raced through her veins. ‘Or what? You’ll throw me to the sharks? What price your honour then? Oh, I forgot…you don’t have any! So maybe Carolyn wasn’t a willing party in this fascinating scenario of yours at all. Maybe it wasn’t seduction on your part, but rape—’
‘I’ve never even touched her—!’ he roared, and broke off, his eyes blazing with silver wrath.
‘But you’re going to marry her all the same.’ She was breathless in horrified awe. ‘You’re going to marry a woman you don’t love, and who doesn’t love you, in order to give your brother’s baby the family name, because for some reason he’s baulking at marriage and unplanned fatherhood. What you can’t force him to do you’re going to do yourself. My God, that’s positively Gothic! Don’t you think that’s carrying your sense of honour to a ridiculous extreme—?’
She squeaked as she was snatched off her feet, dangling by her upper arms between two iron fists.
‘I told you to shut up!’
‘But you didn’t tell me what would happen if I didn’t,’ she said breathlessly, pushing her hands against his chest and pointing her sandalled toes in a vain attempt to touch the deck.
He began to slowly lower her towards him, the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulging with the effort. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. You wanted me to lose control. I would have taken apart a man for saying those things—’
‘But I’m a woman.’ The smouldering acknowledgement flared in his eyes and her voice went abruptly and embarrassingly husky. ‘B-besides, violence never really solves anything—’
‘The hell it doesn’t,’ he growled, and kissed her—a hot, savage clash of mouths that made her go up in flames as he hooked his arm under her knees and swung her up into his arms, carrying her from the bright sunlight through the cool luxury of the lounge and down the narrow companionway into the dim depths of his cabin.
‘You said we weren’t going to do this,’ she gasped, kicking off her shoes as he set her lightly on her feet and peeled his still buttoned shirt over his head.
He cupped her face, and drew her mouth under his.
‘God forgive me, I lied…’
Chapter Nine
REGAN smoothed her trembling hands over his bare chest, skimming her palms over his rippling shoulders and down across the silky pelt of hair to the ridged muscles of his abdomen, thrilling to her rediscovery of his masculine beauty.
Joshua broke his mouth from hers and threw his head back, closing his eyes as he licensed her hands to rove caressingly against his skin, offering himself up like a sacrificial victim to the spearing pleasure of her touch.
‘You remembered how much I liked that…’ he groaned as her fingertips slid through the tangle of curls and nudged against the flat discs of his nipples. ‘Yes…do that again…’ His muscles contracted and his chest rose, pushing against her exploring fingers as she obeyed. He shuddered, his nostrils flaring at the scent of his own arousal. ‘God, what you do to me…’
She could see it in the taut planes of his face, hear it in the harsh sound of his indrawn breath and feel it in the electric tension of his body, and it excited her unbearably to know that he was so violently responsive to her touch that even the lightest stroke could make his desire strain savagely on the leash. It had been the same that night in the apartment…his hunger for her so wonderfully intense that she had felt like the most beautiful and alluring woman in the world…the only woman who existed for him, the focus of all his dreams and the answer to all his desires.
He opened his eyes and smiled slowly at the sight of her flushed face, parted lips and smugly sensuous eyes.
‘Little tyrant, you like having me at your mercy, don’t you?’ he accused, but his deep tone was one of smoky approval. His hands stroked up her arms and spread around her back, massaging the soft cotton fabric of her top against her slender form. ‘You like knowing that you have the power to drive me beyond the bounds of common sense, of decency…’
In a twisted way she did. It satisfied a deep-seated need in her to be the primal source of his actions.
‘I’m the one who should be begging for mercy,’ she said, drawing her nails delicately across his chest. ‘I’m the one who was kidnapped by a pirate. Swept off my feet and carried down to the bowels of his ship—’
‘—to be ravished from head to toe…’ He cupped the side of her face with a scarred hand, his eyes darkening. ‘But not entirely against your will…’
The taunting accusation of rape had wounded him, even if he had swiftly realised that it had merely been intended to goad him into revealing the truth. She turned her head, pressing her lips to the crease of his strong life line. ‘Not at all against my will…’
Her husky confession made him shudder.
‘I don’t want to hurt you—’ The tormented admission was dragged from him reluctantly, a concession to the impossible situation that existed outside the universe of the closed cabin. ‘I’ve made a promise that I won’t—can’t— go back on…too much is at stake…’
She couldn’t tell him that it was too late, that the hurt was already stored up in her heart against the day that she would no longer have any place in his life. She couldn’t lay that burden on him, on top of the ones that he already bore on his broad shoulders. They both knew that what they were doing was wrong, but not as wrong as it would be tomorrow—or in a month’s time, if and when he married Carolyn. Despicable as it might be, Regan wanted to snatch one more precious memory for herself before her conscienceforever denied her the expression of her forbidden love.
It had taken months for her to be wooed around to the idea that she was in love with Michael, but with Joshua there had been no gradual awakening; the knowledge had come like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky—a violent, concussive shock exploding in her consciousness and accompanied by a strong whiff of sulphur. She hadn’t been looking for love—quite the reverse—but it had stormed into her wary heart with a vengeance, and she found she could no more control the unruly emotion than she could the stars in their courses.
But, unlike her first, naive foray into love, this time the portents for a relationship were quite clearly disastrous, and she was prepared for the worst.
‘I know…’ she whispered reassuringly, loving him for his warning. ‘I know you won’t hurt me,’ she added, her hands moving to his belt to unthread the buckle, ‘because I already know what kind of lover you are…strong and virile, and incredibly generous.’
Her fingers went to his zip and he caught her wrists, using them to pull her up against him. His mouth came down on hers and he ravaged it with a forceful passion that triggered a gush of moist heat between her thighs. He angled his head, licking and nibbling at the soft, inner tissue of her mouth, drawing her tongue into his mouth and tugging on it with a rhythmic, erotic suction that made her yearn for an even more intimate intrusion into her moist interior.
His hands fisted in the thin, white cotton of her top, drawing the stretchy fabric tight across her breasts as he lifted his head to study the effect.
‘I like knowing that you don’t wear a bra,’ he said thickly. ‘The other night at the party I imagined I could see the shadow of your nipples against the white silk. I knew they’d be as dark as ripe cherries because they were so pointed and hard.’
‘That was because of you,’ she whispered, arching her back and tilting her head to give him a better view. ‘Because your eyes on me made me want you, even though I pretended not to notice…’
He smoothed a hand across the small mounds, cupping and shaping them. ‘They’re hard now, too.’ He found one stiff nub and fondled it gently, then more roughly as he watched her face register the sharp thrill, her eyelids sinking, her cheeks flushing, her damp mouth