It occurred to Sophia that he might be touching himself, too. Perhaps it ought to have shocked her, that thought. Instead, it drove her to a new peak of excitement. She slid down in her chair, her legs falling apart slightly. Between her thighs, she felt achy and hot. Drenched with sweat and desire.

“Lift your skirts,” came the hoarse command. “Let me see you. I have to see you.”

Lost in a dark haze of passion, Sophia was past thinking, past shame. Her hands slid from her breasts to the tops of her thighs. She fisted her hands in the thin muslin and slowly hitched the fabric up, baring her ankles. Then her calves.

“More. Higher.”

She obeyed, rucking the muslin up over her knees, smoothing one palm against her sensitive inner thigh.

“Oh, sweet Heaven. Look at you. No stockings, no garters. No drawers, either? Tell me there are no drawers.”

She arched her spine slightly, her head lolling against the back of the chair. She skimmed her hand higher to bare the smooth expanse of her thigh.

He released a ragged sigh. “No drawers, either. I’ll never take you back to England now. This is how I want you, always. Here, in the tropical heat—no petticoats, no stockings, no drawers. Ready for me at any time. And you are ready for me, aren’t you, sweet? You’re so hot and wet. God, how I want to taste you. You’re delicious, even from here.”

Sophia’s heart was pounding so hard, she feared it would explode. Her head spun, dizzy with heat. Her mouth fell open. She was panting. She felt shameless and sensual and more boldly feminine than she’d ever felt in her life.

“Touch yourself for me.” His voice took on a new urgency, grew rough and demanding. “You know the place, I know you do. Touch yourself for me.”

His voice held her in such thrall, she was powerless to disobey, even if she’d wanted to. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to do everything he told her. She wanted to be here, always, in this sultry tropical fog of desire, and let him do what ever he would with her. Her fingers brushed over the damp nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs, parting the slick folds of her sex to find that swollen, sensitive bit of flesh.

“Oh yes, sweet. Do it for me. I want to taste you there. I want to be in you, feel you tight and clasping around me. I want you moaning for me. Under me. On top of me. I want to have you in every way known to man, and then invent a dozen more. Touch it for me. Imagine it’s me there, touching you. In you.”

The climax broke through her in a crashing wave. She arched up off the chair, her breath caught in a strangled cry. Plea sure jolted through her again and again, until she went limp in its aftermath, shuddering. A blissful peace washed over her first.

Followed by awareness.

Then shame.

Oh, God. What had she just done? With shaking hands, she pushed her skirt back down over her knees. She brought one hand to her still-naked breast and the other to her eyes, squeezing them shut tight. But not tight enough. Hot tears leaked through her trembling lashes.

“Oh no, sweet. No.”

He whispered so tenderly, but the sound of his voice only served as a cruel reminder that he was there. He had seen. The tears came harder, spilling down her cheeks.

“No, sweet, don’t cry.” His voice was low and close to her ear. “Are you—” He paused. “Are you thinking of him?”

She shook her head no.

“Then why do you cry? Surely you’re not embarrassed?”

Sophia sobbed against her hand.

“Oh, sweet. Please don’t. Don’t cry, or I’ll cry with you. You’re the most lovely, most perfect thing I’ve ever seen in all my life, and I could weep for the sheer beauty of you.” Rough fingers smoothed the hair from her brow.

“Don’t ever be ashamed, not with me.”

He tugged her hand away from her face. She kept her eyes shut tight as he kissed her fingertips, one by one, then turned her hand over to plant a heartrendingly tender kiss upon her palm.

Sophia opened her eyes. The ceiling flashed bright above her at first, through a blurry haze of tears. She blinked and sniffed. Never in her life had she felt so vulnerable. The burdensome disguise she’d been wearing the entire voyage—wearing her entire life, it seemed—had been stripped away. No more deceptions, no more fantasies. This was all that remained: a weary, wanton, lonely girl with one hand clasped to her naked breast and the other pressed against his lips.

She’d bared herself before him, in every way. As she’d never dared reveal herself to anyone. More truth had passed between them in the last ten minutes than any conversation could relay, and still he held her, soothed her. Would his lips still form such tender words and soft kisses, if he knew the complete truth?

He kissed her palm again. “Don’t cry. I’d die before I’d let anything or anyone hurt you. I couldn’t bear to think I’d caused you such distress.” He pressed her hand against his bearded cheek. She felt his lips graze her temple. “Sweet,” he whispered against her ear. “You’re safe with me. Always.”

Sophia turned her head slowly, until her gaze locked with his. His eyes—they were the purest cerulean blue, and fathoms deep. She caressed his cheek with her thumb. “Oh, Gray.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She said his name, and it pierced him. Like a needle-thin dagger that threaded right between his ribs to embed itself in his heart. And like any sudden wound, it caught him completely off-guard. It hurt. It sent him into shock.

What had just happened? He’d been reading; she’d been painting. They’d argued over paint, discussed colors. He’d teased her until she blushed, and she’d teased him back. She’d touched his face. Oh, how she’d touched him. Then suddenly he was viewing the most erotic display he’d ever witnessed in his life. And that included several erotic displays he’d paid good money to watch.

He’d said things to her. Wild, depraved fantasies he’d never voiced to any woman without paying her handsomely first. Perhaps a few things he’d never said to any woman at all. And she’d listened, and complied. Willingly. With sensual abandon and such sweet trust, it made his heart ache. He’d said anything and everything that came into his mind, to keep her going. To bring her to that peak of pleasure and watch her while she came. That much was good. Very good.

But then she’d cried, and he’d said more. He would have said anything, promised her everything to soothe her. Now he stared into her red, weepy eyes, suddenly realizing how very close he’d come to doing just that—promising her everything—and it scared him into a cold sweat. She dragged that soft, soft thumb across his cheek, and his knees actually trembled. Trembled, damn it!

Gray had no idea what the hell was happening to him, but he knew that it had to be bad. Very bad.

Her lips were pouty and swollen with passion and just begging to be kissed, long and slow and deep. His groin was still throbbing with the memory of her erotic little gasps, her back arched in ecstasy. Oh, Gray, she said. Oh, Gray, indeed. As in, oh Gray what the holy hell has come over you and what the devil do you intend to do about it?

He took the coward’s way out. He looked away.

“I thought you were painting a portrait. Of me.”

She turned her head, following his gaze to her easel. A vast seascape overflowed the small canvas. Towering thunderclouds and a violent, frothy sea. And slightly off center, a tiny ship cresting a massive wave.

“I am painting you.”

“What, am I on the little boat, then?” It was a relief to joke. The relief was short-lived.

“No,” she said softly, turning back to look at him. “I’m on the little boat. You’re the storm. And the ocean. You’re … Gray, you’re everything.”

And that was when things went from “very bad” to “worse.”

“I can’t take credit for the composition. It’s inspired by a painting I once saw, in a gallery on Queen Anne Street. By a Mr. Turner.”

“Turner. Yes, I know his work. No relation, I suppose?”

“No.” She looked back at the canvas. “When I saw it that day, so brash and wild … I could feel the tempest churning in my blood. I just knew then and there, that I had something inside me—a passion too bold, too grand to keep squeezed inside a drawing room. First I tried to deny it, and then I tried to run from it … and then I met you, and I saw you have it, too. Don’t deny it, Gray. Don’t run from it and leave me alone.”

She sat up, still rubbing his cheek with her thumb. Grasping his other hand, she drew it to her naked breast. Oh, God. She was every bit as soft as he’d dreamed. Softer. And there went his hand now. Trembling.

“Touch me, Gray.” She leaned forward, until her lips paused a mere inch away from his. “Kiss me.”

Perhaps that dagger had missed his heart after all, because the damned thing was hammering away inside his chest. And oh, he could taste her sweet breath mingling with his. Her lips were so close, so inviting. So dangerous.

Panic—that’s what had his knees trembling and his heart hammering and his lips spouting foolishness. It had to be panic. Because something told Gray that he could see her mostly naked, and watch her toes curl as she reached her climax, and even cup her dream-soft breast in his palm—but somehow, if he touched his lips to hers, he would be lost.

“Please,” she whispered. “Kiss me.”

“I can’t.” For the second time that day, he pulled her hand away from his face. For the first—and, he suspected with distressing certainty, the last—time ever, he slid his hand from her breast. “I just can’t.”

The pain in her eyes devastated him. “Then I suppose you’d better leave.”

The bell clanged through the silence, insistent and ceaseless. An alarm to match the frantic pounding of Gray’s heart. Did the whole ship know the danger he was in?

But as his consciousness filtered back, he became aware that the dull thunder in his ears wasn’t his pulse. It was real thunder. And the roar of breath rushing in and out of his lungs was drowned out by the howl of distant wind. The ship gave a lazy tilt, and a small cake of pigment rolled the length of the table before crashing to the floor. Then a wild lurch cleared the rest of her paints and had them both grasping the bolted table for balance.

“All hands! All hands!”

Gray pushed back in his chair, glancing up through the ventilation grate. As he rose to his feet, another sudden dip swept the chair out from under him. “Sweetheart, I—”

“I understand, Mr. Grayson.” Her voice was weak. “Go. Please, just go.”

And with one last look in her welling eyes … God help him, he left. Gray emerged from the companionway to a scene eerily similar to the one on Miss Turner’s canvas. The Aphrodite hurdled over white-capped swells, and a bank of forbidding black clouds clung to the horizon. As he made his way to the helm, seawater dashed over his linen-clad shoulders, reminding him he’d left his coat belowdecks. Regret hollowed out his chest. His coat was the least of what he’d left there. Any shred of courage or decency he possessed. His heart, the shriveled, black thing it was.

And her.

Above him, a pair of sailors were deftly reefing the main topsail. Gray envied them. That was what he needed: He needed to work. He needed to perform hard, physical labor until he was numb to the fingertips and blind with exhaustion. He needed to sweat her out of his system. He met Joss at the ship’s wheel. “Seems we’ve got our wind back.”

“Aye,” Joss said. “And then some. I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Nor the sound of them,” Gray added.

Joss lifted a spyglass to his right eye, squeezing the left shut. “There’s a sail approaching to windward. I’ve given orders to lie-to and hail her, see what they can tell us about the squall. Perhaps they’ve just come through it.”