verified you were an unmarried lady, not a demimondaine. I knew I could never have you. Even if I had begged for an introduction, they would not have allowed it.” His predator eyes gleamed, his teeth flashed sinfully white. “My reputation is not tolerated within a mile of an innocent débutante.”
“Is it that terrible?” she teased. Then she frowned. “Why don’t I remember you?” With his great height and very handsome head he was hardly invisible. “This is all quite astonishing.”
His thumb caressed her soft lips. “You couldn’t see me, Amore. You were guarded well.”
“I see you now,” she whispered, her gaze drawn to his mouth. A dark shadow outlined his upper lip. Her breathing thinned.
“Now you are mine.” He bent his head and brushed his mouth across hers. She stopped breathing altogether. His lips felt soft and warm, and when she didn’t recoil, they lingered, slow, tender, coaxing. She melted inside. Her eyelids sank. She felt his arms stealing inside her cloak, around her waist, pressing her to his torso. His heat, his scent—a musky blend of cognac, fire, and something else, more intoxicating than the sunny air or the salty breeze—tantalized her. Eros kissed her as one enjoyed a scoop of cream—thoroughly, unhurriedly. The tip of his tongue dampened her lips, seducing them to part for him. Though hesitant at first, she complied. Her tongue touched his, and a heady wave of pleasure swamped her. Primal, alien instincts urged her to explore him as unreservedly as he explored her.
Low sounds rose in his throat as her response gathered confidence, and their kiss deepened. His mouth was no longer tame but hot and needful. He tasted her, stroked her, pushed himself deeper inside of her. Their warm breaths mingled, becoming laborious.
“Eros…” She sighed, amazed how this strong, hot-blooded Italian, who only three nights ago had been a terrible enemy to fear and hate, had cast such a spell on her that her entire self responded to his kisses, to the feel of his large body crushing her to him. Nothing had ever come close to how she felt at that moment. She finally understood what it meant to be alive.
Kissing him passionately, Alanis’s hands cruised up along his corded arms, over iron-hard muscles rippling beneath soft linen, and stole beneath the heavy fall of his hair. A profusion of cool silk spilled between her fingers. Ah God! How she ached to know everything about him, to keep him, consume him, engulf him with the warmth gushing from her soul…
Releasing a ragged groan, Eros tore his mouth away and dragged it along the curve of her neck. She was so caught up in the moment, so immersed in his effect on her, she didn’t know how to object to the hand cupping her breast over the thin nightshift. His thumb flicked over her sensitive nipple. A sharp tremor shot through her, shattering the magic. What has she done?
She jerked free, shame and shock rounding her eyes. “What have you done to me?”
Breathing harshly, his lust-glazed eyes met hers. “What have I done to you?” he repeated, not quite grasping the abrupt change in her.
“You ruined me! Get away from me, you ravishing monster!” She pushed at his unmovable chest, frantic to escape him, to escape herself. How could she have lost her head and capitulated to a base fascination for a pirate? How could she have disgraced Lucas, behaving so wantonly?
“Ravishing?” His eyes lit up with a feral glow. He gripped her arms and pinned her to his chest. “I kissed you! And you kissed me back! I didn’t do anything you did not want yourself!”
“I’m to be married to Viscount Silverlake! How could you do this to me?” The damnable blackguard made her want him with every fiber of her being, and now she felt empty and cold.
“Then don’t marry him!” Eros countered resentfully, thwarted by the tears streaming down her face. “Alanis, you wanted this every bit as much as I did. You clung to me as a woman who had never been kissed in her life.”
Smarting with humiliation, she sustained his incensed gaze. He was right on both charges. If he hadn’t kissed her, she would have expired from curiosity and yearning. But for reading her sad inexperience with such careless ease, for making her crave him so wildly, she wanted to tear his beautiful eyes out. “I hate you!” she hissed, mostly because she knew she could never, ever have him.
“You think I’m not good enough for you,” Eros rasped. “Not worthy enough for a princess of your noble birth to lust after. But you did, Alanis. You moaned and purred like a love-starved cat, and if this deck were my bedchamber, I’d have scratches on my back to prove it. One more night onboard my ship, Amore, and you’d beg me to keep you!” He laid into her with all the arrogance of a man who had had more women than he could begin to remember.
Alanis inhaled sharply. Perhaps because he was so close to the truth, or perhaps because he made it sound so cheap, her hand came up and slapped his cheek, all her hurt and fury condensed into one motion. “You—make—me—sick!” she spat vehemently, raw tears stinging her eyes.
Eros stilled, caught unawares by the intensity of her wrath.
Taking advantage of his momentary confusion, she gave his steely chest a forceful shove and fled as fast as her legs carried her, not daring to glance behind her once.
Eros touched his bruised cheek and stared after her as she flew across the deck, blond hair, white muslin, and black cape thrashing as wings in the breeze. When she vanished from sight, he balled his hand into a fist and slammed it hard into the dense wood of the railing. If words had the power to destroy, the guttural stream of Italian invectives torn from his throat would have sunk the entire French Navy.
CHAPTER 5
Eros trained his telescope on the horizon. “He’s coming toward us.”
“Are you certain you want to give her back?” Giovanni inquired.
Eros shoved the brass tube into his hands. “See for yourself who’s onboard his ship.”
Giovanni put his eye to the hole. A warship flying the English colors was approaching at full speed. “Madonna mia! He has Gelsomina onboard. We can’t fire at him.”
“But he can fire at us. His ship is a man-o’-war with weight of metal equal to ours.”
Giovanni returned the telescope to his captain and glanced at the black serpent printed over purple ominously surfing the wind at the top of the masthead. “What are we to do, then?”
“Nothing.” Eros shut the tube. A private smile tugged at his lips as Rocca escorted Alanis, dressed in sunny yellow silk, onto the foredeck. “Good morning,” Eros said, unsmiling.
The instant they faced each other, Alanis relived their searing midnight tryst all over again: Moonlight, kisses, craving…then shame and guilt. Eros seemed trapped in the same moment.
“I imagine the reason I’m here is to spare us from getting blown out of the water,” she said.
“You scare me sometimes,” he whispered. “Your mind spins as rapidly as mine does.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She took his telescope, turned her back to him, and scanned the horizon. “How much brain does one need to realize that I’m your best collateral? If Lucas spots me on your deck, he will hold his fire, and you shall have your moment with him. This is what you want, is it not? To haggle with the viscount as a common fishmonger.”
His voice turned chillingly cold. “Considering the aperi-tivo I had the pleasure of sampling last night, I confidently expect today’s transaction to go very smoothly.”
His remark was so low she wasn’t about to dignify it with a riposte. She concentrated on the English ship. Lucas. Soon they would wed and come to share their lives together, as man and wife. And after last night, she was better informed about what to expect. Hopefully.
“I suppose this is farewell.” Eros’s low voice filled her ear. Stark craving possessed her. Damnation! What was so intrinsically wrong with her that a blackguard should stir her blood with such wicked yearnings? “Last night when