“Wait.” He chuckled. “I can see now why you’re having trouble believing this. No, that’s not what you did. But you did appear on deck last night. I certainly didn’t imagine that. I was manning the wheel. I do that often, take the night round at the helm. And I did doubt my eyes, I was so amazed to see you walking slowly across the deck in your nightgown. I tied off the wheel, but before I got down to you, you fell over the side! There was no time to call for help. I was terrified you’d drown if I didn’t immediately dive in after you.”
“You saved me?” she gasped, her eyes widening with that realization.
He didn’t answer that directly, but merely replied, “I would have thought hitting the water would have woken you, but incredibly, it didn’t. Actually, if you hit the water hard enough, it could have knocked you out. I’ve seen that happen before. But whichever case it was, my worst fear wasn’t realized.”
“What?”
“That you would sink immediately and I wouldn’t be able to find you in the dark depths. But you didn’t. However, by the time I reached you, the ship was already beyond shouting distance. It was quite disconcerting, watching it sail on without us.”
She could imagine. No, she couldn’t. She was still having a hard time believing any of this.
He led her back toward the little bit of shade under the palms. “Sit down. Relax. It’s early morning. Tyrus will have noticed we’re missing by now. They’ll probably find us before noon today.”
She was still too shaken to take his advice. Relax? Was he joking? Another glance around them pointed out just how alone they were on that strip of beach, without a single thing anywhere indicating habitation. And he was entirely too unconcerned over their situation. For all intents and purposes, they appeared to be shipwrecked!
The thought immediately brought back her original fear. “The ship wouldn’t have crashed, would it?” she asked anxiously. “With no one at the wheel and no one else on deck to even notice if it was going to run aground?”
He smiled at her. “No, I was due to be relieved within the hour last night. And she was set on a straight course away from land.”
“Then they’ve been looking for us since the middle of the night?”
“Possibly. Langtry, who was to relieve me, might have thought I left the deck mere minutes before he arrived, though, in which case, as I said, they won’t have found us missing until this morning. Or they could have turned around last night. Either way, it won’t be long. Tyrus knows these waters well. He won’t rest until he’s retraced the ship’s course to find us.”
“Unless he thinks we’ve drowned,” she predicted, her thoughts still frazzled.
“He’ll have his spyglass trained on the water as well.”
“He gave his spyglass to me.”
Boyd was trying not to grin again, she was sure, when he replied lightly, “You don’t really think that was his only spyglass, do you, or that there aren’t a good dozen on the ship?”
She could tell he was just humoring her now. It didn’t annoy her. It actually had the opposite effect since it pointed out that she was probably being silly in her fears. They hadn’t drowned. He’d gotten them on land. They’d be back on the ship before dark. Nothing to worry about.
She sat down in the sand again. She tried to be demure about it, but that was rather hard to do in a nightgown. He joined her, sitting cross-legged next to her. His feet were as bare as hers, though she noticed his shoes drying out in the sun nearby. At least he still had them, though that must have been hard, swimming with shoes on…
“By the way,” he said offhandedly and with a slight grin. “Are you married today—or not?”
Chapter 34
ARE YOU MARRIED TODAY, OR NOT?
Katey didn’t answer Boyd immediately and kept her eyes trained on the gentle waves rolling in toward the shore. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to answer at all. He made the question sound like a joke, and that’s probably how he was seeing it now. Which was her fault. She should have just stuck to her guns.
He’d believed her lie about being married that afternoon in the captain’s cabin, after they kissed. It even looked as if he were going to avoid her again, because of it, when he missed dinner with her that evening.
Perversely, the very next time she saw him, she confessed, yet again, that she wasn’t really married. A big mistake, that, especially when she ended up changing her tune once more before they left Cartagena. The man could disturb her too much at times. He’d claimed he couldn’t think clearly in her presence? She seemed to be having the same problem these days!
“Let me rephrase that,” he said during the long silence. “Why haven’t you married? You’re certainly old enough. In fact, before long you’ll be an old maid.”
She glanced at him, just in time to see him pour sand from his fist on top of her hand, which was already half-buried in the sand, since she was leaning on it. His silly remark, and the sand, set an irresistibly friendly mood.
“An old maid, eh?”
“Absolutely. In this bright light, I can already see a few wrinkles.” She laughed. He grinned. But then he added, “So why haven’t you?”
She shrugged. “I nearly did. Before I left home, I was desperate to have something new happen in my life. And I was asked by every bachelor in Gardener, all three of them. Two were old enough to be my father. The third could have been my grandfather he was so elderly. You can see why I declined.”
“I can’t believe you only had offers from old men.”
“Believe it. Gardener was a dying village. All the young people had moved on.”
“Your parents gave you no other options? Surely they didn’t expect you to find a husband amid such limited prospects?”
“My father died long ago. My mother often talked about an extended trip to one of the big cities along the coast, maybe even New York, but we never got around to it, and then she died, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Katey replied tonelessly, glancing back at the incoming waves.
He dribbled two more fistfuls of sand on her hand before his next question, as if he’d had to work up the nerve to ask it. “So you do plan to marry someday?”
“Yes, maybe even before my trip is over. It would be exciting to marry a Persian prince, don’t you think? If I’m lucky enough to meet one, that is. Or maybe I’ll end up in a harem. I’ve heard of such exotic things, and my marriage will have to be extraordinary, at least very exciting. I won’t settle for less than that since my life before this trip has been nothing but boring.”
“A harem?” he choked out. “You’re joking, right?”
She peeked at him with a grin. He did really look horrified. She felt like patting herself on the back. She hadn’t lost her touch.
“Of course I am.”
He poured more sand on top of her hand before he said, “You wouldn’t find having an affair with a shipowner exciting?”
The image came too swiftly to her mind, of the two of them lying in a bed, limbs entwined, passionately kissing. She blinked it away. At least he hadn’t said marriage, which is what she’d thought he might be leading up to. She didn’t want to sit here all day feeling angry at him for hounding her about something that wasn’t going to happen. The present mood was too cordial. She didn’t want it to end abruptly.
So she continued in the same teasing tone, “I suppose it could be under the right circumstances, like during a terrible storm at sea where the ship might sink, or—well, you get the idea.”
“I’ll try and drum up a storm for you,” he said.
She laughed, delighted with him for playing along. Life was too short for the seriousness that he usually brought to the table.
Of course, his high passion, which he’d mentioned more than once in regard to her, no doubt accounted for some of that seriousness. But she could hardly blame the man for being overly attracted to her when she’d been having the same problem since she’d first met him. She might wish he could
control it a little better, but it was nothing to hang him over.
Suggesting marriage, though, just to solve his problem, was preposterous. That was worth hanging him for. The very idea! No romance involved, not the least bit of courting on his part. Good grief, they’d only shared one kiss together, and that was after he’d proposed!—those kisses she’d fantasized about didn’t count.
But she tried to continue in the same light vein, and staring down the beach with nothing in her view but lush foliage, she said, “When you order up that storm, how about ordering a carriage, too. Or do you think we’re close enough to a town to walk to one?”
“You don’t seem to have much confidence in Tyrus,” he admonished.
“It was just a thought. But we are somewhere along the Spanish coast, aren’t we?”
He shook his head. “Not unless I got seriously turned around in the water. This should be one of the Balearic Islands. I had just sailed past them last night right before you appeared on deck, so I knew which direction to swim in. They aren’t all populated. It looks like this is one that isn’t, though I could be wrong. Most islands, even well-populated ones, can still have long stretches of empty shoreline.”
He leaned to the side to feed a few more twigs to his little fire, and to turn the fish over on its spit. Not seeing anything else lying around other than a pile of dry twigs next to the fire, his shoes drying in the sun, and his jacket tossed over a nearby bush to dry as well, she wondered how he’d obtained a fish for their lunch.
“How did you catch that?”
He chuckled. “I’m not going to pretend I’m an excellent fisherman. It got trapped in that little pool over there when the tide went back out. I found it flopping about in the puddle that was left.”
She saw the indent in the shore he was talking about. There wasn’t much sand there. Dirt and trees had encroached too close to the water, and dirt wasn’t as malleable as sand, so the hole was being further eroded by the tides, rather than filling back in. It was a nice-size fish, probably enough for lunch and dinner. At least they weren’t going to starve while waiting to be found.
“And the fire?” she asked curiously.
He grinned and pulled a small glass lens out of his pocket to show her. “I’ve been carrying this around with me for years now, ever since I watched someone break a spyglass open to hold the lens toward the sun to get a fire started. I found this much smaller version, small enough to barely notice it in my pocket. I figured it might come in handy someday, though, ironically, I almost tossed it away this year, since I never did end up needing to use it and I frequently misplaced it, as small as it is. It’s a good thing I didn’t. I don’t think you would have liked raw fish. Hungry?”
“Not yet.” She smiled. “I rarely am when I first wake up, and I did just wake up.”
Instead of smiling, she thought he actually winced slightly. Odd. Or was she mistaken? But the sun was getting up pretty high. It could even be close to noon already, and she never slept this late.
Come to think of it, how could he possibly have gotten her to shore without her waking? Water would have been splashing in her face, his arm would have been uncomfortably tight around her, pulling her along. Normal sleep couldn’t have survived that much activity. Either she’d drunk more than she remembered last night or hitting the water had indeed knocked her unconscious. She supposed she was lucky to have finally woken up at all.
She realized suddenly that he’d risked his life to save her. He wouldn’t have been able to keep them both afloat for long if he hadn’t found land. And she would have sunk to the bottom, without even knowing she was about to die if he hadn’t jumped in after her. She owed him…
“What?”
She blushed. She’d probably looked quite amazed there for a moment, enough for him to notice.
“Nothing,” she said, glancing down in her lap, then, “Do you see rain on the horizon?”
Oh, God, she didn’t really just give him such a blatant invitation, did she? But maybe he wouldn’t relate her question to his remark about drumming up a storm for her so they could have an affair. And a peek back at him showed he didn’t even look at the sky for storm clouds. There was no need. There hadn’t been a single cloud of any sort in that blue sky and they both knew it.
His eyes did widen, though. He understood perfectly. And now would be the time to tell him she’d been teasing, whether she had been or not. Quickly, before it was too late. But no words came out as she stared at him. Sun sparkled in his golden curls. That intensely sensual look entered his eyes.
He dove at her. She shrieked with laughter as she fell back in the sand, because she’d caught his playful smile. But now his smile was gone as he settled carefully on top of her. So was her laughter. And she was staring up at a man who wanted her so much, he’d made a fool of himself a number of times because of it. God, she could say the same thing about herself. And she was so tired of fighting it…
Chapter 35
DAYDREAMING ABOUT KISSING just wasn’t the same as this. While some of those daydreams had actually stirred Katey’s pulse and caused her some private blushes, none of them was comparable to the thrill of really having Boyd’s mouth on hers. Her pulse had started racing even before their lips touched, just in anticipation! And it was such a deep, scintillating kiss. If he didn’t have that lens in his pocket, they could probably have started a fire just from the sparks flaring between them.
It wasn’t all raw passion as she’d worried it would be from him. Close. Indeed, very close. But he was also bringing some nice skill into play that was unexpected. Considering what a powder keg of passion he’d always been around her, and their last stirring kiss, this was a nice surprise. It was as if he were trying to mesmerize her with it and to allay her fears at the same time, to draw her in with a slow seduction of her senses, to make her want to kiss him back, and, oh my, it worked extremely well.
“Don’t wake me. Don’t you dare. I think I would die if I woke right now.”
His voice, and yet she could have said exactly the same thing, she realized. But his mouth had moved across her cheek so it was by her ear that he said that, just before his tongue plunged inside it. She nearly shrieked. Gooseflesh spread down her body so quickly and so powerfully, she tingled everywhere. She did wrap her arms around his neck. Tightly. It felt as if she had to hold on or she would be lost in that maelstrom of sensations he was provoking.
Lips to lips again, he gently sucked on hers and tickled them with his tongue, not intentionally, but her skin everywhere was already getting too sensitive. She pressed her lips more firmly to his, to end the tickles. He must have thought she was trying to increase the tempo when she did that, because the passion he’d miraculously been keeping harnessed was suddenly released. His kiss became voracious, and it sucked her right in to the same steamy vortex.
Having her own passion fired to that degree was mildly alarming, but merely because she hadn’t known she was capable of such passion. She didn’t mind that she was, it was just unexpected. Though with as much as she’d daydreamed about this very thing happening, she shouldn’t have been surprised at all. Nor could she have ordered a nicer setting for her fantasies to come true in. A warm, tropical island with a balmy, ocean-scented breeze just the right temperature for taking off one’s clothes. What more could she have asked for—well, other than a bed, but soft beds were for perfect daydreams. This was real and much more preferable.
And private. There wouldn’t be any doors opening to interrupt them here. That thought was in the back of her mind. Here, only she could interrupt this and she wasn’t about to. That she owed him was merely an excuse. She’d thought about this too often to go on any longer without experiencing it. And there wasn’t anyone else in the entire world that she’d rather experience it with.
He was working on the buttons of her nightgown without breaking their kiss. She wouldn’t even have noticed if the back of his hand hadn’t brushed against her breast. There were too many buttons, of
course, because it wasn’t really a nightgown she was wearing but a thin robe that buttoned from neck to feet, one that she preferred because it was so much softer for sleeping in than her cotton gowns.
He’d find that out soon. Would his passion override patience and have him ripping the robe to finish the job? She hoped not, because this robe was all she had to wear for their rescue later. But the thought disappeared as his hand slipped inside what he’d opened so far and caressed her thighs and then moved between them.
Oh, God, she was too sensitized for that! Just the accidental touch against her breast had hardened her nipples a moment ago. But this, his finger sliding over that kernel of raw sensual pleasure! She jerked. She couldn’t help it, had no control of it! He did it again. She moved again, pressing herself closer to him then pulling back, gasping against his mouth. She thought she could feel his lips forming a smile against hers just before he thrust his finger inside her.
She gasped and went right over the edge. So quickly it happened, it just burst upon her, the most incredible ecstasy that spread out wildly from her loins, throbbing around his finger, draining her slowly, deliciously. She was nearly in shock she was so amazed.
“What was that?” she gasped.
“Just the beginning,” he said as he showered her face with tender kisses.
He stood up to remove his clothes. They weren’t done? Excitement swirled in her belly again. She quickly finished unbuttoning her robe, but kept it on. It would make a nice blanket for them in the sand, she thought before she glanced up and had no more thoughts.
Boyd was standing there naked, had just dropped his breeches to the ground. Her eyes flared wide. She’d always thought he was a fine figure of a man, too perfect in her eyes, but this was pure magnificence. Long, lean lines delineated by thick muscle. His chest was broad, spread lightly with a mat of golden hair that didn’t travel much below his nipples. His midsection looked so hard there was simply no give or take to it. She thought she could stand on his belly without making a dent. Even his thighs were corded with muscle, thick, strong, there’d be no racing on foot with him! And those arms that had held her, how had he kept from crushing her? His shoulders and arms were so muscular. It was no wonder he wore loose-sleeved shirts. Any tightness there would probably have him splitting seams.