“I am my own mistress!” she reminded him passionately.
“Are you? You forget yourself, lady. If I chose, I could keep you here. No man could storm this fortress. No pirate would think to come against me, and it would take the combined forces of several royal navies to destroy here. If I commanded it, you would stay.”
She lay beneath him, trembling. If he chose, he could do so. She touched his cheek and whispered softly, “I am here because I knew no force from you. No man can force desire, sir. You said yourself that the lock upon the door did not matter, for locks lay within the heart. You could break the door, but you knocked gently upon my heart, and entered through there by the gentle care you gave me.”
“And tell me, lady, shall I remain there, when you have gone on to a husband.”
He mocked her. She bared her soul to him, and offered her heart. And he mocked her.
She pressed against him, maddened that he had the strength to hold her to his will. She tilted her chin proudly, but again,could not forget the hard naked feel of him against her. “I am my own mistress, sir.”
“I shall miss you when you are gone, with all of my heart, Lady Skye. Tell me, will you miss me?”
“I think—quite highly of you,” she said primly.
He laughed, and nuzzled her earlobe with a fascinating tenderness. “For sea slime, that is.”
She met his eyes, silver with his laughter, touched by the charming rogue’s curl of his lip. His arms were so strong about her. I have fallen in love with you! she thought with the deepest dismay and despair.
“You don’t—you don’t need to be sea slime forever,” she told him.
“Alas,” he said huskily, “there you are wrong, my dear, dear Lady Skye. The die has been cast.”
Suddenly the natural quiet of the lagoon was split asunder. The sound of a single cannon rent the air.
The Hawk looked up. Some fiery light touched his eyes, and when he stared at her again, she thought that he did not know her at all.
She frowned. “What was that?”
He did not reply. He groaned deeply and shuddered and bent to take her lips. He kissed her deeply, and then more deeply. He held her fiercely, and still his lips assaulted hers with abandon. As if he drank from her to take his fill. As if he could not move away.
He moved sure and fleet, bringing his body against hers, and making love to her with a savage determination. She could not protest the driving force of it, for his hunger was so very deep, drawing upon the passion he had created within her. The day ceased to be, the fire of it was so swift, and so complete.
It was his world, his domain. He ruled here.
He had commanded her from the beginning, she realized. He had wanted her, and she had come to him, and in these blinding moments, it mattered not at all. He loved her with the force of a wild sweeping storm, he touched her as if his hands could hold the memory of her from everything. His palm closed upon her breast, and then his mouth, even as his body moved with arrogance and demand, knowing that he would stoke the flames with her. He reached to her womb, to her soul, she thought. His whispers cried out to her, and it was as if he cast the very force and life of himself into her, welding them into eternity. She rode a gale at sea, she thought, dangerous and beautiful. Or a fire storm. So very explosive…
She clung to him, and rode out the tempest, for her body gave so thoroughly to the impetus of his thrust. The sun upon their bodies was as radiant as the heat within them, the very ground beneath her back reminded her that this sweet and volatile binding of a man and woman was as old as the earth, as necessary.…
She cried out with the force and beauty of the shattering climax that fell upon her. He cast back his head, muscles tensed and the whole of him glimmering bronze with a sheen of perspiration, and cried out hoarsely. He fell upon her, and the raging force of him swept deep, deep inside of her like a liquid portion of the sun. She shuddered and fell back into his arms, awed and amazed anew, and certain that he would hold her then in tenderness.
He did not. He fell back against the earth, and a fierce oath exploded from him as he stared bleakly up into the powder-blue sky. He rolled and bounded to his feet. He stared down at her for a long moment. Her eyes were teal-blue and puzzled, her hair a damp splay of sunset over the earth.
He reached for her, offering her his hand.
“Get up,” he said curtly.
She looked at him, hurt, her temper sizzling. “I do not obey commands, Captain Hawk.”
“Don’t you? We shall see.”
“Shall we?”
He smiled, pulling her to her feet. His jaw was taut, his features strained as he spoke.
“The cannon, milady, is a signal. The ship has come, Lady Kinsdale. Your betrothed has come for you, slightly tarnished as you may be. I shall be heartily interested in the details of your nuptials.”
She slapped him with such speed that he did not catch her until too late. Then he dragged her back against himself and bruised her lips with the hot demand of one last kiss. She jerked away from him, horrified. She would never, she thought, forget the mocking fire that burned so silver and so fierce within his eyes.
