“Mmmm … delicious,” she said wickedly.
Rory however was nowhere to be found that night. She fell asleep on the window seat waiting for him and didn’t awaken until the small hours of the night. When at last she heard him, his movements were so furtive she became suspicious. She pretended sleep until he changed into a robe and stretched himself out full length on the floor.
In less than an hour, light from the dawn crept into the cabin and she arose quietly. Her throat closed as she noticed his bloodstained knife lying with the black garments he had removed. She slipped out to go up on deck to get some air. As she leaned against the taffrail in the half-light she saw something floating in the water. It was too dark to make out what is was at first, then slowly she was filled with horror. She knew it was a body because of its auburn hair floating like seaweed. The shade of auburn matched that of the Grenviles exactly.
Within the hour the Phantom was on its way and soon they had left the sodden skies of Holland behind for the sun-drenched coast of France. Summer’s peace of mine had fled. Her suspicions about him grew when they sighted Dutch merchantmen and Rory refused to attack them. Now that suspicion had raised its ugly head she could not content herself with his explanation that he did not want to jeopardize her safety.
When he took midnight watch at the ship’s wheel, she decided to go through his desk. She was convinced that he had unlawful dealings with the Dutch and hoped and prayed that he was not selling England’s secrets for money.
What she found was a diplomatic pouch with sealed documents addressed to King Louis of France from King Charles of England. She dared not disturb the seal further, for to her keen eyes it already looked as if it had been tampered with. Here was a puzzle indeed. Had Rory Helford been entrusted to deliver a message from England to France or had he come by the documents by piracy? If the documents were genuine, had he stopped off in Holland to reveal their contents to de Ruyter? Or were they fake documents to France’s king, only ostensibly from the King of England?
The next time they made love she would pry in a subtle way to see if he would let anything slip.
The Phantom lay at anchor in a secluded cove. The crew had gone ashore in the longboats. They were familiar with many wineries in the vicinity which had provided vintages to slake their thirst in the past and the vineyards stretched back for miles.
Summer and Rory had swum naked together in the warm azure sea the moment they had their privacy and now lay on deck sunning themselves and drowsing in the heat of the day. Summer had modestly wrapped a towel about her, but Rory hadn’t bothered with such an encumbrance. She reclined against soft red cushions he had brought from their cabin and Rory lay stretched out full length with his head resting in her lap. The wooden planks of the deck were deliciously warm beneath her buttocks and the sun had kissed her face until her skin had turned golden.
His cheek stirred against her thighs and she peeped from beneath half-closed lashes. Her eyes ran over the splendid length of him. He had such a superb body, it gave her deep pleasure to see the great slabs of bronzed muscle flex and relax as he breathed. Then she became aware that he was watching her admire his body, for his manhood stirred and the great shaft began to thicken and lengthen. Her body heat almost scorched his cheek as it pressed against her soft thigh. Slowly his hand reached up and removed the towel which separated her bare flesh from his. He turned his face into her body and pressed a kiss just above her triangle of curls. “You are so lovely,” he said huskily, letting the tip of his tongue trace her secret places. “Your skin tastes salty from the sea.” Suddenly she knew a strong need—his body was so beautiful, she wanted to worship it.
“Rory, I want to taste you,” she said intensely. Their eyes met and held and in that moment the whole universe melted away until there was just the two of them and their great hungry need to devour each other. She knew all barriers between them must come down before he would reveal the truth to her. She knew they must merge and become one. He lifted her up until they stood pressed together in a close embrace. Her face when she stood on tiptoe reached to the base of his throat. She kissed the place where his pulse throbbed then her tongue began to lick his bronzed skin. He held his body motionless for her as she traced her lips lower across his pectoral muscles, his flat nipples, then her tongue traced down his ribs until she bent low enough to dip it in and out of the deep cleft of his navel.
Slowly she slid down his body until she was on her knees before him. His sex stood up rigidly, slightly higher than her mouth. She looked up to see him gazing down at her with adoration. This was the most intimate thing she’d ever done for a man and it would shatter the last barrier between them. She reached up gentle fingers to lever his shaft downward and kiss its velvet crown. He moaned with unbelievable pleasure and she took the head into her mouth and ran the tip of her tongue under its prominent ledge. She marveled that the head of his phallus was heart-shaped, and if she held her soft tongue pressed to him, she could feel every wild heartbeat and pulse of his magnificent body.
His head was thrown back now, the columns of his strong neck arched until they stood out, straining his control to the limit. She nibbled and sucked on him for a few minutes then her tongue traced the full length of his shaft and he cried out, “Don’t!”
She had had a foretaste of lavish sensuality and now she needed him to fill her so she would never feel empty again. One last time she ran her tongue over the swollen crest of his manhood. She felt him swell and go solid. She removed her lips and saw how unbelievably large he had grown. She trembled with need. If she didn’t have him, she would die.
He pulled her face up to his before it was too late, then lifted her by the buttocks onto his marble-hard weapon and thrust it to the hilt. If she hadn’t been so completely aroused, she would never have been able to accommodate his great size. Their passion scorned convention and leaped the barriers of normal morality. They fell writhing to the hot deck and she wrapped her legs high about his back as he savagely thrust harder and deeper, impaling her to the limit of her endurance. It was torture, but a blissful torture of shivering, mounting, sumptuous response as he brutally carved out his own place inside of her.
She began to sob for the culmination, then she heard his command, “Now!” and he took her mouth in a bruising kiss which made her whole body throb from the tip of her tongue to her toes. She felt his explosion deep within and she felt herself implode upon him as he emptied himself inside her. It was as if he had opened the floodgates to paradise.
They clung together, dreading the inevitable separation that must come when they returned to being two again. He diminished in size and hardness until his erection was half what it had been at the height of their passion, yet he was still large enough in this semiaroused state to almost fill her. He rolled his weight from her but took her with him so that he could remain inside her. He could not bear to withdraw just yet. She lay in a wanton sprawl atop his great body and felt the delicious black crisp hairs beneath her cheek. The sun beat down upon her bared back and his beloved hands came up to massage her bottom, then he relaxed his hands so that he cupped her lightly. As she lay there, a captive to their lust, she began to feel guilty. What if this man was a traitor to his country? If she faced the truth, she knew he had killed a man. What if he was a danger to her husband, Ruark? She knew Ruark was involved in spying for the King. If Rory worked for the other side, was he ruthlessly using his brother to learn England’s secrets?
She looked at his face and for the first time it looked dangerous, hard, brutal.
When she could speak again, she said low, “Rory, I saw the sealed documents you carry.”
“Leave it!” His voice, like a whiplash, stunned her. How could he keep secrets from her while their bodies were still joined?
“Did you kill Richard Grenvile?” She felt enormous guilt over the death, since she’d been the one to tell him of sighting Grenvile. “Tell me!” she cried.
Very deliberately his hands tightened on her bottom and he rotate
d her erotically upon his hardening shaft. She gasped at the thrill which shot up inside her and knew he was trying to make her mindless, using his sex as his weapon. She had mistakenly thought all barriers between them had been swept away. He had given her all of his body and part of his soul, but his mind was locked away from her.
She reached her hand down between them, felt the crisp hairs of his groin, and withdrew him from her sheath. She cried out at the sharp, quick loss of exquisite fullness, and as their eyes met she saw his were filled with furious anger.
“You deliberately spoiled the most beautiful fucking either one of us ever experienced in our lives!” he ground out between clenched teeth.
She was covered with guilt, for indeed it had come close to being the most beautiful loving she’d ever experienced and she couldn’t bear it to be so. Ruark’s lovemaking had been the best and that’s the way she wanted it to stay. She was momentarily overwhelmed by her faithlessness to her husband. As if she’d done it deliberately to hurt him. My God, even if she’d lain with the King, it wouldn’t have been as bad as giving herself to his brother! She snatched up the towel to cover herself and ran belowdecks, feeling the fury in his accusing green eyes burning into her back as she ran. She slumped down upon the bed with both her mind and her emotions in chaos. A tear slipped down her cheek. She didn’t like herself very much at the moment and knew she needed to take a good hard look at herself.
Why had she let herself fall into another man’s arms so quickly? When Ruark rejected her, her loss had been so devastating that she had immediately replaced him with a replica of himself. She felt ashamed that she had needed a man so badly. Hell and furies, she’d always managed on her own before she’d met Lord Ruark Helford. Admittedly she’d cheated, stolen, and lied, but in a man’s world you did these things to even the odds a little. She’d found the courage to smuggle, she’d had guts enough even to play highwayman, therefore she should have had enough spirit to go on alone without a man in her life. She didn’t need either of them. To hell-fire with all men!
That night the ship docked at Le Havre and she saw Rory leave the ship in black cloak and mask. She had no idea what time he returned, she only knew that he did not join her in the exotic silk-hung bed. When she emerged into the bright morning light, Rory stood at the wheel garbed in white from head to foot, with the Union Jack flapping in the stiff breeze from the top of the mast.
Yesterday seemed like a specter seen through a glass darkly. Today there was nothing sinister about the ship or the man at its helm. He looked boyish, carefree. He waved and called to her, “Come up and navigate.” She was about to shake her head when out of nowhere came a deafening boom and a splash. A great cry went up as the deck suddenly filled with the crew and two went up the masts quick as monkeys.
Summer’s heart drummed in her ears as a quick stab of fear shot through her, but it was immediately replaced by an excitement she could hardly contain. She saw Rory gesture for her to go below but she blithely ignored the order and ran up to the quarterdeck. She did not run to him for protection, but went there to get a better view. Rory was looking through his telescope and his voice boomed to every corner of the Phantom: “It’s a Dutchman.” She imagined she heard relief in his voice, and relief on the faces of the crewmen.
“We’ll fight!” He shouted his decision, and the crew let out a cheer that was deafening. “Get below,” he told Summer.
“No!” she defied him.
“This deck will run with blood,” he told her graphically.
Her eyes narrowed with the excitement of danger. He was so bold, so brave, she wanted to watch him take the prize. “I want to see you fight!”
“You may see me die,” he pointed out.
“Heaven doesn’t want you and the devil is afraid you’ll take over,” she threw his own words at him.
He looked at her and grinned widely—she was every bit as courageous as he and he admired and loved her for it. Then he had no more time to think of her and knew she would understand. He thundered his orders and every last man anticipated them. Skillfully he maneuvered the ship quickly enough to allow one of his gunners to put a broadsider into the oncoming vessel, and Summer could taste the pitch he had used to light the gunpowder in the cannon. A victory shout went up as the cannonball found its target in their enemy’s belly. There was no way such a small hole would sink them, but it would keep some of the Dutch crew busy stopping the seawater from gushing in.
Summer’s hand went to her waist and she felt relief as she felt the hilt of her knife safely tucked there. Rory’s crew comprised every nationality, but whether they were black, yellow, or brown, they were armed in identical fashion. Each man held a cutlass in one hand, a pistol in the other, and a belaying pin or cudgel tucked into his belt alongside his knife.
They climbed the lines of the rigging like circus performers, some even holding their weapons in their teeth while they got a better grip on the lines with their hands and knees. Summer’s head fell back to watch them and she shaded her eyes with her hand. She assumed they were climbing the rigging so that when the two ships came alongside, they would swing over to the Dutchman and board her, but as the tall sailing ship loomed over them she realized in a moment of panic that the smaller Phantom was much lower than the tall merchantman and it would be the Dutch who would board the Phantom and the battle would be waged on her decks.
Rory and his crew had known this all along and were high in the rigging so they could jump the sailors once they came aboard the Phantom. There was a sickening thud and shudder as the two vessels came together and Summer realized she stood alone on the deck of the Phantom as the Dutchmen swarmed aboard. Should she flee or stand and fight? Her feet were rooted to the spot as she watched two men advance upon her. From nowhere a line swung down past her and the sailor on the end of it kicked one of the enemy in the throat while disemboweling the other with a low cutlass slash across his stomach. The man’s innards spewed out and splattered Summer’s canvas pants while she looked on in helpless horror.
Screams and shouts intermingled with curses, cries, and wild laughter. Shots whistled through the air and steel clashed against steel and flesh. Men everywhere were engaged in desperate battle but she had no way of telling which were the enemy. A sailor advanced upon her with glinting sword, but her feet slipped on the blood of the deck and she ducked her head under his arm. Her knife was in her palm and she whirled about and brought it up in a vicious slash to rip open his arm from wrist to elbow.
This was no exciting adventure; the reality was a living nightmare. It was blood and guts and brains. It was death and maiming and gaping wounds. It was screaming and groaning and weeping. It was madness!
Three men were almost upon her when Rory swung down and knocked her from their path. She sprawled onto the blood-slippery deck, the wind knocked from her lungs. Rory stood over her and fought off the enemy. One took a ball through the temple, another lost an arm as Rory slashed his heavy cutlass with all his powerful strength. The third man he disarmed and ran him at swordpoint up onto the quarterdeck, where he lashed him to the mast with a rope. Then in a flash he was back to scan her anxiously then thrust her behind him while he dispatched another to hellfire.
With their captain taken and half their number slaughtered, the Dutch surrendered. The crew of the Phantom prodded them overboard and a magnanimous Black Jack Flash cut the ropes which sent a longboat splashing down among them. Only two of Rory’s crew were dead. Eight were wounded and a dozen had minor injuries which they ignored from sheer bravado.
Summer was shaking all over as she helped to bind up the wounded. Rory’s white clothes were stained red from head to foot. “You were very brave,” he said solemnly.
“I didn’t know … I had no idea what it would be like,” she said shakily.
“I know, love … you wouldn’t listen … you had to learn the hard way.”
“Rory … forgive me … I thought you had gone over to the enemy.”
He shook his h
ead. “You still don’t understand. I didn’t take the ship because she was a Dutchman, I took her because she fired across my bow. If she’d been English, I would have taken her just the same. I am a pirate.”
Her eyes lifted to the captain still lashed to the mast. “What will you do with him?”
“Probably turn him over to Ruark along with the ship.” He grinned at her. “But not before I strip her of every last piece of booty.”
She staggered a little. “Go below and bathe and rest if you can. We have our work cut out for us up here,” he said.
She looked down at herself in dismay. “Does the smell of blood ever wash off?” she asked him quietly.
“Not really,” he said, shaking his head sadly.
That night they didn’t make love, but he clung to her in the great bed in a towering need. Their closeness brought him some small measure of sanity in an uncivilized universe. It was hours before peaceful calm descended to slow his thudding heart and racing pulse. By dawn she had given him back his powerful strength.
“I think you’ll be glad to get back on land again, won’t you?” he questioned.
She hesitated, not wanting to hurt him. “I love the sea … but perhaps we are too close to Holland in these particular waters.”
“I’ve been thinking about sailing to New Guinea for gold. Would you go with me, Cat?”
She thought of her baby and wondered how he could ask such reckless behavior of her. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “I would need time to consider such a thing.”
He stretched and laughed and kissed her deeply before he went abovedecks to again take over the helm of the Phantom. By late afternoon they had sighted England and Summer came up on deck. She was vastly relieved to see everything had been swabbed and scrubbed to remove all evidence of the recent carnage. The gulls and terns circled and screamed overhead as she climbed to stand beside Rory. A stiff breeze was blowing his black-and-white-streaked hair about his shoulders and he seemed lost in thought.
The Pirate and the Pagan Page 37