Chapter Sixteen

P ENELOPE HELPED HER husband rise from the chair and then she led him into the duchess's bedchamber. She placed the candle she carried on the bedside table and then looked up into his eyes.

She'd never asked her husband to lie with her.

She didn't even know how.

She reached up and removed the pins from her hair.

The first—her bun grew heavy—the second, a lock drifted down onto her neck—the third—the knot unraveled, and her hair fell down onto her back.

She put the three pins next to the candle and withdrew the rest. Then, she sat down on the bed.

Wariness remained within her husband's gaze.

He'd allowed her to press a sharpened knife to his throat and still he held some part of himself apart. Now she trembled. He'd come halfway across the bridge between them.

What if halfway was as far as he could go?

"I am not the same," he said.

She placed the final pins on the bed stand. Holding his gaze, she removed the knives and sheathes from her thighs.

"I asked you before who you were. And though I know you are my husband,"—the essence of what she understood to be love—"I will ask you again, who are you, really?"

He swallowed. "I am not fully yours."

Chev. Dear Chev. "Nothing of you is mine. Just as nothing of me is yours. " She smoothed the back of her hand down his cheek. "People are not possessions. And marriage is but an agreement to face the world together—a pact to search for the ours. You promised"—mortifyingly, her voice shook—"we'd invent a new world."

"Nothing could be better in this world than when two minds, husband and wife, are united in harmony and spirit, they bring grief to their enemies and happiness to their friends," he quoted.

She sniffed and then nodded.

"Not my own words, I'm afraid."

"They belong to Homer. The Odyssey."

"Yes." He knelt down, placing his forehead against her knees.

His damp hair fell around her thighs. Emotion rushed into her throat, clogging against a thickened knot that thieved her breath.

His shoulders shook with a sob.

"Stop," she whispered.

He gripped the back of her calf. And threw his injured arm next to her thigh. He turned his head to the side, struggling to staunch his tears.

She touched his face.

One moment he was Chev. The next a stranger.

His grip simultaneously kept her close and pushed her away.

She ran her finger over the scar on his wrist. He flinched.

What had happened to her husband was deeper than the physical scars he bore.

Too deep to heal?

She refused the thought.

Disloyal at best. Moot, in any case.

She'd hadn't given up on him when he was lost. She certainly would not give up now.

"Cheverley," she whispered.

He glanced up, face stilled, harsh and jagged, his gaze, still raw with the kind of hunger that had driven humans to hunt animals that could devour them whole. If any other man had looked at Penelope with an equal amount of proprietorial desire, she would have sunk a dagger into his throat.

She loosened the string at her throat, and the fabric fell away from her shoulders, catching between her body and the bed.

How much of him had the pirate robbed?

And, to reclaim her husband, how much was she willing to risk?

Everything.

She lifted her hand. He winced before she touched him.

Very well, then.

She folded her hands in her lap.

"You are beautiful." His face twisted. "Soft."

"Soft as a lioness," she replied. "And just as willing to defend her pride."

Her words earned...if not a smile, at least a gentling of his features.

"Lioness," he repeated.

"Will you remove your shirt?" she asked.

He did. His chest was a solid wall of muscle.

"I want to be close to you, Chev. What would you prefer?"

"What I prefer..."

He shook his head no. His face hardened again.

He made a sound of frustration. Latent power rippled through his muscles. He could crush her if he wished.

The Unknown—the unknowable slinked through her like a demon, weaving a trail of fear in the pit of her stomach.

Any thought she had, he seemed to know. She veiled her eyes with her lids.

There were pieces of him she did not know, might never know. She'd asked for his trust. And the cost had been higher than she'd expected.

The question was, did the man she knew and understood and loved still exist beneath all this rough water?

She'd made choices before and she would make choices again, none would matter as much as the choice that she made in this moment.

Could she be vulnerable?

Could she open to him now?

"Penelope." He reached up and gripped the back of her neck, his fingers, so powerful, she couldn't move her face.

She wet her lips and forced herself to be pliant.

This is a dance. I'll move as he moves. They'd mirror one another—opposite but moving as one to the same tempo.

"Trust for trust," she said.

Roughly, his mouth met hers.

His kiss ravaged—her lips would be raw. The rush that shot through her limbs was unlike any she felt before. He pushed forward in a kind of prowl until she lay back on the bed. Still they kissed—one long, unbroken kiss, strong enough to stoke a fire that could melt away the years.

She thrilled to his muscle, to his arousal, to his very scent.

A thrill so vibrant, the tingle could have been fear.

This was the man who'd ridden with her through the moonlight countless times. The man who'd danced with her in the dark. The man she'd trusted to lead her to worlds she had never known before.

To create new ones for them to explore.

No matter what transpired, he was that same man.

And she was that same girl.

He pulled away, panting. She savored the sweet ache in her lips.

"Husband," she said with a sigh.

~~~

Husband.

Not Captain. Not Chev, nor Cheverley. But husband.

Something he'd been only to her. Always.

"Penelope..." Her name was a gruffy query. A plea. "Wife."

He wanted her.

The evidence of his desire pulsed thick, hard, and aching against her stomach. He savored the pressure, the tense, heavy soreness.

He denied relief, battling the feeling he must take her or die.

He would not roughly thieve what she willingly offered.

She wove her hands into his hair, pulling the strands back into a plait so they hung down his back. He wanted this. He wanted to sink inside Penelope's body.

Yet couldn't bear her touch.

He held himself up by his elbow and tore her hands from his back and pinned them over her head. She whimpered in protest.

His humiliating memories had no place here—but they would not be denied. They haunted like a question. Like a challenge.

He squeezed his eyes closed and drew back. The pirate and her evil whispers closed in.

Tu n'es rien. You are nothing. Je te possède maintenant en entier. I own every part of you, now.

With a low-pitched growl he drove Penelope back against the bed. Covering her with his body as if he could shelter them both.

Anger rioted though his desire.

"Chev—"

"No! Just let me—" Let him what?

Ravage her as he'd been ravaged? Restrain her from touching him while he indulged the restless, demanding ache in his cock?

Be no better than the pirate?

"Touch me," she offered, "if you cannot allow me to touch you."

He released her wrists and crudely went for her breast. He felt her shock skitter through her body. In her shiver, he knew she resisted recoil.

He dropped to his other elbow and rested his forehead against her chin.

"No." She gripped his hips, drawing his body fully onto the bed between her thighs. She threaded her hand through his and placed it back against her breast.

Beats of pain drummed in Chev's elbow. He didn't mind the stabs. He was ashamed. He'd been rough. Which was wrong.

But what the devil was right?

"I don't want to take you in anger." He could barely speak. His words burned in his eyes, on his tongue, in his lips.

"You are not taking anything. I give what I give in love. I love you, Chev. I always have. I always will."

Love.

A feeling like rain. Like a gentle breeze rising from dead calm. Like the soft relief of twilight. Like the circles she drew against his spine.

Penelope .

He listened for her breath. In. Out. The rioting anger quieted.

He opened his eyes and gazed down into her hers—half frightened, half longing, all trust. And luminous, even in the early afternoon light.

Sweet Pen .

Her gaze lulled him like a ship's rocking.

"My body knew you at once"—she spoke mildly, tenderly, as if he had not twisted her wrists above her head—"though my mind refused to believe."

He concentrated on her melodic tone. "You—you wanted me?"

"Did you not know?"

He'd known. Or, at least he had hoped...

"I blushed," she said.

Blushed, yes. She had. And often.

Such were the signs of innocence. A language he could no longer speak.

But a language he could, perhaps, still understand.

"I love you, too." He touched his forehead to hers.

He could lie with his wife. He would lie with her.

He braced his knee, relieving her of some of his weight. Every muscle in his body screamed, tensed, repelled. She stilled. Frozen. Like a hunted rabbit in brush.

Or a woman seeped in pity.

Then, she circled her fingers down his spine.

He felt like an impostor.

"Cheverley," she whispered, guiding him back.

Chev reached behind him and caught up her hand in his. Her fingers were so long, so thin, so delicate. Why did he want to twist her fingers above her head? Pin them painfully while he rode her hard? He hated the very idea of her being helpless.

He lifted her fingers to his lips, greeting each one, learning their shape with his lips.

Gentle fingers. Penelope's fingers.

She threaded her other hand through his hair, light and yet precise, as if she were weaving and then her fingers came to rest on the back of his neck.

His shoulder muscles twitched, waking to tenderness he'd been denied. Want flickered in his belly, feeling almost like hope.

Penelope...Penelope...Penelope...

Silently, he chanted her name as if it were a torch that could keep the fear at bay.

No one had a touch like hers, so why was he frozen? Why did he wish to roar and, at the same time, to weep?

"I saw you," she said, with tears shining in her eyes, "and all my words fell away."

She'd said the same on the night they'd met. The young woman within her reached in and touched the boy within him.

The boy within him responded.

"I saw you, and you became the embodiment of words I never understood."

"What words?" she asked

"Love." He kissed her forehead. His inhale wrecked his body. Two people—children really. Brave-hearted. Foolish. And somehow wise. "I'd never seen anything so exquisite. Not then. Not now. Not ever."

She soothed his neck with firm even strokes.

"This time, I choose you," she said. "If you'll have me."

At stake, his marriage. His future. His heart.

"Yes," he replied. "And I choose you."

Penelope .

A benediction.

He bent his head, kissing the very edge of her cheekbone, just beneath her eyes. He tasted the salt trail of the tears she'd wept.

Penelope .

He kissed the outer corner of her eye. Her lashes feathered against his skin. Light and feminine. His lips found her brow, followed its curve. Then, he kissed the center of her forehead.

Penelope .

Yearning dipped low in his belly. The kind of yearning that made him believe he would one day be whole.

Penelope .

She glistened with need that had sweat through her pores.

Penelope .

He moved off the bed, allowing the towel to fall. He was naked. Erect. She wet her lips. Her gaze glazed with heat.

Penelope .

"Take off your shift."

She stood, too. She withdrew her arms from her shift and then let it drop.

Nothing remained between them. Nothing but the scars he could ignore.

Her nipples peaked enticingly. He accepted the invitation.

With a greedy tongue he laved her breast, delighting in her involuntary moan. He did not notice that her hands had crept back into his hair, not until her fingers tightened into fists and she whimpered.

A sense of ascendency surged—mutual ascendency.

He walked her back against the bed. She sank down and parted her legs.

Penelope .

His rough, muscled thighs contrasted against her pale ones. He held his cock, positioning it between her legs. He entered her slowly, inch by inch—stopping the sweet torture only when fully inside.

Penelope .

She hooked her legs around his back; he bent forward, claiming her proffered lips in a kiss he'd never forget.

She swathed him with her body, wrapping him up, arms, legs, heat, and heart.

Penelope .

He opened his eyes, synchronizing his breath with hers with every captivating thrust.

Only the two of them existed. Now. Forever.

Her thighs trembled around his waist, her lips parted, her thighs quivered, and she clenched around him with a vital cry.

He closed his eyes, covered her mouth with his and kissed her as he broke open, releasing, spilling into her body as if it were the very first time.