“You tell me you want me.”

“I want you.”

“Me, and no other.”

“Only you, Gray, only you.”

He slid his hands from her breasts to her hips and lifted, positioning himself at her entrance. “You tell me—”

He stopped himself, struck by the idiocy of what he’d nearly said: You tellme you love me. What a damn fool thought to entertain. This wasn’t love to her, it was just fantasy and lewd imaginings. A chance to satisfy her youthful lust and curiosity. He’d been twenty once. He remembered what it was to chase pleasure, and he certainly hadn’t confused it with love. He’d never contemplated love at all.

Until now.

She rocked backward, taking him into her. Beautiful, searing bliss enveloped him. She was all sweetness and heat and molten sighs, gripping him so tightly he could almost believe, for this moment, that she would never let him go.

He clutched at her hips, pulling her closer until they were fully joined. God,

he was losing himself inside her, and it was too late to pull away. There was nothing he could do. Nothing but take the pleasure she offered and give it in return, and make this so damn good that so long as she lived, no matter how far she went from him, she would never, ever forget. He took her in smooth, powerful strokes that had no end and no beginning, but built on one another—surely, steadily, relentlessly. He reached one hand around to cup her sex, part her gently, and strum the sensitive bud hidden there.

She moaned. She keened. She arched into his thrusts and took him deeper. And finally he felt the little flutters in her thighs and intimate muscles that told him her peak was near. He raced toward it with her, his cries joining hers as the pleasure consumed them both.

And then he simply held her, for as long as he dared.

“Well,” he finally said, withdrawing from her body. “You got what you wanted, then.” A bitter edge tainted the lingering tremors of pleasure singing through him. “We both did.”

“Did we?” She pivoted to face him, and he choked on his breath. How dangerous her beauty was. He thought it might be the death of him. She smoothed the hair off his brow, and he winced at the tenderness in her touch.

“Gray, if you found my book, surely you must know that this kind of …

encounter … is not all I want. I want so much more. And I want it with you.”

He closed his eyes, and that picture of the two of them lounging under a willow tree appeared behind his eyelids. He shook his head to dispel it.

“You want some fantasy, spun from a girl’s imagination. You want a dream that can never come true.”

The flush of her cheeks faded as she searched his face. “I suppose you’re right. That dream can never come true, if you don’t share it.”

“It’s not—”

“Enough about my dreams.” She put a finger to his lips, then trailed the touch down his jaw. “What is it that you really want, Gray?”

He seized her shoulders. “I want no more lies. No more wild tales and secret fantasies. I want you to tell me everything. Who you are, where you came from, where you’re going. Everything.”

Something softened in those clear, lovely eyes. “I’m so sorry for deceiving you, for hurting you. But I was desperate, don’t you understand?

You were pushing me away, and I cared for you so much. And that was nothing, compared to what I feel for you now.” She pressed her hand to his face. “Gray, I—”

“I don’t want to hear this. I want the truth, not excuses.”

She stiffened, withdrawing her touch. “Now there is a falsehood. No one ever wants the truth from me. They just want the pretty package it comes in. If you really wanted to hear the truth, you’d listen. My feelings for you, they’re as true a part of me as my name, or my place of birth. But you never want to hear them. You just keep running away.”

He swallowed, uncertain what to say.

“And of all the people to accuse me of dishonesty—the man who told me I was worth nothing to him but six pounds, eight shillings? The man who ordered me to go to my berth and thank Almighty God he didn’t want me?

You have no idea how your lies hurt me.”

Oh, God. “Sweet, if I could only take back those words—”

“But you can’t. You have to live with them now, just as I do.” Arms twisted behind her back, she adjusted and relaced her stays.

“Do you know what I think?” she asked, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes. “Never mind the lies—you were happy to be my first. I think you were damn near overjoyed to discover I was a virgin. I doubt you ever truly believed otherwise. It was only when you found the money that everything soured.” She jabbed a finger in his chest. “I know precisely what you were hoping that day. You were hoping your pure, innocent virgin had come along, to spread her legs and redeem your sins with her mystical virtue. Well, surprise, Gray. I’m not perfect. I’ve sins enough of my own to deal with, and I’m not here to save you from yourself.”

Once again, she left him with no words. She was getting far too good at that. Tightening the cord on his trousers, he released his breath in a bewildered sigh. It was so damned hard to argue with the truth. “Sweetheart

—”

Holding her dress together with one hand, she threaded the milk pail over her other wrist. “I do have dreams, Gray. Beautiful dreams. And yes, depraved fantasies. I also have a heart. You’re tangled up in all of them, and you can ignore me or run from me, but you can’t ask me to deny my feelings any longer.”

She stopped and studied him. Then she rose up on tiptoe and planted a kiss on his cheek. It struck Gray as a pitying sort of gesture, but he could not bring himself to spurn it.

“I know what you want, Gray. I know what it is you really need to hear. When you’re ready to listen, come let me know.”

Her kiss lingered, long after she’d gone.

“Something’s amiss,” Gray said, jerking his chin upward. “Fore topgallant lift.”

The Kestrel crewman hoisted a lantern and peered up into the darkness.

“Where, again? Can’t say as I see it.” Then he turned and peered at Gray.

“It all looks right as roses to me.”

“A line’s gone slack.” With an exasperated sigh, Gray extended a hand.

“Lend me your marlinespike; I’ll see to it myself.”

The sailor did not argue, but handed over the marlinespike with a shrug.

“You’re the captain.”

Gray scaled the foremast rigging, climbing hand over hand past the foresail and fore topsail yards. When he reached the topgallant, he made a perch for himself and rested. There was nothing wrong with the line, or the sail. He’d known that before he began climbing. But there was something amiss with him, and he needed the space and distance to examine it. Cool night air buffeted him, rushing through the loose weave of his tunic and blasting the staleness from his skin. It felt almost as good as a proper bath.

Her question from that afternoon haunted him. What was it that he really wanted? For a self-centered libertine, it had been an oddly long time since he’d pondered that question. For the past two years, he’d poured, bled, and sweated himself into this shipping business. His goals were clear. He wanted Joss to become his partner; he wanted Bel to have her London debut; and he wanted to provide security and a measure of status for their family as a whole. But what did he want for himself? It had been years since he’d allowed himself to spin fantasies of a happy future—not since he was a youth of Davy’s age. Happiness, he’d concluded, was meant for other men: men who lived honorably, kept their promises, built honest fortunes. Men who deserved it. Gray simply took pleasure where he found it, then left it behind. It was mad, and more than a bit dangerous, for a scoundrel like him to dream of lasting joy.

But now she was dreaming it for him. For them. Naïve, fanciful thing that she was, she genuinely believed they could live happily ever after. None of his angry words or dark confessions had persuaded her otherwise. Remarkable. He’d finally met the one girl he couldn’t disillusion. And so, soaring through the darkness, rocked by waves and blanketed by stars, Gray decided to try an experiment. He shut his eyes and dared to dream.

He wanted someone to share his life. To share his burdens, his triumphs, his home and his bed. The longing assailed him, nearly flinging him from the mast with its intensity. It was as though a well of yearning existed inside him, deep and limitless, and he’d been keeping it tightly capped for years, lest he fall into it and drown. And now it flooded him, coursed in his veins like his lifeblood.

He wanted … he wanted so many things. Simple pleasures. To buy her a dozen muslin frocks to replace the one he’d destroyed today. To feed her succulent fruits and ripe cheeses and slices of roasted meat. To lay his head in her lap and feel her fingers in his hair, and listen to all her fanciful tales and dreams. To share thoughts without exchanging words. To lay with her, be in her, feel her body surround him as often as she’d allow. And a child … God, how he wanted a child. He’d been fighting that desire for more than a year, ever since he’d cradled his newborn nephew in his arms. It was irresistible in the most base, selfish way, this impulse to create a life. A child would be bound to love and admire him, no matter what he did. A child would be bound to accept his love. A child would bind him to her, forever.

Somehow it always circled back to her. He wanted her.

This was the voyage he’d meant to go respectable. He thought he’d lost that chance in the taking of her virtue, then the discovery of her lies and that bundle of gold beneath her stays. The futility of all his struggling had burned a black, smoking crater in his soul. But perhaps that was exactly what he’d needed: a blast to his petrified heart, and this resultant void that only she could fill. Perhaps, at long last, what he wanted and what was right were one and the same.

All that remained was to convince her. Well, there he had experience on his side. He knew a little something about conquest.

Gray spent an hour up there in the rigging, soaking up the darkness, gathering bravery from the wind. When the eight bells finally rang, they signified far more than a change of watch.

He was going to change his life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Sophia startled awake. By what dim, silvery light the cabin window afforded, she made out the silhouette of a man standing at the foot of the bed. He was tall—so tall his shadow spread up the wall and seeped into the ceiling cracks, like ink. It could only be Gray. She wondered how long he’d been standing there.

She rose up on her elbow. “What do you want, Gray?”

“I want you.”

Heat swept her from crown to toes. She lay there waiting, suddenly uncertain how to speak or move or even breathe. The small sounds of waves lapping against the boat and canvas snapping in the breeze swelled to a deafening roar.

He leaned forward, placing one hand on either side of her legs. The bed creaked under his weight. Falling back on the pillow, Sophia let out a small squeak of her own.

He prowled up her body, moving forward on hands and knees, until he caged her completely. His scent, hot and male, engulfed her. The front of his shirt hung loose, and as he crawled over her, the fabric brushed against her belly, then her breasts. Her nipples peaked instantly. His hand captured her chin, his thumb and fingers framing her jaw. Her pulse beat wildly against his palm. Though his face hovered mere inches above hers, she could barely make out his features. Moonlight glinted off the bridge of his nose and the neat, blunt edge of his teeth. He inhaled slowly, and Sophia could have sworn he sucked that breath straight out of her lungs.

He was everywhere around her—his strength, his heat, his rum-scented breath. She was powerless to do anything but stare up at him, eyes wide and straining in the dark. Her lips began to tremble.