Heart's Ransom

by Sara Reinke

CHAPTER FIVE

  Rafe stared at the measure of chains that now bound him to Catherine Ransom. At first, what it was, what she had done, did not fully sink in. His groin throbbed with a wrenching, sickening, visceral ache, leaving him scarcely able to breathe without retching, much less think clearly or coherently. “What…what have you done?” he groaned.

  He pulled against the chain, watching in mounting realization—and dismay—as the effort tugged her wrist, bound by the opposing cuff, obligingly toward him. Oh, no, he thought. Oh, no, Mother of God, no…!

  He blinked at Catherine, his stunned disbelief already beginning to dissolve into fury. “Madre de Dios, woman,” he gasped. “What have you done?”

  She was dismayed, as well. He could see it in her face, the ashen cast to her pallor, the stricken expression that left her blue-green eyes flown wide, her mouth slightly agape. She blinked at the anger edged in his voice and her brows narrowed. “No more than you deserve,” she snapped, jerking her hand toward her lap, and hauling his near in the process. “You murderer—we will see who’s helpless now.”

  He shook his head slightly, wondering if his ears were failing him. “Murderer?” he asked. He struggled to sit up, but his poor, wretched crotch sent shudders of painful protest through him, crumpling him again. “You…you mad witch…!” he gasped, his eyes flooding with fresh tears. “What are you talking about?”

  “You meant these for me!” Catherine shouted, shaking the chain, along with his arm, demonstratively. “You chained up that poor Englishman whose coat you have stowed in your wardrobe and murdered him, you coward rot! Then you meant to use them on me—until you found out I was blind, that is! Is that not right? Poor little Kitty, helpless and blind. I will show you helpless, you bastard pirate!”

  She then proceeded to pummel him with her fists, striking at his head and shoulders. Rafe yelped, ducking his face. For someone who was blind, she could land a fairly wicked punch, he had to admit after one well-delivered blow left his right ear ringing and sore.

  “Stop it,” he said, risking a peek and trying to catch her by the wrists. She clubbed him in the temple, and his temper flared. “Stop it!” he shouted, jerking against the chain binding them, snatching her arm toward him. He grabbed her wrists roughly, but sitting up to do so sent new pain flaring through his midriff. He groaned and doubled over, falling against her, knocking her back.

  He landed atop her, belly to belly, the soft swells of her breasts pressed beneath his chest. She wriggled in protest, and the movement stoked something within his groin again—not pain this time. He looked down at her, eye to eye, and she blinked up at him in a mixture of fright and fury, as plainly as if she could see him.

  “Get off of me,” she seethed.

  “Stop trying to hit me,” he said.

  The crimp between her brows deepened. “I was not trying—I was hitting you squarely.”

  He sighed heavily, hanging his head somewhat. At least she could not go anywhere or cause any more trouble for the moment while pinned beneath him, and he took advantage of the opportunity to try and reclaim his breath and wits.

  “Get off of me,” she said again, squirming. When he did not move, her wiggling intensified. “You do not even know who I am, do you? You think I am some helpless blind girl? Some poor, pitiful English rose? I am John Ransom’s daughter—Captain John Ransom, the bloody Hawk of the High Seas! You just wait until he lays his hands on you—and he will, by God! He hunts down murdering pirate rots like you for his life’s work! He can track a hawk on a cloudy day, set a latitude course on a starless night, follow a frigate in a fog bank on a windless sea! No man has ever escaped him, and you will not, either, now get off of me!”

  She managed to work her leg between his. He felt her draw her knee up for his crotch again and he shifted his weight swiftly, blocking the proffered blow. She yelped, her eyes widening in reflexive fear as he shifted his weight again, forcing her leg away from him. This left him poised between her thighs, her legs parted by his hips, his weight bearing down to hold her still.

  “I am not a pirate,” Rafe said. “Or a murderer, either. I have told you—I am a physician.”

  “You killed that man,” she said. “That is an English Naval officer’s coat in your closet. You chained him up and killed him, kept his coat as a prize.”

  “That coat belonged to my father,” he said. “These cuffs, too. I have not chained anybody up with them, much less killed them. They were given to my father by a slave trader who had lost the key.”

  She blinked up at him, caught off guard. He could nearly see the wheels of her mind whirling, processing what he had just said, realization setting in and draining the color from her cheeks. “Lost the key…?” she whispered.

  “Yes, Catherine,” he said, doing his best to smile, even though she could not see him, because the reality of their predicament was so awful, it was either smile or throttle her, and he did not much feel like lugging around a dead woman tethered to his wrist. “Lost the key. There is no undoing these chains.”

  He released her wrists and rolled off of her. “I know who you are, who your father is. I have known all along.”

  He glanced at her over his shoulder. “And you are wrong,” he said. “One man has escaped your father. Mine.”