He came a step closer.
She countered by taking a step back, realizing that had probably not been the wisest thing to say.
Again he read her thoughts and chuckled. His hands went to the wide belt at his waist, his actions slow and deliberate as he unhooked it, folded it in half, and set on the desk.
Summer cast a panicked glance around the cabin. Michael was sound asleep in the hammock; if she woke him, perhaps the two of them could appeal to Wade's conscience, if, indeed, he had one.
She started across the cabin but barely managed a step before Wade was there, stepping in front of her, cutting off her path.
She saw his crooked smile and the darker flicker of intent in his eyes, and she whirled around, making a dash for the cabin door. She pulled at the latch, not knowing exactly where she could run, only knowing that she had to escape. The corridor was dark and she did not see the enormous black specter blocking her exit until she collided with the gleaming, hairless chest.
Choking off a scream, she staggered back and clapped both hands over her mouth. Apart from the brief glimpse of the giant negro on deck today, she had not seen him since the night they were rescued. With a further jolt, she realized she was seeing more now than she wanted, for he was completely naked.
"Somet'ing wrong, Cap-tan?" Mr. Monday's teeth shone white through the gloom.
"Nothing I can't handle," Wade said quietly. "But I will call if I have any further trouble."
"Aye, Cap-tan." He leaned in past a frozen Summer Cambridge and drew the door shut again.
"It is a bad habit I've not been able to break," Wade murmured. "A carry-over from his slave days, I imagine...sleeping outside the master's door."
Summer scarcely dared to breathe. Her hands were still pressed over her mouth as she turned slowly to face him. He was close enough to bring a soft whimper to her lips. His arms were folded across the steely breadth of his chest and his eyes...dear Lord, his eyes were glittering like two chips of black granite.
"Now," he said softly. "Come over here, Governess."
She backed up until she was against the wall. There was not much space between the door and the edge of the book case, but she wedged herself into it.
Wade's eyes narrowed. "Or...I am thinking...I could have Mr Monday remove your brother down to the lower deck where the rest of the crew has slung their hammocks. He is young, and his face is pretty. He should get on well down there."
"You would not d—" She caught herself before she used the word 'dare', knowing how that particular word seemed to irk him.
"Persuade me not to, Governess."
Summer had her hands pressed flat to the boards, but now she twisted them together in front of her. There were tremors in her belly, in her limbs. Her hands were icy cold, her heart was thudding dully in her chest.
"Now. Governess."
She forced herself to take a halting step forward. Then another.
Wade drew a deep breath and met her halfway. She saw him reach out and catch her before the faintness took hold. His hand brushed lightly, almost tenderly down the scattered blonde hairs on her cheek, tucking them back behind her ear. Then his head was bowing forward. His lips were covering hers. And she had the full taste of him...power and strength mingled with tobacco and rum. His lips forced hers apart and his tongue invaded, shocking her to the core, stifling the little sounds she made in her throat. This was not the kiss of a gentleman. It was not the caress of a man wanting to tease her into capitulation. It was lusty and bold, deep and inflexible, promising every sin she could imagine and more that only her body could acknowledge through raw, instinctive need. The blood rushed hot and sluggish through her veins; the quivering in her belly turned into a liquid, shimmering heat and when she tried to gasp for a breath, the sound came out as a whimper, almost a plea.
Her knees buckled beneath her, forcing her hands to curl into his shirt to keep from falling. She heard him growl, and felt his long fingers rake into her hair. He held her fast and took what he wanted until he'd had his fill, then he slid his arms beneath her shoulders and knees and lifted her.
Morgan prided himself on his discipline, on his ability to resist the sweet temptations that having a woman in his cabin each night would afford. He had not been bluffing when he said he could have taken what he wanted, when he wanted it. He had not said it simply to frighten her into keeping that delicious little mouth closed instead of baiting his temper.
He had been as surprised as any man on board when they heard the cries from the water and realized they had capsized the tiny raft with its two survivors. When they had first hauled the girl on board, she had been stared at with a mixture of awe and trepidation. His men had thought they caught a mermaid, for she was a slippery, lithe creature with masses of long yellow hair and skin so white it glowed. When the boy was brought up next, and they realized they had stumbled across two survivors of a shipwreck, the first wave of relief had been almost palpable.
Sailors, however, were notoriously superstitious, and fishing a half-naked woman out of the water in the middle of nowhere had still been cause for a second wave of alarm. They all knew the stories of sylph-like sirens who lured sailors to their doom. Half the fools had wanted to toss the girl back overboard. The other half...well...they had been at sea for two months and some had never seen a woman with yellow hair, let alone one as slender as a wisp and as pale as English cream.
Wade had delivered a loud, clear message when he had put the girl in his cabin. He had attempted to heed it himself by avoiding her company as much as possible, although that was complicated by the fact that the boy was Sir Lionel Cambridge's son. Tossing the pair in the hold was out of the question. Sharing an occasional meal with them seemed to be the least offensive attitude he could take—aside from letting the boy roam freely around the ship so long as he did not get underfoot. Returning them unharmed to Sir Lionel was more of a priority than what he would admit to the governess. With the inevitability of war looming closer every day, having the Governor of Barbados in his debt could be worth far more than any monetary ransom Michael Cambridge would fetch.
All good reasons for maintaining distance and indifference.
All of which fled at the taste of her lips, at the feel of her slender body wrapped in his arms.
The first kiss had been meant to frighten her. This second one was causing his blood to heat and his body to react in ways too dangerous to acknowledge. Her breasts were crushed against his chest with only the thin layer of her shirt to act as a barrier. He could feel the hard little nubs of her nipples just as he could feel the way her mouth stopped fighting and began to surrender. Her hands stopped pushing against him and the sound of her protests turned to startled little cries and soft, startled gasps. Another deep lashing of his tongue...two...and she would be kissing him back.
With his mouth still firmly locked to hers, he carried her to the berth. His breath was uneven as he set her down and stretched out alongside her; his thoughts were scattered along with his common sense. But when he raised a hand and brushed the scattered gold threads of her hair back off her cheeks, reality came crashing over him in a sea-green wave. Her eyes were open and she was staring up at him with such complete and utter dread that he quickly lifted his hands away from any contact and the hunger he felt retreated behind the safety of cold indifference.
He rolled onto his side and folded his arm beneath his head to use as a pillow.
Summer stared at his broad shoulders. Her mouth was throbbing, her lips tingling, her senses still reeling from the kiss. She pressed back as far as she could go against the bulkhead, her hands balled into fists, determined to fight and claw and scratch unto death if need be.
But he did not move.
After two stammered attempts, she managed to form an audible question. "Wh-what do you think you are doing?"
"I am getting some sleep, Governess. And so help me, if you keep me from it, your lovely backside will be a latticework of switch marks."
Su
mmer held her breath as Wade yawned, shifted, and settled into a more comfortable position.
Surely he was not thinking she would remain with him like this for the rest of the night!
"Captain Wade, I must insist—!"
"Blood red switch marks, madam," he warned ominously. "Dozens upon dozens of them."
CHAPTER SIX
Throughout the next six days of sailing, Wade and Summer settled into an uneasy truce—uneasy on her part, for she was never quite convinced he would not turn into a rapine beast at any moment. For Wade's part, he barely paid her any attention aside from the evening meals they shared. After that first night, she took to bundling herself up and sleeping in the deep leather chair...or at least, that was where she started out. Usually when morning came, she found herself in the berth, her cocoon of blankets intact and Wade nowhere in sight. She never felt him lift her from the chair and settle her onto the berth, never felt him tuck the blankets securely around her, never realized that her hand would stray across the still-warm mattress feeling the indent where his body had recently lain.
During those same six days she came to know the personality of the Chimera. Creaks and groans and metal clanking became familiar as did the ship's bell, which rang every four hours, night and day. Her cabin on board the Sea Vixen had been small and airless, located amidships on the lower deck, far from sounds other than the water rushing past the hull. Where the Vixen had balked and reared in heavy seas, tossing things and people to the floor without compunction, the Chimera accepted the challenge with a toss of her fine bow, carving into the waves like the sleek, powerful beauty that she was.
Michael was out of the cabin each morning as soon as they had eaten their porridge and finished their coffee. From dawn to dusk he prowled the decks in Thorny's shadow, plaguing the crusty old tar with questions. He was given small tasks to perform. He was shown how to splice and repair rigging, how to properly reef a sail, then how to climb into the foreyards and set a headsail. His complexion darkened rapidly in the constant fresh air and sunshine. On the third night out, he even ventured to ask permission to take his evening meal with the crew.
When Summer complained...politely...that she was growing weary of staring at the four walls of the cabin, Wade relented from his original orders and allowed her to take a turn up on deck. What started as an hour of sitting quietly on the forecastle bridge, turned into two, then three. She bade Michael set up an awning of sorts from canvas, shading her from the direct sun, and sat quietly reading or watching the dolphins race alongside the Chimera.
The crew, who she was led to believe were all salivating rapists-in-waiting, were distantly polite. If she passed a man on deck, he would step aside and touch a forefinger to his brow. Where the Vixen's crew had been silent and morose, always wary of the watchful, punishing eyes of their officers, Wade's crew, while always busy and hustling about, sang ditties as they worked. They seemed to love the ship and the sea with the same intensity as their captain; they gossiped like old fishwives and pulled pranks on one another that sent up gales of laughter.
This was not to say Wade's crewmen were gentlemanly and conducted themselves with impeccable deportment at all times. She heard comments filtering down from the rigging whenever she passed beneath. She saw the glances and the open, grinning speculation, the eyes that moved lewdly, hungrily over her body in a way that set her flesh to crawling. It was only Morgan Wade's absolute authority, and their assumption that he was keeping her to himself, that kept her reasonably safe.
A particularly urgent clanging of the ship's bell had them mustered and standing at the ready within minutes. On a signal from Morgan Wade, stripped to the waist and manning one of the short-snouted carronades, they ran through endless drills of setting, loading, firing and swabbing, practicing with live shot whenever a piece of driftwood happened by. Only during these drills were Summer and Michael banished from the decks, one quite happily, the other with a great sigh of dejection. But cannon, Wade explained, were like women: temperamental bitches no matter how many precautions were taken to pamper them. Gunpowder was unstable, the wadding often left the muzzle in a shower of flaming sparks, and occasionally, the shot itself exploded moments after being fired.
Summer did not object to the banishment. She cowered in the aftercabin, covering her ears with her hands to block out the roar of the thundering broadsides. She shuddered after each timber-shaking volley, and began to understand why furniture was bolted to the floors and cabinets had wires reinforcing the doors. Water sloshed out of pitchers and basins, loose objects crashed to the floor, and until she figured out how to brace herself for each recoil, she spent a good deal of time sprawled on her bottom.
On the seventh morning at sea, Summer woke, as usual, to the sound of the ship's bell calling the crew to a new watch. She stretched and yawned, then lay contentedly for a long moment watching the play of sunlight where it reflected off the water and danced in patterns across the ceiling beams.
With a sigh, she rolled onto her side and her gaze settled on the large oak desk with its clutter of charts and papers. She could imagine Wade seated in the leather chair, his brow furrowed in concentration, his hands working the compass, a half-smoked cigar propped on the edge of a tin can. While she had not completely lost her fear or wariness of the privateer, she had become somewhat intrigued. He was a man of few words, yet she sensed volumes of conversation in his dark eyes each time she caught him watching her. She certainly did nothing intentionally to garner his attention, yet there was a natural female instinct within her that made her brush her hair smooth each day and tie it back with the red ribbon. It made him smile when she entered a conversation he was having with Michael, and it made her blush when she realized he actually listened to what she was saying instead of just tolerating the intrusion to be polite.
A polite pirate. One who had pressed a savage kiss on her the first day to prove a point, then had made no effort, indeed, showed no interest in taking another since. Back in London, men would have clambered over each other in a frenzy to simply win a smile, let alone a full, open-mouthed kiss. Granted, the kiss had been stolen, not freely given, but even so...and even with half her face a great ugly bruise...
Summer shook away the silly thought that she might actually be vexed at his lack of interest. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the berth. Her hair fell in a tangle over her shoulders and she pushed it back with an irritable little gesture, searching about for the scrap of ribbon and locating it, finally, amongst the bedding.
Yes, she would be grateful when this trial was over. She would be grateful to set foot on solid land again, grateful to have a hot bath in a full tub, grateful to have silk against her skin again, grateful to have someone brush her hair and dress it into a gleaming cascade of curls, grateful to—
The Chimera shuddered unexpectedly, the action so violent it threw Summer off the edge of the berth. She fell heavily to the floor, landing on her knees and hip. She heard no shots but her immediate thought was that the Chimera was under attack. What else could cause the grinding, crunching wail of agony coming from somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship? What else would cause the recurring jolts? What else would produce the continuous, rising howl of a beast caught in the steel jaws of a trap?
The ship lurched again, and she heard the whining rasp of the anchor cables sliding through the capstan. The forward motion became less pronounced, but raggedly so, ending in a series of shunts as the anchor grabbed for a hold on the bottom and finally caught.
The hair on the nape of her neck rose in alarm, and the skin along her arms sprang instantly to gooseflesh. She scrambled to her feet and ran out of the cabin, memories of those horrid last few moments on board the Vixen flooding her thoughts.
She found Michael standing just outside the hatchway, looking pale and fearful as he tried to follow the confusion that had erupted on deck.
"What is it?" Summer asked. "What has happened?"
"I don't know. We struck something com
ing around into the channel. There was an awful crunching noise, and then everyone sort of went mad."
"Where is Captain Wade?"
Michael shook his head. "Below, somewhere. He and Mr. Monday dashed down to see where the trouble was."
"Well thank goodness it is nothing serious. You have no idea the things I was imagining. I thought we were being attacked." She paused and thought about the absurdity for a moment. "You say we hit something? In the middle of the ocean?"
"No. In the middle of a channel," Michael said, pointing.
Summer went up on tiptoes to see past the obstruction of the bulkhead and saw an island lying half a mile or so off the port side, another about equal distance off larboard.
"Thorny said the captain was worried about the currents."
Summer smiled wryly. "With all of his boasting and bragging about what a fine ship he has and how grown men quake at the very sight of him, he seems to have difficulty just getting from one place to another."
Michael turned and looked at her strangely. "Thorny said the patch we took on at Saint Martin was a poor one. It isn't the captain's fault if it didn't hold properly."
Summer glared at her brother, startled to hear him defending the privateer. But he was no longer looking at her. He was staring past her shoulder toward the forward hatchway. Morgan Wade was emerging, his clothes streaming water, his expression grim. The giant negro was a pace behind, and together they thundered across to the rail, barely hesitating to shout a blur of orders before they hurled themselves over the side and dove into the sea.
Summer and Michael ran to the rail, joining a handful of jabbering crewmen. Both men had already vanished beneath the surface of the water, leaving only a disturbance of spreading rings to mark their entrance. The water was clear for a fathom or more before it gave way to an inky blackness, which, after Summer's eyes adjusted to what she was looking at, took on the bulk and shape of jagged rocks, boulders, and coral.
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