"I have a proposal for you, Miss Lynley." Captain Lucius Bramwell's dark eyes glowed and there was a seductive tinge in his smooth voice that I had never heard before. In the past two weeks since embarking from London, we had tea in his quarters each afternoon and he had never been anything else but a gentleman. Now, the sensual glimmer in his raven eyes spread to the rest of his darkly handsome face, the features strong and masculine, as if they'd been chiseled from stone.
I set the delicate china cup on its saucer, lest I spill any of the amber fluid with the sudden trembling of my hands. My heart increased its speed under the layers of bodice and corset of my dress. "I beg your pardon, Captain?" My palms dampened under the lace gloves I wore. "A proposal?"
The captain shifted forward in his seat. He was a mere few feet away on the settee and I could feel an energy, simmering and raw, enclose me as he moved. A lock of his hair, the color of black silk fell over his high forehead, lending him an air of danger. His exterior was that of an English gentleman, commander of the tea clipper that was carrying me to my fiancé in Ceylon. His tailored captain's coat, breeches, and polished boots belied the coiled beastly power raging within him. "Aye," he answered softly. His voice sent tendrils of heat into the bodice of my dress and beyond my control, my nipples hardened against my corset. "I can protect you from entering into an arrangement I know you dread."
My heart pounded. Somehow, the man before me had come to understand that my impending marriage to the man who awaited me in Ceylon was an arrangement for other than love. Of course, this was true. My marriage to Charles Grimley was purely one of social and financial advantage to my father who had not managed the family estate properly in the last ten years. "How did you know?" My voice escaped in a whisper as the heat in my bodice slipped down through my belly, into the crevice between my thighs.
He raked his hair back with one large strong-looking hand and I suppressed the wicked desire to have that same hand on my breast, squeezing and fondling it. "I'm not a stupid man, my dear," he said, his lips tweaking in a smile. "Anyone who gave half a care could see how sad you look, how you imagine a lifetime of enslavement to a passionless cad, which I happen to know Lord Grimley is." He leaned back, studying me, a knowing look playing in the chocolate brown pools of his eyes.
I imagined he knew the sensual effect he was having on me.
"In out afternoon conversations these past two weeks, I've listened to you, to the details of your life you've chosen to reveal," Captain Bramwell went on, "and you spoke of your first husband, God rest his soul, with affection in your voice, but not with passion." He paused and bore his dark gaze into me again. Spikes of heat shot along the slit of my sex. He was making me want him with a force I'd never known before, and I suspected such was his intention.
He moved closer to me, so close, the clean scent of his shaving soap wafted enticingly in the air around us, along with a deeper, more masculine scent that roused me to such a fury, I began to tremble. In my twenty-six years of life, I'd never had a conversation of this nature with a man, and found it releasing something from deep inside me, something a lady of my breeding should never release. I wanted desperately to run my fingertips along his clean-shaven jaw, to feel the light roughness of his whiskers against my tender fingertips.
"So what is your proposal, Captain?" I could barely speak above a whisper for the blood raging in my ears, coursing through my body, engorging my inner sex. My body grew languid and pliant, moisture seeping from between my thighs, preparing me for his possession. At least, that's what I desired.
His sensually masculine lips curved in a wicked grin. "Finally, you ask the right question, my dear," he breathed. His voice had fallen to a husky tenor, his broad chest rising and falling heavily. He leaned in closer, his breath a warm caress on my skin. "My proposal is this. You give yourself to me. Whenever I want you, you let me have you without hesitation, and when we arrive in Ceylon, I'll make certain not to deliver you to Lord Grimley. Not only that, you will be a free woman, free to choose your own course with my assistance to carry it out."
I gasped and stared at him, my mind swirling. My breathing grew shallow and my skin tingled hotly as one emotion after the other ran through me, the foremost being the desire for such freedom. I splayed my hand over my chest. The second most, fear of what he could possibly ask of me in return. "Why?" I breathed. "Why are you saying this to me?"
His grin faded and his eyes darkened, glowing with desire. He reached out and picked up a wisp of my auburn hair, feeling it between his fingertips. Releasing my hair, he brushed the same fingertips across my cheek, over my mouth, the pad of his index finger pushing into the seam of my lips. Before I realized what I was doing, I flickered my tongue on his flesh, tasting its salty roughness.
