Trade Winds Read online

  With each impassioned stroke and touch, a new wash of heat flooded her, consumed her. Coherent thought was a dim thread in the back of her mind. She struggled to cling to it, but for how long? Nothing Guypa had taught her had ever prepared her for this!

  When she didn’t think the ecstasy could get any more incredible, Mast shifted above her. She looked at him in silent question—until he slipped his fingers there, unfolding the most intimate part of her. A stunned rasp spilled from her. She swallowed and gaped as he rolled his long fingers in her soft flesh, brushing a magical little spot that made her quiver with astonishment.

  “Does it ache here?” His voice came surprisingly strong, considering how they’d surely sailed to the stars. He prodded her deeper still, opening her deepest core for his exploration. “And in here, sweeting? Inside your tight, hot tunnel?”

  “Yes…yes.”

  She dragged her eyes down to the same part of his body. His breeches were strained there, the flap stretched by his burgeoning body. She inhaled in awe. “It hurts for you in the same place, doesn’t it?”

  He looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes before giving her a shaking nod. As his breaths heaved in his massive chest, Golden felt a little like a gazelle caught by a panther’s stare. Feeling the pounce in his body on the air itself…knowing it wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

  She reached out and cupped the most dangerous part of him.

  “Christ. Golden!”

  “You do ache here.” She ran her fingers across him, fascinated by how he pulsed for her. “Your ache feels nice.”

  “By God and the angels above…”

  “Am I hurting you?”

  “Yes. No. Don’t let go!” He rolled to his back, his face pulled tight as the bulge she still fondled. “Sweeting, set me free. That’s it. Oh damn, that’s it.”

  His hips bucked as Golden released the fall of his trousers. His manhood lay just beyond the hose underneath, a mesmerizing swell of power and mystery. She loosened the bind of his hose. His shaft erupted, long and engorged and breathtaking.

  She beheld him with curiosity and delight. “Amazing.”

  Mast choked out a laugh as she helped him ease completely out of his clothes. “Thank you.”

  “There’s a drop at the top. Like cream.”

  “I imagine there is.”

  “Can I taste it?”

  “Ohhh, aye, hellion…please do.”

  He guided her finger to the tip of his stalk, letting her collect the milky white fluid there. She licked his juice from her finger then smiled at him. “It tastes nice.”

  He blinked and grinned. “I’m damn glad you said that.”

  She gazed back to the pulsing, hard staff. The colors were incredible. He was mostly a dark pink, though little blue tracks coursed up and down his length like rivers. The top, shaped like Guypa’s medicine mortar, was just as hard and mighty.

  “Hold me,” he told her then. “Take me in your hand, Golden. Hold my ache. Hold it tight.”

  It had to be the first of his commands she’d been elated to appease. She closed her hand around him, loving the shuddering, praising sigh he gave her. She joined his hot breath with one of her own as he grew bigger in her grip.

  “Ffffuck!” he gritted as she began to rub up and down on his thick length. “Ah—hellion—you do that—really well.”

  She could stand the tension no longer. She lifted her hands to the sides of his face, and plunged her pleading gaze into his impassioned one. “You’ve shown me everything else of your world,” she whispered, “now show me this. You’ve been living in loneliness for so long…now let me fill it. Bond with me, Mast. Please. My body needs you. I need you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  If even a tiny chunk of self-control was left inside him, it was pulverized in that moment. Crushed beneath the strident honesty of her plea, devastated by the ardent whisper it was wrapped in, until all that was left in his senses was Golden. His blazing, smart, daring, incorrigibly curious Golden.

  And all that filled his heart was the demand to meet her precious curiosity in every driving, definitive sense of the word.

  Mast pulled her fully down against him. Another growl shook him with the discovery that they fit better together without clothes on. Golden sighed, perhaps with the same thought, for she snuggled even closer to him, inadvertently transforming the tight curls of her womanhood into a warm cushion around his sex.

  His growl turned into a groan. Her wigglings were uninhibited, unplanned, yet dead accurate on the apex of his arousal. He practically clawed his fingers into her waist to stop her, but the action only drove Golden harder against him, whimpering into his mouth between the fervent sweeps of her tongue. Finally, he had to pry her away, drinking in the beauty of her passion-flushed cheeks, the bemused glaze of her eyes.

  “Sweeting…trim your sails by just a few degrees, aye?”

  She whimpered, nuzzled her lips against his throat, and whined with pleading need, “But why?”

  He nipped at her neck in return. “I know it feels good.”

  “Aye.” Her answer was a kitten’s caress on his jaw.

  “I know you want more.”

  “Oh, aye!”

  “And you shall have more.” With that, he pulled her back using the force of his hold in her hair. “When I approve it.”

  She bared her pretty white teeth at him. “Have I told you lately that you’re an obstinate bull dong?”

  He grinned. “Have I told you lately that someone needs to spank you for that mouth?”

  She got him harder in twelve new ways when she responded to that with a saucy tilt of her own lips. “Not in so many words, Captain.”

  The little minx maddened him in so many delicious ways. Tonight, at last, he was going to act on all of those frustrations.

  Without giving her a visual clue about his intent, Mast widened his legs in order to let Golden fall between them. Within the next two seconds, he curled his feet in again, twisting both around her calves. She frowned, catching on to his purpose then, but it was too late. She was his naked, writhing captive, with her two stunning ass cheeks right where he wanted them. Beneath his palms. Under his command.

  “Mast?” she queried. “Mast, what are you—oh!”

  The dual smacks he gave her were the resounding interruption to that.

  “You want words, hellion?” he drawled. “Then you’ll have words. They’ll come from your own lips, at that.”

  “What the bloody hell does that—” She shrieked as his hands landed another set of dual blows. “Ahhh!”

  “Start counting,” he directed while smoothing the burn across her skin. Her cheeks were already aflame beneath his touch—and he was hard as a coral reef getting to feel her this way. “I’m going to love watching those numbers form on your lips.”

  She planted her adorable palms to his chest and tried to wiggle away, but he’d been at sea for a very long while now, walking decks that pitched in all kinds of weather. He could hold down a wild pony like this if he had to.

  “S-Start counting what?” she blurted. “Mast, you aren’t truly going to—”

  “Aye, hellion. I truly am going to.” He smacked only her left cheek now. “You can start with that one if you like. There will be only ten, unless you spout more filth at me and earn yourself more.”

  “You’re out of your damn, depraved, dung-swaddled—ahhhh!”

  His right palm tingled with the stinging swat he gave to her other cheek. “That absolutely got you eleven. And you’ve gotten two down, my sweet—though I’ve yet to hear you count them for me. Maybe you’ve lost the count? Do you want to start over?”

  He barely held back his chuckle as Golden sputtered a frantic string of nos in protest. She followed that by spurting, “One! There’s your one. And two. Happy, Captain Ass Abuser?”

  Smack. Smack. Smack.

  “I certainly pray you know the count to twelve, hellion.”

  “Three. Four. And five, my Lord of Licent
ious Penance.”

  By the time he got her to seven, he watched the transformation in her features begin. By that time, he’d paused the spanks long enough to make certain he soothed her pain into warmth, and her “licentious penance” into a hidden, heated reward. When “twelve” fell from her lips in a dreamy rasp, he skimmed his hands up to her waist in order to gently prod her upward.

  “Up on your knees, my sweet hellion,” he directed, pulling himself up so he suckled her naval. “I want to kiss you now.”

  “But…how…”

  “Nay. I said I want to kiss you.”

  She sighed in trembling understanding, and smiled down at him. It was a tiny curve of her mouth, yet the most dazzling of any he’d ever seen on those precocious lips, for it told him how deeply he’d honored her by wanting to reciprocate her native-style caresses.

  If she only knew how much it had damn near dominated his mind since last night. His need to touch her like this, to explore the flowing lines of her body like this, had become a goddamn beast in his blood, pounding to be fed now. He gratefully indulged the monster, gliding his hands over her graceful thighs and hips, trailing his lips over the curves of her shoulders and arms, once more reveling in her ivory breasts and neck until so much lightning-hot desire claimed him, he trembled from the impact.

  “I can’t stop,” he told her, licking his way along her throat. “I’m not going to stop, Golden.”

  “Don’t,” she whispered back. “Please don’t ever…”

  Her breath caught when he started a deliberate path back toward the moist heat between her legs. She let out a sweet, sighing hiss as he continued on, into that heated center of her being, seeking and then finding the nub where she pulsed for him in slick readiness.

  Her knees gave way when he found the most sensitive spot in her sex. Mast eased her back against the pillows before returning to his quest. He watched, enraptured, as her head flung back with the pleasure he imparted. Her heart slammed along her throat, outlining the marks from where his teeth and tongue had been. Primal pride speared his chest. By the time they were through, she’d feel his touch on every inch on every inch of her—inside and out.

  “Mast!”

  “Sweeting.” He gave the reassurance in her ear. “It’s all right.” He kissed the hollow of her neck. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “I—I’m going to explode!”

  “I know.”

  He slipped his mouth to hers, claiming her openly again. Golden surrendered with whole, open passion, sliding her grip around his flexing shoulders as she clamped her legs around his waist. Their tongues swirled and devoured, teased and consummated. Their bodies throbbed and pressed, perspired and melded. The battle that had ignited the sky an hour ago was a dim memory now, lost to the light of inching his aching, straining penis ever closer to the welcoming shaft of her body.

  “Christ.” He grated it against her cheek as a torturous spasm racked his body. He shuddered on a precipice between heaven and hell, struggling not to think of the pounding need in the dark purple knob of his stalk. He pressed it into the first inch of her pussy, again fighting the fucker as it roared at him at once to drive deeper, harder, faster into her soft, incinerating flesh.

  “Open for me, hellion.” He dragged at her thighs and ass, his soul again screaming in victory when he felt the lingering heat from where he’d spanked her. “Open for me now. Yessss….”

  “Yes!”

  She echoed it as his flesh slid into hers, their heat becoming eruption, their passion becoming lovemaking.

  Until she gasped then froze beneath him.

  “It’ll get better in a second, sweeting. I promise.”

  “I—I know,” she replied. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” She tunneled her hand into his hair, pulling his face down for a fervent kiss. “I want to give you pleasure, Mast. More and more pleasure.”

  “Well,” he half-chuckled, half-grated. “Mission achieved, darling.”

  After that, words became extremely hard to think about let alone form. He surged on, seating himself deep within her core. He moaned, seizing her tighter, positioning her body for the fullest, hottest invasion of his. In response, she was more than he ever dreamed—more passion, more sensation, more hot, beautiful demand—squeezing every inch of him, saturating his body with every intoxicating drop that hers had to give.

  “It’s so much,” she sobbed. “Oh my stars…Mast!”

  Her breathy cry was his undoing. He gripped her harder, drove into her farther.

  “I’m—I’m scared,” she confessed. “It’s going to drown me!”

  “No.” His voice was a ragged but gentle whisper. “Let it go, hellion. I’m here.”

  “But—it’s so—”

  “I know.”

  He altered his pace to include enticing circles of movement in addition to his thrusts. It transformed every plunge into her pussy into a taste of perfect sensation, of sexual Nirvana. Every time he lingered a little longer than the last, watching in brutal satisfaction as Golden clearly strained for the edge of her fulfillment. She pitched her hips higher and higher into his thrusts, until her nipples hardened like berries and her body shook like a lush banyan in an oncoming storm.

  In a fevered rush, he slammed his lips over hers. “Now,” he commanded against those beautiful coral planes. “Come for me now, Golden!”

  It flooded every inch of her, seized every muscle, engulfed every thought and feeling in her soul. Golden cried out as sparks of unthinking ecstasy seized her.

  Not a moment later, Mast added a deep, guttural groan as he clutched her and froze, then pushed her back to the pillows as he drove his hot release deep into her body.

  The drums of their passion dance gradually subsided to a soft and easy cadence, but they rocked to the rhythm for a long time, spending the last notes of their passion song in each other’s eyes. That shared gaze spoke thoughts for which there were no words, communicated sensations for which there was no sigh or moan.

  At last, Mast slid down next to her. In truth he was over her, one arm and most of his legs draped possessively across her body. Golden happily took advantage of the situation. She let her hands roam his nakedness, satiating every curiosity she’d harbored about his hard male build for so long.

  The man was an ideal physical representative of his name. She raked his thigh, marveling at the power it had even in rest. She found a faded scar on his knee and wondered how he’d come by it. She memorized the steely cords of his back and the massive vines that lived beneath his shoulders as he pulled her closer. She smiled at that and moved to oblige him, snuggling into his embrace, thinking she’d never felt more complete or free in her life.

  The warm palette of twilight was quickly giving way to the cool ink of night throughout the cabin, but neither moved to turn up the lantern. They lay in the darkness, content with their entwined state, listening to the evening move through the rest of the hurting, but miraculously still floating, Athena. Canvas flapped somewhere then halted as it was lashed down. The distinctive scrape of knife to wood said Rico was hard at work on the madonna figurine he was carving for his mother. A harmonica began a peaceful tune in accompaniment. Robert swore loudly.

  They joined in a quiet laugh over that. Mast shifted so her head fitted into the crook of his neck. He trailed fingers slowly through her hair.

  “I can feel your heartbeat,” she whispered.

  “I can feel yours.” He slid his touch between her breasts. “Here.”

  After another long silence, he drew in a long breath. It was jagged, hesitating.

  Golden froze her hand in the middle of his chest.

  “Countess Arabella Wincroft,” he murmured into the darkness.

  She turned and looked at him, brows knitted. “Who?”

  The moon had risen enough that she could see his throat constrict. “You wanted to know what made me change.”

  “Yes.” She inflicted a hint of question to the word.

  “It
wasn’t a what. It was a who. And her name was Arabella.”

  He took another long breath, as if summoning the courage to continue. “I was—God, how old was I?—well, I was young. And Arabella was…older, but beautiful, sophisticated. She’d been places I’d never heard of. We were from two different worlds, but I thought the physical heat we shared equaled spiritual passion, and it would only be a matter of time before she happily gave up her diamonds and silks to run away with her daring young sea captain.”

  A harsh laugh erupted from deep in his throat. “It took her only three months to show me what a fool I was—with the help of her next rutting toy, of course. I think he was a court page or something. I remember the uniform on the floor of the bedroom when I walked in on them.”

  Golden pressed her chest to his as if to show him how much she felt his pain. “That must have been horrible. I’m—I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t say anything to that in words. After tugging a finger under her chin in order to bring her close for a lingering kiss, he simply tucked her head against his neck again. Golden listened for any more harsh breaths from him. Instead, she heard his heart hammering through his chest. She recognized the cadence at once. It was the same way her own body had shaken so many times in the middle of the night, when there was nothing to protect her from the cold and the dark. From the memories. From the pain.

  She bit her lower lip hard but the terrifying sting clung to her eyes. The desperate oath pounded at the door of her heart. Good little sailors don’t cry. They don’t cry…they don’t cry…

  “Hellion? What is it?”

  She couldn’t reply to his murmur for a very long moment, struggling for right words where there seemed to be none…praying for a way to begin the most difficult sentence of her life.

  “I was telling you the truth yesterday,” she began, “when I said Nirvana saved my life. But it wasn’t because I’d swum out too far or gotten caught in a storm. It was because I’d fallen overboard.”