Page 61 of A Dance with the Wayward Duke
Her hand found the rail and closed hard around it. The damp wood bit into her palm, and she welcomed the sting because it was simple. Honest. A pain with edges. Not this spreading ache under her breastbone, not this humiliating emptiness opening where hope had been sitting only moments before.
Yes, she was indeed special. Unwanted baggage.
Too much weight.
Waiting for the captain to cut her away.
Chapter twenty-four
Tristan stopped before the cabin door long after midnight, when the ship had settled into the darkness before dawn.
The passage lay empty. A lantern swung at the far end, its flame low. Beyond the planks, the sea moved against the hull with the slow insistence of something that never tired, never explained itself, never loosened what it claimed. Tristan braced against the scarred wood of the door. Moonlight slipped through the stern passage and silvered his knuckles. Where it fell over his hand, his skin seemed too tight, his blood too near the surface.
Tristan closed his fist against the door.
What hold did she have on him? He had wanted women before. Yet desire had never made the air unfit for breathing. And here he was, standing outside his own cabin like a thief, lungs refusing proper work because Marguerite d’Ailes slept beyond a few inches of wood.
They had a bargain, had they not? Until Naples, she was his. He did not have to stay away. He did not have to name what drove him here. He could enter, take what they had agreed totake from one another, leave before dawn, and restore the world to weight and measure.
His hand found the latch. It opened without sound.
The cabin was dim, washed in a diluted silver that entered through the stern windows. She slept with the sheet fallen to her waist, her calico nightgown loosened at the throat, her hair spread over the pillow. The moon caressed her with an intimacy that made his jaw tighten.
His heart gave a slow, painful pull. He crossed the cabin, every step too loud, and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped.
Tristan watched her breathe, the faint crease between her brows even in sleep, as if she argued with dreams.
After a hard exhale, he lay beside her and drew her back against his chest. Her warmth entered him through his shirt, through skin, through bone. She made a soft sound, then her mouth searched for his in the dark. He cradled both her cheeks in his rough hands and kissed her. It should have steadied him. Instead, it widened the wound. She was soft with sleep, her lips parting beneath his.
She pulled back enough to find his eyes. He tried to kiss her again. He could not let her look. Not now. Looking made weight. If he saw more of her, he might take more than the bargain and never forgive her for giving it.
“You came,” she whispered.
He had tried to stay away, but he would only have succeeded if someone had tied an anchor to his legs and thrown him beneath the ocean.
“If you are tired,” he said, and did not recognize the hoarse thing his voice had become, “I can come back tomorrow.”
She was silent for a beat. Then she sat up. “Not at all. I am never tired of fulfilling my promises.”
The last word was so low he nearly missed it. Before he could answer, she drew the nightgown over her head. The moon took her. Her breasts, her shoulders, the pale line of her stomach, the shadowed narrowness of her waist. She was silver and warmth and living flesh, and his cock rose hard against his stomach, blood surging with brutal gratitude.
He needed to be inside her. To bury the tightness, the terror, the memory of cannon smoke that had never happened and splintered glass that might have. There would be no question of weight then, only heat and flesh and the wordless place where a man could lose the shape of his own fear.
She lay down again, facing away from him. Her back gleamed in the moonlight, hair spilling over the pillow and across one shoulder. She did not reach for him or offer him her mouth.
A coldness moved beneath his ribs. He reached with a hand that was not quite steady and touched her spine. She trembled. He followed the line of her back, the dip at her waist, the curve of her hip.
“I have to be inside you, Maggie.” The confession scraped out of him.
He took himself in hand, guided by touch and heat and the unbearable nearness of her. When he lifted her leg and entered her from behind, she cried out, then buried the sound in the pillow. Her body closed around him, hot and wet and known.
For one breath, the hurt stopped. He pressed deeper until his hips met the soft curve of her backside. His arm slid beneath her head, folding around her, giving her a place to turn her face. Holding her waist with his other hand, he began to move.
Tristan shut his eyes, focusing on the heat, the slide of his body into hers, the damp grip of her around him. He thrust harder than he intended, then checked himself, jaw clenched, breath burning. He could not see her face and told himself it was betterthis way. Without seeing her eyes, he could not be asked to carry what was in them.
But he could hear the muffled catches of breath, sounds she tried to swallow. The way her fingers gripped the bedding. She was there, giving him exactly what she had agreed to give.
Pleasure built fast, too fast, a hot pressure at the base of his spine. He needed her to feel it too. If she came apart under his hand, then perhaps the room would again become what it had been before.
