...Conall rocked back, frowning at Luke as though he were an entirely new and incomprehensible breed of man. The corners of his mouth turned up in a wry smile, and he tugged on a lock of Luke’s hair. “You’re handsome enough, under all those skirts. I suppose you’ve left a string of heartbroken maidens trailing behind you as you go off to woo your princess?”

Luke jerked his head to the side, freeing his hair from Conall’s fingers. “Sorry to disappoint you, but no. My country needs an heir, not a litter of royal bastards.”

“A string of boys, then?” Conall mused.

“No!” Luke cried, appalled. He tried to shove Conall back. “Gods.”

Conall grinned as though Luke’s reaction had revealed something. “Celibate as a monk, are you? What a paragon you are, young princeling.” He leaned close again, though Luke braced his hands on the pirate’s shoulders and tried to hold him back. “Luke, my boy, I think it’s high time you had an indiscretion or two.”

Luke tried to duck beneath the arm Conall had braced against the cabin wall. “What are you going to do, throw me at the first disease-ridden doxy who greets us at the next port-of-call? I am not interested.”

“No.” Conall smiled faintly. He planted a hand on Luke’s chest, pinning him to the wall, bringing his body in closer. “That is not quite what I had in mind.”

Luke froze. It was entirely unfair for a pirate to have a voice as smooth and comforting as warm milk and honey. A man so ruthless and violent ought to have a voice that scraped and grated and was harsh on the ears. But Conall’s made a shiver slide down Luke’s spine.

“I have a confession to make,” Conall breathed, so close that his lips brushed Luke’s cheek as he spoke. Luke shivered again, and forced himself to stay still. “When I said that you were not my type…I’m afraid that I was quite mistaken.”

“And what precisely is your type, Captain?” Luke asked through the tightness in his throat.

“Young.” Conall’s hand slipped to Luke’s side where he’d torn through the bodice, fingers dragging over flesh protected by only the finest of linen. “Innocent.” He ventured beneath its edge. Luke sucked in his breath, his stomach jerking beneath Conall’s touch. “So pretty it hurts.”

“Unwilling?”

Conall laughed quietly. “No. I prefer my bedfellows to want to be there as much as I do.”

Luke curled his fingers around Conall’s wrist and tugged it away. “Then I am not your type at all.”

“Is that what you think?” He pressed closer, and though Luke’s skirts were voluminous, they did little to mask the weight of Conall’s hips against his, the hard press of his legs against Luke’s, or the undeniable evidence that confirmed what Conall thought about Luke. “I doubt you’d take much persuading, young princeling.”

“I should like to see you try,” Luke scoffed, and realized his error a moment too late.

Conall’s mouth covered his the moment he made the challenge. The pirate’s voice may have been smooth and honeyed, but there was nothing gentle about his kiss. It was exactly the way Luke would have expected a pirate to kiss—rough, harsh and impatient, a flurry of gripping hands and coaxing lips and nipping teeth, his hips pressed close and moving in a way that Luke desperately did not want to think about.

There was no fighting Conall’s kiss, no resisting it. The pirate took what he wanted, plundered Luke’s mouth as though it was his right, and there was nothing to do but dig his fingers into Conall’s shoulders and hope to endure.

Conall curled his fingers in Luke’s hair, pulled Luke’s mouth to his and turned Luke’s face up. Rough cambric bunched beneath Luke’s fingers as he gripped, tore, struggled. A needy sound that he had no recollection of making vibrated in his throat.

Conall eased back, put just a breath of space between them. He grinned. Luke closed his eyes.

“Now, princeling,” the pirate murmured, “will you still try and tell me you are uninterested?” He settled the weight of his hips against Luke’s, so that it was not only Conall’s hardness he could feel pressing against his stomach.