“Ruby,” he got out, and then she was on her toes, pushing his back to the door and sliding her warm, lush body against his.
He couldn’t help himself. He caught her. He cupped her buttocks in his hands and groaned into her mouth as she kissed him hard. He wanted to say—something—but her lips were parted, her tongue touching the corner of his mouth, and his mind slid blessedly clean of thought in the pure euphoric sensation of her breasts, her tongue, her hair tickling his cheek.
He slid his palm up, relishing the plush swell of her hip, the delicate dip of her lower back. He could smell her—cedar and warm amber, fruit in brandy. Beneath the coarse fabric she wore, he could discern each perfect knob of her spine.
He pulled back. Jesus, his head was swimming already, and not for the first time that day, he had the distinct sensation that he was a single heartbeat from pitching face-first onto the floor, because... because...
BloodyChrist. She was wearing his own third-best shirt, the one that he’d ruined with walnut oil and blue paint. She must have laundered it somehow, but it still bore faint iridescent-blue splotches in various eye-catching locations, along with patches of damp from where she’d pressed herself up against his wet form. The hem hung nearly to her knees, but the shirt was open at the neck and stretched indecently across her breasts. He could see the dark shadowed valley there, and the pale-pink edges of her areolae, and suddenly he could feel his own blood beating in his cock because she was hiswifeand she was wearing hisshirt, and he could have her—just like this, every day, for the rest of his life, he could have her.
The notion felt impossible. He didn’t know how to let himself trust it.
She was gazing at him with an expression of faint concern in her blue-gray eyes. “Malcolm? Are you quite all right?”
“No,” he said honestly, and pulled her by the hand back up against him. He might have worried she’d be cold from all his wet things, except he was fairly certain he was steaming. Pressed up against his body seemed the safest place for her to be. “I think I’ve had an apoplexy.”
“Oh.” She put her lips to his left pectoral muscle, and her mouth moved against wet linen, a sensation that made him shudder. “That sounds dire.”
“I plan to recover.”
“Excellent news.”
“But you’ll have to minister to me in my hour of need.” He slid his hands from her back down to the hem of his shirt, and then up under it, where—sweet heavenly Mary—she had absolutely nothing between the rough-woven linen and her skin. “You can start by wearing this shirt every night for the rest of our natural lives.”
“I suspect I can manage it,” she said, “but—”
Hell. This woman and her damned attentiveness. She’d paused, pulling back. She’d felt the way his heart had tripped over itself at the words. She’d read it right there in his pulse.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh hell,” he said, and put his hand to her cheek. “Pet. It’s not you. It’s only that—for the rest of our lives.” He tried to make himself laugh, as though the words hadn’t gutted him. But he couldn’t—it sounded perilously like weeping instead. “Are you certain you want that? Because I can’t promise you that I’ll fill your life with honor and riches. I can’t even give you a name you can be proud of.”
She shook her head—silly, stubborn pirate queen—and held his gaze. “I am proud,” she said. “I’m already proud. You don’t have to prove anything to me, Malcolm. You have already proven yourself. At the inn, with your hammocks, and at the house, with your crew and your dogs and your pots of flowers. And here on your ship—” Her voice cracked, and suddenly her eyes were full of tears. “Oh, Malcolm. Tell me you didn’t sell theDelphiniumfor me?”
“Only to Oliphant.” His voice was rough. “He let me borrow it for the journey—and for that matter, if we wreck, pet, we’ll be in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“Malcolm,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have.”
Very lightly, he caught her chin in his hand, cradling her face. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Ruby Ballimore. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
There were tears on her cheeks. God—he had not thought to make her weep.
“I want you to stay,” she said. “That’s all I want. Wherever we go, whatever happens next—I want you by my side.”
The ship rose and fell beneath their feet and, carefully, he brushed his thumb across her mouth. Slid his palm down her throat and rested it between her collarbones. “You can still change your mind.”
Her mouth quirked as she regarded him. “I’m not certain that’s true.”
“You can,” he said. “It’s not official yet. We haven’t—” He looked, absurdly, at the hammock behind her, though he certainly wasn’t about to lay his wife for the first time in a tangle of swinging rope.
Her brows arched. “We have, rather.”
He winced. He supposed they had.
“Malcolm,” she said, and she reached up and wrapped her fingers around his. “I don’t want to change my mind.”
“Ah God,” he said, and he couldn’t help himself. He tightened his grip on her hand to pull her closer. “All right. All right, pet. I’m trying to believe you.”
Carefully—almost cautiously, as though she might break in half—he set his mouth to hers. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly. Greedily. And as she pressed herself against him, all luxurious warmth, it struck him that it was not Ruby he believed to be fragile.
