Page 74 of The Pirate and the Pagan
The way he looked at her made her blood thicken and she could not dispel an image of him in his white robe sprawled across his flame-colored bed. He waved his arm toward a cabinet holding a vast array of bottles. “I won’t force champagne upon you tonight, you may chose your own poison.”
“I suppose it is most unsophisticated of me, but I like sweet red wine,” she challenged.
He smiled. “Then you will like Madeira.” He added, “I hope you like French cuisine?”
She nodded hesitantly.
“Escargot—snails?” he asked.
A look of horror came across her face and he relented immediately, his wonderful laugh rolling about the cabin. “Cat, I’m teasing you.” He handed her a goblet and clinked it with his own. “Let’s drink to a mutually enjoyable relationship.” Her lashes swept to her cheeks, but she touched her lips to the wine, acknowledging the toast.
He smiled at her as she looked over the elegant table laid with damask linen and silver. “You choose. Will we do business first or dine?”
“Why don’t I just open this jewel case so you can peruse the contents while we eat?” she suggested.
He glanced once at the jewels, then fixed his eyes upon her where they remained throughout the meal. “Are they presents from admirers?” he asked casually.
Her mouth curved into a wicked smile as she touched her neck. “These diamonds were a gift from the King!”
He frowned for the first time and she laughed. “Now I’m teasing. They were a gift to Barbara Castlemaine. I won them from her fair and square at the card table. Well, perhaps not exactly fair and square.”
He found it amusing that she cheated at cards and she thought to herself, My God, why can’t Ruark be like this?
His eyes never strayed from her to the jewel case and she began to feel nervous. He is pretending disinterest so I’ll lower my price, she thought in a panic. But she was entirely wrong. He was all virile male and the vision before him lured him to taste her rose-colored lips. The frequent glimpse of legs clad in black silk stockings tempted him to part her skirt and run his hands over her thighs and then slip upward to caress her buttocks. But most of all he wanted to slide her gown from her shoulders to reveal the magnificent breasts he’d seen yesterday, and since that is what he wanted most, he decided that is what he would do.
“Do you like peaches?” he inquired.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
He took a silver fruit knife, peeled and quartered a succulent peach, then came around to her side of the table. He knelt down and held a piece of the fruit to her lips. She took it from his fingers, gingerly at first, in case she didn’t like the taste, then more boldly as she found out how delicious the fruit was. With the juice still upon her lips he bent forward and covered her mouth with his.
Her mouth resisted instantly, but as he increased the firm pressure her mouth softened and yielded to the warm thrilling sensation. He lifted his mouth from hers only a fraction so he could murmur, “I wanted you to wear the frangipani for me.”
Breathlessly she said, “I did wear it.”
“I wanted you to wear only the frangipani for me.” His hands slid from her shoulders down her arms and carried the black lace gown down with them. Her breasts sprang from the confines of the neckline and he rolled his eyes heavenward in delighted appreciation of her charms. He chuckled in his throat, “Hellcat Helford, you have the most beautifully impudent breasts in the whole world; they cry out to be kissed.” Still kneeling before her, he put his hands beneath her armpits and pulled her down to him, then he laid her upon the rug and kissed her everywhere from her temples to her navel.
“Please … no … Rory …” she gasped, having no will to struggle as she lay in his arms.
“You need loving.” It was a statement of fact. He unclasped her necklace.
“My diamonds,” she gasped.
His mouth covered her throat where they had lain. “They are unworthy of you.”
My God, what was it about this man that made her feel as if she was the most desirable, the most beautiful woman who ever breathed? “Rory, I can’t,” she protested.
“I just want to look at you,” he soothed. His fingers unfastened the back of her gown and he took it from her slowly, inch by inch revealing her creamy flesh to his laughing eyes. She half believed that he would only look at her and go no further.
He took off her black silk stockings, telling her she was far more beautiful nude than adorned in silk and diamonds. Indeed, all he allowed her to keep on was the frangipani. He even pulled off the tiny black patch from her cheek.
He did nothing but look. His eyes caressed and made love to every pore of her body and she thought it the most intimate thing a man could ever do to a woman. She had a lot to learn. He sat back upon his heels and gazed at her body anew, then he stood and looked down upon her from his great height, studying her as if he wished to remember forever the picture she made. Then he reached down and drew her up to stand before him. He opened his robe and drew her inside.
“Rory!” she gasped as if his flesh had burned her. Indeed her skin was so sensitive at this moment she wanted to scream each time his body came in contact with hers. “Please cover yourself,” she begged, “I cannot resist you and hate myself for it!”
He laughed and fastened his robe. “Don’t hate yourself, sweet Cat. Take your pleasure where you find it—a man would.”
“Oh, I know, Rory,” she said breathlessly. “I’m just not ready to be unfaithful to my husband yet.”
