Taking it would be the final nail in her coffin.
She slipped her fingers into his.
Watched his close around them.
Watched them get swallowed.
Watched them get captured.
There was no running now.
No escape.
Chapter Twelve
Cora sat quiet in the passenger side seat of his car. She hadn’t said a word since they left the restaurant. James hadn’t expect her to.
It had been a long day. An even longer night.
He wasn’t sure he had the energy for more talk. More arguing.
He let her sit shrouded and silent while the passing lights played over the lines of her still frame, over the misery clouding her eyes and tugging at the corners of her mouth.
He wasn’t proud of it.
But every war had casualties.
She was his.
She was the innocent life caught in the battlefield.
Her life was forfeit to appease his own miseries.
His demons.
His sanity.
Maybe she’d make it out whole.
She was strong, much stronger than Annie.
She was a fighter.
He had to believe she would survive.
She shivered and hugged herself tighter.
He reached for the heater and cranked it as high as it would go.
Stupid girl standing in the rain that long. She’d be lucky if she walked away without catching her death.
He didn’t care.
She’d brought it on herself.
She sniffled.
James gritted his teeth. His fingers tightened around the wheel.
He pulled off the road and stopped. He ignored her eyes when they turned to him in the dark. He popped the trunk and climbed out.
The rain had worsened. It came down in a blinding rush that resoaked everything he’d managed to dry off.
If he got sick, he was going to strangle her, he thought bitterly to himself as he shoved open the trunk and snatched up the folded blanket he kept inside. He closed the lid and darted back to his door.
He tossed her the blanket before climbing into the warm interior.
She stared at it like she’d never seen one before.
“Put it on,” he snapped, slicking back dripping strands of hair out of his eyes.
She raised her eyes from the offering to him. Her expression unreadable.
Reaching the end of his tether, he snatched it from her and shook it open, prepared to swaddle the shit out of her when she kissed him.
It came out of nowhere.
One minute he was leaning across the console, the next she had taken his face between her small, cold fingers and her mouth was on his. Soft, delicate butterfly wings fluttering beneath his, urging him to open.
He lost his grip on the blanket. He reached for her, but she’d already broken away. Her mouth had left his. Her lashes lifted. Her hazel eyes met his through the feasible flickers of light washing in through the rain.
It was then that he saw it, the distinct darkening in her eyes, the subtle hitch in her breath. He knew exactly what she wanted, could almost feel it coming off her in sharp snaps of heat. The intoxicating fragrance of her desires syphoned into the crisp air around them.
Her scent.
Her musk.
Her.
Fuck.
“Do you have anything?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her question. “Glovebox.”
She slipped away, a siren receding back into the waves. The shadows on her side of the car took her, enveloped her so all he saw were flashes of her tiny hands flipping the switch. It wasn’t until he heard the smack of the door springing open that he remembered the gun.
His chest seized.
His muscles froze.
But it was too late.
She had the weapon in her hand.
It glinted too large, too menacing in her palm.
He waited for it to turn on him.
Waited to hear the crack.
To feel the ripping pain.
She returned it.
Pushed it aside, moved it away to reach for the box just behind it. A silver packet appeared in its place. The door was slapped shut.
“Why?”
The question abandoned his lips before he could stop it.
Her head tilted to him, the condom held between them. “I made a promise.”
He watched her kick her shoes off and shrug out of her coat. The metal tongue of her seatbelt snapped off and struck the door with a resounding clang.
Then she was reaching across him, invading his space, filling his senses with the scent of her. She flipped the lever that sent his seat skittering back on its ridges.
“Want me to stop?” she teased, head coming up, her face painfully too close.
He moved even before his mind could fully process the wisdom of his uncontrolled gut reaction. His mind and all its many voices faded behind a white wall of silence the moment his hands closed on her arms.
The sights and sounds of the world vanished. There was only her and the sound of her gasp when he hauled her into his lap, and the cry that followed was lost beneath his growl.
He had no recollection of capturing her mouth until it was opening beneath his. The sweet taste of her enclosed him in their velvety claws, ensnaring the remaining shreds of his senses until there was nothing left of his rationality, except the crippling pulse of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Hands, small, with slender fingers curled into his shoulders, bit through his coat to sink into flesh. The sweet pain did nothing to dissolve the red haze of madness. If anything, its vicious encouragement only fueled his own hands into motion tearing up her skirt and dragging her legs across his thighs.
She broke the kiss. The pale light bleached everything it touched, except the flush in Cora’s cheeks, the bright pink in her swollen lips. Her eyes shone a vivid green a pit of unmistakable passion. Its endless void tempted him to leap head first into the unknown and never turn back.
But he had to.
He had to regain control.
This was not the plan.
Fucking her in the front seat of his car wasn’t part of the plan.
Yet it was all he wanted to do. It was all he could think about. Every fiber and muscle in his body physically throbbed with the driving need to claim her, to pound every ounce of his own sick frustrations into her heat, to punish her and twist her into the same warped and fucked up mess that he was. Even sitting there, all he could think about was leaving his mark on every inch of her.
She held out the condom.
He reached for her hand, bypassed the offering and snatched at her wrist. He yanked her back to him and kissed her.
He devoured her.
He deprived her of even a shred of his gentleness as he forced her into the wheel.
He tore down the shoulders of her dress, ripping the fabric and baring her breasts to the sharp nips of his teeth, to the greedy handling of his palms.
Cora never protested. She allowed him to restrain her.
Crush her.
Violate and expose her.
Her dark eyes bore into his, welcoming every vicious attack with a willingness that only amplified his rage.
Stop looking at me like that! he wanted to snarl at her. Stop wanting this! But all that came out was a low growl as he tore at his own pants. The buttery soft material gave easily. She raised her hips, allowing him to slip them down his thighs.
He took the condom from her.
“Hold your skirt.”
She obeyed without question. She bunched the material up so he had a clear view of her perfect lips. She stayed that way, even when James reclined his seat to take in the sight of her, to etch every curve and bend of her, the raw fervor coiling off her to memory. He told himself that fucking the daughter of his sworn enemy in the seat of his car was a small victory, a slap across De Marco’s face, but there was no
lying to himself. Fucking Cora had nothing to do with De Marco, or the plan, and everything to do with what he wanted.
What he demanded to have.
What was rightfully his.
He strapped on the rubber and reached for her. She raised her hips and he aligned himself with her opening.
James paused with his hands at the bare skin of her hips. He studied the angles of her face, the delicate lines of her jaw, the heavy curl of her lashes. He lost himself in her eyes. Those fucking eyes. And forgot about everything, except having her.
He pushed inside her, slowly, gradually, with a deliberate ease that sent her head back with a groan of pure, unadulterated sin. Her walls clenched in welcome, embracing him like a long, lost lover. He held her to him even as he surrounded himself with her velvet heat.
She met his push with a downward thrust of her own, fully seating herself on him, around him. Her nails bit into his chest, through the soft material of his shirt, drawing blood, claiming him.
“James.” His name from her lips in the midst of passion was the most beautiful symphony he’d ever heard.
It filled the cabin.
Filled his core.
His soul.
He took her breasts. Cradled them. Worked the hard peaks in time with each upward thrust.
Cora moved with him, meeting every plunge with a downward push of her own. Her heart pounded against his palms, matching the growing sounds of her approaching release, sounds that would haunt him possibly for the rest of his life. Each whimper, every moan of his name fanned the flames of his madness. Each time she shuddered and her slick walls rippled, he had to battle the urge succumb to his own release. She was liquid fire in his arms and he was all too happy to let her scorch them both to nothing.
“Don’t stop!” Cora’s snarl bordered on something between a scream and a moan, and it was all the warning anyone got before she came with a vicious sob of James’s name.
Heat rushed over and down his cock, drenching them both as the woman in his arms collapsed against him. Her back shuddered against his palms. Her pants bathed the curve of his neck. But she didn’t stay there long.
Her head lifted. Eyes the opaque black of midnight bore into his with the wild abundance of a woman under the spell of passion.
“Your turn, Captain,” she breathed in a sultry purr that tightened every nerve ending in his balls. “Come for me.”
Her urging was followed by her white knuckled grip on the headrest and the demanding plunges of her hips as she rode him with fierce determination.
James shoved her back into the wheel, forcing her to stop as he circled her middle and sank his teeth into her left breast. Her cry as he marked her sang through him. It fed the starved beast hating the limitations of a tiny front seat.
Next time, he told it. Next time she’d be on a bed, open and tied down.
He bit her again. Her nipple this time.
Cora sobbed. Her core cinched with a painful violence that made him curse.
He reached between them and tore away the rest of her dress, leaving her naked in his arms, naked to his mouth. His teeth. His bruising touches.
He found her newly swollen clit with the pad of his thumb. He circled it, urging her to drive them both over the cliff.
She came a second time. The gentle suckling of her pussy took him with her. He spilled into the rubber sheath. But his thumb continued its lazy flicks until the last shudder had escaped her. Until she was limp and sated, slumped in his arms. Nestled against his chest, fully naked to his fully clothed.
“I could sleep like this,” she slurred into the side of his neck.
Thing was, so could he.
“We need to get back.”
She sighed and raised her head. Dark tendrils slipped off bare shoulders and formed curtains around their faces.
“I still hate you,” she murmured. “Nothing’s going to change that.”
He took her chin in a firm grip. “Promise.”
She nodded without hesitation. “Promise.”
He didn’t release her until there was irrevocable proof in her eyes to support her claim.
Twenty minutes later, the rain had stopped, and Cora boarded the ship wrapped in the blanket and nothing else. James watched her climb the steps in her heels, her strides the lazy shuffle of someone ready for bed.
At the top, she paused and turned to wait for him. With the ship lights radiating behind her, her hair was a dark halo around her shoulders.
“My cabin,” he said when he reached her. “I’m not finished with you.”
He felt her pulse race as if it were his own. It lit the flames in her eyes and cast colors into her cheeks.
“Can I take a shower first?”
He searched for hidden layers of sarcasm, but there was none.
He nodded. “Use the one in my room.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” she replied smartly, and for once, he didn’t mind her cheek.
He watched her turn and make her way in the direction of the main stairway. Her heels clapped in a rhythmic clip, filling the night. She was halfway there when Nicholas appeared. Neither paused when crossing the other, each headed towards their own destinations.
Nicholas joined James on deck.
“How did it go?”
James folded his arms and propped a hip against the railing. “As planned. She agreed.” But Nicholas already knew that. He’d been the one James had called from the parking lot. “We need to move quickly.”
Nicholas nodded. “I already called Reverend Marcus. He’ll be here at dawn.”
James would have preferred that very night; time was a luxury they didn’t possess. But dawn wasn’t too far off.
“No one sleeps tonight,” he told his second. “I want around the clock guard until this is over.”
“I’ll see to it.”
James shook his head and pushed upright. “I will. Cora wants a shower. She’s in my cabin now. Keep an eye on her.”
“Think she’ll try and run?”
He didn’t. Maybe it was because she had the chance to shoot him and she hadn’t, but he knew she’d stay. If for no other reason than because she was afraid he’d hurt her parents.
Fear was always the best motivator.
“No, but I don’t want her left alone.”
“You got it, boss.”
He watched Nicholas head off in the direction Cora had taken.
Getting married had always been one of those things that never required much thought, because he’d never once considered it as an actual possibility. No woman alive wanted to saddle up with an outlaw, especially one that spent nine months out of the year smuggling illegal crap across the ocean. While the idea was usually a turn on in the beginning, the novelty eventually wore out. Plus, he was already married to the sea and his ship.
But politically, marrying Cora was the only way he could guarantee the safety of his men and his ship. With her by his side, he would have De Marco’s protection against Bishop. The crime boss would never allow anything to happen to his daughter and the MI5 agent wouldn’t dare attack without risking De Marco’s wrath. Any attack on Cora would have been grounds for war. Bishop knew that. And De Marco was the wrong person to have as an enemy.
As an ally, however ... James may have wanted the man dead, but not before De Marco had served his purpose. Once Bishop was out of the picture, Cora was going to help James take the throne. She would be his stepping stone to taking over De Marco’s empire and ending the other man’s life.
But first things first.
He had a call to make.
Giovanni De Marco picked up on the first ring. His voice was firm, unyielding, gruff, but James heard that quiet ting of desperation, the ripple of hope hidden beneath all that. It wasn’t much but the man’s barely hidden pain only made the night that much sweeter.
“Mr. De Marco, I’m Captain James Crow. We’ve never had the pleasure.”
There was a long swell of silence on the other end, a full heartb
eat where the man was probably trying to place his name.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” he said at last.
Lip caught between his teeth, James descended off the ship, taking each step at a lazy trod to the wooden pier. He prolonged his answer the entire way down.
“I have something of yours, sir,” he declared at last. “I hear you’re looking for her.”
The silence this time was deliciously fraught with the other man’s realization. James could have licked the very air and tasted it.
“Where is she?” He didn’t even bother to conceal his panic.
James stole a glance over his shoulder at the looming bulk of his ship. “I’m guessing she’s in the shower.”
“Put her on. Right now. I want to talk to my daughter.”
James chuckled. “You know that’s not how this works, Mr. De Marco. I have her. That means I’m in control.”
“What do you want?”
“At this moment? Nothing. I might not even want something tomorrow, or the next day. I’m quite content in my life at the moment. However, there may come a time in the future when I do need something. I’m hoping when that time does come, I can count on you to return the favor.”
“Fine.” He didn’t even hesitate. Stupid man. “Whatever. Put my daughter on.”
“No, like I said, she’s in the shower. We got a bit wet earlier.” He could almost hear De Marco’s jaw creaking and had to bite the inside of his own cheek to keep his laughter contained. “But I can bring her to you tomorrow say ... three?”
“No, now.”
James clicked his tongue. “No, I like tomorrow better. I’ll text you the location. Please don’t be late. I dislike being kept waiting.”
He hung up and pocketed his phone.
Too easy. Too deliciously easy. The man was practically in the palm of his hand.
James snickered into the night.
“Until tomorrow, Mr. De Marco.”
Cora was waiting on his bed when he entered his quarters. She sat with her legs crossed under one of his t-shirts. A piece of toast was pinched between her fingers.
She looked up when he shut the door behind him.
“We missed supper.”
He peered at the buttered piece of bread and raised an eyebrow. “Is that what August gave you?”
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