The Tiger's Bride. Merline Lovelace

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      She jerked her head away. “I do wish you would cease this ridiculous behavior. You must know that I only came here because you wouldn’t answer my summons to the Mission House.”

      “At this point, Miss Abernathy, I don’t particularly care why you came.”

      She put up both hands to push at his chest.

      Once, James Kerrick had possessed a conscience that might have made him draw back at this point. But he’d long since put behind him the ideals of his youth where women were concerned. Moreover, he’d learned to read their contradictory signals all too well. A token resistance. A flutter of lashes over eyes that affirmed what soft lips denied. A trembling, breathless sigh that signaled surrender. All sent their own silent message.

      Jamie hid a smile. The missionary’s daughter was most definitely trembling. He could feel the vibrations from his chest all the way down to his toes. With an ease born of long practice, he bent and captured her mouth with his.

      She tasted like sweet, warm honey, he thought in some surprise, before a combination of wine and reckless hunger banished all rational thought. Wrapping an arm around her waist, Jamie dragged her up against his chest. Her lush breasts pressed into his shirt. Her breath puffed out with a little sound that might have been a gasp or a sigh. With smug male assurance, Jamie decided it was a sigh.

      He widened his stance, bending her back over his arm so that she had to cling to him to keep from tumbling onto the bed. A wild, pounding need rose in him, made fiercer by the way she twisted against the hardening bulge in his trousers. With the unerring skill of an experienced and generally considerate rake, Jamie rubbed his upper body against hers. He knew that the pleasure shooting through him from the friction would generate a similar sensation in the sensitive tips of her breasts.

      It did.

      Jamie felt hard little pebbles rise beneath her blue cotton robe. His muscles quivered with the need to lay the woman on the bed, to tug off her tunic and bare those rigid points to his touch and his taste.

      As he lifted his head and stared down at her red, swollen lips, a faint echo of a long-forgotten code of honor sounded in the recesses of his mind. Jamie ignored it without any difficulty. Releasing her, he stepped back to rid himself of his shirt.

      “If you’re quite finished, Lord Straithe, I wish you would compose yourself so we may proceed with the matter that brought me here.”

      Jamie’s hand stilled on the ties of his shirt. He stared at her, sure that the brisk, no-nonsense voice couldn’t have come from those well-kissed lips.

      It had. With an audible sniff, she tugged at the hem of her blue robe and settled it firmly around her hips.

      “Really, my lord, you’ve wasted far too much of my time with this foolish attempt to scare me off.”

      It took a moment for Jamie to remember that scaring this female off had been his original intention when he swept her into his arms a few moments ago. Somehow he’d forgotten that in the course of discovering what a delectable armful she was.

      “Do sit down.”

      “See here, Miss Ab—”

      “At once, if you please!”

      Jamie blinked. After years of captaining a crew composed of the most rowdy riffraff ever collected on one ship, he was more accustomed to giving commands than to being commanded. By anyone. That the determined Miss Abernathy would stand there and issue him orders in that schoolmarmish tone of voice astounded him. His temples pounding in earnest now, his blood still hot and heavy, Jamie debated whether to comply with her extraordinary order or toss the contrary female onto her back.

      Sarah hid tightly clenched fists in the folds of her voluminous sleeves, praying that the black-haired rogue towering over her couldn’t see what effort it cost her to inject just that combination of exasperation and disapproval into her voice. Not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash did she betray the fact that his kiss had sent a rush of heat to every one of her extremities.

      To her infinite relief—and secret, shameful disappointment—Straithe slowly lowered his long frame to the edge of the bed. The rope springs creaked and groaned under his weight.

      “All right, Miss Abernathy, I’m sitting.”

      Sarah let out a long, shallow breath. It still trembled on her lips when Straithe smiled at her evilly.

      “In approximately ten seconds, however, I’m going to be lying. Unless you wish to lie beside me, or under me, you’d best state your business and be gone in exactly that amount of time.”

      “Ten seconds is quite enough,” she responded crisply, and plunged into the purpose of her clandestine visit. “I know that you plan to run cargo up the China coast in violation of both the East India Company’s restrictions and the Emperor’s edicts. I wish to go with you.”

      He stared at her as though she’d suddenly sprouted horns.

      “It’s a matter of some urgency, Lord Straithe. My father made a secret visit to the mandarin who governs Fukien. We must find him and bring him home immediately.”

      His answer, short and succinct, brought Sarah’s chin up.

      “Don’t be vulgar,” she admonished tartly.

      “I’m going to be more than vulgar, Miss Abernathy,” he responded, rising slowly. “I’m going to—”

      “In exchange for your assistance,” she interrupted, “I’ll secure you the services of a pilot.”

      That caught his attention, she saw with grim satisfaction. He froze just a few paces from her, his blue eyes narrowing. For the first time since she’d entered this chamber, Sarah felt a measure of her customary confidence return.

      “How the devil did you know I needed a pilot?”

      “I do wish you would refrain from using such language in my presence.”

      A low, strangled sound rose in his throat.

      “Really, Lord Straithe, you needn’t growl at me like that. I’d like to conduct our business with some semblance of dignity.”

      “We have no business.”

      “Of course we do. My sources tell me that you’ve not been able to hire the services of a pilot to land your goods.” Her sources being Cook’s redoubtable and quite extensive network of blood relatives, in-laws and compatriots, of course. “Nor will you be able to do so.”

      “It that so?”

      “Yes, that’s so. You should know, sir, that word of your past smuggling activities has reached even the Celestial City. The Emperor sent a message sealed with his own personal chop to His Excellency, Lord Wu Ping-chien. He wants a halt to all illegal trading in general, and yours in particular. The decree has circulated throughout Mong Ha that anyone who guides the Phoenix to any port other than Canton will lose his head.”

      Jamie stared down at her, his mind working furiously. So that was why he’d been kept dangling for the past three days. Why the mandarin in charge of ports had smiled and nodded СКАЧАТЬ