lively countenance.
“Not for a missionary’s daughter.”
“But then you’re a most unusual missionary’s daughter,” he retorted.
Her mouth quirked. “And are you acquainted with enough of us to have any yardstick by which to measure, Lord Straithe?”
The pert response took Jamie aback. “A damned unusual missionary’s daughter,” he muttered, as much to himself as to her.
“Well, yes,” she answered, her smile fading at his uncivil tone. “I suppose I am or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
Tired of word games, Jamie decided it was time to rid himself of this audacious female and summon the delectable Mei-Lin to soothe his aching temples. Among other parts.
“I assume your presence has something to do with the notes you sent me, and not any desire to learn the intricacies of the Fluttering Butterfly.”
“The fluttering…?”
With a mocking grin, he gestured to one of the painted panels decorating the bed.
A wave of color washed up her neck. Lifting her chin, she glared at him. “Of course not!”
Prompted as much by his pounding, swirling senses as by the way she stuck her nose in the air, Jamie couldn’t resist taunting her just a bit.
“You might find it enlightening,” he suggested provocatively.
She pursed her lips, looking remarkably like the governess he’d previously thought her. “It’s no use trying to embarrass me, Lord Straithe. I’m well past the age of missishness, but I do wish you would refrain from any more suggestive, ill-bred innuendoes.”
Jamie took a perverse satisfaction in her prim, disapproving expression. The laughter that had so irritated him was completely gone from her eyes now. He refused to admit that he felt its loss.
“If you will meet with men in brothels, you must learn to accustom yourself to far worse than suggestive innuendoes.”
He strolled forward, intending to shock her and send her on her way. Lifting one hand, he ran a careless knuckle down her heat-stained cheek. The soft, creamy texture of her skin surprised him almost as much as his touch startled her.
She took a hasty step back. When she discovered that the bed blocked any further retreat, consternation flooded her expressive eyes.
“Lord Straithe! I must insist that you refrain from such…such…”
“Such intimacies?” he murmured, beginning to enjoy his game. “No, I think not.”
Her eyes widened at his deliberate response, and she tried to edge sideways. Jamie planted one hand against the carved teak bedpost, blocking her escape. He leaned forward until his lower chest brushed the enticing mounds of her breasts. Her very generous breasts. The contact sent St. Elmo’s Fire dancing along his nerves and heated blood still warm from several cups of plum wine. Curling one finger under her chin, he lifted her face to his.
“Women who wait for a man in a room such as this, Miss Abernathy, must live with the consequences.”
The low words, half lazy threat and half challenge, hung between them. For endless moments her golden brown eyes held his. Then she gave her head a little shake, as if to clear it.
“You know very well why I’m here, Lord Straithe.”
“Do I?” he murmured, leaning down to nuzzle the springy curls at her temple. The faint scent of chamomile soap filled his nostrils, so different from the heavy mixture of jasmine and musk that usually assaulted his senses in this chamber.
She jerked her head away. “I do wish you would cease this ridiculous behavior. You must know that I only came here because you wouldn’t answer my summons to the Mission House.”
“At this point, Miss Abernathy, I don’t particularly care why you came.”
She put up both hands to push at his chest.
Once, James Kerrick had possessed a conscience that might have made him draw back at this point. But he’d long since put behind him the ideals of his youth where women were concerned. Moreover, he’d learned to read their contradictory signals all too well. A token resistance. A flutter of lashes over eyes that affirmed what soft lips denied. A trembling, breathless sigh that signaled surrender. All sent their own silent message.
Jamie hid a smile. The missionary’s daughter was most definitely trembling. He could feel the vibrations from his chest all the way down to his toes. With an ease born of long practice, he bent and captured her mouth with his.
She tasted like sweet, warm honey, he thought in some surprise, before a combination of wine and reckless hunger banished all rational thought. Wrapping an arm around her waist, Jamie dragged her up against his chest. Her lush breasts pressed into his shirt. Her breath puffed out with a little sound that might have been a gasp or a sigh. With smug male assurance, Jamie decided it was a sigh.
He widened his stance, bending her back over his arm so that she had to cling to him to keep from tumbling onto the bed. A wild, pounding need rose in him, made fiercer by the way she twisted against the hardening bulge in his trousers. With the unerring skill of an experienced and generally considerate rake, Jamie rubbed his upper body against hers. He knew that the pleasure shooting through him from the friction would generate a similar sensation in the sensitive tips of her breasts.
It did.
Jamie felt hard little pebbles rise beneath her blue cotton robe. His muscles quivered with the need to lay the woman on the bed, to tug off her tunic and bare those rigid points to his touch and his taste.
As he lifted his head and stared down at her red, swollen lips, a faint echo of a long-forgotten code of honor sounded in the recesses of his mind. Jamie ignored it without any difficulty. Releasing her, he stepped back to rid himself of his shirt.
“If you’re quite finished, Lord Straithe, I wish you would compose yourself so we may proceed with the matter that brought me here.”
Jamie’s hand stilled on the ties of his shirt. He stared at her, sure that the brisk, no-nonsense voice couldn’t have come from those well-kissed lips.
It had. With an audible sniff, she tugged at the hem of her blue robe and settled it firmly around her hips.
“Really, my lord, you’ve wasted far too much of my time with this foolish attempt to scare me off.”
It took a moment for Jamie to remember that scaring this female off had been his original intention when he swept her into his arms a few moments ago. Somehow he’d forgotten that in the course of discovering what a delectable armful she was.
“Do sit down.”
“See here, Miss Ab—”
“At once, if you please!”
Jamie blinked. After years of captaining a crew composed of the most rowdy riffraff ever collected on one ship, he was more accustomed to giving commands than to being commanded. By anyone. That the determined Miss Abernathy would stand there and issue him orders in that schoolmarmish tone of voice astounded him. His temples pounding in earnest now, his blood still hot and heavy, Jamie debated whether to comply with her extraordinary order or toss the contrary female onto her back.
Sarah hid tightly clenched fists in the folds of her voluminous sleeves, praying that the black-haired rogue towering over her couldn’t see what effort it cost her to inject just that combination of exasperation and disapproval into her voice. Not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash did she betray the fact that his kiss had sent a rush of heat to every one of her extremities.
To her infinite relief—and secret, shameful disappointment—Straithe slowly lowered his long frame to the edge of the bed. The rope springs creaked and groaned under his weight.
“All