Safe in the Earl's Arms. Liz Tyner

her garments as a barrier between skin and mapping out the feminine twists and turns of her.

      The storm would frame them and their bodies would gain sensations from the hint of danger in the air. And she would be the essence of every sensual mythological being ever imagined.

      He couldn’t read her expression and didn’t know if it was a flaw in him, or if she hid herself well. But when she parted her lips and moved towards him, he didn’t have to. She slipped her arms around his waist, mumbling his name, muffled words against his chest, and she clung to him. Her breasts pressed against his shirt, causing his clothing to feel tight over his body. She moved with the lunging waves, too, but not in the same way as he. She kept herself upright by pushing herself into him at the same time as she pulled. He braced against the wall, one hand clutching the edge of the bunk, leg jammed against the opposing side. His body was forced still within the movements. And she burrowed and snuggled and wove herself against him, holding on like a handkerchief might be wrapped around a blowing limb. When the ship created even the smallest distance between them, she moved to fill the space, keeping him as her anchor.

      Using all his strength in one arm, he kept them steady while he held her with the other hand.

      He found her lips with his and at first she paused, but when she moved again her hands wouldn’t be still, roaming his body with a hunger in her fingertips, searching him out as if she were afraid she might miss touching some exquisite part and wouldn’t be able to bear it.

      Somehow she’d settled herself into the movement of the ship and now used it to keep herself thrust against him. He savoured the desires her body created. If she was a goddess to lure men to their doom, he was prepared to die.

      ‘This helps. And the waves are not so strong now,’ she whispered, and he could feel the movements of her lips against him as she spoke.

      ‘Just ripples.’ But they weren’t. Everything had intensified. He reached to pull free the last bits of his shirttails, which remained tucked in his trousers, and her fingers tangled with his, helping him.

      The water outside crashed against the hull, but he no longer cared.

      She leaned into the side of him that he used to hold them steady, leaving him one hand free to rub the small of her back. But her fingers remained under his shirt, clasping him, leaving heated handprints, which encased his whole body.

      ‘You feel so...pleasant,’ she whispered into him, her face moving up so that her lips were at his neck.

      And for the first time since he saw her, she was in exactly the right place, saying exactly the right thing.

      Letting her sway into him, her rocking against him when the ship moved caused the fire inside him to smoulder so intensely he wondered if he should just let their clothes disintegrate into ash instead of removing them. He had no time to wait for such an event. He didn’t fear her not holding up well in the storm—he felt concern for himself not surviving the intensity within him.

      His lips lingered against her hair, and skin, taking in all of her he could. This truly was the woman of his imagination—the night cravings that woke him with seconds of pleasure lingering in his mind and hours of hollowness facing him. But this time, he would sleep after the dream, untortured—soothed.

      He buried his face into the curve of her neck. She did feel like Aphrodite—and he had the imagination of her vanishing from his arms, fading, mocking him for desiring her so intensely. But he couldn’t be imagining this because he’d never tasted a dream and he tasted the nectar of her lips, and this time, he relished the hint of saltiness at his tongue.

      His fingers brushed over the strands of her hair loosening from the pins and he slid his palm down, closing his eyes and closing all his senses except the ones at his fingertips.

      He knew they had to separate so he could get past the clothing. But one moment apart was a moment for ever lost. He savoured her cheek, her ear and the hollow of her neck. A banquet for his starved senses.

      She might as well have already undressed.

      She kissed him, he thought. He wasn’t totally sure. He pulled back, only enough to look into her face to make certain she was real. Dark eyes stared back at him.

      She’d not tugged at his clothes again, or spoken much, but she didn’t need to. Her expression now told him all he wanted to know.

      For the second time in his life—and he’d never tell her—he felt like a virgin. Yet a different sort of innocent. One who knew all the pleasures he could unleash with his hands, his mouth and his body.

      He forced himself away—aware of his own breathing echoing in the cabin—knowing if he did not move back, he couldn’t get closer. Melina’s hands, hesitant but bold, didn’t lose their purchase easily and that knowledge alone washed him with a satisfaction he’d not experienced before.

      He pulled off his coat and lifted his shirt over his head.

      The luscious heat of her—against his chest—hit him harder than any wave could have tossed him. When he touched her breasts, running a finger over the mark just at the top of her bodice, he could barely breathe. This was his Aphrodite. She would vanish soon, but not until she left him truly sated for the first time in his life.

      ‘You are to be savoured.’ He wanted to feel all of her and adjusted her on to her back, moving her so she was tucked between his body and the wall. He released the buttons of his trousers. The sight of her, in this thrown-together bed where another woman would never rest, clutched at him, filling him with a reverence that arrested him. He stopped for another moment, just a moment, to look at her. He wanted to see her face even when he shut his eyes. He needed her locked into his mind so that all other memories of women on the earth were erased—Melina alone remaining in his thoughts.

      For this, he would have sailed around the world—twice—to capture her so she could bring him to his knees and let him rise back up, unburdened.

      He kicked his trousers free at their feet.

      Hooking his arm under her leg, he pulled her knee to his mouth for a chaste kiss on the coarse cloth of her skirt. Now the fabric felt leaden, thick and suffocating for skin soft as hers. Much too rough.