by Paula Quinn
Training with him was torturous and eating with him was no less challenging. He laughed with the crew at her or Kyle’s tales of their kin back home. He watched her eat, mostly bug-free food. He watched her drink and speak with the others. She felt his eyes on her often and sometimes turned to catch him looking. His smile, across the span of his drunken crew, was sober, intimate, and longing for her as well.
But he hadn’t kissed her since Lisbon. Save for their practice time, he barely touched her. It was driving her mad. She wished they could drop anchor at the nearest port and leave the ship, even for a few hours. She needed to be away from wherever Captain Kidd was.
They were three weeks in. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take. To keep her mind and her eyes off him, she kept busy with other activities, one of them being how to climb the ratlines and finally make it to the crow’s nest. At first, Gustaaf didn’t go along with keeping his instruction a secret from the captain, but Trina didn’t let up on him until he agreed.
That’s why she felt so bad for him one day when Alex discovered her on her way down from the mast. She hadn’t seen him on the forecastle deck and nearly slipped through a hole in the ropes when he shouted her name.
Her near fall didn’t help in the argument that ensued between them. He ordered her never to climb again. She adamantly refused. She sincerely couldn’t believe he was so pig-headed and primitive.
“Ye’re being unreasonable and uncooperative!” she told him, following him around the mast and rigging and waiting while he ordered Gustaaf to come down. “And ye will not blame him!”
The captain shot her a look that proved she’d finally managed to irritate him enough to throw her overboard. “I be the captain of this ship, woman,” he warned in a low voice. “I’ll do what I damn well please. Gustaaf!” he shouted when the sailor’s feet touched the deck. “Do ya carry ill will toward Miss Grant?”
“No, Captain, I’m fon—”
“Then why the hell would ya go along with this madness and agree to teach her how to climb the ratlines? If she fell—”
“I will not fall again,” Trina promised, then backed up when he glared at her and then at poor Gustaaf. “He caught me every time!” she insisted, trying desperately to protect her friend.
Alex covered his face with his palm. “How many times did he catch ya?”
She knew her error immediately. He’d seen her almost fall only this one time. Knowing that it had happened more than once wasn’t going to help her cause. “Today and yesterday. That is all.”
The guilt on Gustaaf’s tanned face told Alex she was lying. She sighed, tired of hiding. She hadn’t come aboard to be told what she could and couldn’t do. “Pretend I am a man,” she seethed at him. “Pretend I am John Gable. Remember, ye told me yerself how well he repaired the masts.”
“Ya don’t know a damn thing about the masts, lass, and I’ll not have ya fall to yar death on me ship. As fer pretendin’ ya’re a man”—his eyes drifted over her like a tangible caress, warming her, devouring her—“that’s quite impossible.”
She hated doing it, but if using his desire for her was the only way to get him to go along with her schemes, then so be it. “Alex, please. I will be more careful. That is the only place on the ship I havena’ been. Dinna’ deny me. I need to be away from… things.”
His expression didn’t change—at least, nowhere but in his eyes. “Ya will call me Captain in the presence of others,” he told her woodenly, unfazed by her plea. “If I find out that ya have disobeyed me again, ya and Gustaaf will careen the hull when next we dock. Savvy?”
“Nae, I dinna’ savvy!” She folded her arms across her chest. “I dinna’ know what careening the hull even means, Captain!” She wished there were something on deck to throw at his arrogant head. She wished she had the courage to kick him.
He cast her an infuriating smile and turned to her friend. “Tell her, Gustaaf.”
“But, Captain,” Gustaaf said quietly. “I cannot swim.”
Trina blinked at him. What kind of sailor couldn’t swim?
“Well then, Gustaaf, the next time ya see Miss Grant attemptin’ to climb the ratlines, ya will come get me, won’t ya.”
This sounded like blackmail to her. “What is careening the hull?” She turned to Gustaaf. “Does he threaten ye?”
“’Tis cleanin’ the barnacles off the hull,” Alex said, saving the Dutchman from having to answer what, she realized a moment after she said it, was a demeaning question to put to a man. “Barnacles grow beneath—”
Trina nodded. “I know where they grow, Captain. And he cannot swim. Ye are despicable to use such tactics, and all to deny me what ye would deny no one else.”
“Think of me what ya will, Miss Grant. I would have ya live.”
“Living is more than just breathing, Captain.”
“On me ship, livin’ is what I say ’tis.” He passed her and continued on his way to the quarterdeck.
Did he honestly think she would let that be the end of it? Poor fool, he was as guileless about women as she was about men. How dare he make light of her words when they meant so much to her?
“I didna’ come here to live under yer rule,” she said, following him.
“Then get off me ship and go get yar own.”
Och, if she could just fling her dagger into his back, all her troubles would be over. When she saw him heading toward his cabin, she followed him. They were going to get this settled now.
“I will not be treated differently from the men here, Captain,” she warned while he opened the door to his cabin.
A man stood on the other side. “There ya are,” Mr. Pierce said to Alex, exiting the cabin. “I was lookin’ fer ya.”
Trina hadn’t spoken to the quartermaster since he stopped her the other night to ask her more questions about David Pierce, who had traveled to Skye for a puppy a few months ago.
“Is it important?” Alex asked him.
Pierce eyed her from beneath his lids. “She’s been climbin’ the ratlines with Gustaaf.”
Trina folded her arms across her chest and glared at him. Had he sought Alex out just to tell him that she’d disobeyed orders? She wanted to give him a piece of her mind, but Pierce was, if nothing else, loyal to his captain.
“I already know about that,” Alex told him, “but thank ya fer comin’ to me with it.”
“Aye, thank ye, Mr. Pierce,” Trina said coolly. The quartermaster looked away. “Now if ye will excuse us, we were just in the middle of a fight about that very thing.”
Pierce went quietly, leaving Alex at the entrance, half blocking it with his size.
“Well?” Trina continued as if there had been no interruption. “What do ye intend to do aboot treating me like one of the men?”
He stared at her for an instant, looking like he simply couldn’t believe her audacity. It amused him. “Disobey me again,” he smirked, “and find yarself marooned—just as I would do to one of me crew.”
He moved to enter his cabin. He wasn’t going to win by keeping her away. Not this time. She squeezed past him—hell, everywhere she went she had to squeeze past him and rub up against his solid planes and rigid muscles, thanks to the tight quarters on the ship. It was driving her mad. Now was no different. This time, she didn’t slip away. This time she stopped in the center of him, pressed against him, unable to move, to breathe. She looked up into his dark eyes and felt his heart accelerate against her.
“Disengage yerself from me, Caitrina,” he demanded quietly.
“Nae.” She defied him yet again.
She felt every inch of him tense and tremble against her. She exhaled and felt the quickening of his breath and his shaft hardening against her hip.
She didn’t want to move for the rest of her life, and without thinking she reached her hands up to clasp his shoulders. “I dinna’ mean to continue disobeying ye. ’Tis just that yer demands are impossible to—”
He reacted instantly, lifting her off the floor and i
nto his arms while he slammed his door shut with his foot. He didn’t give her a chance to speak but covered her mouth with complete mastery and barely leashed control. She opened to his curious tongue and cupped his face in one hand. The other traversed the sculpted lines of his shoulder, down his arm, curled tightly now around her back.
Coming up for a breath, she licked his lips. She bit them and he groaned like a beast she should fear. When he bent her back over the crook of his elbow and exposed her throat to his hungry mouth, she knew whatever he wanted to do to her, she would allow.
His large hand moved over her covered breast, cupping her, running his palm over her and dragging a deep groan from the back of her throat. Her nipple hardened instantly and he rubbed it with the pad of his thumb. Once. Twice, until she trembled and gasped in his arms, needing more. What was it she wanted? She didn’t know. More of him. All of him. His hands, his mouth, all over her. To be devoured, or mayhap to devour him.
Just as he grasped the fabric of her shirt to tear it off her and kiss her where no man had ever been before, someone pounded on the door. Caitrina was grateful to be stopped. Hell, the passion he unleashed in her frightened her.
“Captain,” Cooper shouted on the other side. “We’ve spotted a ship leaving the Sargasso.”
Alex ignored him and continued kissing her neck.
“From here it looks poorly defended.”
Alex disengaged and looked down at her. She smiled, knowing what he had to do. He was a pirate, after all. Besides, she could use the break to examine this part of herself she didn’t know, rein herself in before she made a fool of herself.
“Hell!” He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. “We don’t need more loot,” he whispered into her hair, trying to talk himself out of leaving her. “We have everything we need from Lisbon.”
She pushed him away, smiling. “Go,” she told him regretfully. “I willna’ have the men accuse me of stealing their captain away from his duties.”
Her legs felt weak and her breath was shallow when he released her. Her body screamed for him. Would he discard her afterward? After he had what he wanted, would he run off with the next lass who offered herself to him?
Kyle had told her what he knew about Madalena and Trina understood a bit more clearly why he didn’t trust her. She would prove to him that he could. She would never rob him, though she made light of it when he brought it up. She may not have read all her grandmother’s books, but she knew enough about her kin’s moral code. Her take on Madalena was that she wasn’t in her right mind when she left him. Any woman who had gained his heart would be mad to toss it away. Kyle said she broke his heart. He said Alex had given her everything he had.
Now wasn’t the time to ask about his past loves, not that she was sure she even wanted to know, or what Alex planned on doing after Trina gave herself to him.
She went with him to the door and blushed when Cooper and Mr. Pierce saw her, her bandanna askew on her head. Alex let out a long, nearly silent sigh, but thankfully, said nothing.
“Spyglass.” Alex held out his hand to either man. Cooper hastily slapped the apparatus into his palm.
“Should I set a course to follow, Captain?” Cooper asked.
“Let me take a look.” He stepped outside, then paused and turned to Trina. “Comin’?”
She wanted to, but she didn’t want Kyle to see her so disheveled. As long as he didn’t suspect her of being dishonored, he wouldn’t try to defend her honor and get someone killed. She needed to sit and discuss with him the fact that she didn’t need his blessing when it came to Alex, but she asked for it because he was her dearest, most treasured friend. “I’ll follow ye in a moment,” she told him quietly. “I want to freshen up.”
He smiled, clearly not understanding the fairer sex at all. “Freshen up fer a fight?”
“Captain?” Cooper pressed from the stairs.
He bid her do as she would and then left her. Alone, Trina shut the door and adjusted her shirt so that it wasn’t half loose at her waist and nearly tangled about her neck. What had come over her while he kissed her? She’d felt wild and dangerous in his arms, weak and willing. Did she love him? What if she did? How could she not? He offered her her dreams and so much more. She was in the middle of retying her bandanna neatly around her head when she noticed a small door in the wall by his bed. She’d never noticed it before. But it had never lain open before. There was something inside it, a box. She supposed she should close the latch and keep hidden whatever he was obviously hiding. She went to the wall and bent her knees. She’d meant to close the door, but the box called to her and she picked it up in her hands to examine it. It was beautiful, with several sides, all cut into ornate designs. She shook it. Something was inside. She looked for a latch with which to open it and…
“It has turned out to be an old friend… Caitrina?”
She spun around at the sound of Alex’s voice. The instant she looked at him, saw all his uncertainties about her boiling to the surface, she knew she was in trouble.
His map. She looked down at the box in her hands. Och, dear saints. It had to be his map.
“What are ya doin’?” he demanded quietly. “Ya have five breaths to explain before I throw ya off m’ ship.”
Trina closed her eyes. He’d accused her of coming aboard to steal his map from the beginning. It was his greatest fear, that she could easily be as vile and merciless as Madalena Barros. Now here she was, clutching his treasure in her hands like she’d been scheming for it all along. Saints help her, this was bad.
“The small door swinging open drew my attention and I—”
He turned and walked away from her and, without listening to another word, shut the door in her face.
Chapter Twenty-One
Alex shut the door to his cabin, leaving Caitrina inside. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood. He should have trusted his instincts. He was the worst kind of fool. The kind who didn’t learn from past mistakes. The kind who ignored what he suspected from the beginning. She was here for his map.
He closed his eyes as the cold truth of it hit him like a kick to the face. She was just like Madalena. How could he let this happen twice? How could he have let himself trust her? Care for her?
She was unable to give him an explanation for what she was doing with his box in her hands. Hell, he’d wanted to be wrong about her. She made him want it. If she wasn’t there to rob him, then perhaps he could trust her. If he trusted her, he could love her.
He pounded the door and stormed away from it. “Robbie!” he shouted as his men hurried to their duties. “Guard the door,” he ordered when Robbie reached him. “No one comes out or goes in, savvy?”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n.”
He stormed toward the helm and bellowed orders to bring his ship around starboard. It was his good fortune that the ship in the distance belonged to a captain he knew well from New York.
He listened as his commands were repeated.
How the hell could she be so good at her thieving? She made him believe her. She made him doubt his misgivings and then forget them completely. He’d let her in. The pain in his chest was proof and he cursed it to the four winds. What did she think she was going to do with his map? How did she think she would get off his ship with it? Well, he knew how she was getting off it today—and Kyle with her.
He reached Cooper at the helm then passed him and came to stand at the wooden rail, looking out over his ship. He set his gaze to the sea and the sloop growing in the distance. A part of him wished he were chasing an enemy ship. He wanted to fight. He wanted to smash in some heads.
But Alex knew Captain John Henley of the Colony’s Lady. There would only be favors today, no fighting.
He leaned over the rail and rotated his hand in the air above his head while he shouted to the men below. “Raise the flag!”
“I would have a word with ye, Captain.”
If he didn’t want to tie her to the highest mast and let the
winds take her, he would have admired her unabashed boldness to come to him now.
“How did ya get by Robbie?”
“That doesna’ matter. I need to speak with ye.”
“Miss Grant, if ya want to see another sunset—”
“D’ye earnestly threaten me?”
He stared at her for a moment. He didn’t know what to do next. No lass had ever defied him so bloody much. Should he just pick her up and bring her back to his room, or fling her into the waves? Hell, he didn’t want to do that. He’d believed her. He’d let himself begin to trust her.
“Did ya finally think of an explanation then?”
“The same I would have given ye below. I was about to leave when something caught my eye. ’Twas the small door in the wall. ’Twas open. I—”
“I don’t leave the door open, Miss Grant.”
“But opened it was nonetheless, Captain.”
He turned away from her and watched the other boat pull in its sails, slowing in the Caribbean breeze coming in from the south.
“Why would I want to steal yer map?” she put to him, giving his sleeve a tug. “I had years to steal it from my uncle! I didna’ have to come all the way to the West Indies to get it! I admit that I was curious about the box and what might be in it, but I wasna’ trying to steal it, Alex. Where would I go with it that ye wouldna’ find me? D’ye think I’m a fool?”
She was convincing. “I might believe if not fer one thing,” he pointed out. “I always check the door. ’Tis hard to see when ’tis closed. Ya had to have been lookin’ fer it.”
She looked like she wanted to slap him. He took a step back.
“But ye didna’ check it when ye were busy kissing me,” she accused him instead. “When we found Mr. Pierce in the cabin.”
His eyes darkened beneath his brows. “Do ya dare accuse him? He knows where the map lies hidden. He doesn’t need to steal it.”