Jemma screamed out loud. She couldn't help it. Her body exploded, ripped apart in such a tide of primal pleasure, she felt as if her heart would stop. The sensations would subside, only to begin anew as Nick’s mouth and hands forced her body over each peak again and again until she lay drained and exhausted, her legs hanging limply across Nick's shoulders.
“Jem?” The whiskey voice sounded both concerned and amused.
“Oh.” Exhausted from the last few moments, she could not say more. Words could not describe the experience.
“I’ve never killed a woman before by making her climax, but I suppose there is a first time for everything.” He pressed a kiss to her thigh.
Jemma said nothing, his words reminding her there must have been other women before her, she would be foolish to think otherwise, but still, the thought hurt her.
“Jem.”
Unable to look at him just yet, she shut her eyes.
“Do not think of what came before, for none of them compare to you.”
* * *
And he meant it.
There had been many women, more than he could count, the first had been when he was no more than fifteen. He enjoyed them, pleasured them, used them, and put them aside. But no woman, no courtesan, no talented widow, nor skilled lady of thetonremotely compared to this reckless girl from Bermuda. The traitor’s daughter. The attachment to Jem was more than sexual, his desire for her would not be slaked in an afternoon, he did not believe it would ever cease, nor did he wish it to. He remembered something his grandfather once told him of Nick’s deceased grandmother.
“I desired her even when she grew old and wrinkled, when she grew withered and sick. Every part of me longs to be reunited with her still.”
Jem smiled shyly then and pulled Nick to her, kissing him lightly on the lips, and he could sense her uncertainty. “That was quite marvelous,” she said, her face lovely and flushed. “I did not realize. I—” She bit her lip.
“That such was possible?”
“I did not know it would be like that.” The intensity of her gaze caused the bits of green in her hazel eyes to sparkle like emeralds.
“It is not always.”
“But it is for us,” she said softly, her fingers running to the buttons of his shirt.
“Yes.” He sat back and unbuttoned his shirt, hesitating at the last button. Ruination of this girl was something he promised he would not do, yet here he was, about to compromise her. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it to lay over her boots.
Her hands reached out to him, running over his chest and shoulders, through the thick mat of hair to linger at his stomach. The light touch paused over a particularly nasty scar that ran between his ribs. Puckered and purple, it was a reminder of the blade that nearly killed him years ago. He waited for her questions. Most women assumed the scars to be the result of duels, a terribly romantic notion, or they thought them a result of his family’s rumored servitude to the Crown. In either case, the women he bedded didn’t care to ask.
“Who has hurt you so?" Her genuine concern for him and the wounds he bore surprised Nick, as her lips pressed against the rough edges of that scar.
His heart, which up until now only fluttered in Jem’s presence, burst wide open. The pain, as if a door nailed shut had been forced open, caused him to pause. Nick’s conscience, absent for most of his life, chose now to make itself known.
“Jem, are you certain? If we stop now, you will still be a virgin. Your virtue will remain intact. There is much we can do without—”
She kissed his chest again in response.
Nick swallowed, grabbing her, forcing her to look up at him. “Once done, it cannot be undone. You are certain?”
Jem nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. “I am sure.”
“Then my lot will be yours.” He did not say such a thing lightly. Indeed, no member of the Tremaine family would say such a thing unless they meant it. What the Devils of Dunbarclaimed, theykept.Jem may not realize the import of his words, but Nick did.
His mind made up, he stood in one fluid movement and looked down at Jem, naked and waiting at his feet. He prayed she wouldn't run from him once he took his breeches off. He could feel his arousal, hard and swollen, about to burst forth. Nick was a big man—everywhere.
Pulling off his boots, he tossed them to flop in the sand. Then he rolled his breeches down over his hips as Jem watched, seemingly mesmerized by his actions. As his arousal sprung forth, her bravery seemed to desert her, for she looked down only sparing a glance at his naked body from beneath her lashes.
“Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not.”
