Seduced by a Pirate

FIFTEEN

Phoebe could have laughed at the astonishment on Griffin’s face, but her heart was too full. “It’s good news, isn’t it?” she asked. “From your point of view, that is?”

Good,” he repeated. He looked as if she’d struck him over the head with a big rock.

She nodded.

He spread his hands across her stomach. She instinctively tensed her muscles to try to draw it flat. She had a curve there. The truth was that she had curves everywhere.

You didn’t sleep with another man.” His voice was raw with an emotion she couldn’t quite recognize. Relief? “You aren’t accustomed to eating dinner without underclothes.”

What? No!”

You never wore that blue gown for lover?”

Absolutely not!” She felt a little indignant at the very idea. “You think I have a wardrobe just to satisfy my illicit desires? My maid took off its underskirt because she wanted to make sure you found me desirous.”

Absurd.”

She scowled at him.

As if any red-blooded man in the world could resist you. Now I wish I hadn’t ripped the gown.” There was laughter in his voice again, but relief, too. Relief and joy and a bedrock strain of desire. “Or rather, I wish I’d jumped off that boat and swum back to shore and tried again. Or that I’d remembered I was married and been faithful to you.”

She snorted. “Under English law we aren’t yet married, you know. Not until the marriage is consummated. My father told me, the moment I confessed that you were gone.”

You lied?”

I lied.”

He cupped her face in his hands and dropped a kiss on her lips. “Thank you.” And: “I don’t deserve you.”

No, you don’t,” she whispered back. “Remember that.”

The children?”

My cousin died when Alastair was born. Her husband asked me to care for them. He left for the Bermudas and died of a fever only two months later.”

Worthless sod,” Griffin growled, picturing Colin’s father under his foot. “He should have stayed with his children.”

But Phoebe was smiling at him, and the thought slipped out of his head. “They call me Mama. Still, I tell them about their mother, and we visit her grave now and then.”

Despite all the emotion, his body was urgently making its demands known. He’d had a cock-stand for hours, and he couldn’t wait much longer.

You’ll be a wonderful father for them,” she said.

The three little ones had already stepped into his heart, that scrappy bravery they showed ten times as dear now he knew they were orphans. “We’ll adopt them.”

We already did.” Phoebe had the lazy smile of a well-satisfied woman playing around her lips, but he was still in the grip of a ravening hunger.

Strands of hair fell over her voluptuous curves, playing hide-and-seek with a pink nibble. He clasped her breasts with a possessive joy that he had never felt before. “Phoebe,” he murmured, bending to lap that nipple. “Could we discuss the children later?”

A tiny gasp, and then: “Yes.”

It was a long night. Griffin worked his way down his wife’s body again, making certain that she understood that every splendid inch of her was his, had been kissed and claimed. In turn, he threw himself on his back and let her touch him everywhere.

Virgin curiosity,” he grumbled, his muscles shaking as he fought to keep control as her fingers glazed his most sensitive parts.

Exactly,” she said. But the gleam in her eye seemed more suited to a pirate queen than a virgin, even as she decided that touch needed to be supplemented by taste. His self-control was on the frailest of threads . . .

Still, she was a virgin.

Finally he rolled over, plundered her mouth as he braced himself above her. Her eyes weren’t glazed any longer: they were clear, desirous, and passionate. “Yes,” she sobbed, “please.”

I love you,” he said, looking down at the strong, funny, utterly adorable woman whom fate had given him fourteen years ago.

What?” she asked, sounding dazed.

I love you,” he said, feeling the rightness of it through his chest, and his heart.

Oh, good,” she said. Then she bent her knees and arched up toward him. “Let’s discuss it later.” There was naked longing in her voice.

Griffin knew at that moment that he would never experience anything so wonderful again in his life. “This might hurt.”

I know,” she said, “just do it. Please!” Her fingers were clenched on his forearms.

He thrust into the sweetest, tightest, heaven-sent . . .

There were no words.

By some miracle, he managed to hang on to his control enough to pause. “Phoebe,” he growled, “are you all right?”

No,” she whispered.

Pain?” He dropped a tender kiss on her mouth.

She wiggled and he sucked in a breath. “No.”

No pain?”

She wiggled again. “It’s just that I want . . .”

He withdrew in one smooth movement.

More,” she said, her voice husky, craving. “More. I want more of that.”

He gave her more. At some point he realized that he had been wrong: he hadn’t had the best experience of his life already, because surely that came later that night, when Phoebe woke from a nap.

She crawled on top of him and he woke to find a delectable, fragrant woman sinking onto his very willing self.

At which point his very own pirate queen leaned over and whispered, “I love you too, Sir Griffin Barry. My husband.”

Surely that was the best moment . . . but then there was the next morning in the courtyard, when Phoebe described herself as insatiable, beckoned to him like a “crazed widow” (her term), and pushed him up against the wall. They barely made it into the dairy, and all the time he was pounding into her, smothering her cries with his kisses, he could hear Nanny McGillycuddy calling.