pretending. I love you, Michel Géricault, or Michael Geary, or whoever you are. I love you.”
“No, Rusa,” he said wearily. “Don’t even say it. What about Carberry, eh? I thought you loved him.”
She shook her head in furious denial. “I never cared for him the way I do for you. How could I? Tom was only a girlish attachment. I see that now. Even if he still wishes to marry me, I would not have him.”
Michel’s smile was full of bleak amusement. “A wise decision, ma mie. Perhaps the best you’ve ever made. Now stop at that, and don’t spoil it by mistaking me for your next