Teresa Medeiros Read online

  She nudged Trini, nearly overturning his cup. “She’s rather pretty, isn’t she? If you fancy women with tattoos.”

  In truth, only the woman’s chin was tattooed. The etched wings emphasized the pouting tilt of her lips, the exotic slant of her eyes. Reaching across Emily, she plucked a passion fruit from a tray and snapped half of it away with her straight white teeth. Golden juice trickled down her chin.

  “Did you see that?” This time Emily did tumble Trini’s cup, spilling cold water down his bare chest. “What horrid table manners. The brazen wench wouldn’t last through tea at Miss Win—” She bit off the word, casting him a nervous glance. Trini didn’t seem to notice her slip. He was too busy sponging off his chest with his feathered cloak.

  Her mouth fell open in hopeless shock as the intruder tucked the other half of the passion fruit into Justin’s mouth, her tan fingers lingering against his lips as if in memory of past delights and a promise of future ones. A jagged spear of pain plunged into Emily’s heart. Feeling small and ugly and freckled, she bowed her head, wishing for hair long enough to hide behind.

  The song of the dancers swelled to a new rhythm, hypnotic and sensual. Laughing, the woman pulled away from Justin’s hands and rose to join the sultry dance of her native sisters.

  Justin leaned toward Emily, forced to yell over the music. “Now you can see why I find the Maori so irresistible. They do nothing without singing.”

  “Nothing?” she bit off acidly.

  He hummed under his breath, blithely unaware of the petite volcano seething at his side. “Rangimarie was one of my best pupils. I taught her English.”

  “Is that all?”

  He missed her lethal look. His admiring gaze was hovering at the opulent bosom of his sloe-eyed friend. Her serpentine twists threatened to shake the golden orbs free. She danced toward him, stamping her feet and swinging her hips in blatant invitation.

  The tips of her hair flicked Emily’s cheek like tiny eels as she bent over Justin, mouthing Maori words. He grinned and ducked his head. It might have been the torchlight, but Emily would have sworn a flush crept along his cheekbones.

  As the woman slithered away, Emily slammed her fist into Trini’s arm. “What did she say?”

  Trini gave her an infuriating smile and wagged his finger under her nose. “No, no! Not for the hearing appendages of filial progeny.”

  “Not for the hearing appendanges …?” She muttered the words under her breath before their meaning came to life with furious clarity.

  Not for the ears of children.

  Justin’s own voice, smooth and condescending, echoed through her head. Are you being a naughty little girl again?

  Her nails dug into the woven flax of her cup. They all seemed to think her some overgrown toddler who needed her fingers slapped to keep her out of mischief. She tilted the cup to her lips, draining it in one swig. Fire raced through her limbs, throbbing in time with the music.

  Rum and wavering torch smoke blurred her vision. The exotic features of the dancers melted into the smug faces of Miss Winters’s students. She had hovered in the corner during their ballet class as they floated past, wrapped in yards of delicate white organdy. Her feet had itched to join them, but it had been Cecille who drifted to her sylvan death as Giselle at the recital each spring. Emily’s own small satisfaction had come last year when Cecille had lifted her head to take her bow only to find her shimmering blond mane pasted to the stage.

  The stamp of native feet thundered through Emily’s veins, enthralling her with their primal beat. She glanced over at Justin. His rapt attention was still held by the siren song of the dancers.

  The empty cup slid from her fingers. She was sick of watching from the wings while others took their bows.

  She rose with sinuous grace and slipped among the dancers. She had no need to mock their motions. As she closed her eyes and lifted her hair from her sweltering nape, the rhythm took her in its masterful hands, swaying her like a long-stemmed bloom in the wind.

  The wailing song of the dancers soared and the pent-up spirit of a lifetime burst into flower. Emily spun free, caught in the sheer joy of the motion. The stamping swelled until it resonated through her bones and fueled her pumping heart.

  One by one the natives left their places in the sand to join the dance, bewitched by the spell of rhythm and song. Kawiri leaped and grimaced, wielding a piece of driftwood as a spear. Trini spun with a graceful swirl of his feathered cloak. The old tohunga gummed a smile and rocked in the sand. Dani hopped from one foot to the other, shaking her dark mop of hair.

  For one magical moment Emily was no longer alone. She belonged to something larger than herself—a family. She whirled around, coming face-to-face with Justin.

  Somehow in the midst of this exuberant crowd Justin had never looked more alone. A quizzical sadness tinged his expression. Emily faltered.

  He swept his hair from his eyes and made a courtly bow, giving her a jarring glimpse of how striking a figure he might cut in a London drawing room. “May I have the pleasure of this dance, my lady?”

  The native music seemed to fade, merging into the sweet strains of a formal waltz, half imagined and half remembered from a dream.

  Emily had trouble finding her voice. “I should be honored, my lord.”

  He took her into his arms, holding her at arm’s length with flawless grace. His big, warm hand pressed against the bare skin of her lower back. The natives faded to faceless blurs as they swept through the sand in an ever-widening circle, both of them too lost in the charm of the moment to recognize its incongruity. They never saw the Maori step back, yielding their own dance to the exotic cadences of the waltz.

  Emily gazed up into his face, marveling anew at the strong line of his jaw beneath its careless whiskers, the somber sparkle of his feline eyes. This was nothing like waltzing with Tansy in the cramped corners of their attic rooms.

  She had been dancing for him as long as she could remember. She had always imagined Cecille would twist her ankle and she would be forced to take the lead in the recital. Her guardian would materialize from the fog-shrouded night and slip into the back of the recital room. As she collapsed in a graceful heap of organdy, his beautiful baritone would ring out, crying, “Bravo, bravo! There’s my girl!” to the shocked stares of Miss Winters and the other girls.

  Tears pricked Emily’s eyes. She blinked them away, then wished she hadn’t as Justin’s face came clearly into focus. Lust and tenderness and hopeless longing warred in his gaze. She closed her eyes, dizzied by his strength and the warm, spicy scent of his skin. The windy beach vanished. They might have been dancing alone in a darkened ballroom beneath the tinkling fingers of a thousand chandeliers.

  He folded her deeper into his embrace. She lay her head against his chest, half expecting to feel a crisp waistcoat instead of the warmth of his bare chest.

  He rubbed his cheek against her curls. A shuddering breath escaped her. They were merely swaying now, clinging to any excuse to remain entangled in the tender web they’d woven. As the last pure note of the Maori song rang between them, the solution came to Emily, a revenge so simple and so diabolical, it could not fail to destroy him.

  Tansy had always said there was only one way to bring a good man to his knees.

  The music died and she quivered in the sudden hush. The silence seemed too harsh, too penetrating. Justin reached to tilt her face upward. She tore herself out of his arms and ran, fleeing both herself and him, yet knowing in her heart that he would follow.

  Chapter 12

  As rich as our mine may be, it cannot compare to the wealth I’ve always found in your company.…

  A laughing mob of dancers streamed around him, but Justin stood in a daze, staring at the spot where Emily had been as if he expected her to reappear in a puff of smoke. Blood rushed through his veins, flooding uninvited to his loins, his heart, his pounding head. The roaring in his ears had nothing to do with the sea. It was the same roar he had heard on the night he f
ound Emily, the same relentless ebb and flow of warning and desire that had taunted his waking moments and colored his dreams with madness.

  He plunged forward, shoving his way through the Maori, deaf for the first time to the lilting intricacies of their song. A woman’s hand touched his arm, but he shook it away, blinded to all else by the lithe shadow growing smaller in the distance.

  The ribbon of beach unfurled beneath his pounding feet. A shy moon peeked through the sparse clouds, scattering diamonds of light across the sand. Emily stayed just ahead of him, a whisper of movement between the shallow dunes. His nostrils twitched. He would almost swear he could scent her on the wind, an alluring blend of vanilla and musk.

  As he ran, the lights from the feast faded to a rosy glow in the sky. The echoes of music and laughter were drowned in the crash of the waves. He rounded a high dune and staggered to a halt. Emily stood alone on the stretch of beach where he had first found her.

  Justin knew he would never forget the way she looked at that moment. She was as rare and exotic as a wild English rose blooming in the desert. The wind tousled her curls and whipped at her skirt. Her chin tilted in defiance even as she twisted her hands together for courage. He couldn’t have said which made her more beautiful to him—her vulnerability or her pride. She might have been a defiant Eve dangling a juicy apple in front of Adam’s nose.

  As he angled toward her, he could feel his face hardening in ruthless lines of desperation.

  “I don’t like you,” he said.

  “I don’t like you either.”

  Each weighted step through the damp sand carried him nearer to his destruction. “I’m too old for you.”

  “Much.”

  He was near enough to touch her now. “I have gray hair.”

  She reached up, wound a silvery strand around her finger, and jerked it out. “Not anymore.”

  He tangled his hand in her curls, drawing her head back until her mouth was a scant breath from his own. “I won’t marry you.”

  Her hand crept around his nape. “I wouldn’t have you.”

  “Oh, you’ll have me.”

  She shivered at his husky promise. His mouth closed on hers, tracing its shape, its softness, with a patience and delicacy he was far from feeling. He wanted to make her ache deep inside, as he was aching. He rubbed his lips across hers, nibbling and coaxing with an expertise he’d almost forgotten he possessed. He was determined to stoke the flame of her need with exquisite stealth until she burned only for him.

  Her lips parted shyly beneath the tantalizing pressure, burning his restraint to cinders. With a will of its own his tongue snaked out, delving deep inside the lush sweetness of her mouth. She met his thrust with a soft swirl of her own. He groaned. She tasted like a hot, luscious berry—succulent and ripe for his picking. With a hunger that made him quake inside, he wanted to taste the rest of her, to feel her sugared heat melt around every throbbing inch of his body.

  The knowledge of what Justin wanted to do to her exploded through Emily, both terrifying her and imbuing her with a delicious sense of power. Gasping for a breath of sanity, she tore her mouth away from his. Dear God, what was she doing? It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. She was supposed to coolly seduce him, scorn him, and toss the shreds of his broken heart in his face like confetti. Instead, she was clinging to him like a helpless wanton, drowning in the fervor of his kiss. With only a few expert caresses he had become the hunter and she the prey.

  His lips flowered hungrily against her dimpled cheek, the curve of her jaw, the tingling skin of her earlobe. His tongue flicked out to taste the damning pulsebeat below her ear. A hoarse whimper escaped her throat. She struggled to remember why she must hate him.

  Pressing her burning brow to the hollow of his throat, she whispered, “You always treat me like a child.”

  “No more,” he vowed, sliding his hands down her back. Their callused strength against her bare flesh made her shiver. “You’re all woman. Woman enough to take whatever I can give you.” His warm, rough tongue plundered her ear, sending ribbons of sensation cascading deep into her womb.

  Her knees buckled, but he caught her, dragging her against him. If he only knew how desperately wrong he was. She was no match for him, she knew. No match at all. She knew that with dread certainty as he angled her thigh upward and pressed his flagrant arousal to the aching cradle between her legs.

  She moaned as his mouth took hers again. The slow grind of his hips and his tongue’s feverish strokes painted a dark and vivid picture of his desires. She trembled, but his body was too broad, too unrelenting for escape. There was no place for her to flee from the tender assault she had provoked.

  The rough satin of his fingertips inched between her breasts, gliding wider with each sensual circle. She gasped as his palm cupped the threadbare calico of her bandeau, molding it to the soft globe of her breast.

  He pressed his mouth to her ear. “I’m not like the others, Em. I won’t hurt you. I swear it.”

  How could she tell him he’d already hurt her beyond bearing? Unable to resist his hoarse promise, she clung to his shoulders. His fingertips skimmed her nipple like butterfly wings, igniting tremors of pleasure. Beneath his caress the calico became not a barrier, but silky kindling for a spreading wildfire. She muffled her whimpers in his chest, desperate to hide her agonized blush. She could not still the irrational fear that he might discover not only what she was, but who she was as well.

  His lips brushed her hair. “I’ve spent the last few nights pouring all of my passions into my music, when all I really wanted to do was pour them into you.”

  His blunt confession and the loving stroke of his thumb over the tender bud of her nipple were her undoing. Longing coursed through her in dark waves. She rubbed her lips against his chest, tasting the salty spice of his skin, teasing the rigid nub of his own nipple beneath her tongue.

  Justin was shaking almost as hard as Emily was, hardly daring to believe his sweetest fantasy was unfolding like a dream before him.

  To hold Emily naked in the moonlight, her smooth young body his domain to pleasure and possess. To slake her darkest and most secret desires with his fevered touch. To ease himself inside her scrumptious body and take her, each stroke as deep and measured as the tide against the shore. It was as if time had rolled back to that other windy night and he’d been given a precious gift he thought lost forever. Now that gift had been sweetened by the privilege of knowing her sparkling mischief, her tender wit, and her irrepressible spirit. She was no longer a mysterious nymph coughed up by the sea. She was his Emily, a shining thread of melody wound around his heart.

  His deft fingers tugged at the knot of her bandeau. Before she could moan a protest, the fabric unfurled and slipped from his finger to the sand, baring her breasts in all their pagan splendor.

  Emily could feel their dusky peaks pucker beneath the greedy mouth of the wind and the smoldering caress of Justin’s gaze. She shivered, seized by a terrible vulnerability.

  He wrapped his arms around her, crushing her against the unyielding warmth of his chest. “What is it? Have I frightened you?”

  Beneath her ear his heart slammed like the distant thunder of drums. “Everything is happening so quickly.”

  “Quickly?” He tilted her chin up and gazed into her eyes. “I’ve waited a lifetime for this.”

  Her broken hiccup was half sob, half laugh. “So have I. If you only knew …” No longer caring if this was revenge or madness, she tangled her hands in his hair and drew his mouth down to hers, kissing him with a ravenous passion to match his own.

  Groaning, Justin dropped to his knees in the sand, only too eager to worship at the altar of her pleasure. He stroked her rounded shoulders, the satiny hollow above her collarbone, the plump underside of her breasts, utterly captivated by the contrasts in their bodies. What had seemed common with other women now seemed exotic, shaded with mystery. Emily’s body was ripe with secrets just waiting to be unfolded and stroked and explored.
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  He reached beneath her skirt, running his hands up the back of her calves and thighs to the bare curve of her rump. His thumbs angled across her hipbones, marveling at the cushion of flesh that softened her in all the places bone and muscle tempered him to hardness.

  She quivered at his touch but did not shrink from him, not even when his thumbs curled around to graze the delicate fleece that sheltered the feminine heart of her. Not yet, he warned himself. Too soon. He lay his burning cheek between her breasts and let the sea breeze wash over him, praying it might soothe the desperate tide of desire in his groin. She had known enough of the hasty, selfish fumbles of boys. Tonight she would go where only the restraint of a man could take her.

  His mouth captured her breast, sucking the tender bud with a fierceness that made her arch against him and whimper his name.

  It was all the invitation he needed. He lifted her and carried her to a sandy haven between two low-slung dunes. As he laid her in the sugary bed, the endless throb of the sea taunted him with the vain hope that this night might last forever. Without a word he eased her skirt down over her hips and cast it away.

  He gazed down at her as he had on that first night, enchanted by the hint of a dimple in her cheek, her luminous eyes. Tonight she seemed more angel than nymph. Her nakedness stirred in him a fierce possessiveness centuries of civilized breeding should have exorcised. He had blunted his emotions for too long. This rush of lust and tenderness and primitive jealousy exhilarated him, making him feel reckless and drunk.

  Emily drew in a shaky breath as Justin’s hungry gaze raked her from head to toe, lingering at the nest of curls between her legs. “Justin?”

  His gaze flew back to hers with a guilty haste she might have found amusing if she weren’t petrified with fear. “Mmmm?” he said dreamily.

  “Are you sure you haven’t any Maori blood in you?”

  His slow, wicked smile curled her toes. He reached down and popped open the first button of his dungarees in a gesture so totally out of character and so full of masculine swagger that she had to choke back a frantic giggle.