He had, she thought with giddy conviction, the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen on a man, as green and as ever changing as the sea he loved.
“I’m not very good at arguments,” she said softly. “I doubt I could convince you of your own name.”
“Don’t use words, sweetheart, and you’ll do just fine.” Gently he raised her chin and captured her mouth for his own. She remembered what joy it had been to kiss him before, and eagerly she parted her lips for him.
But the heady sweetness she’d remembered from before wasn’t there this time. Too much had happened since then to change the subtle stakes between them, and that easy, careless attraction between two strangers had been irrevocably lost. In its place was something deeper, darker, that Caro sensed from the instant his lips began moving over hers, something she welcomed even as she realized it could lead only to her ruin.
Now when his mouth moved so surely over hers, she felt his heat like a fire licking at her soul. Seamlessly their mouths joined, his tongue savoring her velvety sweetness, plunging deeper and then withdrawing in a seductive dance that left her desperate for more. In return she kissed him the only way she knew how, with a shy eagerness, the way he’d taught her the first time, and he rewarded her with a low growl of masculine satisfaction.
The gown between them slipped forgotten from her fingers as she reached her hands beneath his coat to curl around his neck, drawing him closer as she arched into him. Her breasts tightened against the rough linen of his shirt and the hard muscle of his chest beneath it, and little cries of pleasure escaped her lips to be swallowed by his.
His large hands slid deep into the black silk to caress her body, lifting her against him so she could feel how well they fit together. With an intimacy that at once shocked and excited her, her legs fell open on either side of his, and through the thin barrier of silk she could feel his rigid length as he pressed against her most secret parts, her softness melting around him, teasing them both with the promise of what completion would bring.
His mouth broke free of hers, his beard rough against her skin as he trailed kisses along her jaw. “We’re so good together, sweetheart,” he murmured, and even in her inexperience she knew he was right. “I’ll give you paradise like you’ve never known.”
Frustrated by the frail barriers still between them, he began pulling her skirts high over her legs, relentlessly guiding her toward the bunk as she clung to him. In her ear she heard how he whispered her name over and over, his voice thick with desire, making the single word a prayer of passion and tenderness she’d never dreamed she’d hear.
“Love me, Caro,” he whispered hoarsely as he licked at the salty hollow of her throat. “Love me, and let me love you.”
Love me. He loved her, he wanted her: what else could a woman hope for from a man? Yet for Caro the awful reality of his words sliced through the haze of passion, and her eyes filled with tears of longing for what she could not—must not—have.
“No,” she said softly, covering herself as she pushed away from him. “I can’t, Jeremiah.”
“Yes, sweetheart, you can,” he breathed, still so sure of himself as he gently drew her back, kissing her again with an intensity that left her dizzy with longing. “You will.”
She closed her eyes and pulled away again, trying to shut him out as she struggled to find the strength within herself to turn away. There could be no place in her life for the kind of love he was offering. Love like that was an indulgence that women could not afford. Love like Jeremiah wanted from her brought suffering, pain and sorrow. She had only to look as far as her own mother.
“I can’t, Jeremiah. Please. Please!’ She withdrew again, and again he reached for her, but now with a blind possessiveness she hadn’t expected, crushing her hard against his chest. For the first time she found him using his size and strength against her, and too late she realized the force of the passion she’d raised in him. Once he had told her he’d never taken a woman against her will, but if he tossed her onto the bunk now to finish what they’d begun, she knew she would have no one to blame but herself. Panicking, she tried to shove him away. “No, Jeremiah, I can’t!”
“Can’t, or won’t?” The blood pounding through his body drowned out every thought except the overwhelming need for her. He had never known a woman who had responded to him so passionately and with so few inhibitions, the sinuous movements of her pale body half hidden, half revealed by the black silk more incendiary than if she’d been completely naked. Her eyes were dark with passion, her throat and breasts flushed; it was inconceivable that she’d wish to end this any more than he did himself, and the physical pain of interruption flared into anger. “I’m waiting, Caro. Can’t, or won’t?”
“Both,” she whispered miserably, her own body aching with unfulfillment. “You must understand—”
“Damn your understanding!” He could take her now, here, while the fire she’d roused in him still throbbed in his body. Despite her words, he knew she wanted him. It would be so easy to bury himself deep within her, to lose himself in the hot promise of her love.
But instead he shoved her away while he still could, so roughly that she stumbled backward. Desperate for some sort of release, he lashed out furiously at the paneling over her head with his fist. “You parade about half-naked and rub yourself against me like a cat in heat, and then you want me to understand when you change your mind?”
She winced at his crudeness, tugging her gown back over her bare breasts. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said softly. “There are so many reasons.”
“Afraid you’ll lose your title, Countess?” he snarled, as angry with himself for what he’d nearly done to her as he was with her for denying them both. “Afraid that if your precious Frederick learned how eagerly you’d spread your legs for some poor American sailor like me, he’d toss you out on the street like the little whore you are?”
Hot tears of shame ran down her cheeks. “It’s not like that at all!” she cried. “It’s just I—I cannot love you the way you deserve.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Disgusted, he turned to leave.
“It’s the truth!” she sobbed. “Damn you, Jeremiah, did I question you last night?”
He froze, his hand on the latch, his face rigid.
“I need you, Jeremiah,” she said haltingly through her tears. “I need you and care for you, and I believe you care for me, too. But for me, for now, that’s all it can be. I can’t love you the way you want. I can’t love anyone like that. It’s not you, and it’s not Frederick. It’s my fault. All mine.”
She sank down to her knees on the deck, burying both her face and her tears in her hands. He would hate her now. How could he not? She deserved it for what she’d done to him. But, oh, how hard his hatred would be to bear!
She could still hear her mother’s voice, raspy with consumption, as she and her friends had taught the little country virgin the cold, mercenary lessons in pleasing men so men in turn would value her. They’d told her things she’d thought impossible between men and women, then showed her themselves with their willing lovers if she’d dare doubt in their hearing. They had ridiculed her innocence and mocked her romantic ideas of love and happiness as readily as they had criticized her beauty. Such spiteful, jealous women, those friends of Merry Miriam Harris, their high-pitched laughter and their bright satin gowns making them seem like exotic, expensive tropical birds in the gray seaside mist of Portsmouth.
Though she had tried so hard to do what her mother and her friends wanted, every cruel word had found its mark in her thirteen-year-old soul, and each night she had cried herself to sleep on the pile of quilts, rank with stale perfume and old sweat, that was her makeshift bed in the