by Susan Ward
Morgan’s eyes fixed on her in a surprised way that told Merry he’d been expecting her asleep. As his gaze dispassionately ran her curled figure in the chair, absurdly swallowed within one of his white shirts, a childish picture she was sure she made, at best.
She wondered if this night would pass, as all the others since Ireland, miserably uncomfortable in his stoic silence. The only time his eyes paused was on the cover of her book. Against her will, she felt color burn her cheeks.
“I am surrounded by scandalous company on this ship. Scandalous thoughts, for a scandalous girl,” he said lightly mocking.
Morgan’s dark gaze floated the room, settling on the drawers before moving back to her, now with a twinkle in their gemmed depths. She’d demolished the drawers earlier, in frustration of being ordered to the cabin.
“Scandalous of mind and scandalous in decorating. Little One, I think I will keep you forever.”
The smile Morgan bent her was infuriating. Decidedly not irritated by her childish compulsion to annoy him, but he was at least talking tonight. Being alone with him in the silence of the cabin, night after night, had been a dreadful thing to endure.
Lifting her nose in the air, claimed by that prickling in her cells that always came with the hold of his eyes, Merry was pleased she was able to convey just the right amount of sauce in her retort, as she countered, “What is a female to do aboard a pirate ship? Do scandalous decorating and read scandalous thoughts, since the Captain never lets them enjoy the scandalous merrymaking, and the scandalous drinking games.”
“Ah, you are rankled with me for ordering you below deck. There are more than few, topside, drunk as friars. It’s not the drinking games I protest you learning, it’s what’s likely to come after.”
She followed him with her eyes as he went to pour a glass of wine for them both. He handed her the glass, then tapped her on the nose, almost as though he were dealing with a small child.
Furious with his insufferable treatment of her, she snapped, “Perhaps I would enjoy what comes after the drinking games. I certainly don’t enjoy passing into old age, alone in this cabin, since you seemed not at all inclined to return me to Falmouth.”
Morgan’s eyes began to shimmer. “I will have to start censuring your reading material, Little One, if a night with Wollstonecraft has you eager to learn what comes after the drinking games.”
Her eyes began to flash at once. “You wouldn’t have to censure my reading material, if you’d let me from this cabin, more than a handful of hours a day,” she said in building waves of exasperation. “I am restless and I am bored. I don’t get enough activity. I am tired of spending half my nights reading in your cabin, just so I may sleep. I wouldn’t read, at all, if there was something better to do at night on ship. I can’t imagine why anyone would want a life at sea.”
Morgan’s dark gaze shifted to the pretty picture Merry made in his shirt. He took her fingers then, making them rub lightly on his lips, before he whispered wickedly, “Since you’re awake and I am awake, and neither of us have a desire to read, perhaps you’d be eager to play with me the games that follow.”
Merry had no idea what to say to that, but she realized, too late, that the husky quality of his voice should have warned her to run.
All she could do was stare at him in silence. Morgan’s hands lifted her from the chair in a movement that was swift and graceful. Merry found herself in a firm embrace, suddenly spread across Morgan’s bed. The warmth of his flesh surrounding her was a shock, but inside her skin was a body reeling. She tried desperately to strain her hips away from him. All she got for the effort was a hand cupping her buttocks, lifting her up against him. Exploded was the happy fiction Merry had indulged that Morgan was tame.
Clinging feebly to the hope her circumstance hadn’t just taken a desperate turn for the worse, Merry said, “If you are done toying with me, Captain, I’d prefer you let me go.”
His laughter was quiet and enticing. “We’re nowhere near done. As I recall, you are the one who demanded something better to do at night than reading.” When she struggled harder, his hands stilled her hips as he ordered, “Don’t. We haven’t even started the games, yet.” For some unknown reason, she relaxed beneath his touch.
She was trying to figure out how to stop him and what had caused all this, as he tilted her head back and laid careful kisses on the smooth slope of her neck. The delicate touch of his lips had a disastrous effect. Then he was pressing his mouth against hers with sweet skill, spreading the rounded fullness, probing slowly with faint and disarming coaxing. The press of his body and the sweet seduction of his kisses, exploded another happy fiction for Merry that her wantonness in his arms in Ireland had all been because of the wine.
But no, it was happening again. Everything from the neck up sluggish and spinning, everything from the neck down boiling like a kettle.
When finally Morgan lifted his head, his breathing sounded soft and normal to her, while she could barely pull the air into her lungs. His lips went to the sensitive flesh beneath her ears.
“See, Little One, this is not so bad, is it? More pleasurable than reading, for the both of us. Would you like me to make you spin faster? I can you know. Give me your mouth.”
How did he know she was spinning? Why did she lift her chin? His kiss, this time, was searing, and then he lifted his face, until his black eyes fixed on her features with knowing sureness.
With hot cheeks, through moist and swollen lips, she whimpered, “How do I get you not to force me?”
One accurate finger was softly following the hairline around her face. “Force you? Such an inaccurate word. I’m not even holding you, Little One. Or hadn’t you noticed.”
Much to Merry’s chagrin, she realized, at some point, he’d withdrawn his body from her and was lying casually reclined on a hip, staring down at her. Her body, on its own, had turned into him. When had that happened?
Holding imprudently to the belief that Morgan would never take her against her will, a belief at present that seemed silly, she whispered, “All the same, I’m not willing.”
“No?”
The sudden glimmer in his black eyes told her that had been the wrong thing to say. His hands returned in rich movements against her flesh as his mouth wandered back to her neck.
“If this isn’t willing, then never has there been a willing maid. Do you really want me to stop? Why don’t we go a little further and then you can decide? I promise to stop if you don’t like anything I do.”
His fingers forced her resisting lips back and his mouth wandered to hers, slowly stirring and soothing her. He continued the movement of his hands. She felt as though every part of her was touched by deep sunshine. To fight him might have been the urging of her mind, but it was not the urging of her body. With an artfully slow disconnect, he lifted his face until his eyes, smoky with pleasure, could study her face.
Whispering, he said, “See, I always play fairly. Have I done anything you don’t like?”
Ignoring both the question with the proper disdain it deserved, and the improper answer that popped into her head, Merry turned her face so he couldn’t kiss her again. She would have dropped to the floor if they hadn’t been lying on his bed.
Her head swimming, she said thickly, “I want you to let me go.”
“How about a diplomatic negotiation?” His eyes only darkened another shade. “I’ll let you go if you kiss me.”
She wasn’t able to answer him because his lips moved with hushed lightness over her neck. Somewhere inside of her there was fight, but it never came, not even when his mouth lowered to the swell of her breasts. She lost herself in the delicious tease of his caresses.
His hands still pressing her to him, his lips on hers, he whispered, “Let me help you. Slowly, Merry, like this. Yes. Oh, dainty flower, you do know how to play. One should never rush the games that follow.” Then, he was guiding her mouth back to him. His hands held her cheeks with his face above her. She was just touching
her lips against his, when she finally realized what he’d meant all along by the games that follow.
Humiliated and furious, she jerked herself backward into the pillows as she pushed upward against him with her knee and snapped, “Why don’t you go back topside and play with yourself?”
The words were hardly out of her mouth before Morgan started laughing, so hard he was choking. Merry didn’t know what he saw on her face, but fresh gales of laughter followed. He rolled away from her, lying back against his bed, as if unable to stop it. The way he was laughing made her temper flare. Before she could stop herself, she shouted, “How dare you laugh at me!”
That her temper came at this, of all moments, only made Morgan laugh harder. He laughed harder still when her response to the laughter was to try to hit him. He expertly avoided it, taking both her arms in a single hand.
He touched her face and in his voice there was a smile. “God must have been in a wicked humor the day he created you. You are more amusement defending your maidenhead than I suspect you’ll be in surrendering it.”
There was an insult buried somewhere in there, Merry was certain of that, though the necessity to flee seemed more important than finding it. She tried to scramble from the bed, but the tail of her shirt was pinned beneath him. On top of everything, he was claimed again by laughter.
The man was deranged. After weeks of ignoring her, he’d practically forced his attentions upon her. Searching his face, she asked fearfully, “Are you drunk as a friar?”
Morgan smiled and said softly, “No, Little One. I am not drunk on wine. I am drunk only on you.”
Then, unexpectedly, he smoothly pulled the shirttail that trapped her on the bed from beneath him.
“You best scamper off quickly, Little One. Before my laughter loses its bite and I think better of letting you go.”
Why he was suddenly tame again was a mystery to Merry. She went to the window bench and pulled the blankets tightly around her in a protective cocoon. Much to her exasperation, she felt it, that feeling of being touched she sometimes felt when his eyes were on her. Peeking cautiously over her shoulder, she found Morgan reclined on his bed, reading the book that had slipped from her fingers during her flight to the mattress, eyes fixed on a page, wine in glass swirling.
She was losing her mind. His eyes weren’t even on her. They were on the book. It was impossible to sleep. It was unnerving, the feel of Morgan’s eyes upon her, only to find he wasn’t even looking at her. Most nights passed with him ignoring her, just as he was now, reading endlessly through the night, with an air of bloody insouciance. Meanwhile, she battled not to crawl from the tingling sensation of her own flesh.
These hours were like being trapped in a snare she couldn’t see. Most of their quiet nights together passed half with her wondering if he were truly a demon and half wondering if her captivity had made her mad.
From the bed, Morgan said innocently, “You can go to bed without fear, Little One. You amuse me, and that’s probably going to save your life.” Morgan’s chin lifted just enough so his eyes could meet her over the book. “But, if you continue to fidget this night, as you do most nights, all bets are off. You need to learn to practice stillness. It would benefit you greatly.”
Having no reasonable response to that comment, it would have felt nice to strangle him. There was something unnerving about a man who could romp you around like Buxom Bess the chambermaid, laugh in your face, and grin over glib jibes about idiocy saving one’s life. If not for his grin, she might have relaxed, eventually. The grin always foretold of danger.
As it was, her nerves were as taut as a bowstring. All Merry could do is stare out the window and pretend she wasn’t here. Behind her she heard Morgan, his steady breathing, the turn of a page. She concentrated on making outlines in the frost against the glass, tracing fanciful patterns. Anxiously, she erased the glass with the cuff of her shirt when she realized she’d sketched a noose. She was wringing out the dampness of her sleeve when suddenly she froze.
What the devil was wrong with her? For some bizarre reason she was quivering. Why was her body a stranger to her, whenever Morgan was near? She heard the wine in glass, felt the quivering sharpen, and slanted him a look. In a flash, she realized, with a shock, why the swirling glass always irritated her. She burned when they were alone and the glass swirled.
He is watching me. Every time the glass swirls, it’s not the glass he studies, it something else. How is he doing it? It is a remarkable trick.
Merry glared at him in fury. She had thought herself losing her mind before tonight, and it took every ounce of her will not to explode.
You insufferable man, you are watching me, though I don’t know how you do it. But I feel it on my flesh, no matter where your eyes look, like they are now. I know what that habit means.
She curled on the window bench, her back turned toward him, and realized with a start that Morgan was always watching her and had been from the first night. She jerked the blankets over her head, hiding fully under them and not caring if he thought her childish.
The wind gained ground as the night grew cold, and the creaking, groaning timbers of the Corinthian were hardly a good collaborator to sleep. Lying in the early morning darkness of the cabin, restless and awake, she was surprised how often she felt the burn of Morgan’s eyes touching her. The cabin was in total darkness because of the brewing storm. How did Morgan see her? And why did he spend his nights awake watching her?
Heavy lids gratefully rescued her from her thoughts.
The next day, Merry was rudely awakened from a fitful slumber when Indy yanked off the blanket. Her eyes were blistered by a blood red sun. Indy said, “Who the devil are you pretending to be now, Merry? Pocahontas in her teepee?”
“You can really be a cruel boy sometimes, do you know that?” she whispered.
There was a short silence. Then he sat down on the bench, their faces nearly at eye level now, the burnish sunlight exaggerating the hard bones of his face. “What’s wrong?” An extended pause followed before he asked, “What has you so frazzled this morning.”
“What could possibly have me frazzled? Outside of the fact I’m trapped on a pirate ship and Morgan attacked me. Then, he laughed at me, insulted me, and spent the entire night staring at me in a manner that made me want to climb out of my skin. He warned me that my life is at risk, if I couldn’t stop fidgeting, which I can’t, because he stares at me. I feel it in my flesh. What could possibly have me frazzled?”
A pause came in which Merry did a lot of fidgeting as Indy slowly arched a brow in note of it.
Finally, Indy said, “Indeed, you are in grave danger.” Then, less mocking, he added, “Melodrama won’t help. Do you think you can tell me what happened in a single sentence? What do you mean Morgan attacked you?”
Reluctantly amending her previous grievance, she said, “He kissed me.”
It was obviously not a serious development for Indy. After a short wait, he asked, “Is that all?”
Having gone from one extreme to the other in this, Merry knew she was making a mess of the whole thing. Factually, every word was accurate, but there was more to it that could not be conveyed by three little words. She nodded.
They sat together and he said, “You’re here. It’s always been only a matter of time before he took you to his bed. Accept it.”
That sent anger bites down her spine. “You make it sound as if I don’t have a choice at all.”
“You don’t. A clever girl would take him to bed, play to Morgan’s kinder tendencies, and get free of here quickly.” Indy had moved from her to the table, and sat there picking at her breakfast plate with a fork.
In a huff she climbed from the window bench and said in an exaggerated way, “Well, pardon me for not being a clever girl.” She sank like a heavy rock into her chair, jerked her plate away from the boy, and started to pick at her food with a fork.
He watched her eat. “Would it really be that bad, Merry?”
“Ye
s.”
Frustrated and angry, Indy snapped, “I think the lady doth protest too much.”
Crazily, considering the situation, Merry felt the keen bite of the truth in that, clamped her mouth shut, and fixed her eyes on her plate. She could barely remember the last time she had passed a day without some thought of Morgan. She could no longer convince herself her thoughts of him were entirely appropriate. Her anger sank like an iron slug and so did her pride.
Indy moved from the table without further insult. He said, “You’re going to be locked below decks all day. Captain’s orders.” He gave no explanation and left the cabin.
Locked alone in the silence of her rocking prison, Merry had no choice but to invent ways to amuse herself and spent half the day re-arranging Morgan’s possessions. Today’s act of irritation complete, she sat curled in his chair before the desk, reading his logbook.
The entries were brief, his writing a precise and elegant swirl. Much to her dismay, she found her finger tracing over the ink on page. Confused and appalled by whatever had prompted her to do that, she jerked her hand back, reached for another log, and slapped it onto the desk.
It noted a year, 1810. Flicking open a page, she thought, behold the mysteries of a demon, and then fixed to read a page.
A pirate’s life was a remarkable journey of travel. She wondered at the places noted in the sparse entries. What they were like, the people that were there, the adventure this man lived. If only Morgan had put better description in his log, there could have been much to be learned here. She suspected one was not inclined to keep a thorough history in one’s own hand of the crimes and villainy one committed.
Pressed on the pages was a map of life that had seemed to have taken him to the four corners of the earth. What there wasn’t, was a single insight on the man. She slapped shut the logbook and moved from the desk.
The cabin door opened. Merry looked up, saw Morgan, and retreated to the far side of the cabin. He shut the door with one hand, as his thorough floating gaze moved efficiently to take note of her disturbance of his cabin. Nothing. Not a word.