by Angel Payne
A wall of towering flesh surrounded her.
She shrieked, kicked, and grappled. The Moonstormer remained horrifyingly silent. He was overpowering. He flattened her against the stairs, her aching wrists bound over her head by one of his. His tall, powerful body came next. He straddled her, pressing her with every inch of his huge, hard chest, imprisoning her thighs inside his iron-hard legs. He was so big, so close, so overwhelming in all the wrong ways.
Because so many of them felt so right.
He lowered his face inches over hers. His breath was as hot as spiced rum. And heaven help her, was just as intoxicating.
“Check.” It was soft, tauntingly soft. “And mate, my lady.”
By the great Puntan. The feel of him…the look of him… It spoke on a dark primal level to that part of her that was wholly, exquisitely female. Her heart pounded like a war drum as her stare fell deeper into the inky depths of his. He was swallowing her with his eyes again, pulling her into the pit of his soul…
“No!” she cried, punching him. “You can’t do this to me! You won’t!”
The Moonstormer didn’t move. He let out an exasperated sigh. “My lady,” he stated softly, “I haven’t done a thing. You have brought all of this on yourself. You understand that, do you not?”
“You’re mad.” She worked her gaze away but was drawn back to his hypnotic blues despite herself. “That’s the most inane—”
“Explanation?” he offered.
“Lie that I’ve ever been defiled with.” She shoved at his wide shoulders. The fact that they were for once the same height as hers didn’t matter; he was still immovable as a brick. “How dare you!” she railed. “I have done nothing to warrant this capture or torture. But I suppose that’s what fires your guns, Moonstormer. Preying on people when they’re most helpless to fight you back. The times when you can inflict the most fear and—”
She broke off as he hitched onto another step. He loomed over her again, and used it to full advantage. His stare sliced down at her like two blades of cold blue steel. His voice carried the same lethal edge. “’Twould serve you well to dull that razored tongue of yours, sweet. A syllable more from it could possibly ensure you a captivity more vile than this.”
Golden narrowed her eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
“Begging won’t be necessary. At least not right now.” A mysterious smirk tugged his lips.
“What?”
“A mere ‘pray you’ or ‘thank you’ would be sufficient, if it’s accompanied by the customary female decorum.” He cocked his head. “You are familiar with decorum?”
She twisted her lips. “Apparently so, because I really want to simply spit on you right now.” She bared her teeth. “No. Dash that. Given the first chance, I’m just going to kill you.”
That should have shut the beast up. She even grinned a little, dilating her nostrils in victory.
But she’d forgotten the true mettle of this adversary.
With fire in his eyes and a gritted jaw, the Moonstormer dug one hand into the small of her back and the other into her nape. “Kill me, hmm? Sweeting, maybe I should have done the same to you when I had the chance.”
“You mean when you stole me from the French, only to stand there in Papa’s study and—and—put your lips all over me like that—”
“Your lips liked that part, too.” His gaze dropped exactly there, black lashes flickering over every inch of her mouth. “Deny it and I’ll do it again.”
She barely held in a little moan. As it was, her heart galloped beneath her ribs, thrusting her breasts against the dark, hard planes of his chest. She almost did refute him, if only for the thrill of feeling his mouth caress her like that again.
Dear gods, he made her soft in so many places.
“S-So were you tempted to kill me before or after that?” she managed to blurt.
“Both.”
So much for softness. Or feeling anything for him but disgust and loathing. “The feeling was mutual, monster, believe me.”
“Oh, you were clear about that, my lady. Every step of the way. From the start, when I saved you from those bastards so your precious neck wouldn’t hang next to Papa’s laundry the next morning, and during all the bullets I dodged from those same culls because I decided to traipse after you in the middle of the night, across a rather painful foot bridge, then through the sodden rainforest behind an army of your banshee friends.
“Yes, my lady,” he continued more slowly, clearly relishing her dawning shock at his revelation, “it was all smashing fun, but the highlight had to be nearly drowning ten yards from my own ship just to pull you off the back of a half-dead dolphin.”
She clutched her stomach—stunned to find he hadn’t lobbed a cannon ball into it. “No,” she blurted. “It couldn’t have been.”
“Think again, sweetheart.”
“You came and got me from Nirvana?”
“Nirvana? You gave the damn fish a name?”
“Answer me.”
She kept gaping at him, senses roiling, heart thundering. The Moonstormer was silent. He still surrounded her, close and big. She couldn’t breathe. And didn’t care.
“Fine,” he finally growled. “Yes. I was the one who came and got you from—” He rolled his eyes. “Nirvana.”
Air returned to her lungs in a painful rush. What was she supposed to feel now? To do? The warrior in her brain rushed to ward off the attack of this perplexing truth. Her eyes moved down, across the Moonstormer’s dark chest with its curling black hair, to the breadth of the arms that held her. The arms that had plucked her from death. The heart that had risked its pulse for her own.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why would you—why did a monster like you do that for me?”
“For Chrissake.” His scowl reminded her of a spring storm on Mount Misery back home. He pushed away from her and paced the cabin, hands back on his firm hips. “All right, sweeting, we’re going to settle this right now. I command it, so listen you well.”
Attempting to follow his track made her senses wobble again. All right, a little more than that. “You…command it?” She managed an insolent giggle.
“I command whoever and whenever I like, my dear.” Despite his smoothly imperious tone, he pulled her down from the stairs with a grip at her waist as gentle as it was strong. “On a sailing ship, that’s the way it works. I’m the captain, which means I’m your law.”
He hadn’t let her go. Golden clutched his arms for purchase. She wondered what god had decided it best to slip engorged melons under the man’s bronze skin. The image made her sigh and run her fingers across his muscles. Damn it. She loved melons. “You’re the what?”
“Captain, my lady. Mast Stafford. And though I’ll probably live to rue it, I welcome you to my brigantine, the Athena.”
She fell into silence, wondering how to respond to that. His words were coated in propriety but his world had been upended, just like hers.
She cleared her throat and forced out, “All right, Captain Mast Stafford, what do you want from me, then?”
His reaction startled her. She watched the tics beneath his jaw and the dark storms skid through his eyes, as if he struggled to maintain the blank slate that dictated most of his face. Hell, didn’t the man allow himself to feel anything? Ever?
She was tempted to ask him exactly that, when he flung back in a steely tone, “Are you always this suspicious of seamen who save you from storms?”
So much for trying to be nice. “I’m this suspicious of you, Captain. The only thing that’s kept my hands from your neck—”
“Is that you’re beginning to realize I’m not the Moonstormer?”
Her throat clamped shut. She licked her dry lips but they remained dry, soaked of moisture by frustration and shock. “That’s impossible.”
“Hmm…no.” He was so blasted assured about it, to the point of arching a cavalier brow. “Highly probable.”
“Stop! Stop it!” She grabbed a stray strand of hair over
his forehead, fishing for her logic at the same time. “Look at you! Just…look…”
But logic had gone into hiding. Or maybe it was just as fascinated with the thick, soft feel of his hair as she was.
“Your—your hair.” It was hoarse in her throat and on her lips. “So black, it’s almost blue.” So full, it was like an ocean in her fingers.
“And…your eyes…” She lifted her other hand to his temple. “So dark, they’re almost black.” So deep, they swallowed her with every glance.
She swallowed hard. Puntan save her, she didn’t want to feel this way about all the signs proving he was her worst enemy. But she did. Ohhhh stars, she did. He was a dark, beautiful, entrancing demon, weaving his spell tighter around her with every passing moment…
“Stop.” Though it spilled from him on a rough grate, his baritone of authority never wavered. He caught her hand as she trailed it down his face. There was tension in his grip but she could feel the tremors through all his fingers. With another rugged breath, he pressed her against the stairs again…and once more secured her there with his body. His gaze went murkier, trailing down to her breasts then raising back to her face.
“Goddamnit,” he muttered. “Could Dink have found a shift for you in any other color?”
She watched his lips form the words. They barely moved, yet thick meaning resonated in every word he spoke. Exactly what meaning? She wasn’t sure. But the need to find out made everything in her body feel tight, clenched, hot…needy.
“Wh-What’s wrong with red?” she whispered.
“You look too fucking good in it, that’s what’s wrong.”
She sucked in a breath on ragged lungs. The tension in her muscles gave way to a hellish cacophony. Her blood was hot and trembling but her mind was lost and chilled. “Damn!” she blurted. “None of this makes sense!”
He ran soft fingers along the curve of her shoulder. Like ripples in a hot spring, the farthest corners of her body felt it.
“No, hellion. It certainly doesn’t.”
She forced her hand back up to his face. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the curving indentation on his jaw but managed to press her fingers an inch from it, below the taut corner of his mouth.
Without warning, he shifted his face so she touched the hideous scar.
She hissed and yanked her hand away.
He growled and shoved it back.
“Stop.” She moaned it at him. “Oh please, don’t make me—”
“I can and I will make you.” His voice was black as his eyes now. “Touch it, Golden. It’s a scar, damn it, not a burning coal. Not the bloody moon. Satan didn’t claw it on me; the wrong end of a knife did during my first sea battle. Touch it.”
She grimaced, vowing to hold her breath until the ordeal was over, but he held her fingers there for an endless, relentless minute.
“My, my,” he murmured. “Imagine that. You didn’t grow a thousand warts. Or get struck by lightning. Or lose a single finger.” He forced her index finger to trace the curve of his mark, deliberately slow about the torment. “Books are not their covers, Lady Golden. Just as folk songs do not a sea demon make.”
She finally let out her breath. With cautious increments, she traveled her gaze back across his face. “Who are you?” she rasped. “Where did you come from? Why are you suddenly everywhere in my life? What do you want with me?”
His thick eyebrows lowered. “You’re tired.” His tone was a clear but commanding evasion. He moved back from the stairs, unexpectedly towing her with him. “Right now, all that matters is seeing you recovered from your ordeal. I’ll have some food brought in, then you’ll sleep.”
“Captain’s orders?” She tilted a challenging look at him.
“Precisely.”
Several retorts should have come to mind but Golden couldn’t think of a single one as he helped her back onto the berth and tucked the spice-scented bedding around her. Exhaustion blanketed her brain, a humbling reminder of how right Stafford was about pushing herself too far. She caught a glimpse of herself, bedraggled and pale, in his direct gaze. The next moment, those midnight depths fogged over again, fathomless and unreadable.
Not saying another word, he turned and bounded back up the stairs—leaving her alone with her jumbled thoughts.
How did she begin to make sense of this chaos? Of the turmoil this man had single-handedly thrown her life into? How had he just appeared from…well…nowhere? What did he want that he snatched her from doom from the French—twice—then from the fury of the sea?
Who is he, if not the Moonstormer, that he knows where to be at all the right times?
It was a mystery that pressed her mind to its most intrigued limits. But how would she find the answers? Certainly not from the dark, entirely-too-beautiful captain himself. The man had answered even her preliminary questions with a glare that said she must be insane or insolent.
There lie her dilemma.
Sure as the moon pulled the tides, Mast Stafford himself was her missing link. He knew something and he wasn’t telling her. It permeated his voice, rumbling in the thunder at the ends of his commands. It was explicit in his patience with her, even when she threw herself at him and tried pummeling him to death. Most significantly, it vibrated through each moment of his magical, powerful touch…the caresses that always left her craving more, even when he terrified her the most.
If she could only crawl beneath that shell of his. If she could look at the secrets he hid beneath those bronze muscles, that determined scowl, that controlled veneer…
That was exactly what she intended to do. By the fates, she’d have the answers to her questions, even if it took some creative persuasion. She’d peel free the truth from the man, even if it meant learning everything about his world first.
Captain Mast Stafford would be uncloaked, whether he liked it or not.
Chapter Six
Her new determination hummed through her veins, making sleep an annoying nemesis now. Eventually, her weary body lost the battle, thanks to a bowl of steaming turtle soup and a mug of bumboo spiced with rum. She fell into a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep.
It seemed but a moment before her eyes twitched again. She blinked once, twice. The light was now mated with a balmy, breezy warmth, and Golden drew the back of a hand over her cheek, glorying in it.
After opening her eyes completely, she realized the light was a high midday sun that streamed through a wide, slanted window from a cloudless blue sky. The accompanying wind lent a crisp feel to everything, whistling through the shrouds, whipping canvas to yardarms as the ship clipped along at what she could tell was an impressive speed.
The ship!
She sat up with a start. Good Lord. The ship.
Memory returned with more blinding force than the sunshine. She settled back against the pillows, her mind sorting through a storm of memories. One by one, she tried to place them in some kind of order, cataloguing this remarkable experience so far.
She wasn’t half done before noticing that one unnerving element was the same about each recollection. The bold, formidable face of Captain Mast Stafford.
And the absolute confusion that came along with it.
As if confusion could even touch what she felt about the riddle of him. Things were simple enough mere days ago; Stafford was the Moonstormer and she was destiny-bound to kill him. Now he was the most un-scoundrely sea scoundrel she’d ever met—and she owed him her life a few times over.
She wondered if she could keep expressing her gratitude by pressing her lips to his.
By the stars, she liked that mouth-rubbing thing.
She sighed heavily. To loathe or to trust? Both decisions terrified her, and neither seemed more right or wrong than the other. She couldn’t officially hate him anymore, not after the feats he’d accomplished for her. But those acts were the reason she didn’t trust him, either. Pirate or no, what seaman did those things for a complete stranger of a woman?
Blast the perplexing ba
stard!
“There’s only one way out of this dilemma, Golden,” she ordered herself. “And sitting here in a mope is not it.”
She kicked back the covers, swung her legs out of the bunk, and reveled in the feel of the fresh air blowing through the chemise to her skin.
A few minutes later, she discovered that was just a hint of the magnificence that awaited her up on deck.
After opening the hatch, she peered up into a vast canvas forest. Its majesty took her breath away. Shrouds and backstays were vines and branches, with spars and masts the trees upon which the ropes grew. The creatures of the forest were the ship’s crew, swooping and flying around their world just as the mongooses and monkeys of the rainforest did.
Indeed, the large sailor who swung then jumped from a tangle of ropes brought the same laugh Golden gave the vervet monkeys back home. She followed with delighted applause.
The seaman jumped in surprise and snapped a glare at her.
Her laugh snagged in her throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just enjoyed watching you.” A giggle broke free. “You reminded me of the animals in the trees on Saint Kitts.”
To her relief, the man’s broad shoulders loosened. Though his relaxed mien didn’t extend to his face, he answered gently, “I imagine I did, my lady.”
Golden tilted her head. “You know me?”
“Ah…aye.” A strange light flickered in the sharp hazel gaze that swept down her body. “Your arrival was quite an event around here.”
“It was?”
“My lady, does the captain know you’re up here?” he said, instead. She wasn’t really listening, anyway. The man’s hands now fascinated her.
“What are you doing?” She padded closer, already studying complex loops and knots he twisted into a length of rope.
“Uh, well—nothin’ that would interest you, I’m sure. Just securin’ the lines.”
“Securing the lines,” she repeated slowly. Her stare traveled to a long wood spike nearby. “And what’s that?”
To her surprise, the man chuckled. Golden had a feeling he didn’t chuckle often. “Don’t miss a thing, do you? It’s a belayin’ pin. You wedge it in the fife rail, like this. Then when your line from the mast comes down, you lock the rope in with the pin, like this.”
