The Devil and the Deep

CHAPTER FIVE



Lady Mary stifled a gasp as Captain Ramirez rose from the tin bath tub with the fluid grace of a stallion. Water sluiced down the long lines of his body as the flickering lamplight gilded his bronzed skin, throwing it both into mysterious shadow and enticing relief.

The mucous membranes of her throat cracked as dry as parchment, her heart skipped frantically in her chest.

She should not be here.

She should not be spying on a man, a nude man, who was unaware of being watched.

But she simply could not stop.

The last time she’d seen flesh this magnificent had been at Lord Ladbrooke’s stables and her nostrils flared as she remembered how all that leashed power had felt beneath her jodhpurs as she’d straddled and then ridden the Arabian beauty bareback.

Much to her aunt’s chagrin.

Lord alone knew what she’d do now witnessing Mary’s scandalous behaviour. There’d be smelling salts for sure.

But, alas, Mary could not take her eyes off the man.

Steam still rose in wisps around his calves as he stood waiting for the excess water to run off. She held her breath as her gaze roamed over the board-taut planes of his shoulders, obscured towards the middle by sleek wet strips of dark hair. Water trekked from the dripping ends and she followed the path of one errant droplet, gleaming in the light, as it slid down the furrow of his spine nestled between the well-defined muscles either side.

She lost it in shadow as it entered the dip of his back, bracketed by enticing hollows, but her eyes roamed south regardless to the rise of his buttocks. Two firm slabs of muscle, potently male even in his relaxed state, greeted her.

Her gaze was drawn to the left where an imperfection snagged her attention. There, in the centre of his left buttock, lay a large smooth brown birthmark.

It was utterly fascinating and Mary stared at it open-mouthed. It was a perfect circle as if some lover, for he looked to be a man who took lovers, had drawn it deliberately to brand him.

Mary’s cheeks flamed at the risqué image and she felt the roughness of her breath as it quickened in her lungs.

Just when she thought he’d turned to stone he turned slightly, affording Mary a different view. Her gaze brushed along the flare of a bicep, the jut of a masculine hip, which seemed as savage as it did graceful, and the perfect delineation of a meaty quadricep that seemed to vibrate with barely leashed power.

And then there was his...

Mary swallowed. She had seen illustrations of the nude male anatomy in obscure texts in her uncle’s library when she’d been fifteen but they hadn’t managed to capture the sheer beauty of the real thing. The long elegant line of the male member in all its potency was a sight to behold.

It was more elongated and the girth more significant than she’d ever imagined. The curls at its base more enticing.

How magnificent would it look standing out proud as she’d seen on the midnight Arabian?

Mary felt a strange sensation take root deep inside her.

How on earth did it fit?

Captain Ramirez suddenly reached for a nearby towel, covering himself as he stepped out of the bath, his fascinating birthmark the last thing she saw before everything was obscured. Just as quickly he’d padded over to the door that led to his private bedchamber and disappeared through it.

Mary let out the breath she’d been holding. It stuttered noisily into the air around her. She knew she should move but she was utterly incapable.

Until now she’d assumed that pirates didn’t bathe.

She would be grateful until the day she died that Captain Vasco Ramirez had shattered that rather high-handed illusion.

Vasco was breathing rather heavily himself as he shut the door to his bedchamber, leaning against it, his long sable lashes covering the smoulder in his devil blue eyes. Ever since he’d seen Lady Mary in the looking glass peeking out from behind the curtains he’d been determined to shock her.

But he hadn’t been prepared for her thorough appreciation. Nor for his completely involuntary reaction to her fascinated scrutiny.

His fancy did not usually involve gently bred ladies but he’d seen those flared nostrils, heard that muffled gasp.

Maybe beneath all those prim petticoats and haughty eyes beat a passionate heart. Maybe she wasn’t as indifferent to him as her demeanour suggested.

Maybe she could be persuaded to make this voyage a lot more bearable for both of them?



RICK shut the book as he finished chapter two.

Again.

He could hear Stella moving around above him and knew he had to get out of bed and get under way but he wasn’t sure he could look her in the eye this morning.

And—he looked down at the tented sheet—he needed a little time to compose himself...

He ran his fingers over the glossy cover of Pleasure Hunt, the metallic letters boldly pronouncing her name—Stella Mills.

This was not the Stella Mills he knew.

What on earth had happened to her? The Stella who had played mermaid and pirates? Who liked to snorkel and scuba dive? Who liked to read and watch the stars at night? The Stella who hated carrots and could almost hold her breath as long as he could?

The one who had been devastated when her parents had divorced and had made him promise that whatever happened in their lives they would always be friends.

Of course that Stella had been ten years old.

Just the way he liked her.

Because otherwise he had to think of her as a very different Stella.

A grown-up Stella. Who got engaged.

Who had sex.

Who was twenty-seven and not the virgin her father had hoped she would be for ever.

Not if Pleasure Hunt was anything to go by anyway.

God, she probably didn’t even hate carrots any more.

Rick threw the covers off. This was ridiculous. And not helping his situation down below.

He cut straight to the crux of the issue, or one aspect of it anyway.

She was not Lady Mary.

He let it reverberate around his head for good measure. Lady Mary was a character she’d made up. In that vivid, hot, lustrous, dirty—God, so dirty—imagination of hers.

Just because Vasco was him, didn’t mean that Lady Mary was her.

It didn’t mean she’d been fantasising about him sexually. Or that she’d put herself into a character whose lust for his character bordered on pornographic obsession.

That was just plain crazy.

There was nothing remotely similar about Lady Mary and Stella—nothing.

So he needed to get over himself.

He needed to go and take a shower—a cold one—and get the bloody boat moving.

* * *

He was on deck twenty minutes later. And he was in big, big trouble. Suddenly the filter that had always been in place where she was concerned had been stripped away. Those teenage dreams he’d had about her and refused to let himself dwell upon were front and centre.

She was in teeny tiny denim shorts with a frayed edge and a shirt that barely met in the middle. A straw cowboy-style hat, the edges curled up, sat low over her eyes and held her tucked-up hair in place save for a few haphazard wisps that had escaped and brushed her nape.

The girl he always saw, the one he’d trained himself to see, ever since Nathan had sprung them about to kiss, was gone for ever.

Now he saw the ripe bulge of her breasts as the bra he could clearly see through the thin fabric of her shirt pushed and lifted in all the right ways. The wink of her belly button taunting him from the strip of bare skin at her midriff. The killer curve where her hip flared from the tiny line of her waist.

He’d never noticed how curvy she was before. Not consciously anyway. Consciously he’d always thought of her as short and cute.

Like an elf or maybe a munchkin.

But there was nothing cute about those curves—they should come with a yellow warning sign.

And he was stuck on board with them for the next few weeks.

‘Well, about time,’ Stella said as she caught Rick’s advance in her peripheral vision. ‘Another gorgeous day for sailing.’

Rick smiled, his gaze drawn to her mouth. The mouth that was nowhere near as innocent as he’d always thought. A mouth he tried and failed not to think about on his body the way Lady Mary’s had been on Vasco’s.

Stella popped the lid on a bottle of sunscreen and squirted some into her palm. ‘If you get us under way,’ she said, slapping it on her chest, ‘I’ll cook some bacon and eggs.’

Rick swallowed as Stella distributed the white liquid to her shoulders and upper arms and across the swell of her cleavage, dipping her fingers beneath the fabric a little.

Do not look at her breasts. Do not look at her breasts.

Too late.

He looked at her breasts.

‘Sure,’ he said distractedly as her hands continued to massage the crème until her cleavage glistened in the sun.

Stella frowned at him as he stood there looking at her. Was he...was he perving at her chest? There were times when they’d been younger, pre her sweet-sixteen debacle, when she’d caught him looking at her, when their gazes had locked and he’d smile at her with wolfish appreciation, but that had been a long time ago.

‘Rick?’

Her voice brought him back from the fantasy of licking every inch of the crème off her. He blinked and quickly donned his sunglasses. ‘Yes, absolutely, getting under way.’ He saluted, turning from her gratefully, his hands trembling as if he were fifteen years old again and trying to undo Sharon Morgan’s bra.

He really needed to get a grip.

By the time the sun was high in the sky Rick was halfway to crazy. The boat was travelling along at a steady clip, which left him nothing else to do other than stare at Stella. Even metres away from him in her low chair, doing nothing but writing, she destroyed his concentration. She was almost directly in his line of sight, her legs supporting her laptop, her shirt riding up her spine to reveal a good portion of skin, including the dimples at the small of her back.

With conversation non-existent, he was left with a lot of time to think. A lot of time for his mind to wander.

Standing at the helm, the wheel in his hand, the ocean at his command, it was a little hard not to think of himself as the all-conquering pirate Vasco Ramirez.

The Vasco who decided to turn his treasure hunt into a pleasure hunt. Who actively seduced Lady Mary after the bath scene and whose slow, deliberate dance with her was both clever and cunning.

Rick’s mind wandered to those scenes of calculated seduction. Vasco washing Mary’s hair on deck. Vasco removing a splinter from her finger with his teeth. Vasco cutting into the juicy flesh of a dripping pear with his jewelled dagger and feeding her slice after slice.

And the sexiest scene of all where Vasco had tied her spreadeagled in her under-things to his bed until Mary had admitted her desire for him.

That one had got Rick hotter than a summer day on the equator.

In fact just thinking about it now was getting him pretty damn hot. Not helped by the fact that she had abandoned her seated position and was doing a sexy little stretch, bending over and touching her toes, then arching her back as she linked her hands above her head and twisted from side to side.

Oh, Lord, kill me now.

She turned then and walked towards him and he was pleased, as her breasts jiggled enticingly, for the secure placement of his very dark sunglasses.

‘You fancy a cold beer and a bite to eat?’ Stella asked as she approached.

‘Sounds great,’ he said.

Stella patted him absently on the arm. ‘Be right back,’ she said.

Rick stayed very still as the fleeting touch seemed to reach deep down inside and stroke something that it just shouldn’t have. Since when had a perfunctory touch from her had such an effect? But he suddenly understood Ramirez’s puzzlement over the sensations that Lady Mary had created when she’d clung to his sleeve briefly during some choppy weather.

Rick shook his head at the direction of his errant thoughts. Bloody hell, had he been emasculated overnight?

When Stella rejoined him ten minutes later with some ham and salad rolls and two beers, he’d found his testicles and got over himself.

‘Put it on autopilot,’ Stella said, pressing the beer into his hand. ‘Come and sit with me.’

Yeh, that was just what he needed.

But he did it anyway.

‘So, how’s the book going?’ he asked, nodding at the shut laptop as he took a man-sized swallow of beer to dilute the absolute unmanly curiosity over her current romance novel.

Stella nodded. ‘Coming along very nicely. I’m just about finished with the first chapter. I’ve emailed Diana—she’s ecstatic. I think Joy had threatened her with editing non-fic if I didn’t deliver.’ Stella grinned.

Rick smiled too. She seemed relaxed and willing to chat about the book. Maybe, instead of wondering whether Lady Mary was her, which was, quite frankly, driving him nuts, he could just come out and ask. Or at least start a conversation where he could work his way round to it.

‘So, what’s the book about?’ he asked as he took a bite out of his bread roll.

Stella looked up at him from under the brim of her hat. ‘You really want to know?’

Rick stopped chewing. ‘Of course, why wouldn’t I?’

Stella blinked. For as long as she’d known him Rick’s tastes had run to non-fiction books on anything to do with the salvage industry and shipwrecks. And Phantom comics.

‘It’s not really your thing.’

Oh, if only she knew how suddenly it was exactly his thing. He looked at her. ‘It’s yours. I’m interested.’

Stella stared at him for a moment, taken aback by his sincerity. ‘Good answer.’ She smiled.

He smiled back. She looked so damn sweet, how could she have such a dirty mind? ‘So?’ He quirked an eyebrow.

She didn’t know where to start. She wasn’t used to sharing this sort of information with anyone. Only Diana had known about Pleasure Hunt and even then Stella had been reticent to share any of the details in the early stages of the book. Non-writers didn’t understand how storylines and characters weren’t always crystal clear and well defined.

‘It’s about a mermaid,’ she said. ‘Called Lucinda.’

And then for some strange reason, under his scrutiny, she blushed. She thought about all the times they’d played pirate and mermaid as kids, swimming through the tropical waters of wherever they happened to be at the time.

‘You know I’ve always had a thing for mermaids,’ she said defensively.

Rick’s gaze locked with hers. ‘I do.’

Stella shrugged. ‘She came to me in a dream.’

He nodded, wishing he’d been privy to that dream. Hell, if her dream life was as rich as her on-page fantasy life he wished he were privy to all of them.

‘And the hero?’ he asked.

Something held Stella back. She straightened the hat on her head, then whisked it off and let her hair tumble down, stalling for time as she looked towards the horizon. ‘I don’t know much about the hero this time,’ she said with what she hoped seemed like artistic vagueness.

Rick followed the stream of her hair as the stiffening ocean breeze blew it behind her. His palm itched to tangle in it and he kept it firmly planted around his beer. ‘Is that unusual?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I’m new to this and it’s just the way it’s happened.’

Rick slid a sideways glance at her. ‘Did that happen with your first hero?’

Stella’s heart skipped a beat as she glanced at him. ‘No,’ she said casually. ‘He came to me...fairly well developed.’

Rick bit back a smile. Hell, yeah, honey, no prizes for guessing why. ‘Does he have a name at least, this new guy?’

Stella blushed again. ‘Inigo.’

Rick smiled. ‘Ah...good choice.’

Stella looked at him and returned his smile grudgingly. ‘Thank you.’ It was surprisingly hard to talk about the hero with Rick and his Vasco Ramirez eyes staring straight at her even from behind his midnight shades.

Rick knew he had a good opening but was surprised by the pound of his heart as he contemplated the question.

Did he really want to know the answer?

He forced himself to take up inspection of the horizon so the question would seem casual rather than targeted. ‘Do you base any of your characters on people you know?’ he asked casually.

Stella glanced at him sharply. Did he know? Had he read Pleasure Hunt? She’d sent a copy to the Persephone for her father, which Rick could have got his hands on, she supposed, but it had been in a box of things that had been cleared from his cabin and sent to her after his death still in pristine condition.

The spine hadn’t been cracked and it had been obvious to her that it had been unread.

It was an innocent enough question on the surface—one she’d been asked a hundred times by fans and media alike—but her shoulders tensed as she inspected that inscrutable profile just in case.

He seemed his usual relaxed self, soaking up some rays and downing a beer with the unconscious grace of an Old Spice model.

Besides, she doubted there would be any way he would have read it and not realised immediately who Vasco was. And she knew Rick well enough to know that he wouldn’t have been able to resist taunting her mercilessly about it.

‘No,’ she said faintly, hoping her voice sounded stronger than it felt.

Rick stifled a chuckle. Liar. For damn sure Vasco Ramirez was him.

‘So they just come to you...like in a dream or something...?’ he asked innocently.

‘Something like that,’ she said vaguely. ‘Although if I’m to be honest,’ she admitted, trying to divert his attention off the hero, ‘I suppose that the heroine is me.’

Rick coughed noisily as he inhaled some of his beer into his windpipe, necessitating her to beat him on the back a few times. He gasped and wheezed and coughed while his airway cleared the irritant.

Vasco probably never did anything so undignified.

‘So,’ he clarified once he could speak again, ‘the heroines are...you?’

Please say no. Please don’t let me have to imagine that Lady Mary is really you.

Damn it. He should have left it alone.

Stella blushed as Lady Mary filled her vision. ‘Well, to a degree, I suppose, yes. I’m a woman so I can write a female character from my own experiences. In that respect, in very generic terms, I guess they are.’

Rick breathed easier. She was talking in generalisations. Not specifics. ‘So Lucinda isn’t you?’

Stella shook her head. ‘Well, she’s more me than Lady Mary,’ she admitted.

Rick felt the tension ooze away completely.

Hah! There. She wasn’t Lady Mary.

Phew.

‘Lady Mary’s from the first book?’ he asked innocently.

Stella nodded as her embarrassment slipped away. It was actually quite good thinking this sort of stuff out loud. Knowing the differences could only help with her writing process.

Maybe Rick was a good sounding board?

‘Lucinda has a strength of character that Lady Mary didn’t. She’s not waiting around to be rescued—in fact, she’s going to rescue the hero, who’s being held in chains.’

Rick tried not to think about how that scene would pan out. ‘And Lady Mary is weak?’

Because he’d thought, in her own way, Mary had a startling resilience.

Stella shook her head. ‘No, she’s not weak, she’s just more passive. But that’s really just a product of the times and her upper-class background.’

Rick thought of the scene where Mary had finally succumbed to Vasco’s seduction. There had been nothing passive about her then. And nothing passive about the way she’d totally turned the emotional tables on him.

‘Definitely not you, then,’ he smiled, relieved.

Stella smiled back. If only he knew. Beneath Lady Mary’s petticoats and pantaloons lay Stella’s every secret desire. She drained her beer, then checked her watch. ‘Right, enough time skiving off. Lucinda is whispering sweet nothings in my head.’

Rick frowned. ‘They talk to you?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Stella nodded. ‘Most insistently usually.’

He swallowed. ‘The heroes as well as the heroines?’

‘Yep.’

Rick’s mind boggled. ‘What do they say?’

Stella shrugged. ‘Their thoughts, dreams, desires.’

Good God—had Lady Mary whispered those things to Stella? Had she told Stella she wanted to see Vasco naked in the bath, that she wanted him to suck her finger into his mouth and she wanted to be tied to his bed?

Or had it been Vasco telling Stella what he wanted to do to Mary? Describing it in all the erotic detail that it had appeared in the book?

Had Stella been hearing him in her head?

* * *

Rick had never been so happy to see terra firma in all his life when they spotted the Papua New Guinea mainland mid-afternoon. His attempt to dissipate the heat of his thoughts hadn’t exactly gone to plan and he was pleased to be getting off the boat and distracting himself for a while.

They motored into Port Moresby harbour and docked at the Royal Papua Yacht Club. After seeing to all the official formalities they headed for the club.

‘Remember,’ Stella said as Rick smiled at a beautiful dark-skinned woman who openly ogled him as she passed by, ‘you’re on a dare.’

Rick almost groaned out loud. If he had to share quarters with a woman who wrote sexy literature for a living and dressed in next to nothing, then it was vital to put his flirt somewhere!

The fact that he was now bound to a ridiculous dare was just the really rotten icing on a really sucky cake. What was the world coming to when he couldn’t negate some totally inappropriate sexual urges with some harmless flirting?

He smiled at her. ‘Piece of cake.’

Stella grinned as she fell in beside him. She was so going to enjoy this!

He tried to ditch her first thing in the cool, modern surrounds of the yacht club, but there was no way she was letting him walk around unaccompanied, flirting with no redress. She stuck to him like glue as he organised refuelling and restocking of their fresh food supplies and some onwards paperwork for their visit to Micronesia.

They found a nearby craft market and she watched him get crankier as they moved through the stalls thronging with colour and spice and wall-to-wall gorgeous local women. She asked him his opinion about earrings, bikinis and having her hair plaited. None of which he had a strong opinion on other than exasperation.

She bought a sarong and an anklet that had a tiny shell and a little bell on a piece of rope. It was nautical and she was thrilled with her purchase.

He was plain annoyed.

By the time they’d returned to the boat after an evening meal at the club, he was withdrawn and every inch the brooding pirate.

Due to cloud cover and lack of interest there was no star gazing tonight. Just a strictly professional conversation about their onward leg and a discussion revolving around the weather, which wasn’t looking good for the next couple of days, but the long-range forecast remained excellent considering they were in the monsoon season.

‘You okay?’ she asked innocently as she picked up their empty coffee mugs and padded barefoot towards the galley. ‘You seem kind of tense?’

Honestly, the man didn’t realise how much his very survival depended on his banter with women—he needed it as if it were oxygen.

‘The no flirting getting to you?’ she queried, suppressing the humour that bubbled in her chest.

Rick heard the laughter in her voice only on a peripheral level as the tinkle of her anklet obliterated all else.

Great.

As if he weren’t conscious enough already of her every movement, he was going to hear her every movement as well.

He’d probably hear her at night rolling over in bed.

He plastered a smile to his face. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. It had only been forty-eight hours, for crying out loud—just how oversexed did she think he was? ‘I’m going up on deck to plot the course into the sat nav.’

Stella smiled as he departed. She had this dare nailed.