“Hello!” she said cheerfully. “I was just . . . um. . .” She frantically tried to think of something. “Going to fetch a drink. Yes. How are both of you doing?”
“Splendidly,” Catherine said, smiling up at the Prince.
“Have you ever heard of Queen Hadiyya?” he asked.
“I . . . no, I suppose I haven't,” she said, wondering what this had to do with the fact that if she had to keep up a genial smile for much longer her heart was going to shatter.
“Ruled centuries ago,” he said. “Loved two men equally. One was high in society, but possessed too hot-tempered a nature to be suited to rule beside her. The other was a peasant, clear-eyed and wise. So she married the latter, and kept the former as her love. Then there was the case of King Casimiro and Queens Tatiana and Emilie. So there's actually plenty of precedent for--”
As he'd continued on, the cracks beginning in her heart had faded completely, and she'd found a smile spreading helplessly across her face. “Are you asking. . .”
“Cybele. Will you--”
“Yes!”
He laughed, holding her close when she sprang into his arms. “I didn't even finish the question!”
“Doesn't matter. Answer's yes.”
“You do realize that gives me an awful lot of leeway,” he said, grinning down at her.
“Mmm-hm,” she said, giving him a quick kiss before she turned and threw her arms around Catherine. “Oh, this is perfect! Now I have three sisters! Speaking of, where are Estelle and Ravi? I have to tell them.” She grabbed both their hands, her bright eyes searching the crowd. “Come on!”
Mugs and mugs of ale. Bottles of whiskey. A vast keg of dark, rich mead. There was so much alcohol flowing through the clearing, it was no wonder that the night fires were burning with a blue edge.
And around it all they danced, spinning and twirling with wild, fierce abandon.
Her feet moved of their own accord, bewitched by the joyous music and the giddy relief of victory. She was alive, he was alive, their friends were alive—and never had her heart felt so free.
“Don’t stop, lads!” Hook cried as the reel wound to a close. “Play on! Play on!”
Allan laughed, swaying with ale, and slid the bow across his fiddle with a shriek. “What do you say, boys? Shall we try ‘Bonny Brown Betsy’?”
“Aye!”
The new tune jumped up to take the old beat’s place and Wendy gasped for breath, grabbing hold of her captain’s shoulders.
“You’ll dance me to death, James,” she chided.
“Not yet, m’girl. Not with this dance,” he said with a smile of heady promise, tightening his grip at her waist and pulling her back into the fray. Her tattered skirts skimmed across the leafy floor, sending up a spray of dirt as he lifted her in a spin. She laughed breathlessly and snatched the plumed hat from his head.
“Take care of this for me, Call,” she said, tossing it to the passing pirate, who caught the hat with a sweeping bow and smile.
Never had there been such a motley group of dancers or an odder bunch of revelers. Pirates, harem girls, royalty, Faery folk, commoners, liberated prisoners. The Seven sat discussing weaponry with the Knight and Shani. Beauty spun past in a deep red dress, laughing gaily in the arms of the grizzled Wolf. Alice lay stretched beneath a sheltering oak, head resting in Snow’s lap as she shouted
the instructions for a game she was teaching a group of harem girls and pirates.
But Wendy couldn’t pay the others much heed. Not when James had his arms around her, hand at her hip and hook against her wrist. She couldn’t look at him enough. She may have recalled their past but still his face felt new; she wanted to memorize it again, every line and hair and freckle. Every smile and wink and the way his mouth shaped itself around his words. Especially her name. She loved his lips around her.
He had such an expressive face, flashing from comical to predatory to sincere like the quicksilver of his moods. There was a fire in his eyes that nothing could bank down for long, a passion and desire for everything. New experiences and new horizons. His soul was a true pirate’s soul, full of rum and songs and rousing action. He wanted the world, and so did she. She wanted everything and she wanted him.
That was one of the biggest secrets James had shown her: growing up didn’t mean growing old. You could still quest for adventure and live a rowdy live of mad excitement. You could still have it
all. Growing up just meant richer entertainments with greater payoffs. . .
The song wound to a close. Before Hook could shout out another command, Wendy pressed close and balanced on her tip-toes.
“Let’s go dance to a different tune,” she whispered in his ear, the low purr in her voice sending shivers to a very precise spot. He gave her backside a teasing slap as he turned his head and brushed a hasty kiss against her temple.
“Carry on, lads,” he called in encouragement, waving his hook vaguely. “Red-Handed Jill and I are just off to liberate a few more bottles of ale.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Allan said with an obvious and very knowing wink.
They rushed through the woods just shy of a run, falling into one another like eager puppies, their laughter echoing through the sentinel trees. Wendy hiked up her dress to quicken her pace and he half-tackled her, both stumbling into a wide tree trunk.
“You flash a pair of legs like that, lass,” he growled against her neck. “A man’s liable to lose track of things.”
She pinched his shoulder, slipping away with a very feline grin. “I had a proper bunk in mind, Captain.”
“Highly overrated.”
“Bunks?”
“Propriety.”
She agreed, but that didn’t stop her from sprinting away. Wendy intended to make him work for the prize, and she could tell from the expression on his face that he was more than happy to give chase.
How could she blame him for being so greedy-handed? She was sore tempted herself to give in to the immediate gratification, to let down the terrible dam of desire and lose herself in the flood. Pirates had never been good at patience.
But this would be the first time since. And as such, Wendy intended to make it memorable. Possibly even record-breaking. Because it felt that the world had been divided in twain: before and after. That blasted Potion, that damn boy and his selfish cruelty, they were the line between them. They’d stepped over that line, but tonight they would leave it so far behind as to render it invisible. That mattered, and a great deal. They would never have that time back that they lost—it had been stolen forever. Which made all the time they had left that much more priceless. These moments had to be treated like the precious gems they were. And while brash kisses against trees and fumbling tumbles
through the leaves would come later, and frequently, this moment, this night, had to be something altogether different and important.
They burst out of the woods and onto the shore of the Lagoon. Blondie looked up lazily from her perch on a spar of rock.
“We have a wager going,” the mermaid said casually, willfully ignoring their flushed faces.
“Oh?”
“I say it’ll be two days before your pirates forget the terms of our Truce and do something foolish.” She lifted her tail out of the water, admired the way the sinking sun glinted off her polished ice-blue scales. “She thinks it’ll be only one,” she told them, nodding over at Green-Tail, who was barely visible at the other end of the Lagoon.
“How nice of you to give us the benefit of the doubt,” Hook said. “Now if you’ll pardon us, madam, we’ve got a pressing engagement aboard our ship.” To prove his point he caught Wendy around the middle and pulled her closer, until she could feel just how pressing. She bit her lip and tried to ignore the ache building in her stomach and burning even lower.
“Please yourselves,” Blondie said airily, braiding a shell into her golden hair.
“We intend to,” Hook murmured for Wendy’s ear only.
The row back to the ship seemed to take an eon.
She spent the time watching the muscles along his arms and shoulders that flexed with each oar stroke, and the way the fabric of his loose, unbuttoned shirt tightened and relaxed with every movement. They were halfway across when she glanced up and caught his gaze. The force of the longing and desire she saw there was more intimate than half of their kisses. Her heart thrummed to the point of pain beneath her ribs; the stories never told of how magical it was to be desired. They spoke always of love but rarely of passion. Knowing that James felt such emotion and want simply by looking at her was a completely different kind of power. And it was entirely reciprocal.
That was the truth of it: he had never taken more than she’d given. She’d never had more than he’d offered. They were precisely partnered, everything split and shared fifty-fifty. At first it had been a joking arrangement, a sign of affection and mutual respect. Pirate to pirate. And then as she’d grown, as love had opened between them, it had become a partnership of woman and man. Lover to lover. Husband to wife. Blondie had called them “their” pirates. He had said “our” ship. She’d been gone for so long, and still that remained. A universal truth that everyone acknowledged.
Her already bedraggled skirt snagged on the wooden railing as she swung over it, the fabric ripping free with a loud hiss. She looked down calmly at the revealing slit, totally unconcerned. There had been no question of ever wearing it again, not after the things it had been through.
“That dress is a mess, darling,” he observed. “It shall have to come straight off.”
“In this we are in accord,” she said. “Perhaps you could assist me with the laces?”
“Something I will never fathom,” he said conversationally as he stepped closer, boots loud against the empty deck. “Why must ladies’ clothing be so infernally complicated?”
“Anything worth having,” she replied, taking a step back to match his forward, pulling just out of arm’s reach. “Is worth a bit of effort.”
“Aye, fair enough,” he agreed, clasping his hands behind his back and swaying on the balls of his feet. “Though is it always wise to prolong the inevitable? That sort of anticipation… That could be mighty dangerous.”
“For who?”
“Minx.”
“Scoundrel.”
“Well, then. What must this supplicant do to be worthy?” He spread his hands wide and did his level best to look innocent, utterly failing. Every inch of him was made for sin, and he was hardly bashful about it.
She loved it. He knew it.
“What if I said . . . to bring me the moon.”
“I’d fetch you a string of pearls, the tears of the moon.” He stepped closer. She stood still.
“And if I asked for the summer?”
“A bottle of wine from the middle of that season, the smell of the vine still on the cork.”
Another step.
“And what if I asked for forever, for something lasting and eternal?”
“I’d simply show you this.” He reached for her hand, lifted it to his chest, pressed her palm against the warm skin. “This heart beats because of you, Jill. It’s yours now-- think it always was. It may not beat forever, but it’s all that I have.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. And she took his hand and held it to her breast. “Because this is yours, in equal exchange.”
“. . .Just this one, or do I get the full pair?”
“You!”
He stopped her laugh with a kiss. His tongue slid over hers, still flavored with whiskey. It was a kiss that could unlock anything, and she felt herself loosening as the tumblers clicked open.
But she managed to pull away long enough to say, “Your bunk. Now.”
He was hardly in a mood to argue, and wrenched open the door to the cabin.
Inside, she pushed him back onto the bed, hooking his ankle out from under him. He sat down with a breathless grunt.
“Those laces you were going to help me with,” she said with a smile.
“As milady wishes.” Hook unknotted the bow quickly, deft fingers already accustomed to unweaving tangled lines. He began to draw the laces out, the ends popping softly as they slid through each channel. The bodice was half open when he paused and leaned forward to press a kiss to the pale hollow between her breasts. She shivered. He looked up, an eyebrow arched. She bit her lip but said nothing, and with a chuckle he resumed his work.
The lace parted way from bodice and slipped from his fingers to curl onto the floor. She reached up to push one shoulder strap off, then the next, and shifted her hips to let the dress slip to her feet.
And there she stood, pale and uncovered before him in the half-light of the room. He stared at her with an uncharacteristically inscrutable expression, eyes roving to take in every inch. For a brief moment she felt almost uncomfortable, and crossed her arms over her breasts.
“Oh, lass,” he said. He stretched out to touch a faint scar on her stomach, then a new, vividly purple bruise on her thigh. His fingertips ghosted up past the marks of the wound that had led her to Alice, and then he wrapped his arms around her waist, buried his face in her stomach as he embraced her, the metal of his hook cold against her back.
Her hands curved around his head, dug into his hair. He was shaking, and that rocked her at a fundamental level. This was the notorious Captain Hook, a scourge of the seas, a rogue—her rogue. And he had dropped his ever-present guard.
“When they took you,” he murmured, breath hot against her skin. “I thought I’d go mad with worry. I knew the Queen was capable of anything. I saw them torturing you, as vivid in my mind as the world through a spyglass. I could feel myself come unstitched; I thought I’d fall to pieces.”
She didn’t know what to say. There were no words. Nothing would come close to sufficing.
He lifted his face as her hands slid over his neck and under his collar. She pushed back the fabric to expose the darkly tanned, corded shoulders. He released her to undo the last button—the shirt was dropped over her dress. She knelt, face-to-face, and turned her attention to his belt. As the leather strap slipped free, he kissed her cheek. She unbuttoned his breeches; he kissed the other cheek. His boots were the last to join the pile of discards.
Leaving just James Hook and his Red-Handed Jill. For a long heartbeat they held still in their tableau, one seated and the other kneeling, meeting one another’s eyes in a level, steady gaze.
So much had changed since their last night. The eyes that he looked into now would always be a deep and unvaried black, so unlike the bright blue eyes of the girl he’d once known. His golden hook rested on the edge of the bed, the sharp tip scratching into the wood of the frame; she would never again feel what it was like to be held fully. But the visible changes were nothing compared to what lay beneath the surface. They’d lived entire lives apart, full of danger and heartache and loss. There was so much to be shared and discussed and to recover from. Wendy’s new scars were not the only ones.
Then she broke the spell by pushing him back onto the bed, following him into it, sliding her body over his until curve met hollow. She couldn’t find the words to tell him everything she felt so dearly-- that what was past was past, that they could only move forward from here, that she loved him more than the sea or stars or sun, that he was more precious to her than any treasure, that she would never leave again-- and so she showed him. Sometimes a broken body can only feel whole with another shattered soul.
“Jill,” he said before she could cover his mouth with hers, her tangled brown curls brushing his bearded cheeks. She drew his lip between her teeth as she shifted against him, her hardened nipples rubbing over his chest. He was so warm beneath her, warm to the point of burning, and she could feel the thick length of him between her legs. She wanted him to the point of delirium, needed to remember how overwhelming it could be to have him slipping inside her, wanted and needed so much she was slick with it.
She straddled him, her knees digging deep furrows into the feather mattress. He was ready-- more than-- and
moved instinctively as she positioned herself. It had been long enough since the last time that she gasped in surprise at the tight sensation.
“Relax,” he reminded her breathlessly, hand cupping one breast as the thumb rolled gently over the sensitive nipple. His eyes were shining as he looked up at her, so beautiful and in control.
Wendy nodded and bit her lip, taking another breath before pushing her hips further, driving him deeper. His low moan sent shockwaves through her. She drew back. Swayed forward. Slowly re-learnt the rhythm that would leave them both dazed. She clutched at his chest in an attempt to steady herself, palms rubbing over scar tissue from old battles.
When she twisted her hips he cried out, so close to release it was maddening. He lowered his hand from her breast, drew it across the sweat-slick expanse of her stomach, until he’d reached the crux of their joining. As she rocked forward again, more forceful than before, he rubbed the pad of his finger over her, drawing figure eights and spirals until she began to whimper.
“Hook!” she cried out, finally giving into the heady, wild rhythm, losing all semblance of pace as she drove herself forward, grinding her hips over his until she felt him come with a shudder and a gasp. Everything went black and warm and indistinct. She fell forward, sure she would fall forever, only for him to catch her in trembling arms.
She slept dreamlessly, floating on a warm and placid sea that rose and fell as gently as a summer breeze. It was a sort of peace she had not known for months, a peace she could not have known without him.
When she woke it was full dark. The sky through the opened porthole was an inky black dotted with the pinpricks of stars. The evening waves splashed quietly against the hull, the sound as soothing as the soft swaying of the ship. Her head rested against a down pillow and there was a white sheet drawn over her.
Wendy sat up quickly, a jolt of fear running hot through her veins.
“Easy, darling,” his voice reassured out of the darkness. She rolled over to find him still stretched beside her, lying atop the sheets with his back against the wall. She practically dove into his arms, grabbing him roughly to prove that he was flesh and blood. “. . .This is going to take a while, isn’t it?”
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