Which was why I had no intention of playing by the rules.
I took another swill of rum and carried it with me to the bed. Stepping into the V of his spread knees, I planted my boots against the insides of his and steeled my nerves.
“So, my stunning, unmanageable, ever-vexing wife,” he murmured, tiptoeing his gaze up my body to meet my eyes. “Shall we get on with it, then?”
I gave a deliberate pause, pretending indecision. “Do I have another option?”
“Hmm.” He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers, his voice folding around me like nightshade—beautiful, exotic, deadly poisonous. “Perhaps I’ll bend you over my knee like a bad little girl and leave us both aching for release.”
“You owe me more than that.”
“Quite so.” His insidious stare taunted me over the fingers he held captive, his breath dipping into the valleys between each knuckle, teasing sensitive skin.
A shudder raked my body, puckering my nipples and unleashing hell on my focus. I ached for his touch, and my senses thickened with that need, sharpening and dulling in waves as I sought to control my reaction to him.
I knew what I needed to do. Anger would guide me. Ruthlessness would protect me. But the woman I’d once been—the wife, the lover, the sensual creature who craved affection—desperately wanted to postpone his pain.
And mine.
This was the last time I would be with my husband. I endeavored to savor it.
Hooking an arm around his broad shoulders, I held the bottle of rum against his back and straddled his lap. Then I pulled my fingers from his grip and allowed myself to touch him.
First, the soft brown hair that swept back from his forehead. Then the tender skin around silver eyes that watched me with unnerving patience. Then the blade-sharp cheekbones. The chiseled mouth that had caused me so much heartache. The wiry stubble that covered his jaw. A man’s jaw. Square. Rough. Warm skin over bones forged from iron. He was majestic. Beastly. Regal. Peerless. Unreasonably handsome.
No one—not man or woman—could look at him without stealing another look, and another, until those glimpses carved themselves into memory and established the benchmark by which all beauty was measured.
“I hate that you’re so good-looking.” I roamed my free hand down his bare chest, marveling at the stone wall of muscle. “Your beauty was our ultimate detriment, you realize.”
His gaze flickered to mine, open and distant at once. “Explain that.”
“Would your lover have given you a second glance, let alone a lengthy affair, if your face looked like uncured leather? If your ribs pressed against skin or your smile bore rotten teeth?”
“I don’t know.” His expression blanked.
“How did you meet her?”
His eyes hardened, warning me not to mention her again. “What about you, Bennett? If I were ugly as a wart, would you have married me?”
“Yes.” I traced the sculpted bow of his upper lip. “Your pretty face has its appeal. But it was the intelligence in your conversations and the intensity of your devotion that ensnared me. When I realized that devotion wasn’t real, your looks held no significance.”
He didn’t need to know how many times tonight I’d acknowledged the effect his physical perfection had on me. It didn’t matter. At the end of this, it would be the vivacious soul of the man that I would mourn the most.
His mouth flattened beneath my finger.
“Don’t look so offended.” I patted his cheek. “I only wonder what might have become of us had you been an average-looking fellow. Would you have been so easily lured from me?”
“I wasn’t easily lured away, and though you are painfully gorgeous to the eye, that wasn’t what enthralled me, either.”
“Is that so?” I asked dryly.
“The first time I saw you, you were standing at the helm of this fifty-gun galleon, tearing into a man three times your size. He took his punishment with nothing but respect in his eyes.” He smiled a reluctant smile. “I’ve watched great men rule great ships, and they don’t hold a fraction of the esteem that you do. You, this tiny ferocious woman, commanding a crew of one-hundred-and-twenty unruly, quarrelsome, lusty-minded men, and none of them so much as touch you. They wouldn’t dare.”
“One of them dared.” I leaned in, hovering a breath away.
“Yes, well, I’ve spent a lifetime taking risks.” He brushed his lips against mine. “But none so satisfying as the one I took with you.”
Then he took again, with his hand in my hair and his tongue in