by Andrea Jones
His shoulders relaxed. He felt his heart relax, too, opening just a wedge to let this woman in. Perhaps she did own the strength to shift a boulder. “Your spirit moves me. I see that you mean what you say.”
“You’ve impressed me, too. You and I now have an understanding: my life rests in your hands, and yours rests in mine.”
He tightened his grip, surrounding her soft, steady fingers. “You have courage. I like it.”
“I admire daring. You possess all the qualities I demand in a man. I accept you.”
Lean Wolf’s primal drive snatched at her willingness. His eyes flashed with humor; who would have guessed such a woman would stand on ceremony! Here was his pleasure, on a platter. He had only to speak the phrase. “Red Hand from the Sea. I accept you— as my wife.” His conceit told him he’d been clever in his handling of her, but once he’d said the words, he knew that he might mean them. This female was unlike any other. He marveled, “I have never known a woman such as you.”
Although tempered by the moss on the walls, Jill Red-Hand’s voice, like that of a prophetess, resonated in the depths of their sanctuary. “Lean Wolf Silent Hunter. You have found your match.”
The promise in her words, in her look, made his insides feel hollow and hungry. He was compelled to taste her lips, to consume her. Leaning toward one another, the man and the woman joined together and, with a kiss, a marriage was made. The ease with which it was conceived pleased both husband and wife.
Closer the couple inclined, their knees meeting on the furs, their joined hands lowering in favor of their bodies, and soon the bright bond of cloth became superfluous, and fell away. Jill cast her arms about him, Lean Wolf pressed her against his chest, and their kiss redoubled, a taste transformed to a feast. Scarcely believing how effortless this conquest had become, Lean Wolf took her head in his hand and tipped her backward. His arms assumed her weight and he laid her down, far more gently than he had expected, on the cushioned bed of his trysting place. He eased his body downward to lie upon hers, the spear that was his only weapon in this cave pressing through his breechclout, seeking her woman’s own trysting place.
Her hands traveled along his waist, unfamiliar with his garb and searching for a way to free him. He helped her, and, soon after, he enjoyed the interest on her face as she appraised the male endowments between his deerskin leggings. His branch was already upright, but her fervor made him stiffen all the more, and he had to employ discipline to prevent himself from ravishing her now.
But, as he discovered, that pleasure was not yet possible. With surprise, he found his delight in this woman’s facial reactions so absorbing that he had forgotten the less obvious response under her garments. He must deal with her clothing first. As he was aware from other encounters, a woman’s garb was an obstacle to be removed, a secondary fortress, and no matter how easily she succumbed to his initial assault, not always a simple defense to breach.
But now, with a rush of gratification, he found that clothing didn’t matter. Again she moved ahead of him. His bride disrobed, quickly and without a hint of embarrassment, slipping from her tunic, then sliding off her leggings. She slithered his own off, as well. And after that, with the vision of her fair femininity glimmering under the phosphor, Lean Wolf applied his store of force to himself, to compel his eyes to make love to her first.
She was like a moon spirit. Pale and serene, she granted her blessings to a petitioner. Her breasts were like moons themselves, but pliant, trembling as he neared her. Her abdomen was just round enough to prove she was a woman, and her shapely thighs, with that curious, curled fleece in between, parted as though to invite him in. But it was her mouth that seduced him first.
Against her pallid skin, those lips appeared red, and she opened them as her hand— her crimson hand, he noted with a hot spasm of shivers— closed upon his branch. The stroke of those painted fingers proved as erotic as he’d imagined. In another moment, Lean Wolf shut his eyes, and he swore he could feel her color as she held him. Scarlet. It was at the same time a burning and a balm. Her redness worked upon his body, shooting bolts of pleasure to prickle in his scalp. He buried his hands in her hair. His knees sank into the blankets; his manhood sank between her lips, red, ruby, rosy. He moaned to feel the plush of her tongue, and then, with a low rumble, he laughed to think the cold, dry moon, upon intimate acquaintance, should prove so hospitable.
And like the moon, Red Hand from the Sea commanded the tides. She indulged her newest husband, brought him to the crest of a wave, and when his breathing ran shallow and promised to stop, she ebbed away, denying him. Sitting up, she drew him nearer. He nuzzled her neck with affection, her cheek with care, as if his honor might be damaged if he failed to inspire in her a similar thrill. He awakened it when he arrived at her breasts, and her rapture at his touches made his chest burgeon with an emotion unfamiliar to him. Lean Wolf prided himself on sating his women, and now Red Hand more than any other, because she was so strange to him. Mysterious as the moon was she, yet he felt her truth in his soul; once grounded on his terrain, she trusted him.
He kissed her again, running his tongue along her teeth, prodding to open them. He played with her tongue, and then he enveloped her right hand, her bloody hand, and he drew it, too, to his mouth. He kissed her ruby palm, licked it, and remembered that it hadn’t been idle; it was flavored with the pungency of his flesh. She responded to his sampling, and he surmised that the paint lent her palm sensitivity. Her back arched, her moans roughened. But, after lingering in the feeling, she freed her hand from his grip. Pressing her palm to her bosom, she shaped her breast so that she held it cupped in offering, as in the village mothers did for their babes. As she waited for his advance, Lean Wolf saw that Red Hand longed for it— the mound of her bosom grew firmer, and the tip of her breast peaked. Obliging, he suckled there, drawing from her childless fount no milk, but another kind of sustenance. An acceptance. And, once again, a trust. It had been long since Lean Wolf was trusted. His heart cracked open, just a mite more, pried by a weapon he had not known she held.
And Jill wielded her weapon with skill. Hadn’t Hook done the same when caught by an amorous keeper? Like him when ensnared by the surgeon’s daughter, Jill chose to work within her chains. Hook could have easily overpowered the girl, but that girl was the key to his shackles. And tonight, although Hook had taught Jill how to kill a man, even a strong man, with a single strike, Jill dared not employ that knowledge. Silent Hunter had her trapped. No exit could open without his wish. The job for Jill’s arsenal was obvious.
He had her now, but she had him too. Willingly or no, it was merely a matter of method. To grapple or to capitulate, either choice was soon over, and the identical fate lurked at the end. Had Lean Wolf lined his cave with knives, Jill would scorn to touch even one. The only tool of use in escaping this prison was he himself. She had seduced this mighty man. With her sensuality, Red Hand from the Sea must overpower him— and wait for his readiness to roll away the stone.
And then, when the moment was ripe, Red-Handed Jill would kill him.
The thought was stimulating. She allowed it to work on her, setting her blood afire. In her trials aboard the Roger, Jill grew adept in the give and take of power. The exchange of dominance with the commodore, with the captain, with even the surgeon, was challenging, but bracing. Now, engaged in a duel, she must thrust and parry again. Like Hook’s, a passion for winning was indispensable— if she was to emerge, not simply alive, but victorious. What little choice she could take, she seized. Red-Handed Jill ravished her ravisher.
Behaving like lovers, the couple linked their limbs in one another’s, embracing. At last, tossing his head with impatience, Lean Wolf delayed no longer. He pushed Red Hand to her back, stretched out above her and, with his fingers, touched her tender threshold. Finding the moon’s tide in his favor, he smiled, sucked its moisture from his fingertips, and with the spear of his manhood, probed again. She pulled on his hips, to force him closer. In slow anticipation, con
trary to the predator he was, he slid the only obvious weapon in the cave deep, in her sheath.
Jill drew him toward her womb. With a sense of fate in her fingers, she skimmed the copper of his hide. Hook had once hunted her too, just as ruthlessly, and with the same single-mindedness of intent. Like him, this hunter roused her, in every sense of the word. Even Lean Wolf’s scent, the blood imbued in his skin, incited her totem tigress. But— always— Hook allowed his Jill to choose. As this wolf in human form filled her sex with his vigor, Jill’s mind filled, too— with vengeance. And although the prowler held her prisoner, had schemed and succeeded in ripping preference from her grip, she savored the intimacy of these moments. Precious moments, that numbered among his last.
With every lunge, he plunged more profoundly into Jill Red-Hand’s snare. Every word she pledged to him was true. His life rested in her hands. Her curse was alliance; all her husbands suffered for her love. In binding him thus, she arranged her revenge, and, for Jill, the spur of power yielded passion. He had found his match, indeed. The bloodlust of the huntress, first evoked as she stained her hand, sought satisfaction again. As Hook once suggested, the prospect of death heightened her experience. Here it came again. A kidnap, and a kill.
Her arms glowed in the eerie light of the crypt. His life force throbbed in her womb as, with manly vigor, he exchanged his seed for ecstasy. Lean Wolf groaned and shuddered, and Jill welcomed the pulsing of his muscles. She exacted his essence, drawing him in. With an exultation unknown to the stoic walls of her cage, she reached a heady height, shouting until the sound beat back against her ears, and with the assurance that her captor lay— all the evidence of his pulse, his breath, his heat, his flesh to the contrary— within his grave.
Jill felt vibrant. Absolutely alive.
The tension drained from Lean Wolf’s body. As if already lifeless, he lay upon her. But he was far from the door of Dark Hunting. He rolled from her belly so that she felt the fiery fluid of their union oozing, like blood, to the blanket. “Red Hand,” he panted, jubilant with self-congratulation. “I must kidnap you again. I think what they say is true. You thrill to life lived in danger.”
Curving her lips, she sighed. When her frenzy abated, when she could speak, the hiss of her whisper bounced back from the boulder that sealed her in her cell.
“Lean Wolf Silent Hunter. My third-time husband.” She caressed his biceps, so firm, so alive. Like her own blood, the pounding in the great vein of his arm ran rampant beneath her scarlet palm. She shook her head. “It isn’t life that does it.” She used her smile again.
It is death.
Lean Wolf’s potency proved as robust as his reputation. Twice more that night, he provoked his new white wife to give voice to rapture. The strength of his arms was well known among the women of the tribe. A few of the select had witnessed the strength of his staff. None had kept pace with it. He smirked with satisfaction. Even in the young days of their marriage, Red Fawn had not cried out so often, nor so lustily. Red Hand’s words were prophetic. He had found his match.
He tracked his fingers along her figure as she lay on his blankets, wrapped in sleep now, her golden head nestled in the crook of his shoulder. Her body smelled of the musk that manifested between a man and a woman when indulging their lust. Her branded hand rested on his man-place, warm and sultry. His hand, the color of copper, settled on her breast.
His mouth remembered suckling there, and the feel of her nipple, hard on the softness of his tongue. Maybe that was how coupling felt for a woman, he reflected. Hard within soft. Such a notion had never occurred to him before. A woman’s view of lovemaking— this woman’s feeling, as she shared her fervency with a man who was her equal. Stirring again, his branch began to fill, and he felt her fingers awaken. She encircled him with them, her touch of fire igniting to burn once again. The blanket of sleep fell away, and, like the tide, Red Hand from the Sea rose from her slumbers to pay tribute to desire.
Gingerly, as if she carried poison beneath her claws, Jill’s fingernails grazed her husband’s skin until he tingled. The man felt every sensation she designed for him to feel. That which the hunter promised her, the huntress granted him. Tonight, she left no wound upon his body.
Above the surface of this cave, up beyond the tree limbs, and higher, in the sky, the Furies raced through the heavens while, trapped within the entrails of the earth, Jill’s cries burst upon the rock of her prison, to echo, fade, and die.
Just like her new husband, Red-Handed Jill was a predator. She could move noiselessly, when it served her. She was a silent huntress. On the day she chose to slay him, he would never hear her stalking.
CHAPTER 24
Medicine Women
Tom threw open the tent door to reveal a man as wild as any lion. Raven had heard many tales of the Black Chief. None matched the ferocity she encountered as she faced him this night. She drew back, and her resolution faltered.
Tom gave her no chance to reconsider. He ushered Raven inside, relieving her of her basket, and she felt him squeeze her arm in encouragement. She remembered the young man’s promise: he swore that his chief never pressed a woman for more than a woman consented to give. But now Raven read two meanings into Tom’s assurance. Seeing the pirate chief before her, she could not imagine refusing him anything.
This man was more than the commander who waded ashore to her village. He seemed transformed to a spirit of retribution. His appearance was barbaric, even beyond the claw he held poised at his side. His black curls straggled. Around his beard, dark whiskers roughened his face. His shirt hung open at his chest to reveal the strap of brutish leather that bound it. Jewels glared on the fingers of his only hand, and his golden earring trembled at his jawline. When at last Raven looked him in the face, she could not break away from his eyes. His gaze flamed with intensity. The man who remained so cool when attacked by her tribesmen now appeared heated to sizzling pitch.
Tom came to her assistance. “Commodore, Miss Raven agreed to come to you of her own free will.” Tom glanced at her frightened face. He didn’t blame her; he was fearful himself. “She’s not accustomed to parley, Sir, so I’ll just let you know that she’s set some terms.” He cleared his throat. “As your courier, I took it upon myself to suggest that you might honor her wishes.”
Hook raised one eyebrow, and looked Raven down and up. His lip twitched as he observed her. “The lady and I will decide that.”
Raven had never felt so vulnerable. Men of the People did not stare as freely as these Europeans, and rarely spoke so straightforwardly. Even Lean Wolf understood that he must at least appear to abide by tradition. Raven knew from Tom and from Cecco that these pirates esteemed their women, even their native women, yet she could not accustom herself to their manner of address. It made her proud, but equally, afraid, to be consulted herself in place of the headman of her family. The loss and the gain struck a balance. She was at liberty to choose her own way, but she had only herself to watch over her.
Camp stools stood by, and a chair made of willow boughs. Raven wondered if women of this tradition were denied the comfort of the ground. To her surprise, the commodore accommodated her. With the barb on his arm, he snared a blanket off his camp bed and flung it to the carpet on the bed’s farther side. He gestured to it, and Raven followed his lead. She knelt down there, the fringe of her deerskin dress pooling at her knees. Somehow she felt less exposed with the cot and its hangings between her and the door. Hook settled across from her, one knee up, and his elbow resting upon it so that his hook dangled before her. “Mr. Tootles, bring the lady some refreshment.” Tom lost no time in leaving on his errand.
Without preamble, Hook asked, “Have you been informed why I sent for you?”
Still shy of this frank approach, Raven hesitated. As she had done when she walked through this enemy camp and saw the buccaneers strewn over the beach, she realized how deeply she had waded into this foreign world. It was Cecco’s world, and she missed his caring courtesy. Indirectly, it was
Cecco who was responsible for her presence here. How would she fare without him, at the mercy of his commodore?
Raven lowered her eyes, and answered mildly, “I believe you seek revenge.”
“Revenge is mine. I won it the moment you entered my tent.”
She considered the truth of his claim. Then she nodded.
“What did the boy tell you?”
“Tom says that your woman returned to her husband. That the chief of the pirates finds himself alone—”
“As you see, I am not alone.” Hook bared his teeth at the word. Inhaling deeply, then, he rolled his shoulders. “I pledge safe passage home, ahead of the dawn. What else do you require before…acquiescence?”
Once Tom had convinced her that he meant her no harm, Raven thought hard before agreeing to accompany him here. So much lay at stake, and disaster threatened if White Bear discovered this meeting. By now, Raven knew exactly what favor to request. She had known it all along; she simply never dreamed she’d be given the opportunity to bargain for it. She offered, “I will assist you through your time of need, if you will do the same in mine.”
“And your need has to do with the warrior White Bear.”
Raven looked up, astonished. “Why do you say this?”
“Captain Cecco did not win you. Whether by fear or by affection, your sister’s husband rules your heart.”
“I am not as brave as your lady pirate, nor so openhanded. I asked Captain Cecco to carry me away from White Bear, to the Other Island.”
“And Captain Cecco had the gallantry to promise?”
“He had the gallantry to deny me, unless his commodore bestows his permission.”
Hook shut his eyes, wincing as if in pain. After a moment, he recovered himself. “And you will explain your absence from your tribesmen, how? We only just avoided war. I should prefer to enjoy the peace for a while.”
“Some of the elders propose to exile Lily’s son Rowan and his companion, Lightly. I would question the elders’ decision. Then they must exile, me, too.”