Dunham

Chapter 7

7

From the periphery of her dreams, Celia felt the bed depress beneath her, and though it could not possibly have been Dindi, Celia cast the irregularity of it to the back of her sleep-induced haze and remained settled in the darkness of slumber.

She should not have, she discovered, when a stranger’s lips pressed harshly against hers. Her eyes popped open, her heart lodged in her throat, and her stomach lurched—

Light eyes twinkled in the moonlight piercing through the darkness.

Then she tasted rum and cocoa.

She opened her mouth and wrapped her arms around the man’s broad shoulders, under and through his long silky hair, his skin cold and a bit damp from his midnight row.

“Ah, now that’s a greeting I didn’t expect,” he whispered into her mouth.

“Not even after I ordered my sails trimmed? I expected you days ago.”

He stilled, and she felt him smile against her lips. “And now we are becalmed.”

“Aye. I want my figurehead back.”

“Is that why you are so willing? You’ll fuck me to retrieve it?”

“If I must.”

He chuckled and hoisted himself off the bed to pull the linens back. “Share your bedclothes.”

“Why?” she asked as she moved to accommodate his big body and held the linens for him to slip in.

“Because I’m cold,” he said wryly, and proceeded to prove the point by rolling up against her so that they were cold skin to warm.

Celia squeaked. “God’s teeth, Judas. First you mistake me for a whore, and then you mistake me for a warming brick.”

“And yet you have not chased me out of your cabin for my audacious invasion of your ship and your person. You haven’t even fled to the other side of the bed.”

“You sound particularly pleased with yourself. I told you there were many ways to gain my undivided attention for a night or six.”

“And this is one of them.”

“It is now, although if you had a faster ship, you could have ordered me to heave to and boarded me.”

“I intend to board you, Madam, never fear. And I am keeping your figurehead.”

“Aye, I thought you might say that. I will simply sink your ship, then. If I cannot have it, neither can you.”

He ignored that. “I would like to discuss your questionable judgment in methods for running British blockades.”

Celia laughed. “And all this time I thought talking was the last thing you would wish to do.”

“In time, my love. In time. I’m intrigued. I want to know your mind as much as your body.”

“My mind is not engaged at the moment, Sir,” she murmured and rubbed her palm carefully down his body, thumbing his pap along the way, feeling the hard muscles of his torso—its scars—the peak of his hip, to the nest of curls around his cock. It was flaccid at the moment, but she would expect no less considering the cold. “And it won’t be long until yours is no longer engaged. Kiss me.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” he muttered as if he had no choice, pressing his mouth against hers again, opening her lips expertly with his.

It wasn’t the first time Celia had been tempted into bed by a virtual stranger, but it was the first time a man had made such a concerted and sustained effort to get her there.

It was also the first time she had bedded a man who was her equal at sea.

Aye, he was a special one, one she wanted to know better, and she did not ken why she was so hungry for a man she did not know that she would tolerate his violations of her property and her person. “Why?” she whispered against his mouth, her fingers running through his long, damp, salt-laden hair.

“Why not?”