by Pam Godwin
The wind rose, warm and damp and thick with brine. Below, white foam broke upon the crests of turbulent waves, flinging the spray high over the warship’s bows. Since it had been overcast all day, I’d foregone a hat. My loose curls whipped in the gale, tangling around my arms and slapping my face.
Lightning flashed. Thunder grumbled, and a moment later, great sheets of rain fell from the sky and blew sideways with the gusts. The deck slanted, and I braced against the sudden sway, gripping the rail for support.
So much for Ashley’s courtly manners.
I glanced around and couldn’t see a tarnal thing through the violent shower. To hell with him.
Hurrying to the gangway ladder, my legs absorbed the roll of the deck. I descended quickly and leaped off the last step.
And landed in pure agony.
The pain shot through the sole of my foot and drove me to my knees. I cried out and fell onto my hip, digging through the skirts to locate the source of my anguish.
A small metal spike protruded from the planks. A boot would have absorbed the sharp tapered end. But since I didn’t have shoes, the puncture had gone right through my soft fleshy arch.
I yanked the hem of the skirt away from the river of blood and pushed myself up onto one leg. My eyes closed against the deluge of rain, and my foot slipped, flying out from beneath me.
Strong hands caught my waist from behind. I was lifted, cradled, and carried against a warm chest. That single embrace released all the tension in my body.
I didn’t have to open my eyes to know I’d find the brightest, deepest gulfs of blue fringed in black rain-soaked lashes. But I looked anyway, sighing in appreciation of his masculine beauty.
Ashley didn’t meet my gaze as he strode toward the main hatch. But he pulled me tighter against his chest and tucked my wet head beneath his jaw.
“Send Lieutenant Flemming to my quarters.” His command vaulted over the crash of thunder, scattering men like chain-shot. “And find me the smallest pair of boots on the ship. Make haste!”
My feet were the size of a child’s, so best of luck with that. But the thought warmed me.
Down the companionway and into drier depths, he stopped the first soldier he encountered. “Remove the spike on the upper deck.”
“The spike, my lord? I don’t—”
“Find it!” He spun away, carrying me toward his quarters. “How’s the foot, Goldilocks?”
His endearment replaced my needling pain with unexpected contentment.
“I could’ve limped back to the cabin on my own.” With my arms around his broad shoulders, I pressed my face to his neck, relishing his fresh, earthly scent. “But this way is much more enjoyable.”
“You’re shameless.”
“You’re delicious. Why have you been avoiding me?”
“I don’t meddle with prisoners.”
I touched my lips to the dark hollow between his jaw and cravat. “You like meddling with this one.”
“You’re bleeding.” He arrived at his cabin. “Sergeant.”
“My lord.” Sergeant Smithley opened the door and shut it behind us.
“I’m not bleeding on purpose.” I wriggled my toes, igniting stitches of pain. “I didn’t see the spike and—”
“It wasn’t your fault.” He set me on the dining table. “Lie back.”
Outside the open window, the rain came down hard, flickering with lightning and flooding the planks inside the cabin.
He lifted my legs to the table and wedged a cushion beneath my knees. I lowered to my back, astonished by how he could be so attentive and aloof at the same time.
“Have you been thinking about me?” I brushed wet hair from my face and neck, shivering in the soaked gown.
His gaze narrowed on my prickling flesh. “Shift to your side.”
He rolled me where he wanted, and his fingers tackled the laces on my spine. Moments later, the gown loosened. He dragged it down and off my body.
I bit my lip, captivated. What was motivating him to do this? Was he concerned the wet clothing would ruin the furniture? Or make me ill? Or was something else going on?
His hands returned to my torso. Quick caresses of his fingers here and there straightened Priest’s shirt beneath the stays and down my legs. Once he confirmed the undergarments were dry and in order, he positioned me to lie face-up.
His wet frock, waistcoat, and cravat came off next. Everything went on hooks to dry. Then he strode toward the windows to shut out the rain.
“Have you imagined my lips wrapped around your cock?” I asked softly.
The glass rattled beneath his hand, slamming harder than necessary. He disappeared through the day cabin. The balcony door closed with a whoosh, followed by the sound of his returning footfalls. He didn’t show it in his features, but his steps landed harder, more agitated than usual.
I stifled a smile. “I’m crawling underneath that steel mask of yours and—”
“Stow it, Bennett.”
“I scare you.”
“You pester me.” His stern, sculpted face appeared upside down above mine, his hands braced on either side of my head. “Always talking and making trouble and…” His gaze slid down my body. “Bleeding all over my table. Where the devil is that surgeon?”
“Here, my lord.” Lieutenant Flemming swept in, adjusting his cravat as if it had been haphazardly thrown on.
“She stepped on a spike.” Ashley shifted to stand beside me, resting a proprietary hand on my knee.
Flemming sank into a chair near my feet and opened his medicine chest. As he went to work on my wound, Ashley kept the linen shirt tucked around my legs, protecting my modesty as if I possessed such a quality.
“How’s the pain?” He focused on the doctor wearing a strange expression. Like he was troubled by my injury.
“I’m not going to bleed to death, my lord.”
He didn’t glance at me.
“I don’t understand.” I folded my hands on my midsection, watching him watch Flemming. “You punched my face, tossed me off your balcony, shredded my wrists, bruised my arse and other unmentionables. Yet you’re concerned about a gash on my foot?”
That brought his gaze to mine.
“I control the pain I inflict. I know where and how hard to strike to avoid permanent damage. But this…” He motioned toward my feet. “I can’t control infection should it decide to attack and contaminate your body.”
Flemming kept his gaze on his work, pretending to ignore us.
“I should have located boots for you.” Ashley ran a hand through his wet hair. “I should have ensured the deck was safe.”
“I don’t see how any of that matters,” I muttered. “You intend to see me hang.”
“I intend to see you stand trial.”
Same thing. But arguing the particulars wouldn’t change the outcome.
“The wound is clean, my lord.” Flemming shifted. “But it requires stitches.”
“Do what is needed, Lieutenant.”
With a needle and thread, the doctor began the painful task of closing up the bottom of my foot. The skin was so tender along the arch that every stab made my teeth clamp together. Muscles contracted without my permission, and I couldn’t stop my body from jerking and bowing off the table.
Ashley bent over me, blocking my view of the attacking needle. Blue eyes pinned mine, and his hand sank into my hair, smoothing out the damp coils.
“Lieutenant Flemming revived you the day we pulled you from the sea.” He ran a finger along my temple and down my cheek. “You weren’t breathing.”
I was barely breathing now with his insufferably gorgeous face so close to mine.
“We debated the method of resuscitation.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I decided the best way to stimulate you was by inserting a pair of bellows into your rectum and thereby fumigating your insides with tobacco smoke.”
“Oh, for the love of God.” My entire body cringed.
Blowing smoke up the arse of the suddenly apparently dead
was a treatment I’d seen too many times. It never worked as far as I could tell. So how was I alive?
Ashley drew his bottom lip between his teeth, and that unholy gesture made my stomach dip. Did my eyes deceive me, or was he fighting a smile?
A muffled chuckle drifted from Flemming.
I craned my neck and glimpsed the doctor barely containing his grin.
“You’re jesting?” My mouth dropped open as I looked back at Ashley. “You made an actual joke? To excite laughter?”
“You’re not laughing.”
“I’m too shocked to do anything at the moment.”
“That’s good.”
“Why?”
“All done, my lord.” Flemming stood and gathered his tools. “Keep the foot elevated for a time.”
He finished? I couldn’t believe it. Ashley had deliberately distracted me from the stabbing needle. Why would he do that for someone he was condemning to the gallows? Why engage with me at all?
There was so much more to this man than he allowed to be known.
As Flemming stepped out, Sergeant Smithley set a pair of black boots inside the cabin. They looked small. Perhaps small enough.
The door shut, and it was just Ashley and me, staring at each other.
Ashley touched my chin, closing my still gaping mouth. I expected him to pull away, but his fingers stayed, drifted, inching their way to my lips.
“How was I revived when you pulled me from the sea?” I stared up at him, hypnotized.
“Flemming put his mouth on yours.” He traced the curve of my bottom lip. “He gave you breath until water squirted from your airway.”
“He did what?” I’d never heard of such a thing. “That worked?”
“I should say so.” His gaze lowered, caressed the rise of my breasts above the stays, and returned to my eyes. “I’ve never met anyone so full of life. It pains me to imagine your…vitality being choked from your body.”
A flutter swarmed my belly as the tips of his fingers touched my throat, tracing my pulse. Choking was exactly how this would end if he continued on his path. But for the first time, I glimpsed a genuine struggle in him, an inner battle that gouged creases into his serious brow.
While his king’s desires came before his own, he didn’t want to deliver me to England. Deep down, he knew I would be convicted and hanged.
Choosing a pirate over his country was nowhere near a possibility in his mind. But the situation unsettled him. He liked having me around, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.
He lifted me into his arms and lowered us into a nearby chair, arranging me sideways on his lap with my legs propped on the table.
“Relax.” He touched his lips to my temple.
I hadn’t realized I’d tensed. It seemed my body didn’t trust him. As it shouldn’t.
Releasing a sluggish breath, I ordered my muscles to loosen one by one. Softly, gently, I sank into the cradle of his brawny frame and dropped my head onto his shoulder.
He stretched out his legs and deepened his recline, letting the cadence of the storm lull us into a profound sense of serenity. Now and then, he indulged in his need to untangle my curls—unraveling the wet strands with patient fingers, smoothing out the tresses from roots to ends, and breathing rhythmically with the movement of his hand.
With each stroke, I snuggled closer until my lips rested against the hard lines of his jaw. He had the smoothest skin I’d ever felt on a man, and he smelled delightful, so clean and virile. I couldn’t resist the pull to nuzzle him.
He allowed the intimacy and played in it, too, brushing his mouth across my cheek and against the ticklish place beneath my ear. Off and on, he dropped tender kisses along the frame of my face, seemingly unaware of his effect on me as he absently petted my hair and stared off into the rain.
His affection was neither lust-filled nor expectant. He didn’t grab me or grope me or hurry this along to some indecent end. He was giving me a connection, a closeness that was bigger, stronger than bedplay.
We were meaningful together. Intricate. An unlikely bond formed in the dwelling place of souls.
The moment felt unreal, like a dream between time and space, with no boundaries, no titles. We weren’t enemies in this sphere. We weren’t captor and captive or lord and pirate.
We were but two people who came from and belonged to the sea, reaching for each other because it felt right. It felt natural.
In the security of his arms, I floated into slumber, waking periodically to his lips grazing some part of my face, his breath rustling my hair, or his hands roaming the shape of my hip.
As the rain tapered off, I woke fully and found him watching me with an engrossed expression.
“What is it?” I tried to sit up.
The hand in my hair brought me to a halt and held me there.
“You’re fragile when you let your guard down.” His voice rumbled, setting my chest aflutter. “This spot… Just here.” He touched the curve between my neck and shoulder. “It’s so delicate and feminine. Like the softest silk.” He caressed the dip again, making me twitch. “You’re ticklish. Even when you sleep. It’s…remarkable.”
I stared up at his beautiful, impassive face where excellent breeding met intelligence and sophistication. Carved and polished from head to toe, he was a nobleman through and through. And a damned good commodore, too, with eyes that missed nothing and an iron will that never bent.
What did he want with me in his arms? What did I want beyond my freedom?
There were no painless answers to those questions.
With each passing second, my intent to win his love felt less like a devised plan and more like a fate I couldn’t stop or control. I needed his affection. Not to use as a means to escape.
I didn’t want to escape Ashley Cutler. I didn’t want to betray him or lose him in any capacity. The greedy, unreasonable truth was I wished to keep him and hold him just like this every night.
What did that mean for Priest?
Did it matter? Priest irreparably hurt me, and Ashley was betrothed. In the end, I would end up alone. Or hanged.
Which was why I needed to stick to the plan. Love hurt. It betrayed and ruined. My plan was safe. It protected me, not Ashley or Priest. It ensured I wouldn’t be the one destroyed in the end.
Not only that, Priest was on my tail right now, and he wouldn’t be receptive to discovering I’d fallen in love with another man.
Had I fallen?
No, not quite. But as our gazes melded, those eyes held mine with an intensity that filled a terrible void inside me. The way he looked at me made me feel special, desired, almost loved.
I was doomed.
My need for this, for the sort of all-consuming love I could have with Ashley… It was greater than my survival. It was more essential than life. More significant than death. It was immutable. Immortal. Beyond all doubt and faith.
I needed him, plain and simple. Which meant I could never hurt him. I could never let Priest hurt him.
As I slowly came to terms with this, I was fantastically, undeniably terrified out of my mind.
I tried to straighten my twisting thoughts, tried to curve my lips into a casual smile, but nothing worked right. Not my brain. Not my mouth. I was cracking. Weakening. Losing my sanity.
We sat motionless, bodies entangled, gazes locked, sequestered together in the fading light, for no other reason than because we fit so perfectly this way.
It was too real. I wanted this too badly.
Doomed.
I looked away, but his stare stayed with me. His eye contact… Good God, it was more intimate and private than anything I’d ever experienced. Staring at him felt like making love, only closer, deeper, farther reaching.
What was this sorcery?
“Bennett.” His accent caressed. A delicious torment. Sensual. Excruciating.
I closed my eyes, trying in vain to draw air. The need he roused in me was so beautiful and frightening it was all I could do not to weep.
I felt it rising—the scalding emotion, the swelling in my throat, the wetness behind my eyelids.
Warm hands framed my face. “Look at me.”
I placed a palm on his chest to push him away. He covered my touch, flattening it to flexed muscle. His heart hammered, strong and fast, and mine tripped over itself to keep up.
Opening my eyes, I found his lips an inch away, the tantalizing seam parting, drifting closer. “What are you—?”
“Your kiss, madam.” He planted it on me, buried it in me, deep and devastating, with a pledge to grow.
His mouth imparted so much passion and potency it stunned my senses. The sensual glide of his lips, the twist of his fingers in my hair, the roll of his tongue against mine—the execution put me to death and brought me back to life.
My chest heaved with the force of my gasps, threatening to tip my breasts over the stays. Then my legs were shifting, readjusting with the help of his hands. We moved together, bringing our bodies as close as possible on the chair.
I settled onto his hard, powerful thighs, straddling his hips—all of which gave his mouth better access to mine.
With my fingers in his hair, and his arms holding me tight, he kissed me through vast, unexplored eternities.
I poured everything into the union. Every part of me filling with heat and giving it back to him ten-fold. He mated with my mouth as though the connection was all he wanted, all he needed. I sank into his passion, welcoming his hard body between my legs as he rotated his hips and ground against my aching.
He felt wonderful, so solid and male and him, the man I’d slept next to for a week. I flicked my tongue against his, whirling, teasing, tasting the sky and the sea and every desire between.
“Touch me.” He panted against my mouth, his hand sliding down the front of my stays.
His lips feasted, and his palm covered my breast, encouraging me to explore.
I didn’t slow at setting my fingers upon the muscled meat of his abdomen, but glided my touch downward, reaching into the space between our spread legs. There, I clutched his throbbing response.
“Christ.” His sharp grunt fanned against my lips, and his hand tightened on my breast.
Holy mother, he was enormous. I traced the swollen outline through his breeches, following the hard curve along his thigh. The length of him stretched from my wrist to my fingertips and farther still. He was thick, too. Thick enough to feel for days after he impaled it.