She stared at Sheridan for a long time.
He was stretched out beneath her cloak, which he'd been using as a blanket since they'd found only enough fur skins to make a single bed in the ruined sealers' hut. He lay on his side, one arm curled up under his head and the other extended, as if he'd been reaching for her.
The streak of sunlight crossed his hand and bare forearm. His palm lay upturned and half open, the fingers curled gently in relaxation. She could see his pulse beating beneath the smooth skin of his inner wrist, and the almost healed blister he'd got from rowing the pinnace with wet oars.
Stripped of his halo of heroism, he was infamous. He was vile and tantalizing, with his soft mockery and his unfamiliar maleness. She squeezed her eyes shut and threw herself onto her stomach, burying her mortification in the soft fur.
For a week she'd dreamed it—or something close enough. She despised him, and he haunted her. He was a coward and a thief, yet she found nothing so fascinating as to watch him as he slept. It was bewildering and distressing and shameful. It was unbearable.
Slowly, so slowly, she slid her fingers across the sealskin. They came within a fraction of his. She stopped. She had only to open her hand to touch him. In the dream he had touched her, slid his palm across her skin, made the ache into sweet fire…
She opened her fingers and brushed his hand.
He didn't stir. Glancing up, she watched his breathing, deep and oblivious. He was tired; he'd spent yesterday rebuilding the last portion of the hut, hauling rocks from the hill behind the beach while Olympia cut tussock grass to thatch the roof. She'd missed her attempt at a goose. The flock was growing wary. By the time she'd given up, the tide was too high to reach the mussel beds, so all Sheridan had had to eat was the contents of two handfuls of tiny, spiraled periwinkle shells in a thin broth of seaweed and goose bones. There had been a half breast of the last goose left, but he'd stubbornly refused it.
She needed it more, he said.
She slipped her fingertips along the pads of his. His hand was so much larger than hers—brown and firm, where hers was pale and plump and chapped. She'd tried to help with the rocks, but he didn't like it. She was too slow, he said; she was in the way, and she'd only get hungrier and look at him with her big eyes and he'd end up giving her his portion again. Go stalk a goose. Or keep a lookout.
Sometimes it was hard to hate him.
She'd been content with stalking the geese, as long as she could catch them. But she hadn't taken one for two days now. And no ships came, not Phaedra or any other.
She smoothed her fingers over his sun-warmed palm. There was an ache in her, a restlessness, on the edge of something she wanted and could not have.
The hut was not as cold as it might have been before they'd learned to dig the peaty turf from beneath the tussocks to bum. Last night's fire was banked against the stone hearth. Her dress and chemise, dry at last, hung from a bleached whalebone rafter. Beneath the sealskin she was naked.
The cloak had fallen back from his shoulder, revealing the velvet swell of bare skin and muscle. A flash of the dream came back: a weight on her, a masculine shape between her hands. Her fingers curved, pressing into his. She imagined smoothing her palm across his shoulder. Her heart beat faster. She could see the outline of his body beneath the cloak, the fluent shape of his torso and hip, powerful relaxed perfection, his leg drawn up a little in a sleeper's balance.
She wished she could slip the cloak back. The dream lingered, a remembrance of sensation. She stared at his hand, her fingers drifting, tracing the curve at the base of his thumb and moving up the open flex of his forefinger, feeling the smooth skin and roughened places. It seemed amazing to touch him, to be so close to a man—to this man, who set her insides in turmoil and harried her dreams in dragon-shape.
She raised her lashes and found him watching her.
She almost snatched her hand back—then didn't, on the hope that it might seem an accident of sleep—then nearly did, on the logic that she would if she'd just woken up and found it there—and then didn't, for no reason at all except that she was paralyzed.
He smiled at her: a strange, sleepy, heated smile, his eyes a tangled brush of dark lashes and pale smoke. Gently, his hand closed over her fingers. He caressed her palm with his thumb.
Olympia wet her lips. If he'd held her by force, if he'd spoken, she would have pulled away. But the silence made it seem unreal. She could see the tendon in his wrist flex as he stroked her.
He opened his hand and slid his fingers backward between hers, curling them over and down into his palm. So slowly that she never found the concentration to resist, he drew their locked hands toward him. He bent his head to the back of her palm and pressed a soft, caressing kiss to her skin.
"I'd like to," he murmured, his fingers tightening. "God, I'd like to." His lashes lowered as if he were tasting honey. "But better not, Princess. Not here."
Olympia jerked away, coming to her senses in a fluster.
He rolled onto his elbow at her side. His gray eyes were marked with laugh lines as he leaned on his hand and looked down at her. "As your chief minister of affairs, it's my unfortunate duty to report that I'm exerting myself manfully, but should I be awakened tomorrow with a back rub, I'm afraid it may go hard with you."
"What are you talking about?"
His face lost its humor. He watched her for a long moment, his gaze moving to her mouth and shoulders with raking leisure and then up again. "I think you know what I'm talking about," he said softly.
Olympia felt blood rush to her cheeks. She turned sharply away and stared at the tussock roof. "If you will kindly leave for a moment, I can get dressed."
His mouth curved up at one corner. He threw off the cloak and turned over, hiking himself up. Olympia pretended to stare at the roof, but she watched him from the comer of her eye. Though he was wearing pale trousers, he slept with them open. In the moment before he reached for his shirt on the hearth, Olympia bit her lip with a small sound of dismay. He tied the double trouser flap, containing the startling sight behind a bulge of fabric, and glanced questioningly at her.
Olympia knew what his body normally looked like. In spite of her sick weakness on that first morning here, the momentary view she'd had of him was quite vivid in her memory.
"Are you ill?" she asked sharply.
He seemed surprised, and then shook his head. "Devilish tired and hungry. Do I look ill?"
"That's not painful? That swelling?"
"Swe—" He stopped, blinked—and then a slow grin lit his face. "Ah. That swelling."
Olympia recognized his grin. She'd said something ridiculous; laid herself open to his subtle mockery. She stiffened beneath the seal fur and turned her face away. "Never mind! I'm sure I don't care if you swell up and turn purple all over."
"That only happens if I hold my breath. This is a different kind of malady, Princess Peahen."
"I see," she said with arctic majesty.
"Actually, it begins to appear that you don't. Would you like me to tell you about it?"
"No."
He said gently, "I think perhaps I ought. We might rub along better."
"I'm sure there's no need," she said, and then added rather wildly, "I know all about it."
He shook his head. Sunlight glanced off his black hair. "You don't know the first damned thing. Which I might have guessed, given the kind of well-informed opinions you hold about the rest of the world." He pulled on his coat, scooped up her dress and chemise and headed out the door. "Don't go far," he said blithely. "Professor Sherry commences his famous lecture on Modesty and Morality in the Modem Female in just a few moments."
"You don't have the morals of a cat!" she shouted after him, trapped naked beneath the fur while he had her dress. "Or the modesty either."
"You've got fifteen minutes," he called. "You'd better be back under that fur when I get back, or we'll have a demonstration instead of a lecture."
Olympia took him at his word, scrambl
ing out from under the sealskin and performing her morning ablutions in frenzied haste. Long before he returned, she was huddled in place with the fur up to her chin, staring at the stone wall in miserable anger and uncertainty. Worse than the fury and bewilderment was the confused sense of excitement, all tangled up with the dream and his hands and the way she'd watched him sleep.
It was wrong. It was wicked, like he was—and it held the same impossible allure. She thought of what he'd done to her in Madeira, the way he'd made her feel with his hands and his kisses, and felt sick with agitation.
She heard the rooks squabble and scatter and went rigid in anticipation. When he came through the door, she was pretending to have gone back to sleep, but she knew perfectly well when he rekindled the fire, filling the hut with the tangy smell of peat smoke. Her pathetic effort at sleep dissolved as soon as he sat down so close to her that his leg pressed hard against her hip. Something rustled dryly. She opened her eyes.
To her astonishment, he was unwrapping a small packet of waxy paper.
She sat up, barely remembering to clutch the fur skin over her. "Whatever's that?"
"Breakfast."
"What is it? Where did you find it?"
He smiled, holding up three sticks of horehound candy, spiraled with pale green and white. "Our late friend the chief mate had a sweet tooth. I've been saving 'em for a special occasion."
Olympia's lips parted in awe. "Oh," she said faintly. "Oh, my. You don't know how I've been dreaming of comfits!"
"I daresay I had my suspicions." He pulled out his knife and sawed at one stick, dividing it with his careful and exacting fairness. "Here, my mouse." He laid the sweet in her upturned palm, pressed her fingers over it and kissed the top of her fist before she realized what he was about. She snatched her hand away.
He only laughed softly and stretched out beside her with a stick of horehound in his mouth. He'd shaved, which he did frequently, in spite of arguments over proper use of their single bar of soap. Olympia slid down into the protection of the fur, sucking her own portion of candy with nervous bliss.
He crunched down on his stick, making short work of what Olympia was savoring, and then watched her for a moment. "Do you know how to make a baby?" he asked.
Olympia almost swallowed her candy stick.
"Specifically, I mean," he added. "Not just get married, y' know, and then go look under a cabbage leaf."
She hesitated, crimson. He was propped up on his elbow, regarding her with casual attention. She shook her head slightly.
"Just as well," he said. "At least you're not suffering under some bizarre misconception about doorknobs or something. You wouldn't believe some of the weird ideas thirteen-year-old midshipmen can circulate as truth." He sucked at the tip of his second piece of candy, regarding her over his fist. "But I'm sure your notions on the subject are much more mature."
"I never thought about it," she said stiffly.
"Oh, really?" He lifted his eyebrows. "A virgin and a liar to boot."
"I haven't dwelt on it," she amended abruptly.
"Why did you touch me this morning? "
She turned her face away. "I didn't touch you. I despise you."
"Yes, we're all well aware of that. I'm a villain and a blackguard—every quaking little maiden's nightmare." He lowered his lashes, watching her with a moody smile and eyes like smoke. "But some get a taste for the devil, don't they?"
Olympia drew in a sharp breath. "This is nonsense! I want to get up."
"By all means," he said mildly.
She glared at him, still trapped underneath the fur by her nakedness. He showed no inclination to leave.
"Don't you want to know?" His question was soft and provocative. "Knowledge is power, Princess. Did your learned tutor never pass along that political lesson?"
Olympia glared at him.
He lifted one eyebrow in a subtle curve. "Wouldn't you like to torment me? You can, you know. You've got revenge right in your hand."
"Oh, I'm sure you intend to tell me exactly how I can torment you."
His lashes lowered on a silver gleam. "I might."
"Why?"
"It's a game, Princess. I can tell you how to play, but that doesn't mean you'll win."
Olympia gave an unladylike snort. "I'm sure if it were a game, you'd cheat."
He tilted his head. "Now, cheating is an interesting subject. For instance, is it actually cheating if one doesn't get caught?" He looked back at her. "But the rules are pretty flexible in this particular competition, so I encourage you to connive against me to your heart's content. If you think you can."
This challenge, delivered with a sly smile, made her sit up on her elbows, pulling the fur up under her chin. "I'm tired of your idea of riddles. If there's something I ought to know that you can tell me, do so directly."
He reached across her, spreading his fingers in the fur as he caught her arm, pulling her against him. Her face was on a level with his, her skin flushed. Her loosened hair spilled down over her shoulders and the soft bedding. For an instant he stared at her, so close she could feel his breath on her eyelashes. As her lips parted to speak, he lowered his head and kissed her.
Olympia made a sound in her throat: furious protest and unwilling excitement. His grip tightened on her arm. Heat and sweetness invaded her, the taste of sugar on his tongue, the scent of horehound candy and of him—honey and salt mingled, unexpected and fascinating.
The sound of the ocean seemed to rise to a roar in her ears. She was drowning in him, in the length of his body, in the heat of his mouth taking hers, when he suspended the kiss with an abrupt move. He left her breathing hard and raggedly. She stared up into eyes of cloudy silver beneath black lashes.
"Direct enough?" he murmured.
"Let go of me."
"When the lecture's over. We might require further demonstration on certain points." He bent to brush caressing kisses at the corners of her lips, his breath warm on her cheek. "Don't fight it so, my little mouse. I won't hurt you."
She closed her eyes with a faint trembling in her chin, a strange, painful pleasure spreading through her. "You will," she whispered. "Yes, you will."
His light caresses stopped. In the silence a rook cried above the sound of the surf. Olympia pressed her mouth closed against the quivering.
When she opened her eyes he was looking down at her. The teasing smile was gone, leaving the grave, beautiful curve of his mouth. He lowered his lashes, and the sulky expression stole in to shadow his features. He glanced away toward the fire. "If it's guilt and regret you want, you're looking at the wrong man."
"I don't want anything from you. Not anymore."
He turned back, his eyes smoldering. "That's a lie, Princess."
She felt herself redden beneath his hot look.
"Unlike you," he said, "I happen to have a jolly good notion of what you want. And it's fine with me, but for the fact that we're stranded on this damned desolate island for the foreseeable future, and I don't wish to have three of us to worry about instead of two."
"Three!"
"A baby," he said politely. "I don't want you pregnant. Not here."
Olympia's blush deepened into scarlet. "That couldn't happen," she exclaimed, covering her agitation and embarrassment with a scathing tone. "We aren't married."
"Well, what do you think, that they wave a magic wand at the ceremony and you start littering right there at the altar? That ain't the way it works, as I've been at pains to try to explain to you, if you'd come down off your high ropes and listen."
"How does it work?" she demanded in alarm, and then a dreadful thought occurred to her. She stared at him, horrified. "You kissed me."
Then an even worse memory blazed, of scandalous intimacy in Madeira. "And…and touched—" She swallowed frantically. "Oh, God."
He threw back his head with a bark of laughter. "Aye, I did, didn't I?" He grinned wickedly. "Feeling a bit queer yet? Any sign of dizziness? Queasy in the morning?"
&n
bsp; She sat up, pulling the fur around her. "The only thing that makes me queasy is you! Go on. Tell me everything, and if you lie to me, I swear I'll make you sorry."
"I'm terrified." He smiled at her, his glance lingering on her bare shoulders. "All right, then—listen up. Forget all that rubbish about wifely duty you've undoubtedly been stuffed with. It'll give you terminal respectability. Think of the way you felt when you were touching me this morning."
She wet her lips, evading his eyes.
"You don't have to be shy. It's only me, you know… despicable old Sheridan the Thieving Coward and Fraud. There's no one else to hear. And you don't care what I think, do you?"
"Not in the least."
"There." He smiled a little. "Now—how did you feel when you were touching my hand?"
Olympia shifted uncomfortably, holding tight to the fur.
"Restless?" he suggested gently. "Excited?"
She bit her lip.
"Where?" he asked.
She didn't answer. She couldn't. Watching him stretched out like an easy cat, with his gray eyes and tangled lashes and faint lazy smile, was bringing back the feeling in force.
"Here," he supplied for her, and spread his hand on his abdomen. Olympia stared at it, at his fingers as they slid downward toward the apex of his legs. "And here."
His palm rested over the place where she'd seen his body change. The thought made waves of heat and agitation wash over her. She thought of the dream, of Madeira: the sweet center of fire. Her own body began to feel queer and melting there in the same place where his hand lay.
"I feel that way, too," he said softly. "When I see you, or think about you in particular ways—sometimes if I think about what I can't see…" He half closed his eyes, dreamy and diabolic. "Your ankles…I think about how small they are, and how they're shaped…the way they curve down to your pretty white feet. I think about how soft they'd be if I could touch them…how they'd taste if I could kiss them, how warm and smooth and…" He lifted his hand. "See?"
Olympia blinked at the change in his anatomy, her face burning a furious red.