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“Because I did not think it was possible,” he said finally, “to feel anything but hatred anymore. It was all I was when I came on board this ship: hatred and revenge. It was pure and undiluted and so strong, I did not think anything that was soft or beautiful could find its way inside me again. Then tonight—” he paused to take a breath— “when I saw Bloodstone, the desire, the need , was still there to kill him. But so was the need to come back here, to feel your arms go around me and your body take me where it’s soft, and beautiful.

” He looked at her squared shoulders and the small white fists clenched by her sides, and his voice fell to a whisper.

“And if I don’t know how to say the right words anymore it’s because—it’s because I never thought I would want to say them again. ”

Beau’s shoulders sagged and the anger drained out of her in a rush. She lifted her hand and dragged it across her cheek, pushing back a strand of wet hair that had fallen over her brow, and when she turned around, her eyes were huge and dark and glistening in the candlelight.

“I hope … you are not trying to tell me …”

“That I love you? I’m afraid I am, mam’selle. And I’m afraid I do. Very much so.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then bowed her head and shook it slightly. “You can’t. You just … can’t.”

He arched a genuinely curious eyebrow. “May I ask why not?”

“Because … it isn’t fair,” she whispered. “How am I supposed to hate you when you tell me something like that?”

He closed the gap between them and framed her face between his hands.

He held her that way for the short breath it took to whisper her name, then his lips were brushing her temple, her eyes, her cheeks, the corner of her mouth.

The lush heat of him drew her inside, and the kiss deepened, became bruising and urgent, claiming her, branding her as his own.

“I do hate you,” she gasped. “I do.”

Her hands went around his shoulders and his arms brought her crushing into his embrace.

Her toes came off the floor as he lifted her and he turned her in a slow circle, once, twice, before he set her down again.

His hands slid up from her waist and she heard the damp rasp of tearing cloth.

It was all she could do not to comment on his impatience as he growled another lame apology, but his mouth was hungry and insistent upon hers and patience of any kind became the farthest thing from her mind.

He stripped off her shirt and stripped off her breeches and his mouth followed his hands everywhere, intent upon inflaming her body with a need as urgent as his own.

Blood was drumming through his temples, through his fingertips, through the raw nerve endings on his skin, but when he stood back to fling off his own clothes, her hands were already there.

She grasped the open neck of his shirt and tore it down the center seam, opening a gash all the way to his waist. She fumbled next with the buckle on his belt and cast it to the floor, then tugged at the shrunken wetness of his hose, the stubborn, clinging barrier of wool that would not budge until she broke free of his mouth and fell to her knees, peeling the recalcitrant garment down his thighs with her.

Her hands circled the iron-hard shaft of his flesh and her tongue slid over him like a hot, wet flame.

Dante swore and pushed his fingers into her hair, trying, in the beginning, to hold her away, to keep her from bringing him out of his skin too soon …

too soon … But her hands stroked his thighs and her lips stroked his flesh and he could only groan a warning as his whole body began to shake, to tremble.

His hips began to buck against the pressure and a raw, ragged gasp broke from his throat.

The heat flooded into his loins, threatening to explode, and a moment before he did, he lifted her roughly into his arms and carried her the few steps to the bed.

“And you accuse me of not playing fair?” he rasped.

Without preamble he buried his mouth between her thighs.

Beau arched up off the bed, but he would have none of it; he kept his hands on her belly and breasts, and his tongue ravishing, plundering, pillaging, until she was hoarse from crying out and weak from the waves of pleasure so relentless and powerful, there was no stopping them, no interrupting them, not even when he rose above her and sank himself into the hot, drenching splendor.

“You need me,” she whispered some time later. “You know you need me.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” he said, his teeth clenched through a snarl.

“You don’t know this Edward Carleill, you don’t know what kind of a helmsman he is.

For that matter you don’t even know the ship, or what she is capable of doing.

You need me, Simon Dante, and by God—” her mouth closed around the dark disc of his nipple and worked it until she heard him gasp out a curse— “I intend to make you admit it.”

“I admit it freely, mam’selle. I need you. I need you.” He twined his fingers through her hair and angled her face up to his so that there was no mistaking his meaning. “I need you. But not on the Scout It’s too dangerous.”

Beau pushed herself upright and saw the quick flexing of muscles across his chest. She was straddling his thighs, he was buried hilt deep inside her, and they had been dueling over the finer points of his leaving the Egret long enough for both of them to be covered in a fine sheen of sweat.

“After all my father and I have done for you, how can you just let Drake send us home with a pat on the head?”

“You’re going home with your holds full of plundered treasure.”

“A pox,” she said, sliding her hips forward, “on plundered treasure.”

He swore again and rolled his head to the side.

If the bed had been an inch wider, he could have easily tossed her over and reversed their positions—and then she would have learned the true meaning of torment.

As it was, she kept her knees locked firmly to his hips, and braced her hands, when he made any attempt to extricate himself, on an overhead beam, pushing down as hard as he pushed up.

Moreover, she was showing remarkable control.

His own fault, he supposed, for bringing her to climax half a dozen times before he found himself splayed and pinned like a starfish out of water.

If it weren’t so unbelievably arousing, he might have become annoyed.

She cupped his chin in her hand and forced him to look at her again. “You said you thought it might have been one of Bloodstone’s men who ambushed you on the Bonaventure tonight.”

“When did I say that? I never said that.”

“Then you were thinking it. And if he would dare to plan an ambush on Drake’s flagship, what will he dare out in the open sea? Or in battle? Or—”

He brought her mouth down hard on his and kissed her so thoroughly, she was gasping when he let her go. Her face was flushed and her eyes were blazing with the effort it was taking to concentrate on something other than the heat beneath her.

“I will watch him very closely,” he vowed .

Panting lightly, Beau combed her fingers through the springy black mat of chest hairs, molding her hands to the shape of his muscles, following each magnificently sculpted band down to his belly.

She rocked her hips back and forth, testing his limits even as she tested her own, and stopped moving a shiver shy of overestimating herself.

“We could unburden some of the gold on the pinnace that is going home anyway,” she said, still trying to find a way around all his manly logic.

“The pinnace is going, the Egret is going, and you are going. And if anyone should be unburdened, mam’selle—” his hands circled her breasts and his thumbs abraded the taut pink nipples— “it should be me, before you cause irreparable damage to the both of us.”

She reached back and let her fingertips trail lightly back and forth along his thighs. She felt him tense and stretch himself farther up inside her, giving one delicious throb when her fingers danced over an area that was already acutely sensitive to every languid roll of her hips.

“So. Now I am a burden,” she murmured.

He sucked in a breath and released it on a soft oath. He grasped her around the waist and forced two swift, hard strokes before she regained control and stopped him.

“You are not a burden,” he promised on a gasp.

“But you might become a dangerous distraction in battle. I might be inclined to worry more about you than the enemy, about what might happen if I took my eyes off you for any length of time. You have seen how fast things can go wrong in battle. You saw how close your father came to losing his other leg. Good God, Isabeau,” he brushed his hands over her breasts, her shoulders, her arms, her legs, “you cannot fault me for wanting to keep you safe and whole.”

She bit back her frustration and leaned determinedly forward, her hands braced on either side of his head, her eyes a mere inch or two from his. “No one had to keep me safe or whole before you came striding into my life, Captain, and look … I am all here.”

His flesh throbbed in its fullness. “So you are.”

“On the other hand, I have seen you in battle and you are reckless. You take unnecessary chances—”

“I swear I will be the soul of discretion.”

“You play careless games with unfamiliar ships.”

“I will stand off a thousand yards and spit my shots harmlessly into the water … is that what you want?”

A shiver sent her focus down to the source of all her trouble: his mouth. “I want you to trust me.”

“I do.”

“Completely.”

“I am trying. Believe me, I am trying. But you are asking me to put aside every law of nature, society, reason, and instinct I have ever known. It might … take a little more time.”

“How much more time?” she demanded.

He looked so deeply into her eyes, she thought she felt him climb inside her. “Will the rest of our lives do, do you suppose?”

Her breath came out in a rush. His hands were on her hips, manipulating them as deviously as his words manipulated her intentions.

Her pleasure started to come in dark, swirling torrents and she could not have stopped it had she even been so foolishly inclined to do so.

She wasn’t, of course. She wasn’t even sure she had won any part of the argument.

Later, she would worry about reclaiming the wit to challenge him again, but for the moment, the dissolving liquid heat of the moment, it was enough to hear him cry out her name and feel the power of his shuddering ecstasy fill the last empty place in her heart.