Joanna Bourne: My Lord and Spymaster

Nothing could have been more natural. It was as if they’d been married a dozen years and she’d come back from checking up on the kids. She let her nightgown slip down around her feet and took the empty spot in the bed. In all creation there was no woman so right for him. She was his.

She loved him. It was written in her eyes for him to read, her loving him and hurting about it and planning something hazardous to her safety fairly soon. She’d try to break into Meeks Street or storm Parliament. He’d talk to her and put a stop to it. Adrian was sure he could get Whitby transported to Australia, not hanged. He’d explain that, and some of the desperation would go away.

Right now, she didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. She was hurting and afraid, and she’d come to him to hide for a while.

Lovemaking is a good place to hide. “What we will do,” he said, “is take a little trip.”

He kissed her fingers, one by one. She was watching him, interested. This was the very beginning. Soon, she wouldn’t watch him do anything at all. She’d feel it. He said, “Look over the edge.”

Perplexed, she looked where he pointed, over the edge of the bed.

“Rug sharks.” He shook his head sadly.

“Rug sharks?”

“Lots of them. Hungry looking, too. Can’t get out that way.” He crawled across the bed to the window, motioning her to follow. It was only just first light. “See that?” he pointed to the garden in the middle of the square.

“Yes . . .”

“That’s the island. I imagine we’ll drift up against it sometime or other. Probably in a day or two. Till then . . .” He put his hands on her shoulders. That was a good place to start, the shoulders. “We’re stuck here. On the raft.”

She smiled, tentative. “It’s a nice raft, though.”

“A fine raft.” She had lean, elegant muscles, tense as carriage springs. He kneaded up and down her neck, loosening them up. “There’s just the raft. No past. No future. Only the ocean around us. Nowhere to go and nothing to do but make love to each other.”

He watched her let go of them—past and future. “I’d like that,” she said.

“Lie down then. No. On your stomach.”

She lay down, willing, but puzzled. When he got on top, straddling her thighs, her skin startled. Little ripples of shock spread out.

So this was new. Her first lover, that boy, had taken care with her. Been gentle. But he hadn’t known much. There’d be lots of surprises for her this morning.

He patted her rump, Hello, rump. Aren’t you a pretty thing, and introduced himself to the muscles up and down her back . . . fingering his way along . . . stroking them the way they liked . . . getting them on his side . . . telling them they were safe with him. He knew what he was doing. It was a beautiful, beautiful body she had.

She had her head to one side, looking around his room, glancing back to see what he was about. “Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“Can’t do anything. All those rug sharks. We just have to stay here and amuse ourselves.”

“I meant, amusing ourselves. I’ve done this before. I know there’s more to it.”

“Indeed there is. But we’re not in any hurry. Got a couple of days to fill up before we get to the island.”

After he’d been working a bit, she forgot to worry. Her eyes closed. A little while onward, she whispered, “This is what it feels like afterwards. Like I’m melted.”

So that was enough on those back muscles. She’d loosened up nicely. When he got off and rolled her over, she almost flopped.

He started in on her hand. Many bones and muscles to make friends with there. Then up her arms to her shoulders. Her eyes were half-closed when he went down to get acquainted with her feet. Jess could relax and enjoy herself. It just took a while.

“That feels good. I didn’t know.” She spun the words out of a soft breath. “Didn’t know.” Her eyes closed. “Are you sure there isn’t something I should be doing? It doesn’t seem fair.”

She was breathing deeply, letting his hands tell her when to breathe. This was where he wanted her to be. This was what he wanted her to feel.

“You truly hate to lie back and do nothing, don’t you?” he said.

“This isn’t doing nothing. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not doing nothing.”

He knelt between her legs. So beautiful. It took all his strength to hold himself in check, thinking what it was going to feel like . . . Jess, closed around him.

SHE liked what Sebastian was doing to her. Kissing her knee. Made it hard to get her breath. Hard to stay still. But, oh, she liked it. Was this what people generally did in bed together? She hadn’t known it took this long. She was almost certain you could get to it faster if you wanted to.

Then he kissed her breast, and it was like being plunked down over a fire. Heat everywhere.

He put his mouth on her, eating her with noisy sucks and bites, like she was a melon or something, and he was hungry. He pressed his teeth against her nipple. She would have sworn she was drawn too tight to move, but she thrashed like a hooked fish when he did that.

“I want . . .” She wanted to grab him and crawl through his skin. Into him. She wanted him there. She held her legs open for him because that was what this was all about. She wasn’t ignorant.

“You never do anything by halves, do you, Jess?” He stroked from her shoulder to her breast and down her belly, between her legs. She jerked and jerked in the wake of his hand. “No defenses at all. Nothing held in reserve.”

That probably all meant something. She’d think about it later. “Could we . . . could we do the rest of it?”

“We are.”

“I mean a little faster. Now.”

“Why would we want to go fast? Remember? No place to go. Nothing to do.” He wound some of her hair around his fingers. “I like this. It’s the color of the ropes on a ship, when they’re dried out in the sun.” He played with her hair, doing something to it. “You watch for that color because the ropes lengthen up, and you have to send the boys about tightening them to trim the sails. It’s a good color. It means fair weather.”

“I don’t think I can stand much more of this.”

Damned if he wasn’t pulling one strand through the other, like he was braiding it somehow. Braiding her hair. “This is a reef knot,” he said. “That’s the first one you learn on a ship.”

He was tying knots in her hair. Sailor’s knots. The man was insane.

“You use it for holding ropes together,” he said.

“I don’t care if you . . . dance jigs in it. Look, can we talk about this some other time?”

He took her hair apart. No more reef knot. He stroked her again, oh, slow and strong down her belly, and she pushed her whole body up underneath his hand. He let her press herself up into the heel of his hand four or five times, till she was dancing for him. She whimpered when he took his hand away.

“Please . . .”

Kneeling over her, he played with her hair some more. “This one’s called a sheet bend. It’s another one you use for joining ropes.”

She watched while he undid her hair. She was tensing and untensing, rhythmically, waiting for him to finish with the damned knot nonsense. He was waiting, too, being stern with himself. When she set her fists on his chest, he was iron. He was oak-hard flesh, quivering. He wanted her.

He said, “The joy at the end takes only a minute. Pleasuring can last as long as you like.”

There was a logical fallacy behind those words. She was sure of it. When they were through in bed, she was going to kill him. “I don’t like this.”

“What part don’t you like? This?” He trailed his thumb, soft, across her, where she was open.