Liam, quick as a striking snake, put a cutlass at Josiah’s throat, the point just tickling his Adam’s apple. There was a collective intake of breath. Josiah didn’t move.
“You’re talking about my wife, Josiah Walker,” Liam said softly. “Best think again, and well, before you continue.”
Josiah clearly realized there was no good coming of that particular course, so he changed the conversational tack. “We’ll not allow these mincing whoresons you call modern men to wander our ship and mock us, no matter what the excuse. We’ve had enough. Sir.”
Liam lowered the sword and delivered a hard blow across Josiah’s face, sending the man reeling into the arms of the other men in the doorway. “Have you,” he almost hissed. “So have I. I wouldn’t wish any of you on the modern world. You’re a disgrace to the mothers who bore you.”
Walker squared his shoulders and raised his chin, almost daring Liam to take another swing at it. “Been said before, sir. I’m sorry I called your woman a witch, but she brought us to this. And she has to go if we aim to live as we should. She’s done her work—broke the curse—and that’s done with her, aye?”
Walker’s voice rose in a half question. He was nearly pleading, but his stare was still hard and direct, and Liam’s was in no way softer.
“No,” he said. It was almost a purr, deep in his throat. “And you put your hands on my woman under the penalty of a death you’d not wish on a rabid dog. Are we clear, Mr. Walker?”
Neither of them blinked. The other sailors murmured and jostled; Cecilia, heart pounding, palms sweating, faint of breath, could hear the tone of it rising, turning darker again. Liam had set them back on their heels for a while, but he was losing it quickly, and it was all because of her.
“Wait,” Cecilia blurted, and stepped out of her shadows. To her surprise, they did; all of the mutineers, even Josiah Walker, paused in midmutter to shift their attention to her. “It’s our honeymoon. You wouldn’t kill me on the day of my wedding, would you?”
Walker frowned. Another man leaned in to say, “The wench has a point. That would be bad luck.”
“Worse than having a woman on board?” Walker snorted. “This woman?”
Cecilia took a deep breath and plunged. “What if Captain Lockhart agrees to take the ship out for a period of—oh, I don’t know, a month? Call it a honeymoon cruise. Then you put us back ashore, and go on about your business, if you still feel the same way. And we forget about the reception. I’ll promise to keep out of your way.” She gave them all a sudden grin. “Not that I expect you’ll see either me or your captain much.”
That woke a deep rumble of appreciative chuckling from the crew. Even Walker was forced into a slightly less vexed expression. “Well,” he allowed, “that might do. Might do.”
Liam deliberately relaxed, banishing his anger with an effort of sheer will. “Then as long as you all clear my cabin and let me get about the job of welcoming my new bride, you’re all free to set sail, or to dive to Davy Jones for all I care.”
A relieved sigh went through the men, and through Argyle as well. He’d been prepared to back Liam’s play, of course, but Cecilia could see that defying the crew would have gone against his better judgment.
Liam turned toward Cecilia, just for a second, eyes burning into hers, and she forced a slight smile. He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them. “Forgive me for leaving you,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
And they all filed out, leaving her alone in the captain’s cabin. After fidgeting for a while, Cecilia turned to the corner where Liam’s hammock normally swayed. It was gone.
In its place was a luxurious feather bed, pristine and white, covered with fragrant red rose petals.
“Oh,” she whispered, and tears stung her eyes. “Oh, Liam.” It was a lovely thing.
She stretched out on it, feeling cold and lonely, listening to the thump of the crew’s footsteps above her.
I should have brought a book, she thought.
Well, it was her honeymoon. Who’d have thought she’d need one?
SHE WOKE UP TO A RATTLE AT THE door, and it banged open to admit a man almost hidden beneath a massive silver tray, loaded down with an elaborate tea service. He staggered under the strain and expertly found his balance when the ship rocked and tilted.
When he lowered it, Cecilia was surprised to see it was Liam, and he was smiling.
“Good morning, love. We’re well under way.” Liam poured a cup of tea, added milk and sugar in the measures he already knew she liked, and handed over the delicate china. She sat on the edge of the bed and listened, nodding occasionally, as he told her details about where they were nautically in the world, what his plans were for the voyage, and all she could really understand of it was the light in his eyes, the lilt of pleasure in his voice. Although she loved seeing that in him, it also made her horribly uncertain. I’m not good for him. This is what’s good for him. If I take him away from this… Maybe the crew was right. Maybe the best thing would have been to slip quietly away in Boston and let them go on without her.
Liam stopped talking and put his cup aside. She glanced down at her own and was surprised to find it empty; she’d sipped it without even noticing the taste, although she’d always enjoyed cream tea.
When she looked up, he was standing in front of her, and he reached down to take the china from her fingers and place it carefully back on the tray. “Biscuit?” he asked, with the blandest possible tone. There were cookies on the tray. Oreos, her favorite. She nearly laughed out loud.
“No, thank you,” she said. “Liam—”
He didn’t waste time with another polite question, and before she could finish the sentence, he was next to her, capturing her lips with his. The kiss was a fierce, lovely thing, far different from the gentle one he’d given her at the wedding; this was a pirate’s kiss, demanding surrender, and she felt her entire body give a joyous answer. When he let her up for breath, it was like rising lazily from a deep, skin-warm sea. She wanted to dive right back in.
Liam pulled back, and Cecilia shivered in response to the look on his face. She’d never had anybody stare at her in quite that way—and then a rush of heat flared up from her toes to melt her into a liquid, gorgeously decadent feeling of utter abandon. Oh.
Cecilia pushed him back onto the bed, then stood up and slowly unbuttoned her white shirt. It slipped off her shoulders and fluttered to the carpets, leaving only the fragile lace bra. The blue jeans were just as easy. Liam’s breath left him in a rush.
“Permission to come aboard, sir,” she said, and sat astride him. It was a long, damp, aching kiss, trembling with potential and need, and Liam’s hands went around her to push her back, just a tiny bit.
“Lass,” Liam murmured, “I’m not a gentleman. I wasn’t born one, I wasn’t made one, and the circumstances of my life haven’t encouraged me to—”
She shut him up with a finger across his lips. “If I’d wanted a gentleman, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with a pirate,” she said. “Not even one with kind eyes.”
He pulled back, frowning at her. “I do not have kind eyes.”
“You do when you look at me.” She took a deep breath. “If you’re trying to warn me that you won’t be a good, gentle lover, I think you’re underestimating yourself,” she said.
He captured her hands and held them tightly. Hers were stubby, small, and pale; his were large, square, darkened by sun, and heavily scarred. He didn’t look up from his inspection of their differences as he said, “I’m saying that you are no doubt used to the refined ways of modern men who make a study of women, who understand how to—”
“Liam.” She raised his chin with a finger under his chin. “If modern men have ever made a study of women, it’s the first I’ve ever heard of it. If you think that I’m going to be comparing you to all my previous lovers, well, don’t, because that’s a list that includes two men, one of whom was a mistake, and one of whom was an awful mistake. And neither one of
them gave a damn about how I felt during the process anyway.”
Liam looked flummoxed. Appalled, even. “You mean, with all the magazines and writings and all of the visual—instruction—” He’d found the pay-per-view channels in his apartment. “—there is not a higher understanding of how to please—”
“Not a bit,” she said.
He seemed completely relieved, and she had to stifle a laugh that she knew would be completely inappropriate. “So they weren’t meant to be instructive.”
“Did you watch the porn? Accuracy, not its strong suit.”
He slid his palms up her arms, a warm glide of flesh. “Of course I watched it, my dear. I’m no Puritan.”
“Prove it.”
He slipped his hands under the thin lace bra, slowly, watching her face without blinking. He didn’t restrain a smile when she let out a gasp, and it was one of his full, charming smiles, with a razor-thin edge of darkness—the kind that, she imagined, had spontaneously brought several women in his lifetime to shed their inhibitions.
Not a problem. She seemed to have left hers on shore, anyway.
“I’ve been thinking about this for hours,” he said, and his voice was low, barely audible over the creak of timbers and rush of the sea. “There’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you, Cecilia. It’s important.”
“Yes?” Her voice came out almost calmly.
He put his lips very close to her ear. “Do you prefer the left side of the bed, or right?”
She laughed out loud, unable to stop herself. “Right side.”
“Ahhh,” he sighed regretfully. “That’d be a problem, then, lass, as I like the right side of the bed.”
“Only one solution,” she replied, straight-faced.
“Dice? A game of cards? Pistols at dawn?”
She kissed him, slowly and deeply. He groaned low in his throat, and pulled her closer.
“One of us has to be on top,” she mumbled into his mouth. “I’ll let you go first.”
Under Liam’s black trousers he wore, of all things, Joe Boxer briefs. With red lipstick prints. She stared. He shrugged. “Argyle advised me,” he said, sounding faintly unsure. “All right?”
She smothered a laugh. “So long as they come off, I’m fine.”
They did. Her lace top was also disposed of, though they took good time to enjoy the journey. It took a timeless, sunlit eternity for him to work his way from the relatively safe territory of her collarbones, nibbling down in slow, steady kisses, to her breasts. She couldn’t keep herself from pulling in as much as her lungs could hold, arching toward him, desperate to have those clever, clever lips do more, go farther.
Oh, and they did. They definitely did. And it took a deliciously long time.
Liam paused for breath, looked up at her, and drew his fingertips in a slow, hot line down over her stomach, straight down. “Pace yourself, lass,” he said, with a grin that took her breath away. “We’ve leagues to go yet.” He hooked his fingers in the thin elastic band of the triangle of lace that pretended to be panties. “And plenty of territory left to explore. We’ve not even made landfall yet…”
She heard a distant shout. Liam’s smile vanished, and he turned his head, frowning. She hadn’t made out any words, but evidently he had. He rolled off her, and roared, “God’s blood, lads, we’d better be bloody sinking!”
She heard a kind of shrieking hiss, getting rapidly louder. He grabbed her and rolled her hard off the bed, thumping them both to the carpet between the bed and the cabin wall, an instant before something hit the stern of the ship so hard, it felt like a giant hand shaking the massive vessel. The mullioned window exploded in a shower of glass shards and lethal shrapnel.
By the time she blinked, Liam, stark naked, was already up on his feet, cursing with a bitter violence all the more alarming because he was doing it in a whisper. He shook broken glass from his trousers and stepped into them, not bothering with the fancy underwear, even while he asked, “All right?”
She nodded mutely, swallowed, and managed to say, “What’s happening?” She could hear the alarm bells ringing on deck, running feet above her head, and felt the ship heel over hard enough to send her rolling against the wall. Evasive maneuvers.
“Bloody bad timing, at the very least,” he said, and bent to give her a quick kiss. “Get dressed. If we’re boarded, give a good account of yourself, you’re the captain’s wife now.”
She gave him a shaky salute. “Aye aye, sir.”
He eyed her with longing and great regret, touched his forehead in a casual salute, and dashed for the door.
Cecilia quickly dressed and armed herself with whatever was left over from his quick exit—a dagger, a spare cutlass, and a spare pistol. She checked. Fully loaded.
“I am not hiding in the corner,” she said. That was a safe enough declaration; there was nobody to argue with her about it, at least not yet. She left the cabin and went down the narrow hall, blinking as she emerged into the bright shimmer of sunlight on deck.
The sails had been piled on, and the Sweet Mourning was cutting through the water at an incredible pace, flying like a bird. The rigging crew were on the masts and yardarms. Up on the quarterdeck, Liam was at the wheel, with Argyle leaning on the railing.
“She’s got speed on us!” Argyle shouted. Cecilia ran to to the side to lean out for a look; behind them, far in the white wake, she saw another ship advancing on them. It was smaller, with a enormous single square mainsail, wider than it was tall, and a much smaller triangular sail at the prow. The design was thin and long, and somehow it put her in mind of a shark, the way it cut cleanly through the water. Argyle was right, it was frighteningly fast. Even though they had the advantage of more canvas, the other ship was rapidly gaining. “She’s coming within range again! ‘Ware cannon!”
Cecilia watched, wide-eyed, as a black dot traveled across the blue sky, grew in size, and ended its trajectory with a shattering crash amidships. It sent fragments spraying in every direction. Some of the shards had fallen near her feet, and she saw they were glazed pottery, not metal.
They were throwing pots?
And then a thick, greenish liquid that had splashed in a broad swath across the deck caught fire, an eerie flickering flame that took on a hellish intensity in less than a breath.
“Greek fire!” Argyle shouted from the quarterdeck. “No water! Smother it! Move!”
She got out of the way of a stampede of sailors carrying spare canvas, who began putting out the fire.
“Mrs. Lockhart!” Argyle bellowed. He no longer sounded friendly, or amused. “If you must expose yourself to every danger that presents, at least do so up here!”
She blinked, saw Liam and Argyle staring at her with identical expressions of disapproval.
“We’ll discuss who wears the pants later,” Liam said once she was on deck. “Argyle. Is it that damned madman Salvius?”
Argyle answered, and retrieved a spyglass from his pocket, studied the ship for a second, then passed the glass to his captain. “Aye. It’s the Aquila.”
Liam flattened the spyglass with a snap and handed it back, no expression visible on his face at all. Someone from the crow’s nest, far above, called out, “ ‘Ware ballista!” and Cecilia shaded her eyes to see something that looked like a massive, oversized spear arcing toward them. It hit toward the bow, ripping through wood like butter.
“That’ll be a week in port,” Argyle said with a sigh. “Hell and damnation.”
“He’s playing with us,” Liam said, even as he spun the wheel, and the Sweet Mourning responded with another rapid change of course. “Any sign he’s preparing to use his fire cannon?”
“Not as yet,” Argyle said. “If he does, there’s little enough we can do about it.”
The other ship glided smoothly up to their port side, close enough that Cecilia could see the elegant long lines of her form, and three banks of holes that were too small to be cannon ports—oar holes? There were men swarming the deck, most dress
ed in simple sun-faded tunics, but also a lot kitted out in armor.
One man stood alone toward the curved fishtail at the stern, muscular legs spread for stability. He was broad and sturdy, dressed in a splendid set of Roman-era armor, complete to shining helmet with a vivid crimson brush. The tunic underneath the armor was bloodred, and he glittered in the sun like some dangerously invincible god.
The Roman captain—what else could he be?—faced them as the two ships drew even with each other, and inclined his head. “Captain Lockhart,” he said, in a voice loud enough to carry over a melee-filled battlefield, never mind a short span of water. “Well met on favoring seas.”
“Better never met at all, you garlic-eating bastard,” Liam shouted back. “What the devil are you playing at, Salvius?”
Salvius advanced to the rail of the ship, put both hands on it, and stared across at Liam. No, Cecilia realized with a shock, he was staring at her.
Liam realized it too. “What do you want, Roman?”
“Word travels,” Salvius said. “I heard it from the Dutchman’s own mouth that you’d broken free of your curse.”
“So you came to gawp?” Liam said. “To put ballista holes in my deck for sport? To settle old grudges?”
Salvius unexpectedly grinned, showing a broad expanse of strong, if browning, teeth. “I like to see miracles for my own eyes. And now that I have—” He nodded sharply to another armored soldier, who shouted something to the men on the Aquila’s deck.
“ ‘Ware arpax!” someone cried on the Sweet Mourning, and a massive bridge snapped up, as if spring-loaded, from the deck of the Roman ship, wide enough that two or three men could walk abreast on it. One end was fastened to the deck of that ship with some kind of hinges; the other had a lethal-looking bronze beaklike hook on the end, and it crashed down on the Sweet Mourning’s railing, splintering it, and dug deep into the wood of the deck, locking the two ships together.
My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon Page 9