THREE
Jack stared down at the pretty bare foot in his hands. Soft, pale skin. High, smooth arch.
Webbed toes.
They didn’t even look human. The connecting skin shimmered like fish scales, delicate as insect wings.
His stomach cramped. He looked up into Morwenna’s eyes, bright and opaque as the eyes of an animal. A primitive chill chased up his spine and lifted the hair at the back of his neck.
“What is this?” he asked quietly.
She snatched back her foot, curling it under the legs of the chair. “What does it look like?” she asked defensively.
He couldn’t say. He could hardly think. Stories from his schoolboy days—Poseidon and the Nereids, Ulysses and the Sirens—raced through his head, mixed up with memories of Morwenna singing at the water’s edge, her silver hair shining like seafoam in the sun.
Ridiculous.
He took a deep, steadying breath.
“Not like anything I’ve seen before,” he said carefully. Or anything he believed in. “I was hoping you could explain.”
She pursed her lips. “Must everything have an explanation?”
“In my experience, yes.”
She stood, shaking her skirts down over her ankles. “Then you explain it.”
“Morwenna, your toes are . . .” A gentleman did not discuss a lady’s feet. But he had held hers in his hand, and her toes were . . .
Webbed. Shining with rainbow color like a soap bubble.
“Different,” she supplied.
He seized on the word gratefully. “Different. Yes.”
“And anything different must therefore be flawed.”
He straightened warily. She was offended. Hurt? “I did not say flawed.”
“Am I suddenly repugnant to you now?”
“No.”
Her chin tilted at a militant angle. “But you wish to leave anyway. Because of my different feet.”
He shook his head in baffled admiration. Like a practiced swordsman, she had reversed their positions, driving him on the defensive. “Of course not.”
“Then what do my toes matter?”
He could deal with her anger. But the emotion glistening in her eyes caused a quick clutch in his chest.
“They don’t.”
“Ah.” She held his gaze for a long moment, letting his words speak for her.
He knew he was being manipulated. He did not care. She was so beautiful with her flushed cheeks and that sheen in her eyes. Her quick passions had roused his. The memory of their last time together rose like smoke between them, firing his imagination, cutting off all oxygen to his brain. Then she hadn’t faced him from half a room away. Then she had dropped her dress and sat on the mattress, pulling him to stand between her smooth, bare thighs. He wanted it to be then.
He dragged air into his lungs. How could he press her with questions when he could not breathe? He could have her again, he thought. In this room, on that bed, this very afternoon. His shaft hardened. All he had to do was let go of his questions and enjoy the moment.
Accept the moment.
Accept her.
Her challenge thrummed inside him like the beating of his pulse. Is not existence meant to be enjoyed?
Yes. Lust and longing surged together inside him. He wanted this for himself. He owed it to her. Yesterday he hadn’t taken time to enjoy her properly, to do the things a man does for a woman he cares about.
There was more than one way to discover her secrets.
Very deliberately, he took off his jacket and hung it from the back of the chair. He sat down to pull off his boots.
She watched him, her chin raised another notch. “Do you wish to compare feet now?”
“No,” he said calmly. He set his boots side by side under her table before looking up into her eyes. “I want to make love to you.”
Her breath caught.
Slowly, slowly, her lips curved. She reached for the fastenings of her gown.
Thank God. He crossed the room in two quick strides. “Let me.”
He gathered up her hair to lay over her shoulder, out of his way. It smelled like sea and sunshine. Her nape was as white and delicate as porcelain, as rich as salted cream. He untied the tapes of her gown, controlling himself with effort, determined not to grab or tear. Tugging the sleeves from her arms—no chemise, no petticoats—he pressed his lips to her shoulder, opening his mouth to taste the salt of her skin. She made a sound of impatience and turned in his arms, twining her bare arms around his neck. Her breasts pressed against him.
Need churned inside him, greedy, hot.
But this wasn’t about greed.
He half walked, half carried her to the bed, made her sit while he stripped off his trousers and drawers. His cock jutted out like a tent pole against the long tails of his shirt. She reached for him, caressing him boldly through the linen fabric. He groaned in pleasure, thrusting forward into her hand. She knew him, knew his body, knew how to touch him and make him respond.
He wanted to do the same. To bring her that pleasure. To share that knowledge. To have that power over her.
He cuffed her wrists, pulling her hands from his body. Easing her back against the pillows, he pushed her thighs wide. She propped on her elbows to watch him, her lips parted, her eyes gleaming. Beautiful. His heart thundered. He traced a line with his fingers from her collarbone to her waist; ran his hand over her sleek belly to the roughness of curls between her legs. She was already wet. She smiled and arched her back, offering her breasts, offering . . . everything.
He could take her now. He was hard and aching. His blood pounded in his ears like siege guns.
But it was a siege he planned, an assault on her senses, an invitation to surrender.
He bent over her, his mouth roaming the trail blazed by his hands, wandering here, lingering there, getting to know her body. Her collarbone, her breasts, the curve of her belly, the crease of her thigh. She sighed and shifted, showing him the way. There. More. Again. He kissed and licked and suckled her, learning what made her flush and moan, what made her clench and sigh, reveling in her response.
She undulated under him, beautiful in her abandon, surging under his hand, against his mouth. Hot, wet woman. Heady. Ripe. He drank her in, her scent, her cries. He was drunk on her response, his head swimming, his control slipping.
Her arms came around him, stroking under his shirt, tickling his ribs. Her fingers danced along the ridges of his scars, making him shiver like a horse tormented by flies.
“Take it off,” she commanded.
He shook his head, used his mouth on her. She gasped, she quivered, but she would not be distracted.
She tugged again at the shirt. “Now.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Reluctantly, he raised his head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes great pools of black rimmed with gold. He had never seen anyone or anything more beautiful. And he . . .
“I am scarred,” he said bluntly. “Not just my leg, but my back. My side.”
She found his face with her hands, touched his mouth, his cheek. “I want you. All of you.” Her palms stroked down his belly and thighs, cupped his big, square knees, slid up under his shirt. “Naked.”
His heart pounded. “It is not pretty,” he warned.
“I want to see you.” Her voice was a Siren’s voice, lilting, irresistible. She reached him with her hands and with her words, her fingers circling, squeezing, moving higher. Her knuckles brushed his sac. “Let me see you.”
He had never been a vain man. Or a coward. She deserved to see, to know who she lay with. That didn’t stop his mouth from drying as he dragged his shirt over his head. He knelt over her on the bed, braced for her rejection, dreading her pity.
He did not close his eyes.
Neither did she. In the warm light that spilled from the windows, in the clean air that blew from the sea, she studied the damage to his body.
He had been lucky. The Ninety-Fifth had been caught in the breach, trapped between trenches laid with pikes and sword blades and the two big guns filled with canister shot. He had been fighting his way to the guns when the French fired the mines beneath the slope. The earth had vomited rocks and flame. The sky rained dirt and body parts. His world had exploded in death, in darkness and in pain.
But he had survived.
With one finger, she traced the jagged gouge high on his arm. She brushed the red pucker at his hip. She laid her palm against the twisted mass of purple scars where the surgeon had probed for shrapnel.
“This is what you men do to each other in war,” she said.
He could not read her tone.
“Sometimes,” he said stiffly. He fought an absurd inclination to apologize. For his gender? His profession?
She met his gaze, her eyes like tarnished gold. “You do not wish to talk about it.”
He had left his shirt on to shield himself as much as to protect her. He did not want to go down into the pit again, into the pain, into the bloody surgeon’s tent and the long, agonizing time before and after. “A gentleman does not discuss such subjects with ladies.”
He sounded like a prig.
“Even a lady he is naked and in bed with?”
“Especially not a lady he is in bed with,” Jack said firmly.
He did not want to bring those memories here, into this room, into this moment. He didn’t want that ugliness to touch her.
Yet she continued to touch him, her fingers at once soothing and inflaming. She rubbed small circles against his chest, scraped her nails gently across his abdomen. His cock swelled, hard and eager, shameless at her approach. Her hands wandered over his torso, laying claim to him, to all of him, making no distinction between his damaged flesh and the rest.
He swallowed against the constriction in his throat. “You don’t have to touch them.”
Touch me, he thought.
Her smooth shoulders shrugged against the pillows. “Why not? Your scars are part of you. As my feet are part of me. Not the most interesting part,” she added. Her teasing look set him on fire. She circled his erection with both hands, cupping him lightly. He gritted his teeth against the exquisite pleasure of it. “I am sorry you were hurt. But if we want each other, we must accept each other as we are, with all our scars and all our parts.”
He wanted her. He ached for her, with his body and in his soul. He craved her joy, her acceptance, her unabashed appreciation of life.
“I want you,” he said, his voice as raw as his need.
She smiled up at him. “Now.”
Forever, he thought.
He lowered himself to her. They came together in comfort and in lust, her arms lifting around him, her hands sliding down his scarred back to grip his buttocks. Her legs twined with his. Holding him. Touching him. She felt so good, soft, warm, wet. He made a sound deep in his throat and thrust. She surged to meet him. And despite their differences, or because of them, all the parts fit. As if he had found the other piece of himself, the missing half that made him whole. His mind blurred as they moved together, two bodies with one rhythm. One flesh. His breath shortened. His heart raced. Her body rose and strained beneath his, matching him thrust for thrust. He plunged and withdrew, plunged and held himself still inside her until he felt her tense and go lax around him, softening at her climax. He pressed harder, deeper. The tremors that took her shook them both.
She held him, held him close, as he turned his face into her hair and emptied himself.
Slowly, Jack returned to his senses. His knee throbbed like a sore tooth. His thigh ached with strain. He was exhausted and sweaty . . . and more content than he could remember ever being in his life.
He turned his head on the pillow. Morwenna lay half under him, her face perfect in the golden light, smooth and rounded, luminous as a pearl. She smelled like sex. Like sex and the sea.
Webbed toes, his brain reminded him, but he silenced thought and listened to his heart instead.
She was all beautiful. Beautiful and his. Every part of her was his.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, combing the white gold strands from her brow. “Morwenna.”
Her lips curved. “Major.”
Silent laughter swelled his chest. “Under the circumstances,” he said gravely, “I believe you might call me Jack.”
She opened wide golden eyes. “Jack?”
“Or John, if you prefer.”
“Jack,” she repeated. “I like it.”
Tenderness raked his heart. He kissed her again, a long, slow, openmouthed kiss that stirred him all over again.
He cleared his throat. “Your brother was right, you know.”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon.”
“It isn’t wise for you to live alone here. It isn’t . . .” Proper. “Safe,” he concluded.
His weight still pinned her to the mattress. But already he could feel her withdrawing, regrouping, pulling away from him. “It isn’t your concern.”
“I am concerned,” he said honestly. “You obviously haven’t been responsible for managing your own household before. You need help. Protection.”
Her quick frown gave her mouth a sulky look. “I told you once I will not live with you.”
“Not with me.” That would cause even more talk than her living alone. “Your brother is in the area, you said. You can stay with him.”
“No.”
“I will escort you.”
“I am not one of your soldiers. You cannot command my obedience.”
“I would call on him in any case.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You wish to meet my brother.”
“It is customary,” Jack said carefully. “When a couple is . . .”
What? he wondered. Courting?
Could he seriously be considering making her an offer? An unknown woman of dubious background living alone on the edges of his estate?
Yes, his heart insisted.
“Getting to know one another,” he said.
She wiggled under him, making him acutely aware of her naked body. “We already got to know each other. Twice.”
He smiled. “Which makes my introduction to your family the next—the only—appropriate course of action.”
“My brother would not agree with you.”
“Then give me the opportunity to change his mind. Let me ask his permission to court you.”
There. He had said it. Certainty settled into his bones and lightened his chest.
“That is not necessary,” she said.
Not the reaction he hoped for.
Or, truth to tell, expected.
“I am well able to provide for a wife,” he assured her stiffly. “My father was a gentleman. Aside from my cousin’s estate, I have savings of my own which I am prepared to settle on you.”
“Are you trying to persuade me of my great good fortune in attracting you as a partner?”
“No. Maybe.” He rolled away from her, off the bed. “I sound like an ass.”
“Merely human.”
He turned.
She sat on the edge of the mattress, her hair tumbled over her smooth shoulders, watching him. “You would make a good husband, I think. For someone else. I am . . . fond of you. But I have no desire to marry.”
She was rejecting him. His hands curled into fists at his sides. He did not understand. Every woman wanted to marry. What other options did she have?
“You must want security,” he said. “A family, a home of your own.”
“I enjoy my freedom. I wish to keep it.”
He stared at her, baffled and frustrated. “What if you are with child?”
Her eyes were bright as the sun-struck sea. But underneath the golden surface, shadows flickered and swayed. “It is not possible.”
“Of course it’s possible.” His voice was harsh. “We have lain together. Twice.”
She raised her brows at his deliberate appropriation of her words. “And will do so again, I hope.”
“Then marry me.”
The offer slipped out, shocking them both. But he did not take the words back. He wanted this, wanted her.
“Because we pleasure each other in bed?” She tilted her head as if considering. His heart pounded in anticipation. “No. My life suits me. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have. Nothing I need or want.”
Her rejection knocked the air from his lungs. He inhaled past his constricted throat.
He had narrowly escaped committing his life and honor to a woman he hardly knew. A woman without apparent wealth or connection. He should be relieved.
He was not relieved. He was hurt, confused, angry.
“Then I will bid you good day, madam.”
Unfortunately, he could not even exit on that dignified note, bearing away with him his injured pride, his bruised heart, and his rejected proposal. First he must get through the awkward business of dressing. He could only be grateful that he was a soldier and not a dandy. At least he did not require her assistance to struggle into his boots and his coat.
She pulled the blue dress over her head and stood in the doorway of her cottage to watch him mount.
Her words echoed in his empty heart. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have. Nothing I need or want.
A child. He could have gotten her with child.
“You will inform me,” he commanded, “if there are any consequences.”
A flush rose in her smooth, pale, perfect face. “I will inform you.”
With that, he had to be satisfied.
He pressed his heels to Neptune’s sides and rode away.