Oh fuck, that made her blood speed to a torrent. “I promise to fuck on your command,” she said, doing her best to rub her cheek on his stubble to hide her words. “Is that what you mean?”
“On your feet, Waif,” he snapped, pulling away from her. “Go get your shit together, you’ve got orders.”
Getting too close at the dinner table with so many eyes around them was stupid. Swain couldn’t be gentle in front of his people, he had to be abrupt. Her captain was right. She did have orders. If she wanted to use her influence with him in the times it mattered, then she had to show she was willing to defer to him as much as possible.
In the end, he was the captain. Whatever he decided was law. Sassi would never defy him. In private, she’d give her opinions; but when it came time to jump, she’d always comply with his commands without hesitation.
TWELVE
Sassi assumed that the crew from the other ship would be hungry and it was her job as cook to feed all the hungry mouths on the ship.
The rest of the Eros crew had various important tasks to complete and she wanted to stay out from underfoot. While they worried about assigning cabins and stowing important cargo, she stayed in the kitchen baking pie and meal planning.
It hadn’t taken long to pack the belongings in her cabin. Most of what Sassi had brought was in the galley, stores, or had been eaten already. But, she packed what remained. Most of it was her uniform apparel and she hoped she wouldn’t be expected to share that if there were females on the other crew.
If she had to, Sassi would share her personal clothes with them. But, for some reason, she was protective of her uniforms. Maybe it was wearing Swain’s name—something she’d come to realize she found pretty damn hot—and she didn’t want any other woman wearing it.
Swain popped his head through the mess door, smacking his palm on the inside of the wall. “I need you, Waif.”
“Now?” she asked, struggling to quickly untie her apron. “How do you have time for sex now? I thought you were securing the other ship.
“Not for sex,” he said like she was trying his patience. “I need you on deck.”
“For what?”
He took the final step into the room. “She asked less questions before I nailed her,” he muttered to himself. “You remember what you were scared of? About the other crew?”
Sassi let her head move in a shallow nod. “That they would be a bunch of slobbering mangy dogs set on violating me,” she said and paled. “Oh, God, how many are there? You’re not going to lock me up for my own safety, are you?”
“No, but I might do it for my sanity,” he said, storming over to her. “There’s a woman over there. I need you to deal with her.”
She didn’t understand. “Why? You know what to do with women. You got me into bed, didn’t you? Charm her.”
His lips thinned for a second. “Aye, that sounds like me. She’s refusing to come aboard.”
“Just one woman?” she asked and he nodded. “How many men?”
“One.”
Her whole body relaxed and she breathed out her relief. “A couple. Thank God for that.”
“Why thank God?” he asked, wearing a scowl.
“If they’re focused on each other, they’re not going to get handsy with us, are they?”
“You want to see the guy before you think about trading me in?”
Whether he was teasing or serious, she didn’t care and wasn’t impressed. “We’re not swinging. We’ve been together a day, it’s too early to switch it up like that.”
“We won’t ever be switching it up like that,” he said and snatched her hand. “Get out here and tell her we’re not fucking pirates.”
Sassi licked her lips. “Well, I can’t say that, can I? At least one of you is,” she said. His glare told her he didn’t appreciate her quip. But, she wasn’t deterred and grinned. “It’s funny, I worried about how a new crew might scare me; I never worried that my crew might scare someone else.”
His scowl faded. He loosened and moseyed closer, skimming a hand onto her hip. “That’s the first time you’ve referred to us as your crew,” he murmured, making it clear how he appreciated her identifying with them.
She considered it for a second. “Huh,” she said and sighed. “I think of you all as my crew. I guess I just didn’t want to…”
“What?”
Winding her arms around him, she relaxed against his body. “At first I didn’t want to be presumptuous because you seemed so close and I was new. After I started to like all of you I guess I was worried about…”
“Getting too close.”
He finished her sentence when she ran out of the nerve to do it herself. “I’d never thought about life at sea before this… I’m surprised by how much I like it.”
“We can talk about your future at sea later. It’s cold out there. We need to get them over here and into shelter.”
“Okay,” she said, pulling away from him to go deeper into the galley.
Retrieving a box of cookies, she held them up and then hurried back to him.
He grabbed her hand to drag her along toward the passageway. “Do you ever go anywhere without cookies?”
“It’s a great way to make new friends,” she said. “You’re the only one who ever refused my cookies.”
“You’re still smarting about that, huh?”
Trotting along behind him, she ran to keep up though he held her hand tight, forcing her to move. “I’m just saying, if you hadn’t, maybe I’d have given it up a day or two earlier.”
“I’ll remember that next time I find a waif bearing treats,” he mumbled before pushing down the dogs to open the door to urge her out onto the deck.
Foist, Swing, Fidget, and Jockey were all on the deck around the gangway. There was a smaller boat, a yacht tethered to the side of their boat with a bunch of buoy’s between the two crafts. Eros’ huge blazing flood lights drowned the smaller boat in light, illuminating a blonde woman on the deck. Wrapped in a blanket, shivering and crying, she had a man at her side. The man was trying his best to talk to and comfort his partner, but she kept pushing him away.
If they’d been stranded out here for a while, all good humor had probably long since dried up. Sassi wasn’t surprised to see the woman sniping at the man who was trying to put an arm around her. “I’d probably be just as pissed at you,” Sassi muttered to Swain who sank his hands into his pockets.
“If we were alone, dead in the water, I’d have sabotaged the vessel myself and I wouldn’t put out a call for rescue.”
“No?” she asked, rubbing her arms that were cooling in the breeze. “What would you do?”
Taking off his hoodie, he didn’t ask before putting it over her head. Keeping her cookie tub tucked against her, Sassi slid her arms into the sleeves one after the other and rolled them up as best she could.
Swain leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Keep you prisoner for as long as you’d let me get away with it,” he said, pulling up the hood of the sweater he’d just put on her. “You’re with a pirate now, Waif.”
While she absorbed the new fantasy he’d just planted in her mind, Swain put an arm around her to urge her over to the others who were gathered around the open space in the hull where they would usually disembark. Between the two vessels was a drop to the black water lapping between the two parallel hulls.
“Ahoy,” she shouted and immediately felt like an idiot, especially when Foist laughed and she had to smack his chest to shut him up. Ignoring the engineer, she kept her focus on the other crew… such as they were. “Are you hurt? Is it just the two of you over there?”
Sassi figured she should’ve asked Swain some questions about what they knew already, rather than getting caught up in another nautical fantasy. “Look, Gumdrop, look see, there’s a woman,” the guy exclaimed, trying to get close to his shipmate again.
Him calling her Gumdrop suggested the pair were together. This must have been a romantic getaway, shame it ended this way.
The woman kept sniffling, but did look up, so Sassi opened her hand in a wave and kept her smile warm. “All woman here,” she said, thinking that with Swain’s oversized hoodie hanging low on her thighs, she didn’t have much of a figure on show. “I know you’re probably really scared. I understand that. But, you don’t have to worry about the intentions of these guys. My crew are capable. They’re a rough looking bunch, but you’ll never find a more skilled and good-hearted team. I promise you, none of them will hurt you.”
The woman sniffed and wiped her nose on her hand. “How do I know… how do I know they’re not making you say that?”
This woman had seen a lot of movies, Sassi thought, but she was being smart. Turning around to seek out Swain, she needed direction. “How does she know that?” she asked her captain.
The woman shrieked. Figuring something terrible must have happened, Sassi spun around. Except no one had moved, nothing was different. “Are you the captain?” Gumdrop asked.
Sassi winced.
Oops, she had forgotten that all the men’s uniforms had their roles emblazoned on the back. So, the hoodie she was wearing declared her to be captain. It should’ve been obvious that the garment was way too big for her. Therefore, not hers. The flaw in that supposition was that her uniform hadn’t fit when she first got onboard, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that all her clothes were this big.
“She’s his wife!”
Gasping, Sassi turned to see Swing pointing at her and Fidget nodding. Sassi was so shocked that she almost missed the serious expressions Foist and Jockey shared with an equally stern Swain.
“His wife?” the woman called, Sassi was still examining her crew. “You’re not wearing a ring.”
Swain took her shoulders to ease her aside so he could move forward. “We don’t wear ‘em. They’re too easily lost at sea.”
Her jaw swung loose again. It was one thing to joke about it in the mess with the more innocent members of the crew. It was another thing to perpetuate a lie with strangers whose trust they were trying to gain.
“Prove it,” the woman shouted.
“Prove it,” Sassi muttered. “How are we supposed to—”
Throwing an arm around her, Swain yanked her back in a dip and forced his mouth to hers, wasting no time in thrusting his tongue between her lips. Sassi balled her fist and pulled it back as if she was going to punch out, but it didn’t go anywhere.
In fact, after about three seconds, the cookie tub hit the deck and she twisted toward her captain to curve her hand around the back of his neck. Her fist loosened and drifted toward him. She smoothed her palm down his shirt until it could snake underneath and open on his abs.
When he tugged her away, Swain’s arm around her shoulders was the only thing keeping her aboard. Intoxicated by the pleasure of that kiss, she felt dizzy and would probably have fallen right through the gangway if he wasn’t there holding her up.
“Trust us now?” Foist called out.
Concentrating to unblur her focus, Sassi peeked around to see the couple were now huddled together talking to each other. There was some sniping, emotions were still running high, but it was progress.
“Damn convincing kiss,” Jockey said, nudging her so hard that she stumbled into Swain whose attention was fixated over her head on the bickering couple.
“This is taking too long,” Swain muttered.
Sassi hoped he wouldn’t command them to sail away and abandon the couple. Their boat was in darkness and they had no way to communicate with anyone else.
Surveying the scene, she put herself in the woman’s place and one thing came to mind. “We need a gangplank,” she said. “This deck is too high.”
“There’s a door on the lower deck we—”
She scowled at Jockey. “You can’t ask her to jump into a tiny doorway. She’s about the same height as me and my legs wouldn’t make it; that’s like a gap of ten feet.”
“It’s three max,” Foist said, coming into their group.
Noticing that Swing and Fidget had retrieved her cookie tub, Sassi was glad that there were more sweet treats in the galley. Those boys would polish off their sweet treasure hoard fast.
“You said yourself that they don’t know what they’re doing,” she said to Foist. “And if they end up in the water, who has to get them out? If they go in the water, I’ll be going in there too.”
Swain’s eyes darkened as they zoomed in on her. “Don’t threaten me,” he said.
“I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you that I’m a strong swimmer and I—”
“Strong swimmer, huh?” he asked and bent over to hoist her onto his shoulder. “Let’s test that.”
Carting her around the superstructure, toward the opposite side of the ship, he passed the spot where they’d shared their first kiss and carried on to the port side.
“Swain,” she said, kicking her legs and punching his back. “Stop it! Put me down!” He bent forward a little and slid her body down his. Sassi braced to go right over the edge of the ship. Instead, he dumped her butt on the side. “Don’t do that, you scared me.”
Though technically the danger wasn’t gone. She was sitting on the side, still teetering close to going overboard. With her ass over the edge of the ship and her legs around his torso, her captain was the only thing keeping her on board.
“You abandon ship when I tell you to,” he said. “Someone hits the drink, you raise the alarm, you don’t go in after ‘em.”
The hood had slid from her hair during their kiss and she felt the chill of the sea creeping around the back of her neck. “I can’t see someone in trouble and ignore them.”
His arms tightened around her. “You disobeying my command?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and looping her arms around his neck.
“Good. ‘Cause as of today you’re this ship’s most precious cargo and we don’t dump the most valuable goods if we can help it.”
Grinning, she pulled herself even closer, urging him down until her chin touched his. “I’m valuable?”
“Sure, who’ll make donuts and pie if you’re not around?” Growling at him, she had actually been drawn in by his teasing. He was so damn good at leading her on a merry dance. But, he became more sincere. “Waif,” he soothed and kissed her.
“Did you hear? He calls her Gumdrop,” she said, crossing her ankles over his hips, which actually made her lean back more because of the angle of her legs.
Swain didn’t miss her show of trust. She was dangling over the edge of his ship and didn’t have a single reservation about trusting him to keep her safe and dry.
“You like that? Want me to call you Gumdrop?”
Just the idea of him saying something so ridiculous made her laugh. “Waif is just fine,” she said, and opened her mouth to pull him into another kiss.
They were still kissing when someone cleared their throat. Jockey was a few feet away, caught in the light reflecting from the back of the starboard floodlights. “Cap’n, the lady’s requesting a gangplank.”
Swain nodded. “Do it.”
Jockey side-stepped then paused to smirk. “Your wife need a Mae West?”
“No, I’ve got her for now,” Swain said.
“What’s that?” she asked both of them. “A Mae West?”
“Life preserver,” Jockey answered.
She smiled, expecting Swain to get defensive or grumpy because he wasn’t really going to dump her overboard. That and they weren’t really married.
“Haven’t decided if I’ll let her go yet,” Swain said, and did actually release the tension in his arms enough that she dropped an inch, causing her to whoop and grab for him. “Not so funny now, is it, wife?”
He hadn’t even looked at her, he was still focused on Jockey. Sassi didn’t know how he knew she was smiling, but when she grabbed his tee-shirt in her fists, she squeezed them tight. “If I’m going in, you’re coming with me,” she said.
This time her ca
ptain did bring his attention around to her. “I know the quickest, easiest ways back onto the ship, do you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll hold onto you. And, don’t you forget, husband, if we’re married, there’s no more girl in every port for you. I want a faithful husband. So, if you ever want to empty your balls with a woman again, you better keep your wife happy… and onboard.”
Jockey wandered off to leave them alone. Sassi was aware that she was keeping the captain from his duties but was enjoying him too much to let him go.
“I’m not worried. My wife promised to fuck on my command.”
Laughing, she let her head fall back and that was when he pulled her forward, easing her onto her feet on the deck again. “I did! Damn, I didn’t think that one through.”
While she enjoyed their teasing, he held her close between him and the side of the ship. As the humor slid away, she noticed intensity in the way he looked into her. “You’re fun, Waif,” he said, using his index finger to tuck away a loose strand of her hair. “You care, but you don’t take yourself too seriously…”
It was as if he was trying to say something to her, but she couldn’t quite decipher it. “What does that mean?”
“It means you were right,” he said, the rough callouses on his fingers rasping down her jaw. “You’d have been safer staying the hell away from me… But, it’s too late for you now. You’re in it.”
In what? She didn’t know what he meant. Swain took her hand to pull her back around to the others so they could return to work, and Sassi was left wondering just how she’d let herself be drawn into this. This was fast turning from what she’d thought was harmless fantasy into her reality… It wasn’t a bad one to be in. But, it wasn’t one that could last.
THIRTEEN
“So you… you live here?”
“This is the only address I have,” Sassi said to Whitney, also known as Gumdrop, the woman who’d been rescued from the yacht.
Sweet Seas Page 12