Free Hot Winds From Bombay by Becky Lee Weyrich Page B

eternities—Persia knew.
    “I love you, Zack,” she whispered. Her heart exalted in hearing the truth spoken aloud.
    He made no answer but captured her lips once more in a fever of passion and need. She answered him in kind, making no move to escape from his strong grasp.
    “Ahem!”
    The sound from above was startlingly loud. They wrenched apart, and Persia felt her face burning along with the rest of her body.
    An uncomfortable silence followed. Zack shuffled his feet. Persia smoothed her damp palms down over the front of her gown. He nodded toward the stairs.
    “Well, good night, Miss Persia, Captain.” Zack offered a nervous salute to the man standing at the top of the stairs, arms crossed over his chest and side whiskers twitching, but not in amusement. “I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow?” Caught, he was making sure his invitation still held.
    “Yes, tomorrow at one, Mr. Hazzard.”
    Persia watched Zack disappear through the door. The last thing she wanted to have to do was meet her father face to face. Taking her time in turning, she steeled herself for the well-deserved lecture to come. But when she looked up, the captain was gone. He could no more deal with chastising her over a kiss than she could deal with his disapproval.
    Jefferd’s Tavern was only a brisk walk away from the Whiddington house. Zack welcomed the cold bite of the air and the silent solitude of midnight. He needed to clear his head and his senses. He needed to think. What the devil had he gotten himself into?
    “Never let a sailor loose ashore,” he muttered to himself. “He’s only safe with the sky overhead and the sea beneath his feet. Chee-rist, but I’m in the soup!”
    He trudged on, thinking of Persia—how sweet and willing and innocent her kisses were. But that was not to say they weren’t tempting. And it could get mighty dangerous for a man when he felt as tempted as Zack did at the moment. Maybe Jehu was right. Maybe a man needed to stay ashore with one woman all the time. At least then, when you itched you could scratch! And Zachariah was itching right now as he had never itched before.
    He wondered what tomorrow would bring. It was bound to be interesting with both sisters there.
    That Europa was something. Even as he’d been hauling her out of the icy water—both of them freezing half to death—he’d felt her turn her body in his arms so that her breasts snuggled right up to his chest, begging to be fondled. But damn, his hands had been too numb with the cold to feel a thing. Still, he’d hardly needed the fire in the Whiddington parlor to warm him up! Her kiss might have been brief, but it promised a world of passion. He’d met her kind before—”Venus flowers,” he called them. They’d attract a man with their sweetness, only to devour him when he got too close. Yes, he had Miss Europa pegged all right. Still, there wasn’t a man alive who could resist such a woman’s sensuous invitation.
    But Persia, now there was another matter. The girl— woman, he corrected in his mind, for she was all of that—the woman had no guile about her. She was honest and open with her feelings, almost too open. Jesus, hadn’t her mother taught her anything about men? Didn’t she know from observing Europa that a woman was supposed to cozy up to a fellow, keep him dangling, play the game by the rules? He’d never met a woman who just came right out with it: “I love you, Zack!” No pretty this and that… no stalling, no teasing, no flattering, no flaunting. Just the words, plain and simple and honest and terrifying!
    Christ, it was enough to scare a man out of his wits!
    He shook his head and jammed his hands farther down into his pockets. No, sir, he’d never met one like her!
    Suddenly, he came to a skidding stop on the icy street, a memory bright in his thoughts. He had met another, yes indeed. Mahianna. Except that her coloring was different and she wore more clothes, Persia could be his native lover all over