The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,40

chest too. ‘Is that better?’

She wanted to shake her head, tell him no. That they burned. That he’d set them on fire. But she was only capable of a nod. A very weak nod.

‘Good,’ Rick said with difficulty as her mouth hovered so very close and that line became even hazier.

My pleasure.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lady Mary sat awkwardly on the chair placed in the middle of the sun-drenched deck, conscious of the crew’s barely concealed curiosity.

‘You’ll have to lean back,’ Vasco said from behind her.

Mary turned slightly, catching him in her peripheral vision. ‘Really, I don’t think this is necessary,’ she protested primly, her hands folded in her lap.

Vasco placed his hand on her shoulder, urging her back. ‘The lady wishes to wash her hair. What the lady wants, the lady gets.’

Mary submitted to the pressure of his hand and turned to face the front again. ‘I am perfectly capable of washing my own hair, Captain Ramirez.’

Vasco leaned down, his lips near her ear, inhaling the floral scent of her, so utterly female in this all-male environment. ‘Ah, but where would the fun be in that, Mary?’

He smiled at her slight intake of breath at his familiarity. ‘Undo your hair,’ he ordered in a low whisper. ‘Lie back.’

Mary felt her nipples pebble against the fabric of her chemise at the deep vein of risqué in the low command. Another protest rose to her lips but she stifled it. In her week on the ship she’d learned that the Spanish captain always got what he wanted.

And her hair really did need a wash.

Her fingers trembled as she pulled out the pins that secured her hair in an elaborate up do, one by one. She could hear her own breath loud in her ears as he towered above her. When it was all released she shook it out, then furrowed her fingers into the back of the curly mass to loosen any recalcitrant strands.

She became aware that the low chatter from the crew had stopped and she was the object of their blatant attention. ‘Captain,’ she said, feeling suddenly breathless, ‘your men are staring.’

Vasco couldn’t blame them. Her hair was like a Titan masterpiece, a flaming torch beneath the blazing sun burnishing the highlights into strands of golden thread.

He gently picked up a long spiral curl from her shoulder and pulled it out to its full length before letting it go, watching it recoil against the scarlet fabric of her frock.

‘It’s not often they see a woman of such beauty, madam.’

‘I would prefer they did not,’ she said, reaching for just the right amount of haughty as the low, almost reverent compliment unsettled her.

Vasco preferred they did not as well and he barked some orders at them, more than satisfied with the immediate response.

‘Thank you,’ Mary murmured as a dozen or so crew got back to their jobs.

‘What the lady wants...’

He looked down at her crowning glory and imagined how it would look spread over the milky skin of her breasts. What would she want when he was looking at her like that?

For she would soon be his.

‘Tip your head back.’

The command was betrayed by the roughness of his voice and he expected her to object yet again. When she acquiesced without dissent, her hair falling over the back of the chair in a soft red wave, his anticipation built another notch. It had been many months since he’d last had a woman. And never in all his eight and twenty years had he ever had a creature so stunningly beautiful.

He picked up the bucket and poured the water slowly onto her hair, distributing it evenly, watching as the curls became drenched and the whole glorious mass darkened into a lustrous sheath of the finest satin. The excess pooled around his boots but didn’t register as an errant droplet captured his gaze. It trickled onto her forehead and began a slow descent down her face, running over a closed eyelid, down one creamy cheek until it reached her mouth, where her tongue darted out, sipping it up.

Vasco almost threw the bucket down and lowered his mouth to claim those moist, upturned lips on the spot. The desire to kiss her, to ravage that tempting mouth, had been building for days. But even through the savage haze of lust that had set a raging inferno in his loins he knew that she wasn’t ready. That the dance wasn’t yet complete.

So he picked up the soap and rubbed it over the sodden silky layers. Then he