The Pirate, the Bride and the Jewel of the Skies Read online

  She wandered the corridors of Cecil’s fine ship, her heart agonizing over every romantic detail. Huge sprays of fresh flowers festooned every imaginable surface. The truncated oval dining table was set for two, with impeccable china and crystal awaiting the new bride and groom and their first meal as a married couple.

  It wasn’t as though she had been in love with Cecil. Personally, she doubted such an idea existed in practice. It seemed a bit too convenient to think that two people could grow so attached to each other that their marriage became more than a social partnership. Still, she had wanted to be a wife. Specifically, she’d wanted to begin the adult stage of her life in earnest.No one took a woman seriously unless she was married.

  Damn Cecil! It was supposed to have been the happiest day of her life! While Cecil had been a bit cold and formal and, if she were to be perfectly blunt, a bit disinterested in her, he would have made an extraordinary husband, she was certain of it. He reminded her so of her father in that respect, and time and again she’d imagined Cecil moving comfortably through her father’s daily routines. She’d even practiced the polite and unobtrusive way she would greet Cecil with a kind word and a brandy when he came in from the cold after riding out to oversee the estate.

  And in his selfishness, he’d ruined everything. Well, she could ruin things, too. After all, if she ran off with a pirate because of his rejection, some of the shame would fall upon his head, as well. He’d led her down this path of utter degradation, hadn’t he? And it had been on his very ship that she’d met the pirate who would be the instrument of her ruination, even if he hadn’t seemed entirely invested in ravishing her.

  Well, he would be, Catherine assured herself. He just needed some…inspiring.

  Chapter Three

  It was nearly four o’clock by the time Valentine had set all of his instruments in place, and at any moment the crew would return and find him. He cursed as a jet of steam shot a gear off the control panel, and he hurried to stopper up the leak, nearly boiling his hand in the process.

  Perhaps he’d bitten off a piece of tough mutton with this ship. Maybe it wasn’t a one-man job. But he didn’t like sharing the spoils with a copilot, and he wasn’t giving up so close to the goal.

  The dainty sound of a feminine throat being cleared tugged at his ear, and he physically swatted it away. “Unless you’re here because you know how to reconfigure a furnace pressure gauge, I suggest you return to your cabin and leave me the hell alone.”

  “I was rather hoping you’d help me, erm… reconfigure… oh, bells and whistles, I have no idea how to seduce a man!” She stamped her foot, and the entire deck rang with the sound.

  Seduce? That sounded troublesome. He spared her the briefest of glances, his gaze shooting directly back to her when his mind had registered what his eyes had seen. There stood the bride, in nothing but her corset and drawers, openwork white stockings tied with pale blue garters just above her knees. Her dark hair, no longer piled atop her head like some massive round pillow, fell around her shoulders in a silken cascade, and her face proved impossibly pretty when washed clean of soot and smudged cosmetics.

  It wasn’t that Valentine was the type of man easily distracted from his work, but he was a man, after all. He dared any pirate, living or dead, to look at the woman before him and remember exactly what it was he was doing the second before.

  The greasy rag he’d jammed into the broken pressure gauge shot free, and the steam came inches from burning off his face. He hurried to stopper up the leak, shouting, “No, no! You have to go! You can’t be in here, this is all sensitive equipment!”

  “Perhaps I could help?” she ventured, moving closer to lean over the instrument panel, her pale breasts positively aquiver against the lace edge of her corset. Poised like trembling beads of oil at the end of a dropper, they seemed ready to fall free at any moment, and he held his breath and silently prayed that they would.

  “You can be of better help to me if you would kindly step away.” He pushed her back with one hand and let go of the rag with the other, the jet unfurling wetly into the humid atmosphere of the cockpit.

  “Aha!” She shouted triumphantly as the white haze clouded the air, but by the time he’d fanned away the obstructing mist, it was too late. She’d ingeniously, stupidly, jammed the handle of the dual lever adapter into the hole. It fit perfectly to plug up the leak. Without the adapter, he couldn’t ignite the primary furnaces.

  “What have you done?” he shouted, just before the sound of violent pounding issued from some far off part of the ship. Angry words, as well, like, “Open up at once!” and “This is the royal air police! We demand to board this vessel!”

  “You sealed the door, didn’t you?” he asked, and the bride nodded mutely, her eyes as big as Jameson Patented Cogs in her sweet face.

  They had to make their escape at once, that was clear. The bride would have to serve as auxiliary lever adapter, whether she wanted to or not. “You! Go to the large red switch at that end of the panel.”

  She didn’t move, but crossed her arms over those magnificent breasts and said, with the oddly erotic voice of a stern nanny, “There isn’t anyone else here, you know. You don’t have to refer to me as ‘you’. And I have a name.”

  “And I would be suitably impressed, I assure you, if I weren’t so pressed for time and a need to keep myself from hanging!” It had seemed a somewhat decent plan, when she’d proposed it, to use her as an assurance against the gallows. Faced with the reality of the air patrol literally knocking on their door, he had little hope such a tactic would work. Despite her overt attempt at seduction, she was clearly a total innocent, whereas he was a scoundrel of the worst type, or at least, he was purported to be. No court would believe he hadn’t lured her into his depraved, piratical lifestyle with promises of romance. It was what he was known for.

  He almost regretted spreading those rumors himself.

  Pouting, she went to the lever and immediately pushed it up, the gears grinding and screeching, echoing through the hollow ship floors with a fearsome shudder.

  “No! Put it back, wait until I say,” he barked, hurrying to the other lever. He released the rudder lock and nodded to her. “Now!”

  They pushed the levers up in unison, and were rewarded by the sound of the primary furnaces firing, the gas bladders inflating, and the shouts of the air patrolmen growing in urgency. Something collided with the passenger hatch, and the terrible hammering left no doubt what was taking place on the dock outside.

  “Now quickly, release the tension anchors!” he shouted, and when she stared back at him in blind panic, he clarified, “The green switch! Release the green switch!”

  With a far off zipping sound the wires that had previously fastened the ship to the dock sucked back into the body of the vessel, and they lurched upward with such force that the bride was knocked off her feet entirely.

  “So sorry, I should have warned you.” His apology sounded just a bit distracted, as he had a tricky bit of navigation ahead of him. The air patrol, crafty as ever, had ordered cloud buster ships into his wake. It would have been a clever move, had it not been so expected. Gaining the helm, he steered the ship with one hand and operated the tilt level to raise the nose. The Jewel was hardly on par with a bulky for-hire ship; it lived up to its reputation by handily soaring above the cloud busters before they could readjust their blockade.

  “Watch out!” the bride screamed, clinging to the instrument panel. Ahead, through the wispy fog of coal smoke and cloud, a hulking freighter had drifted lazily into their path. Easy enough to avoid, for a ship as sleek and powerful as the Jewel. He felt a rush of almost sexual pleasure as they swooped down, plunging toward the earth at a dizzying pace, only to rise again once they’d passed beneath the enormous commercial ship.

  “What if you’d hit it? What if you punctured the bladder and we’re losing gas?” The bride’s voice clearly indicated she would be wringing her hands if she wasn’t holding so tightly to the instrument p
anel.

  “There is an element of danger involved in stealing a ship, I’m sorry if you had overlooked that grim reality.” They ascended rapidly, the pressure in his head growing enormous before he swallowed it away. The patrolmen would not have given up. He needed to find a large enough cloud bank to disguise them, until they did.

  Ahead, a tall column of forbidding gray crackled with deadly energy. That was the place.

  The moment he steered toward it, the bride gripped his arm and screamed, “You’re headed straight into that storm!”

  He deployed the lightning rod with a flick of a switch, and turned on the secondary power source. “Unlike those ancient cloud busters, your former fiance’s ship has a rather ingenious feature. Lightning strikes are collected and funneled into a lightning generator. Not only can we safely fly through that storm, we can fly with it, camouflaged, for as long as we need to evade the authorities.”

  To her credit, she looked suitably impressed, which meant she probably understood what he was talking about. He had to admire a girl who knew her aeronatuics. They breached the high, nearly-black wall of roiling thunderhead and found themselves thoroughly ensconced in the storm’s tremendous power.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she breathed, stepping closer to the panoramic windows. Each pane was held by thick, sturdy brass strips, riveted together into a patchwork pillow of glass. When her toes encountered the sloped edge, she gasped and stepped back. “Is it…is it safe to go closer?”

  “This is the finest made ship in all of England. I wager an elephant could walk on that glass and not strain it.” He watched with amusement as she fought to overcome her fear, sliding first one stockinged foot, then the next, onto the glass, stepping easily into the curve of the window.

  He slowed the propulsion generator and steadied the altimeter, setting the Course Steadier to the helm to prevent them drifting from their cumulonimbus stronghold. He deployed two cloud anchors, magnets that would operate off the current crackling inside the storm to hold them there, and took a long delayed breath of relief.

  At the window, the bride pressed her hands to the glass. “I doubt I would have seen something so amazing on a trip with Cecil.”

  Strolling lazily to join her, Valentine tried to imagine looking at the storm from the inside with eyes that wouldn’t take the sight for granted. The varying shades of gray, lying about in delicate mounds and arches, were like some exotic landscape. Lightning leaped across the chasm, vibrant with the sheer joy of being, white hot, blue, yellow, the intensity varying like steps in a dance.

  He’d grown to know the sky better than he knew the earth; what a thrill for someone who rarely found her feet off solid ground. Her beautiful red lips parted on a soft gasp of delight as a wisp of cloud tangled with an arc of lightning, creating some new and terrifying being that whipped about like the a cobra before evaporating in a cloud of shimmering sparks. The bride’s eyes were wide and glazed with tears shed at the beauty of this unseen world, a world he’d long taken for granted.

  Perhaps if Cecil Butler-Llewellyn had seen this side of his bride, he would not have been so inclined to cast her off.

  Maybe this was the type of woman Valentine needed. Not that he needed a woman. No, Christopher Valentine had been perfectly content to sail the skies alone. In fact, it made more sense to do it that way. He’d never heard of a solitary pirate being gunned down trying to rescue his woman from rival pirates, or the air patrol. He’d never heard of a pirate dying from loneliness, but they certainly seemed to die from love an awful lot. And despite his overly romantic surname, Valentine spent considerably less time seducing women than he did stealing ships, even if he didn’t mind if others fueled his reputation as a rake. Half the women in London who claimed to have been ravaged by him were simply making it up, and they were welcome to. No pirate had ever gained notoriety without a riveting back story.

  She looked over and gave him a tremulous smile. “Why do you ever bother going back to the ground, if there are sights like this to be seen?”

  Answering that question would make him sound like a prat, he realized. But an honest question deserved an honest answer. “I suppose that after a while, I stopped seeing things the way you’re seeing them. Everything began to look the same.”

  “That’s very sad.” The lightning outside reflected in her dark eyes. “I always assumed that pirates must be very jaded. Now that I’ve seen this, I wonder how anyone could become cold to this.”

  “I’m not entirely cold.” Seemingly of its own volition, he raised his hand to touch her hair. She took a breath, her breasts heaving above the top of her corset. Distracted by the beauty of the storm, she must have forgotten her state of undress, because she gasped and covered herself, hugging her arms around her chest.

  “What you must think of me,” she whispered, wetting her lips. “Coming to you like this, as if you would…”

  He wound one dark lock around his finger and let it go, reaching to cup her jaw in his hand. His fingers left a little smudge of grease on her porcelain skin. If he tried to kiss her, she wouldn’t resist him, even now that her modesty had caught up to her. She’d known exactly what she was doing when she’d gotten on the ship. And why shouldn’t she? A grown woman, cruelly denied not only her wedding, but her wedding night. Only a fool would assume that a bride wouldn’t look forward to that as much as the groom did.

  What the hell. It wouldn’t be the worst thing he’d ever done in his pirating days. No one would die. And as long as they drifted with the storm, there was no better place they need sail to. He leaned down, slowly enough that she could back away if she so desired, but the caution proved unnecessary. As he gently brushed his lips against hers, she rose on her tiptoes and fell against him, mouth parting to invite him in.

  A pirate he might be, but only an ill-mannered brute would refuse a lady’s invitation.

  Chapter Four

  It was terribly unfair of Catherine to compare the kiss to the tight, thin-lipped ones she’d received from Cecil. After all, how could Cecil, a man who spent most of his time wandering about fields, shooting defenseless foxes, and berating his valet for laying out the wrong shade of socks, possibly compare to a man who sailed the skies, taking what he wanted and exploring the vastness of the heavenly firmament? But she couldn’t help it. She’d only ever been kissed by Cecil, and he most certainly had never swept his tongue into her mouth, making her breathless and hot. Cecil’s cheek had been smooth and, she suspected, subtly powdered, whereas this pirate was most assuredly rough and stubbly. He put his arms around her back and she nearly swooned; not even when dancing had this much of her person come into direct contact with a man’s body.

  The pirate lifted his head, one eyebrow arched incredulously. “Don’t tell me this is the very first time you’ve been kissed.”

  “It isn’t.” She was too aware of the heat that burned in her face, and the way her breath grated as though she’d been out for a hard ride. “Well, not like that, exactly. Cecil—”

  “Let’s not have talk of him, if he couldn’t have been bothered to kiss you properly,” the pirate scolded. Then he kissed her. Properly.

  Catherine found herself, for a moment, out of her body, viewing every small detail in what could only have been an attempt at her decency to show her how entirely wanton she was. From the way her fingers dug into his shoulders, to the muffled moans deep in her throat, she was the very picture of a harlot. It looked very well on her, indeed.

  To say nothing of how she was dressed, or, rather, undressed in front of him. What on earth had she been thinking? Whatever it was, when his hands slid down her back, under her drawers to cup her buttocks, she was so glad she had thought of it. She gripped the front of his coat, wondering if there was some etiquette for getting a man undressed. Would he prefer to do it himself? He hadn’t brought a valet along. It would have been terribly rude of her not to help, so she pushed his coat up on his shoulders, and he obliged her inexperience by shrugging it off the rest of the
way. All the while, his talented mouth nibbled and sucked and invaded hers, and she was absolutely certain that if he were to touch her anywhere else, she would simply expire of sheer pleasure.

  Then, he did touch her elsewhere, his mouth paying cursory tribute to her throat before moving to the tops of her breasts, and her knees went so weak she thought she might literally die, instead of the figurative expiration she’d imagined. If he noticed the way she swayed on her feet, he didn’t seem inclined to stop in his relentless assault. He ripped open her corset in a shower of hooks, and if he minded the angry red marks it had left on her skin, it certainly did not stop him. He took a nipple into his mouth and twirled his tongue around it, and she really did have to protest. “I’m sorry…but could we do this somewhere more…horizontal?”

  He looked all about then lifted up his discarded coat while she tried not to cover herself. She was certain that confident, well-brought-up harlots did not cover themselves. In one smooth motion, he swept her off her feet and laid her down on the cold glass, thousands of feet above the earth, the heart of a storm below her and above her. The coat, he balled up and put beneath her head. It did little obstruct the view, but it gave her quite enough to clutch at while she lost herself in the dizzying exhilaration of dangling, helpless above the earth and the wet thrill of his mouth as it moved across her belly. He slid her drawers down, down, his chin brushing over the silky curls beneath them. Her heart nearly stopped in her chest. Surely he wouldn’t…

  But he did, and her very first thought, as his mouth descended over her practically throbbing flesh was, My, how very French! Any further consideration of continental behavior fled as soon as his sinuous tongue circled her pearl. Beyond the glass, the lightning flashed, and a sudden, sinful rush of arousal flooded her at the thought of the heavens playing voyeur to such intimate congress. Though her eyes slid shut several times, she forced them to remain open; she did not wish to miss a single moment of the pirate’s dark head between her thighs or the violence of their sheltering cloud. The keenest ache arced through her, like the very lightning all around them, a spark growing hotter and hotter until she ignited, her body curling up, knees clamping on his head as his stubbled chin pricked her and his wicked tongue lapped at her dripping core. She rode the current, bucking her hips against his face as again and again the sensations became too much, too overwhelming.