" Well then. Let us begin with essentials. Are you free to marry me?” He exhaled slowly, in a pointed effort not to hold his breath.
“Of course. When I come of age, that is.”
“Tell me your birthday.”
She smiled. “The first of February.”
“It will be our wedding day.” He traced the shape of the birthmark on her hip. “Very convenient for me, for your birthday and our anniversary to coincide. I’ll be more likely to remember both.”
“I wish you would stop touching me there.”
“Do you? Why?”
“Because it is ugly. I hate it.”
He tilted his head, surprised. “I quite adore it. It reminds me that you are imperfectly perfect and entirely mine.” He slid down her body and bent to kiss the mark to prove the point. “There’s a little thrill in knowing no one else has seen it.”
“No other man, you mean.” He kissed her there again, this time tracing the shape with his tongue. She squirmed and laughed. “When I was a child, I would scrub at it in the bath. My nursemaid used to tell me, God gives children birthmarks so they won’t get lost.” Her mouth curled in a bittersweet smile. “Yet here I am, adrift on the ocean on the other side of the world. Don’t they call that irony?”
“I believe they call it Providence.” He tightened his hands over her waist. “You’re here, and I’ve found you. And I take pains not to lose what’s mine.”
He kissed her hip again, then slid his mouth toward her center as he settled between her thighs.
“Gray,” she protested through a sigh of pleasure. “It’s late. We must rise.”
“I assure you, I’ve risen.”
“I’ve work to do.” She writhed in his grip. “The men will be wanting their breakfast.”
“They’ll wait until the captain has finished his.”
“Gray!” She gave a gasp of shock, then one of pleasure. “What a scoundrel you are.”
He came to his knees and lifted her hips, sinking into her with a low groan. “Sweet,” he breathed as she began to move with him, “you would not have me any other way. "
― Tessa Dare , Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2)