The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,35

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The second Stella strained to see that birthmark she’d been fascinated with since she’d been five years old she knew that happenstance had turned into voyeurism. She forced herself to cease and desist. With one long last lingering look at possibly the most beautiful rear end in the world, certainly in historical romance fiction, she slunk back down below deck, fry pan still in hand.

She should feel guilty; she knew that. If the positions had been reversed she’d have been mortified. But strangely she didn’t. No harm had been committed. He didn’t know that she’d been watching him or that he’d just fulfilled a particularly potent fantasy of hers—so potent she’d put it in a book!—and she certainly wasn’t going to tell him!

But she would use it.

Late at night when a day of crafting sensual tension or a torrid love scene left her restless and achy and the dictates of her body would not be ignored, a naked Rick bathed in shower spray and moonbeams would come in handy.

Very handy indeed.

Vasco examined the milky white perfection of Lady Mary’s hand. He cradled it in the palm of his much bigger, much darker one and admired the contrast for a moment. This was what they’d look like in his bed, their limbs entwined, their stomachs pressed together—coconut and coffee.

He stroked his thumb down the length of her index finger where the long slither of wood had embedded itself and let it drift across her palm. He heard the slight intake of her breath and felt her resistance to his hold.

He looked up into her emerald eyes. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he murmured.

Mary swallowed. They were seated, her knees primly together beneath her skirts, his legs spread wide in that lord-of-all-he-surveyed way of his, bracketing hers. The fabric of his breeches pulled taut across his thighs as he leaned in over her hand, his head perilously close to her cleavage.

‘It really just needs a pair of tweezers,’ she said, trying to pull her hand back. He resisted and she resigned herself to the unsettling heat of his touch.

Vasco smiled at her, her pink mouth a tempting bow before him. ‘I think I can do better than that.’

His voice was low and silky and Mary felt it in places that she’d only recently, thanks to him, become aware of. Her green gaze locked with the startling blue of his as he raised her finger to his mouth and sucked it inside.

Vasco watched surprise pucker her mouth into a cute little O shape as her pupils dilated. Her breathing was loud in the space between them as she lowered her gaze to where his mouth tasted her. He felt a half-hearted attempt to pull away again but countered it by laving her finger with long strokes of his tongue.

Her whimper went straight to his groin.

Mary felt the throb ease as Vasco ministered to her wound in this most unusual fashion. Her gaze returned to his, finding him watching her with something in those mesmerising eyes she couldn’t fathom. She didn’t know what it was but she did know she’d seen it there before.

And it was both dangerous and enticing.

Still holding her gaze, Vasco slowly withdrew his lips, his teeth seeking and finding the rough end of the splinter burrowed in at the tip. He nipped at it until he held it firmly, then slowly eased it out, her glistening finger slipping from his mouth altogether. For a moment he held the liberated splinter between his teeth, then turned his head and spat it on the floor.

He smiled as he turned back to face her. ‘That’s better,’ he murmured.

Mary couldn’t move. Her finger or anything else for that matter. She just sat there, hand still in his, finger moist from his ministrations, staring at his mouth. A mouth that had turned her insides to jelly.

‘Th-thank you,’ she stammered, belatedly remembering her manners.

Vasco lowered his head to her finger again, and pressed a gentle lingering kiss to the exit wound.

He grinned. ‘My pleasure.’

Mary felt a sudden urge to call for smelling salts.

After a restless sleep Stella wasn’t in any hurry to look Rick in the eye for the first time since her voyeurism of last night. She’d gone straight to her quarters after her little peeping Tom episode, thus avoiding him altogether.

But she couldn’t stay in her cabin for ever and it wasn’t as if he knew that she’d spied on him. All she had to do was not blush and stammer