He framed her face with his hands. “I can’t take advantage of you like that. Not tonight,” he said, wondering whose voice was coming out of his mouth. “You’re upset and vulnerable right now.”
“No, I’m aching to feel you inside me again,” she whispered, feathering her fingers over his exposed chest. “It feels so good when you fill me up, Sam. Please make love to me.”
He groaned softly in defeat. He wrapped his arms around her, slid off the couch, and laid her beside him on the rug in front of the fire. She immediately went to work on his belt buckle. He captured her hands and lifted them over her head. “I believe you asked me to make love to you . That means I’m the captain on this voyage.”
The woodstove was producing just enough light for him to see her expression, which went from intense desire to trepidation as she obviously remembered how she’d nearly killed him on their last voyage together.
He went to work on her buttons, and as each one came undone, more of her beautiful breasts came into view. Sam prayed she didn’t realize the firelight was enough for him finally to see what he’d only been able to feel on the RoseWind .
Her skin was creamy alabaster and as soft as silk. She was wearing a lace bra that pushed her full breasts together, and as he parted the edges of her blouse, he could see her nipples straining against the lace.
She stirred restlessly, and Sam leaned down and kissed her, using his free hand to undo the zipper on
her pants. He stripped her down to her bra and panties about two seconds before she realized she was completely exposed to him.
She immediately tried to hide against him.
“You’re beautiful, Willa,” he murmured against her mouth, and kissed her again. He gently caressed her skin above the lace of her bra, running his thumb across her raised nipple. She responded with a sweet, feminine moan and slid one of her legs up his. Sam kissed her chin, her throat, her collarbone, then delved into her cleavage, which turned her moan into a soft shout of approval. He felt her trembling beneath him as he continued on, moving his lips over the lace to her nipple. He suckled her through the material, causing her to arch her back with another encouraging shout. He finally released her hands so he could take off her panties and bra. She immediately attacked his shirt, pushing it down over his shoulders, growling in frustration when she couldn’t get it off his arms.
“Help me, Sam. I want to touch you.”
He stopped undoing the front clasp on her bra long enough to shed his shirt; by then, she had already moved on to the buckle of his belt. Sam knelt upright, watching her lick her lips as she studied his chest and undid his belt, sliding his pants down to his knees.
Her gaze dropped, her eyes widened, and the hands that had been reaching for his chest suddenly headed for his erection. Apparently, she had just discovered a major advantage of having light during lovemaking. Sam jerked his groin out of her reach, capturing her hands and raising them back over her head. He used his knees to open her legs to him, then settled between her thighs. He smiled, seeing her trepidation return. “A bit disconcerting, is it, to find yourself lying naked under a man you took blatant advantage of a couple of weeks ago?”
“I—I fished you out of the ocean. Twice,” she said tremulously. “And I always took the night watch so you could get a good night’s sleep.”
“I’m not talking about the sailing, sweetheart.”
She gasped. “I don’t remember having to tie you up to have my way with you!”
He chuckled, kissing her raised chin. “No, you just set so many rules that you might as well have.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then her cheek, and finally her mouth when she tried to argue. He gently nibbled her lips awhile, then began kissing his way down her neck toward her breasts. She squirmed, pushing her hot, damp, naked sex against his erection as she wrapped her legs around him. Sam immediately slid down her body to avoid the temptation of slipping inside her, holding her hands at her sides so his mouth could continue its downward journey. She went perfectly still. “S-Sam?”
He ignored her, having decided they were playing by his rules tonight, and dipped his tongue into her belly button. She shivered, her fingernails digging into his wrists. He moved lower, leaving a trail of kisses and gentle nips, and was rewarded by her soft, keening whimpers.
He tucked his hands holding hers under her hips, lifting her into a most intimate kiss. She shuddered violently, her whimpers turning to cries of pleasure. Her legs pushed into his shoulders, every muscle in her body coiling. Sam continued his sweet torture until he felt her quivering on the edge of orgasm, then rose to his knees. He lifted her hips onto his thighs and, placing his thumb where his mouth had just been, slowly entered her—all the time watching her in the dancing firelight. He was barely inside her when she started convulsing around him, her hands covering her mouth to stifle her screams. Sam took hold of her wrists and pulled them away, setting them by her head as he braced himself to thrust into her deeply.
“Let me hear you come, baby,” he growled, retreating slightly, then thrusting again. “Don’t hold anything back.”
He’d always been a visual man, and watching Willa explode with pleasure—her skin covered with dew, her eyes locked on his as she shouted his name and screamed—sent him plummeting out of control. His own release came with the suddenness of lightning, shooting through him in bolts of searing white heat. He stilled deep inside her, letting her lingering spasms finish the job. Their gazes met and held for several heartbeats before she looked away, and Sam saw her eyes fill with emotion so raw it appeared painful.
He sighed, lying down on the floor beside her. She immediately turned to him, burying her face in his chest. He kissed her hair. “There. That’s out of the way.” He smiled when she stiffened.
“Excuse me?”
He scooped her up in his arms, stood, and headed for the bedroom. “Now that we’ve taken the edge off, we can really get down to business.”
Chapter Nineteen
Willa lay in bedwith her eyes closed, moving only the muscles needed to smile. Who knew there was a captain lurking inside Sam Sinclair’s beautiful, sexy, inexhaustible body? By the third time he’d made love to her, she’d been ready to promote him to admiral. And by the fifth? Astronaut material. His ego was probably so puffed up now, it was a wonder he had fit through the door when he’d snuck off in the wee hours of the morning.
Willa listened to the wind howling outside, heralding the arrival of a Canadian cold front. She bet if she opened her eyes, she’d see her breath, the cottage felt so cold. It also felt so empty she wanted to weep.
Did she have the brains of a lobster or what? No, even lobsters had an innate sense of survival. She, on the other hand, had crawled into bed with Sam almost three weeks ago, blithely risking her heart just to shut up her hormones. And last night, right there on the floor in front of the fire, she’d felt her safe little world explode into pieces as fate finally caught up with her. She loved Sam.
She didn’t want to, but there it was, in all its stark, frightening truth. What had Sam been trying to tell her
last night? That life happens whether we want it to or not and that sometimes fate is simply beyond our control?
She had been controlling this particular aspect of it for years, so what in hell had gone wrong? She knew she couldn’t really blame her hormones; the poor things had just been doing their job. Abram, then. This was all his fault. That stupid, insane, outrageous bequest had started her dreaming of no longer coming home to an empty house and of someday even waking up to the patter of tiny feet. Boy, oh, boy, had she taken the bait.
Willa pulled the pillow from under her head and pressed it over her face. It was pitiful to realize she wasn’t even as smart as a lobster. Lobsters were love-them-and-leave-them creatures. They never had to sit home and worry that something might happen to a loved one or fret over someone else’s happiness. Willa dropped the pillow to her belly with a heavy sigh and blinked up at the ceiling. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked the universe. “Marry Sam and let everyone win?” She snorted. “Except I’m not going to fulfill the baby part of Abram’s bequest, which means Warren Cobb will still get Tidewater, and Sam will be stuck with a wife who was shoved down his throat.”