The captain launched himself onto the ratlines and scrambled up with a speed and grace that astounded her. Even climbing beneath instead of above the ropes, he sped toward her. Once at her side, he looped an arm about her waist and drew her against him. Instinct guided her arms about his neck. He speared her with a furious glare but she didn’t care. The instant he wrapped his arms around her, Christina knew she was safe. He loosed a string of colorful curses over the sharp wind as they descended. Disquiet blended with her relief.
On the deck, he set her down with a grunt. “Are you hurt?”
Christina stared mutely at his disheveled dark mane and bare torso. The mask and beard obscured his face. At the moment, his disguise didn’t matter.
Her heart chugged in her chest for a reason that had nothing to do with fear.
The dampness of her palms increased tenfold as she stared into the sharp, fathomless depths of his dark eyes.
“Are you?” He shook her shoulders.
She shook her head. “Ju—just my fingers.”
The captain grabbed her wrists and turned her palms up to him. Christina stared at the red pressure stripes marring her skin. A moment later, he released her with a curse.
Shoulders tense, he pointed an accusing finger at Davie. “You should have bound and gagged her to keep her off those lines, damn it.” Mouth taut with displeasure, he speared the man with a glare. “I’ll deal with you later.”
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The Lady and the Dragon
Christina wasn’t allowed a word in Davie’s defense before the captain wrapped his fingers about her arm and dragged her down to his cabin.
Slamming the door and enclosing them in privacy, he shouted, “Are you completely insane? Or do you simply want to die?”
“I just wanted to learn,” she protested.
“Learn to be a corpse?” he shot back. “That’s what you would have been had you fallen. Damn it, do you ever think before you act?”
“Of course.”
He rubbed his forehead with a broad palm. “What if I hadn’t come up?
Davie’s too small a lad to have taken you down the ropes with him. You would have both died.”
Fury dripped in his voice, sparking Christina’s pride. She thrust back her shoulders. His shirt fell off her shoulder, exposing fine linen and white skin.
The rest of the damp garment clung to her breasts, riveting the captain’s gaze to her. Quickly, she clutched the collar and yanked the garment back in place.
“And what the hell are you wearing, besides my shirt?”
“B—breeches. I was told I couldn’t climb in a dress and—”
“And so you thought you’d do well to parade around in breeches before my sex-starved crew.”
“I was hardly parading,” she said through clenched teeth. “I just wanted to climb the ropes and feel the wind.”
“Do you have any idea at all what those men would do to you with any encouragement on your part and weakening on mine?”
“No one touched me,” she returned. “Nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened? “ He curled his fingers around her arms in a tight grip.
“It isn’t over…”
An instant later, his mouth crashed down on hers. The uncompromising slant of his lips over her own stifled her protest. He wound his fingers into her damp tresses and pulled her head back to meet his punishing kiss.
Before she could think—could tell herself to fight—he deepened that kiss, stealing the air from her body. A dizzying wave swept through her until her head felt light, her thinking unclear.
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Shelley Bradley
He parted her lips with an insistent slide of his tongue. Once he thrust inside her, heat flooded her belly and pooled lower. A hot zip of thrill shot through her as he caressed down her back, to her hips. His fingers splayed against her, pressing her closer, into the hardness between his legs. She moaned. Of their own will, her hands slid up the satin of his muscled chest.
She kissed him back, trembling with an ache she didn’t understand but desperately wanted more of.
Instead, he released her with clenched fists, his chest heaving as he drew in shuddering breaths. Christina watched the rise and fall of his broad, bronze shoulders with a tingle of excitement igniting her body.
“What else could they have done to me?” she murmured.
He shook his head and growled, “Don’t tempt me, Lilli.”
“What else?” she insisted huskily.
The Black Dragon stood staring, unmoving, as if in indecision. Christina tossed her hair off her shoulders, sending his shirt dipping low again. “What else?”
At her taunt, he swore beneath his breath and stared at her bared skin. A muscle ticked in his jaw. Tense moments ticked by, and Christina measured them by the wild thud of her heart.
“This.” The captain reached for the buttons of her shirt.
They seemed to unravel beneath his nimble fingers. He pushed it off her shoulders, baring her to the waist, except for a sheer, damp chemise. His gaze locked on her, fixed on the hard nipples pressed against the clinging garment.
The heat of his body, of his stare, sizzled her.
“Kiss me again,” she instructed.
He jerked his gaze up from her breasts to her face. She read a struggle in the downward slash of his brows, in the restraint in his frown.
She sidled closer and pressed her body against him. His breathing ceased for the briefest of moments.
Then he groaned and seized her lips again. His tongue wound its way into her mouth in an instant, as his hand trailed from her shoulder, down her aching breast. He cupped her, engulfing her sensitive flesh in the heat of his
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The Lady and the Dragon
palm. His thumb brushed across her nipple. Tingles splashed across her skin in a hot drizzle. Christina hoped he would do it again, but he caressed his way to her hip. With a gentle pull, he gathered her thigh in his hand and held it around his body.
Christina felt him press the hard stalk of his sex to the joining between her legs. A new thrill shot from her chest, all the way to her fingers and toes.
“You make me crazy, Lilli. Sometimes I can’t decide if I should throttle you or throw you in my bed.”
Before she could reply, he bent to her and captured her chemise-clad breast in his mouth. A burst of lightning seemed to split her in half with pleasure. She arched toward him. The captain answered by taking her buttocks in his palms and fitting her closer against him.
His teeth and tongue played with the bud of her breast, teasing it to an aching stiffness. Pleasure skittered down to her belly…and lower. She cried out, fingers clasped about his shoulders.
“You’re too damned sweet,” he murmured before turning his attention to her other breast and, with a nudge, rocked his hips against her.
Molten heat spread throughout her body, singeing her with a need for more. Little cries slipped from her throat as she peppered his bearded face, his salty neck, with feverish kisses.
Seconds later, he yanked his shirt from her body and let the transparent garment slip to the floor. He untucked her chemise from her borrowed breeches and fitted his hands beneath. Christina felt his hot palms against the chilled skin of her abdomen.
Feeling his way up her torso, he skimmed his thumbs across her sensitive breasts. Christina gasped at the dizzying sensation. Then he lifted her undergarment above her head. It, too, joined his shirt on the floor.
He swallowed hard as his eyes roved over her bared flesh. “Dear God,” he breathed. “You are…perfect.”
Before she could reply that she felt much the same about him, he lifted her against his chest, and set her on his bunk.
He followed her down, covering her body with his. “Is this what you want, Lilli? Do you want me?”
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Shelley Bradley
She sighed. “Yes. Oh, yes. I’ve never felt like this, so alive. How wonderful and new!”