Kathleen E. Woodiwiss(154)
“Why, Shanna love,” he crooned. “ ‘Tis a dread late hour of the morn for wifely passion, yet I would not dare turn you away.”
His lips began to lower to hers. A soft breast was crushed against his lean, hard chest, their thighs were caught together, and Shanna became abruptly aware that he was more than willing, and most certainly ready, to make the hour later still.
She scrambled away from him, surrendering the sheet to whatever purpose he might make of it. It was easier to contend with her own nakedness than with his amorousness. She rose from the bed and sought cover, aware that she must garb herself or face the prospect of rape. Ruark indulged himself in a leisured observation of her flight across the room.
Hastily Shanna snatched up and donned Ruark’s leather jerkin, which offered at least some protection—it reached to her knees. Generally large, there were no fastenings above the slim, belted waist of the garment or any below.
Slowly Ruark grinned as his look ranged over her, halting momentarily upon the full, ripe curves showing between the lapels. He rose from the bed, strode naked across to the chair beside her to fetch his short breeches, causing Shanna to glare at him in suspicion.
“I truly admire the garment on you, madam,” he commented. “And I really don’t mind sharing my possessions with you, but I suggest more discretion among the pirates. Without warning, you might find yourself tossed upon your lovely backside by some horny knave.”
Shanna’s eyes flickered down him and carried the implication.
“Excluding myself, of course, madam.”
Shanna rolled her eyes disbelievingly. “Are you sure that day will ever come, sir, when you will resist the urge to tumble me?”
“Not even when I’m fourscore and six, madam,” he reassured her lightly. “With you near me I would need the frigid north seas to cool my blood.”
“True,” she nodded. “And so ‘tis with every wench you meet.”
Ruark straightened and peered at her in open question of her insult. “Every? Lord, woman, allow me some discrimination.”
Shanna’s small chin raised a notch. “You could have had more, but it doesn’t matter now. ‘Tis over between us.”
“So, ‘tis torture you have planned for me.” He stood beside her, hands resting low on his hips, his breeches trailing in a casual grasp on his fingers. “Madam, the sight of you naked in my bed makes my loins ache. The sight of you in my clothes makes my loins ache. Just thinking of you makes my loins ache. Madam, if you do not relent soon, I shall spend the rest of my days in a stoop like an old man bent with age. Do you have no mercy? You’re a wench, Shanna Beauchamp, a hussy to so parade yourself”—he stalked about her and slapped the rounded tail of his jerkin heartily—“when you have foresworn that very thing you strut about.”
He seized his breeches in both hands and slipped them on while Shanna laughed at him.
“ ‘Tis a simple mind, my lord and master, that bends the meekest movement to a strut. Indeed, of strutting I have much to learn from you.” She clamped the straw hat on her head and struck a posture, one knee forward and a hand braced upon her hip. “The Pirate Captain Ruark, conqueror of all he sees, be it maiden, budding child-girl or heavy-breasted harlot. Pray tell me, sir, have your conquests so burned your brain that you ignore the twist of words which brings our fate to this? You prattle of oaths and pledges, bargains fully made. And what of you, good sir? Have you a special standard where you hold yourself to no single pledge?”
“Shanna, love.” Ruark checked the priming in both pistols and laid them down again. “You have oft declared that I am no husband and that you are widowed full and true.”
“If that be the case,” he leaned close and spoke into her face with almost a snarl on his lips, “then, my love, what claim do you have on me? Why do you defame me loudly for this supposed taking of another? You gave me naught to say, no simple chance of denial, but set your hound on me. All that goes beyond that day, my love, must rest upon your pretty head, for had I not been cast asea by your anger, none of this would have come to pass. A crew of men would have been at your house thus to protect it, and close at hand another score or more to raise arms and set these curs upon their heels. Now what say you, my lovely? Am I your husband? Or am I free? And if the last it be, then why should you at every turn set upon me like a jealous vixen on her mate? Do I stray from you? Or am I some toy pulled along on a string meant to perform when milady would turn and play, but ever on the string?”
Shanna’s anger subsided, and she tried vainly to replace it with reason. “ ‘Tis not the wedding vows I claim. ’Tis the other that any woman hates, to be trifled with, to be taken to bed and there warmly plied with love and devotion then brought to listen as another woman lays honors to that selfsame love and warmth. How can I lie with you, tender and loving in your arms, when I know that others have of late been there like me and that others in times coming will usurp my place and with their pleasures make a common thing of that which I would treasure?”