Caribbean Jewel

by Jayla Jasso

  She continued to regard him in silence, not moving.

  He dropped his hand away from her face. “You deserve so much more than I can give you, Jolie. Por Dios, I wish I could do this, take you this instant, and deny you the privilege and honor of a reputable name, but I—cannot do it. I will not ask you to spend your life with a bastard-born privateer who has nothing to offer you but this brigantine.”

  “Gabriel, I don’t care about a respectable family name.”

  “Of course you don’t right now, querida. Your body is trembling and responding to mine, and you are ready to be seduced. Just go back to your cot while I still have the strength to let you go.” He forced his hands to lift away from her body completely.

  She sat up straighter in his lap, stubbornly clinging to his neck.

  “I said go, Jolie,” he grated firmly. “Have mercy on me. Go.”

  When she didn’t move, he moved her legs from his lap to the edge of the mattress, and gently pushed her limp body forward until her feet touched the wooden floor planks. He helped her stand, holding her arm to steady her as she turned to walk across the cabin. He watched as she pulled back the covers on her cot and lay down under them.

  Numbly, he readjusted his towel and retreated to the balcony outside the back door. He needed time away from her presence and several bucketfuls of cool water before he would be able to think about getting some sleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The chilly ocean water had proven useless against either Marcano’s arousal or his burning inner torment. He slipped back into the cabin and quietly donned his trousers and boots, then grabbed his shirt and left the cabin to check on Guillarte.

  A lamplight in the window of the great cabin told him Guillarte was inside; Marcano swung the door open and strode in, slinging the shirt around his shoulders and stuffing his arms into the sleeves. He looked up to find Guillarte seated at the table, the map book spread out before him, a lit cigar dangling from his lips.

  Guillarte removed the cigar from his mouth to speak. “I’m worried about you, Captain.” An amused glint in his eye, he surveyed Marcano from head to toe. “Since when does the former pirate Gabriel Marcano leave a lovely lady’s bed with a bulge straining in his breeches?”

  Marcano swore under his breath in Spanish and strode angrily to the sideboard to pour himself a drink.

  Guillarte chuckled. “Are you losing your touch, my friend? Don’t tell me she ran sobbing from your arms as well. Our lovely English guest has a strange problem, this bursting into tears when we try to seduce her.”

  “Once again, Guillarte, your ignorance is exceeded only by your boorish insensitivity,” Marcano growled, gulping down a shot of black spiced rum.

  “I was only pulling your chain, friend,” Guillarte joked, “seeing it’s grown so long.”

  Marcano set down his glass to button his shirt over the incriminating evidence of his arousal. He raked a hand through his hair. “Can we change the subject, Lieutenant? I came down here to get my mind off the girl, if you don’t mind.”

  Guillarte took another long drag from his cigar, blowing out a slow puff of smoke. “Of course, Captain. Allow me to update you on our progress. We were only blown off course a couple of miles by the storm, and should reach Kingston by nightfall tomorrow—or should I say later today. That leaves only the task of recovering the stolen goods and setting a return course for the islands of Puerto Rico.”

  Marcano poured himself another shot of rum. “I have a very bad feeling about Hauste. I fear he may be looking for us—getting the Corazón out of Crab Island may be more difficult than we thought.”

  Guillarte frowned. “We must recover the Corazón this trip, Gabriel. The more time we take, the greater the chance Philip will discover he has commissioned us to recover the precious artifact we ourselves stole.”

  “Our monarch spends all his time with hunting and music. We will have the Corazón de Isabela safely back in Spain before he catches on.” Marcano held up his glass, peering at the lamplight filtering through the dark liquid inside. “This rum is the same color as her eyes.”

  “Gabriel, I hate to bear bad tidings, but you have the look of a man who has fallen hopelessly in love.”

  “Do I?” Marcano slowly set the glass down and stood with hands on hips, gazing at the floor. “I want to show you something, old friend.” He dug into a pocket in his shirt and produced a small, shiny piece of jewelry. It was a marquis-cut rose amethyst, set in an intricately carved, white-gold band. He stared at it, then held it out for his friend to examine.

  Guillarte reached out to take the small ring between his forefinger and thumb, holding it up for inspection.

  Marcano grasped the back of a chair with both hands and leaned on it wearily. “Now I suppose you will get a good laugh, ¿sí? I bought it today in Santo Domingo while we were looking for the parchment and ink. And the most laughable part of it is, I can’t give it to her.”

  Guillarte glanced up at his face. “What is holding you back, amigo? The girl adores you. It was obvious tonight at the dance.”

  “I am not certain her feelings run deeper than infatuation. But even if so”—Marcano shook his head—“I cannot bring myself to ruin her chance of marrying into a good family, to have a respectable name. Believe me, I am not attempting to be a martyr. It’s just that I care what happens to her, and I can’t take away her best possible chance at happiness.”

  Guillarte cleared his throat uneasily and motioned to a chair. “Sit down, Gabriel.”

  Marcano obeyed tiredly, and once he was seated, he slumped forward with his forearms on the polished surface of the table.

  “Had you considered,” Guillarte asked, “that if the girl’s goal was to marry into a good family with a ‘respectable’ name, she would have been more receptive to marrying me?”

  Marcano sighed, fixing pained eyes on his first mate’s face. “She is too young and naïve to understand what she would be giving up by accepting me.”

  “I see.” Guillarte nodded. “That is certainly a wise, socially proper viewpoint you have taken. It surprises me, however. I have always known you to be a romantic, and more idealistic than that, Gabriel. I think Jolie knows exactly what she wants, and it isn’t an ‘important match.’ It is a man who will love and cherish her with all the passion and strength of his heart.”

  Marcano stared at him. Every so often, Luis was bloody brilliant.

  He held the ring out to Marcano. “It was a hopeless romantic fool who purchased this ring. Why don’t you ask him to offer it to her?”

  Marcano sat looking at the delicate piece of jewelry in Luis’ hand for a moment, then reached out and took it. He held it in his palm, the fragile beauty of it contrasting with the ruggedness of his large, rope-roughened hand. “She deserves better than this little ring, but I had few coins with me today. Most of my fortune is in safekeeping back in Seville.”

  “You have enough stored by to buy her a wedding diamond?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And a comfortable home?”

  “I believe so.”

  “What more can the girl want,” Guillarte asked, “but this heartfelt token of love, a comfortable home, and a passionate Spaniard to adore her?”

  Marcano smiled wearily. “Perhaps I will entreat the hopeless romantic fool to ask her that as well.”

  Guillarte took one last drag from his cigar, then rubbed it out. “Go to bed, Captain. You are hardly in any condition to lead this surly group of sailors on their mission tomorrow eve—forgive me, I meant later this evening. The clock strikes three even as we speak.”

  Marcano pushed himself to his feet, then dropped the ring back into his pocket. “Until later, then, Lieutenant. My thanks, old friend.”

  #

  For the first time since she had come aboard the Amatista Jolie awoke in the morning to find Marcano still asleep in his bunk. She had sat up on her cot and was groping under it for her slippers when she noticed his form under the covers of the be
d across the cabin. She drew her hand back and sat up straight.

  What to do? Wait quietly in the cot until he awoke? Should she try to dress herself before he stirred? Indecisive, she sat watching him from across the cabin, then carefully stood up to see better. He lay on his stomach, his face toward the wall, arms bent, cradling the pillows. The bedclothes were pushed down around his waist and his broad, well-muscled back and arms lay bare to her view. She realized she had never seen him asleep and peaceful like this. Last night he was tense and disconcerted as he argued about her needing more than what he could give her—a respectable name, family connections, etcetera.

  Illegitimately born, to a common whore? Jolie cared not. There was nothing disrespectful nor base about the way Gabriel Marcano conducted his business and his person. He may have been scorned by his snobbish birth family, but his friends and crewmen clearly loved and admired him with the utmost devotion. It was possible, Jolie mused, for an illegitimately born man to become a gentleman of the highest esteem, and for a man born into a genteel, proper family to make himself the lowest reprobate. And if the genteel-born man who grew up to be a villain was to be despised, how much more should a man like Marcano be praised for his strength of character, since he grew up with opposition on all sides?

  She knew some of what she felt for him was admiration and gratitude, but beyond that she had an overwhelming desire to cradle him in her arms. He already knew many of her worst secrets and hadn’t rejected her as despicable or disgusting. She wanted to gain affirmation from him, to be assured she was worthy of love and acceptance, and to assure him he too was worthy of all this and more.

  Truly he was the most remarkable man she had ever met, and she felt certain her mother and father, if they were still alive, would heartily approve of him. Her father had gone against his family’s wishes by marrying a French girl, and both her parents’ writings spoke of the love that bound them together against all opposition. So what would they say about her bastard-born Spanish seafarer? If they knew the intensity of her feelings, and the goodness of his heart, they would approve.

  Jolie went to the washstand to wash her face and rinse her mouth, drying on the towel hanging there, then tiptoed to his side. Blue morning sunlight seeped in through the windows, illuminating his smooth olive skin, the rich blackness of his hair. She stood watching as his back rose and fell gently with his steady breathing. There was a raised scar below his right shoulder blade about four inches long, the only interruption of the muscular perfection of his skin. Her gaze traveled down the planes of his back to the lowest point exposed by the sheets—beneath them, his slim waist, narrow hips, and the swell of his buttocks. Jolie braced one hand on the mattress and boldly reached over to stroke the hair away from his cheek with her fingers. He murmured something in Spanish, and she leaned over to press her lips to the smooth plane of his shoulder blade. His eyes didn’t open, so she kissed the same spot again, and feeling daring, trailed the tip of her tongue against his skin just for a second.

  Startled, he jerked awake and rolled over awkwardly, almost succeeding in losing the sheet and exposing himself to Jolie’s view. She stood chuckling as he struggled to a sitting position, gripping the covers in a fist hold.

  He reached up to run a hand through his loose hair. “¡Cielos, mujer!”

  “What does that mean?” She grasped the rafter at the upper edge of the bunk over her head and smiled down into his bewildered-looking face.

  For an answer, he reached up and grasped her waist, pulling her squirming and kicking body over him to the far side of the bunk, between him and the wall. He pinned her there on the mattress and hovered over her, grinning.

  Jolie gazed up into his brilliant blue eyes, which were now fully alert. His long hair hung down on either side of his handsome face, shading it somewhat from the weak morning light.

  “Don’t move. Close your eyes and don’t look until I tell you,” he said.

  Jolie obeyed, giddiness filling the pit of her stomach at the realization that he wasn’t going to yell at her for approaching him or run her off this time. She felt him get up from the mattress and resisted the urge to peek.

  She heard him at the washstand, splashing water on his face and rinsing his mouth. He returned to the side of the bunk and slipped beneath the covers, sidling up to where she lay, eyes still tightly shut.

  He leaned over and brushed his warm lips against hers, sending a shiver of excitement through her body. When he drew back, she smiled, eyes still closed. “May I open my eyes now, Captain? You gave orders not to look ’til you told me to.”

  She felt him smoothing her hair along the pillow beside her shoulder before answering.

  “No, not yet.” He caressed her cheek, bent his head to press his lips to her temple, and then claimed her mouth hungrily.

  Jolie felt that her insides were turning wrong side out as he kissed her. She lay still, not knowing quite what to do other than allow him to do whatever he wanted and to drink in each new sensation bravely. His warm tongue swept across her lips and she opened them for him, reveling in the wave of heat that washed over her as he traced the insides of her lips and tasted deeper into her mouth. He tangled his fingers into her hair and cupped the back of her neck to pull her closer.

  Jolie strained up against him as the kiss propelled her into a dream world where the gentle creaking and rocking of the brigantine and the calls of the morning seagulls ceased to exist. There was only Gabriel Marcano, warm, breathing, alive, kissing and stroking her. Her hands were itching to touch him, but she was unsure of where exactly to put them. Tentatively she placed one hand on his firm chest and rested the other against his flank. His muscles rippled beneath her hand as he pressed against her.

  “Jolie, querida,” he breathed near her ear. “I keep finding you even when I am not searching. Perhaps I should have been searching all along.”

  She nodded, and he lifted his head and fixed his startling blue eyes on her. He looked so different this morning, she thought. There was a new joy in his eyes, a look of recognition, of acceptance. He looks like he loves me, she told herself hopefully. She flattened her palm more fully against his chest, boldly caressing his pectoral muscle, and grinned up at him. “Why should you search for me? I’m right here.”

  His response was to kiss her again, this time with a kind of hungry desperation, tugging insistently at her lips, finding her tongue and urgently drawing it into his mouth. His forcefulness stole her breath away, and she reached around to caress his back as the kiss seemed to drain her of any resistance or doubt.

  Eventually he dragged his mouth from hers and swept her hair aside to find the slim column of her neck, pressing his heated mouth to the sensitive skin there. He rested his body on his forearms on either side of her and cupped her shoulders in his fingers. His tongue tasted the underside of her jaw and explored farther back to the ticklish area around and behind her ear. Jolie shut her eyes tightly against the sheer delight of his touch; she could hear her own breathing, feel her pulse pounding in her ears.

  His mouth made its way to the base of her neck, and his lips traced her collarbone. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted him to touch her breasts until she noticed he had started unbuttoning the front of her gown and found herself wanting to scream, hurry up! His breathing was heavy against her cheek as he worked at the little buttons, and she marveled that he was affected so much just by kissing her, even though she hadn’t done anything but lie there.

  The nightgown was soon unbuttoned to her waist, and his lips explored the heated skin below her collarbones and lower, trailing down between her still-covered breasts, parting the silk just enough to nuzzle the warm valley between them. His kisses slid scandalously lower to the flat plane of her abdomen, down to the V of the unbuttoned gown, and then he made his way back up gradually, unhurriedly, licking at her heated skin with the tip of his tongue. When he reached her breasts again, he slipped a hand inside the gown under the swell of one of them, pressing his lips to the insid
e curve of the rounded flesh, then pulling the material away with his fingers. Jolie opened her eyes just long enough to confirm what the sensations she felt were telling her, that her right breast was exposed to his view and he was cradling it in his left hand, gazing down at it with rapt attention. He bent his head toward it, and she closed her eyes in anticipation.

  Just as his lips touched her sensitive nipple in the softest of kisses, he jerked back. Jolie’s eyes flew open to see him looking back over his shoulder at the door.

  It sounded again, the knock that she prayed she had imagined the first time.

  “Capitán, soy Joaquin, Señor,” called the boy’s voice through the door. “Le buscan los hombres.”

  Before Jolie could collect her wits, Marcano had reluctantly covered her breast and begun to re-button the nightgown. His mouth was set into a firm line, but he didn’t curse.

  “Momento, Joaquin,” he yelled hoarsely, fumbling with the buttons with unsteady fingers. Jolie watched him mutely, holding her breath. She was so limp she feared she would not be able to stand up if he asked her to.

  At last he finished buttoning the gown and brought his lips back to hers for a brief but impassioned kiss, then whispered, “Go back to your cot and pretend to be asleep so I can open the door, all right? We don’t want to embarrass Joaquin.”

  Jolie nodded, her eyes on his face as he lifted her drained body from the bunk and set her feet on the floor. He pulled her close for another open-mouthed kiss, then reluctantly released her, pushing her gently in the direction of the cot. She staggered somewhat gracelessly to it, burying herself beneath the covers.

  Marcano called for the boy to enter. From beneath the blanket, Jolie listened to the sound of the captain moving about, rummaging in his armoire for his clothes, and talking with Joaquin in hushed Spanish. After several minutes she heard the cabin door open and close, then Marcano’s footsteps approached her cot from across the room. He drew the covers aside and she rolled over to face him, smiling when she saw him kneeling there beside her, dressed in a white lawn shirt, his hair tied sleekly back.