LITMIR.BIZ

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lay the rub, for her steely independence faltered somewhat under the mantle of his care, and if she let herself believe in fairy tales she would only be hurt all the worse later.

      The memory of him deep inside her body made her heart race. Lord, but to never again know the sweetness of his kisses and the raw white heat of passion…She slashed at the tears that welled in her eyes and swore.

      She was caught between love and lies, frozen into immobility. She, who had always walked her world unfettered and straight, the wind in her hair and the sun on her back and a sharp true blade in her fingers.

      And now when her world had skewed and reshaped, she understood how often she had been lonely. Solitary. Isolated. Living in Jamaica under the shadow of her father had allowed no space for frivolity, for girlish pursuits, for love.

      Love.

      A prickling panic overcame her. Love? Asher had never said it. Not once. Could just lust be enough? Had it ever been enough for Beau?

      She rubbed at the ache that was settling at her temples and promised herself honesty.

      She was the pirate’s daughter and already the whispers of her difference were starting, just as they had at home in Jamaica. She had never fitted anywhere. Even aboard the Mariposa.

      Frowning, the slight echo of mistruth startled her.

      She did fit!

      In Asher’s arms with the promise of safety in his name and in the strong lines of his body.

      Yes, for the first time in all her life she looked neither onwards nor backwards but existed just in the moment, a tiny and fragile reality that offered happiness.

      Or hurt?

      The ghost of her father hovered near and behind him other spectres lingered, death and pain written across each face.

      She would not let them spoil this moment and she shook away memory, laying her arm alongside Asher and feeling his warmth. And then, when he did not stir, she pressed her legs against the long heat of his own and a shiver of delight consumed her.

      When she woke again it was morning and the indent of where he had slumbered was still warm. He has only just left, she thought and sat up, running her fingers through her hair to try to straighten it. What should she do next? How many nights of loving constituted absolution? Rising from the rumpled bed, she was pleased to see that a basin with water and a towel had been left on the table. Wetting the flannel, she brought it across her forehead, her face in the mirror showing the struggle of wanting. Wanting to be with him. Wanting to be gone so that he might never know any of it. Today the blue in her eyes was overshadowed by dark, dark green and her hair was a wild array of wayward curls.

      Not the face of a duchess.

      She could not imagine a portrait of herself above the Carisbrook baronial fireplace to last down through the centuries. The scar that dissected her right eyebrow was reddened and visible and she brought up her finger to touch it. This was the sum of who she was and no amount of wishing it otherwise could preclude her past.

      She had just dressed when he returned, and ridiculously she blushed. If he noticed, he gave no word of it—for that she was grateful.

      ‘Would you walk with me? We have much to say to each other.’ He did not touch her at all as she went past him and kept his distance still as they descended the stairs. Outside in the sun he seemed to relax more as they ambled between the stone walls, the lush green of summer in the leaves of trees that stood as sentinels on each side of the garden.

      When he stopped she looked up at him. The brown of his irises was darker today and his hair slicked back as though he had just bathed.

      ‘Who were the men who attacked me?’

      So he wanted answers. She hoped that she might give him at least a version of the truth. ‘The McIlverrays of Kingston Town. They want the map inside the cane. They believe that it should belong to them.’

      ‘And you think it prudent to hold on to a treasure map that might indeed in the end kill you?’

      She almost laughed at that, but stopped herself.

      ‘My family has debts.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me how much you owe and I’ll place it into an account tomorrow.’

      Her mouth fell open. ‘No.’ She couldn’t do it, couldn’t escape from here with a fat payment in her pocket after a quick toss in the sheets. That would make her—what? A whore? And every bit as on the game as the ones she had seen peddling their bodies in Jamaica. ‘I can’t take money from you like that.’

      She was unprepared for his laughter. ‘And what if you are pregnant?’

      She had not even considered that.

      ‘If you are pregnant, the child will be the heir to the Carisbrook fortune. I would not want him, or her, to be brought up on an empty quest for treasure or a hollow prophecy of greed. And Falder would welcome the promise of a child.’

      ‘A child you would risk everything for?’

      He shook his head and turned her towards him, peeling away restraint with a quick easiness. ‘It is you I am trying to help.’

      ‘Help me, then, by giving me the map.’

      ‘And then watch you disappear?’

      She reddened and felt his breath on the soft skin at the top of her ear and her insides twisted in longing. So simply done. So effortlessly won. A throbbing shot of warmth spread as she turned into his lips, groaning when his fingers flicked at her nipples. Even here, in the garden in the full view of the windows along the back end of Carisbrook House, she would let him have her, down on the ground amid the flowers and damn the consequences.

      He was hers like no other person had ever been. She felt his familiarity with an ache, and was gasping as he drew back.

      ‘This is not the place to…Come with me.’ He led her to a summer house at the very bottom of the garden and stripped off his coat. The shirt he wore beneath was snowy white. After he loosened his breeches he stopped and smiled, the wind lifting his hair away from his throat and throwing a shadow into amber-lit eyes.

      He was so beautiful. So masculinely perfect. With care she laid her palm against the rough stubble on his jaw and drew one finger across the fullness of his top lip.

      ‘We could be seen—’

      He stopped the words with a quick shake of his head.

      ‘No. Not here.’

      Suddenly she did not care. With a slow grace she undid the buttons at her throat, excited as he watched her lift the fullness of her breast above their protection of lawn and lace.

      Wanton. Heedless. Immoderate.

      She felt his fingers lifting her skirt and the wind on her shins and thighs and bottom as she accepted him with a sigh. Tipping her hips forward to get a deeper thrust his hands anchored her and she bit into the cotton of his sleeve to smother a scream.

      ‘Easy, sweetheart,’ he gentled, but she could not be still. The last trace of manners broke and she slid her fingers beneath his shirt and scraped her nails down the raised scars that marked his back. She was wild and free as he rubbed across the nub of hardness in the place where the swollen lips of her womanhood began, and when her head fell back the sunlight was bright upon her face.

      She loved him.

      ‘I love you.’

      Had she said it? He stilled.

      I love you. I love you. I love you.

      Not yet, not now, not when he would not want it.

      Not when the clenching joy of sex took her over the top of ecstasy and wrenched her on to the dizzy shores of elation.

      Asher took her down with him as he collapsed on to the floor of the summer house. What the hell had just happened?

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