He gripped her hand tighter.

She went onto her toes, pulled him down, and he kissed her again, beyond pleasure, beyond sense, without hesitation and with one apparent object, to make her submit. She did, willingly, happily. His hand came around her face, his fingers on her jaw, the pad of his thumb pressing at her chin, and Viola found her mouth opening. Then his heat, his tongue, and her tender flesh that he claimed, fast, deep and urgent.

He dragged her against his body, his hands moving now, touching her neck, shoulders, the curve of her waist, then over her behind. She moaned, warmth bursting inside her as his big hand cupped her, then slipped behind her thigh. Heat wrapped around them, sinking into her body, beneath her skin, burning into their kisses. He pulled her knee alongside his hip and tugged her to him, his arousal coming against her. She moaned. Holding his face between her palms, wanting his tongue in her mouth, she drew him in. How could it feel this good yet she still wanted more?

She struggled against him, needing to be closer. “You said you had no intention of kissing me again.”

“This is not kissing.” He pushed her against the rail and moved hard against her soft inner thigh. His hand sought her breast.

“Oh, God.” She had wanted him to touch her like this for weeks, his hands and arousal feeding hers. She ached with it. But it was almost too much, too sublime to have his hands on her so intimately, to be pressed to his body so thoroughly and insane with need. She tore at his coat and he shoved it over his shoulders, his shirt damp and clinging to his muscles. She wanted to climb up him, to climb right inside him. She twisted her foot around his ankle and her skirts snagged. She teetered. He caught her and bore her down to the canvas-covered steps beneath him.

He took her mouth again and his hand moved fast along her thigh, yanking up her skirts. His haste and purpose did not surprise her. She wanted it too. She arched into him, gasping in breath, and he pulled her against him. His tongue stroked hers then thrust inside her, his fingers clamping around her knee.

He separated their mouths. “Viola.” An utterance, hard and taut. “I will not force you. Open up, or I leave.”

Her knees were welded together. What was she doing?

“Off the ship?” Her voice shook.

“You wish.” He caught her mouth and she sank into his kiss, into the fear and certainty that kept her knees locked, the alarm that everything was changing in this moment.

“I don’t wish.” She fought to meet his kiss closer, biting at his lips with little nips and sucking. She could consume him. She wanted to be consumed by him. She was frantic for it. “Not at this moment, that is.” An inelegantly hasty amendment. But he seemed to approve of it. His hand stroked along the crease of her thighs. And so she gave to him her body, because it was what he expected and what she wished, an aching for union. Simply, she could no longer bear to remain apart from him.

She parted her thighs and took him between and, trembling fiercely, felt him at her entrance. He came into her in one thrust, hard and thick, with a groan of pure masculine pleasure. She fought for air. Her fingertips dug into his shoulders. She was stretched too hard, too tight, and it hurt. But it hurt to perfection. He moved inside her, pulling out, then stroking in again.

“No.” She clutched at him. “Oh, God, no.” It hurt dreadfully, but not her body. Her body tumbled, overflowing with pleasure that shut out the momentary discomfort.

This pain within was worse.

He went still, breaths rough and fast, his hands tight around her hips holding her to him. “Viola.” He spoke against her cheek. “It is too late for ‘no.’ ”

“No. Yes. Yes.” She thrust to him, gasping at the mingled pleasure and pain. Unmoving, he kissed her, fusing them again in this manner as though he would be inside her as she longed to be inside him. Then, releasing her mouth, he took her.

She had thought she understood. She had done this before.

But not this. With every thrust into her he forced her pleasure, moving in her so that she must take her pleasure on him. Hips low, he guided her on him with his hands, again and again making them one, harder, deeper with each joining until she whimpered with her rising need. It came so swiftly, the quickening, the tight building of sweet tension she had only ever felt alone, that she never knew she could feel with a man. Fast and overwhelming it took her. She gulped in air, arching desperately against his thrusts, crying out sounds. He bore her into the canvas, palms flat to either side, and she shook with her release as it came, as his muscles hardened. He dipped his cheek to hers, forcing himself inside her, and she couldn’t get enough, the power of his body, the stumbling pleasure in hers. When it came again, she gasped, shouted at the beautiful, rippling contractions. He caught her hand-her hand-held it tight, and came inside her.

His chest moved hard against hers. She sucked in air, gulping from the delectable shock of his release within her. Nothing had prepared her for this, for him. The laughter of sheer euphoria bubbled up in her. And song, but her throat was parched and she cradled a pirate between her thighs, so singing seemed not quite right. She had never known it could be like this. Or that reclining on a canvas sail on a companionway could prove so uncomfortable after a time.

He pulled away. She drew her knees together and opened her eyes, and made herself drunker yet on the sight of him. Rivulets of moisture ran along his jaw, another droplet clinging to his taut collarbone, then sliding down his chest to be lost beneath his shirt. The linen clung, revealing every contour, every perfect detail of man.

He fastened his trousers and extended his hand. She stared up at him.

“Come.” He curled his fingers in a gesture of encouragement, not insisting, but his gaze scanned her, peculiarly bright.

Viola’s throat was like parchment, possibly from all the moaning.

“Where? What do you want?” she croaked.

He leaned down to her and curved his hand around her face. He passed the pad of his thumb over her tender lower lip and spoke close, his breath a whisper across her flesh.

“What do you think I want?”

She swallowed hard. Holy Magdalene, she wanted it too. Again. Immediately. She felt wonderfully satisfied, yet hunger still ground deep in her simply from looking at him.

His fingers curled around hers and he grasped her hand. “Come now.” He backed off and her knees shook like canvas letting fly. Now, after all her gyrations beneath him, she could not move.

A crease formed between his brows. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. No, perhaps.”

His jaw tensed, a flash of alarm darting across his handsome features.

“You-” He took a hard breath. “You have done this before? That is to say, I did not-?”

“No.” Her face flooded with heat. “You did not. And yes, I have.” She wished she were wearing breeches, pistol, and knife. She felt utterly exposed, utterly foolish, and utterly at a disadvantage. “Only not for some time now. And not quite like that.” Not by far. How could she have made love several times with the man she had adored for years, and yet doing it once on stairs with this man drove the memory of everything that had come before clear out of her head?

A slow grin curved his perfect lips. “No?”

She frowned. That he might very well have done this plenty of times before did not sit well with her.

“A little unsteady, are we?”

“Don’t laugh at me, Seton.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Because if you do, I’ll stick you through with my-”

“I am flattered.”

“Don’t be. I meant I have never done it on stairs. My legs have gone all pins and needles.”

“Of course they have.” He didn’t believe her. With good reason. “Still flattered.”

“You are beyond arrogant.”

His smile flashed quick, utterly disarming, and of course stars sparkled across her vision. She was an idiot.

“Can’t help but be. Now come.” He drew her up until he held her waist. “I am of a mind to merit more flattery before the night is out.”

Her body hummed in his hold. He really intended to do it again. She gripped his arms to remain standing. Her legs felt more like jam than pins.

“Need some assistance getting there?” he murmured.

“Yes, in fact.”

His mouth quirked up at one side. “You absolutely do not want me to carry you.”

“Absolutely not.” She would rather die. “We could remain here?”

He laughed outright. Then he drew her arms around his neck, turned, and reached to the backs of her thighs. “Up you go, then.”

Viola jumped onto his back and laughter spilled from her throat as she clenched her knees to his sides and hooked her arms around his shoulders.

“I am offering you perfect opportunity to strangle me now, of course,” he said, moving toward her cabin.

“Perhaps later. I have need of your services at the present.”

It was not a long walk, a mere ten yards. But in the corridor leading to her cabin, where he had first looked at her as though he would kiss her, then had not, Viola’s patience disintegrated. She nuzzled his neck, then reached for his face, his jaw. The flavor of his skin, the rough texture of the day’s whiskers, sent pleasure rushing about her midsection again. She turned his face to her and nearly climbed over his shoulder to meet his lips, perfect lips she wanted attached to hers again without delay. He gave her what she wanted for far too short a time. Then he pulled her around off his back and set her on her feet before her cabin.

She went inside and sat to remove her shoes. Peeling off her stockings, she glanced up. He stood in the doorway, his gaze fixed on her writing table. On it sat one item: the spyglass he had borrowed that day that seemed ages ago, that she taunted him about, teasing that he had stolen it. And he had replied that he did not take that which was not his by right.

Finally he lifted his gaze to her. The heated look of the lover was gone. Now the cool crystals were pensive, sober. And oddly assessing.

Chill skittered down Viola’s spine. So many times during their journey he had looked at her so from across the deck. Never when they spoke, though, and never when he stood so close. Because it was a gaze of distance-not of feet or yards, but of a much more profound distance. When he looked at her like this, the loneliness within her blew like the wind off a Maine whaler.

“Tomorrow’s interview with the harbormaster is bound to be uncomfortable,” she said to break the silence and chase that distance from his light eyes. “I don’t have one hundred and fifty pounds.”

He moved into the cabin. “Here, or at all?”

“Here and at all.”

“I have assets on Tobago. I will lend the sum to you.”

“You have one hundred and fifty pounds? On Tobago? Whatever for?”

“Moments such as this.”

Which recalled them quite abruptly to this actual moment in which their intent had nothing to do with pounds and port officers, only with each other.

Viola tried to speak. Her throat clogged. She made a second somewhat more successful attempt.

“Jin, I cannot accept-”

He pulled her off the chair into his arms and bent his head. “It is nothing.”

“But one hundred and fifty-”

“It is nothing.” And then their lips met again, despite the distance and the money and her astonishment, or perhaps because of them. They kissed as though they had not before, and then as though they could not cease, hands and mouths lost in a need both sublime and violent. Clothes were swiftly discarded-her gown, his shirt, her petticoat. But the removal of her stays proved too much for them both. He put his hands on her unconfined breasts, she moaned as he caressed her through her shift, and quite abruptly there seemed no more leisure for dithering with garments. He dragged her to the bed beneath him, hungry on her mouth as though he had not already satisfied himself in her tonight. But this need pressed inside her as well, and she did not wonder at it.

She ran her palms up his back, smooth, damp skin and muscle, and flattened her body to his-breasts, belly, hips-to feel him everywhere on her. He wanted her, clearly, as she had never known a man could want a woman in a single night.

But she had wept in front of him, because of Aidan.

She broke her lips free, sweeping her fingers through his hair and holding him away. Dear Lord, he was beautiful, his eyes liquid with desire, his perfect mouth hers if she wished it.

“Are you doing this from pity? Because of my tears earlier on the veranda?”