Annie was watching him with a strange mixture of emotion in her eyes-half amusement, half something indefinable. She was part of a generation that tended to scoff at the kind of gesture Blade had just made. But she was also from a family whose fortunes had been founded in the great days of that now sadly shrunken Royal Navy. Her family home was filled with portraits, models, and books telling of those days and of sons who had «gone down to the sea in ships» flying that same white ensign-and sometimes not returned. She might smile at Blade's nostalgic gesture, but she would never ridicule him for it. And in an odd way she was moved by it.

Whatever combination of emotions he had aroused in her was still working that night, after they had dropped anchor in the sheltered mouth of a small creek and snugged the yacht safely down for the night. Blade was conscious of her brown eyes, more intent on him and wider than ever, as they sat in the cabin, baking the chill out of their bodies with the cabin heater and shoveling in soup, corned beef, and peaches out of cans from the galley lockers.

Champagne glowed in the light of the lanterns and bubbled in plastic cups as she poured it from a chilled bottle, then curled up on the leather-covered couch beside Blade. That couch was the one Annie called her passion pit. As she passed in front of the light, Blade saw the silhouette of her lithe figure through the thin yellow robe that was her only clothing.

She clicked cups with him and drained hers in a single long swallow, then put it on the floor and reached out one long-fingered hand to caress the hard, chiseled line of his jaw. The hand moved down along his neck and under the collar of his shirt, stroking the sinewy muscles of his shoulder. Blade turned, his lips crinkling in a smile, and reached out with his own large left hand to stroke in gentle but rapid succession her cheek, lips, jaw, neck, shoulder-and then the delicate curve of breast that thrust out the light fabric of the gown and the even more delicate bud of the nipple, visible in its center.