by Pam Godwin
My breathing tightened with determination. My muscles hardened with focused fury. Where I had compassion for him before, now there was none. I needed him to hurt.
“You know what that compass means to me.” I lifted the rum, swilling it with a calm I didn’t feel. “You wouldn’t have left it in Jamaica.”
“No.”
“You didn’t toss it into the sea.”
“Never.”
Breaking my heart was one thing, but he wouldn’t destroy that gift from my father. He wouldn’t be so cruel. I had to believe that.
Everything inside me relaxed. The compass was on the ship.
But where?
As my mind raced for answers, I straightened my corset, trying miserably to cover my breasts from his humiliating stare.
He knew this vessel from bow to stern. Every alcove and nook. Every shadow and hiding spot. No doubt he’d determined the best location for the compass the moment he’d swiped it in the tavern.
With sleight and quick-wittedness, he probably secreted it away on the upper deck when I wasn’t looking. Or slipped it into a wall on his way down here. Or… I glanced around, deflating at the stockpiles of weapons, cocked hats, rolls of sea charts, maps, and random treasures that cluttered the cabin.
It could be anywhere.
Once I locked him in irons, I would launch an exhaustive search. I would rip up every plank. Empty every chest. Topple over every barrel. If it failed to turn up, I would resort to torture. The psychological kind.
I knew exactly how to break the iniquitous Feral Priest.
“So your plan was to hold my compass hostage. Well done.” I tossed back another swallow of rum, choking on my own bitterness. “What happens next?”
“You’re clouded by anger, far more than I am at the moment. Understandably so.” He ambled to the bookcase, selected the smallest of my three hourglasses, and held it up. “This one measures fifteen minutes?”
“Ten minutes.” I squinted at him, burning to punch his perfectly composed face.
“Good enough.” He carried it to the bed and sat on the edge, testing the flow of sand between the glass globes. “We cannot have a fruitful conversation until we work out this tension between us.”
“I will not—”
“Quiet!” The explosion of fury in his voice stopped my heart. Just as frightening was his ability to return to a placid tone. “Since you seem unwilling to abandon the discomfort beneath your skirt, I’ll remedy that particular reluctance by offering an agreement.”
I tightened my hand around the rum bottle—the weapon I would use to best him. “Go on.”
“I’ll give you pleasure, a worthwhile release, without the benefit of my own.” His gaze softened. “I owe you that much.”
A sting pricked my throat. Oh, how I loved and hated him. I focused on the latter. “I’ll have no part of that indiscriminate member between your legs—”
“I’ll use only this finger.” He held up a long, thick digit. “If I fail to bring you over the edge before the sand runs out, I’ll give you the location of the compass and debark at the first opportunity. You’ll never see me again.”
I didn’t trust him. Not for a minute. “If you succeed?”
“If you come on my finger within the allotted time, I’ll have your forgiveness.”
“Really, Priest.” I made a scoffing sound. “Never in the history of faithless husbands does a woman offer forgiveness at the crook of his finger.”
“Very well. If I succeed, I’ll have my position reinstated as the master gunner on this ship. I’ll resume my role as your husband and earn your forgiveness.”
“Chops is the master gunner.”
“Chops can report to me. Or I can feed his innards to the gulls. I’m indifferent either way.”
He set the sand clock on the mattress and folded his hands on his lap, regarding me with an expectant look. It wasn’t hopeful expectancy. He calculated on me agreeing to this.
We both knew I would. And we both knew he would win.
Which was why I had no intention of playing by the rules.
I took another swill of rum and carried it with me to the bed. Stepping into the V of his spread knees, I planted my boots against the insides of his and steeled my nerves.
“So, my stunning, unmanageable, ever-vexing wife,” he murmured, tiptoeing his gaze up my body to meet my eyes. “Shall we get on with it, then?”
I gave a deliberate pause, pretending indecision. “Do I have another option?”
“Hmm.” He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers, his voice folding around me like nightshade—beautiful, exotic, deadly poisonous. “Perhaps I’ll bend you over my knee like a bad little girl and leave us both aching for release.”
“You owe me more than that.”
“Quite so.” His insidious stare taunted me over the fingers he held captive, his breath dipping into the valleys between each knuckle, teasing sensitive skin.
A shudder raked my body, puckering my nipples and unleashing hell on my focus. I ached for his touch, and my senses thickened with that need, sharpening and dulling in waves as I sought to control my reaction to him.
I knew what I needed to do. Anger would guide me. Ruthlessness would protect me. But the woman I’d once been—the wife, the lover, the sensual creature who craved affection—desperately wanted to postpone his pain.
And mine.
This was the last time I would be with my husband. I endeavored to savor it.
Hooking an arm around his broad shoulders, I held the bottle of rum against his back and straddled his lap. Then I pulled my fingers from his grip and allowed myself to touch him.
First, the soft brown hair that swept back from his forehead. Then the tender skin around silver eyes that watched me with unnerving patience. Then the blade-sharp cheekbones. The chiseled mouth that had caused me so much heartache. The wiry stubble that covered his jaw. A man’s jaw. Square. Rough. Warm skin over bones forged from iron. He was majestic. Beastly. Regal. Peerless. Unreasonably handsome.
No one—not man or woman—could look at him without stealing another look, and another, until those glimpses carved themselves into memory and established the benchmark by which all beauty was measured.
“I hate that you’re so good-looking.” I roamed my free hand down his bare chest, marveling at the stone wall of muscle. “Your beauty was our ultimate detriment, you realize.”
His gaze flickered to mine, open and distant at once. “Explain that.”
“Would your lover have given you a second glance, let alone a lengthy affair, if your face looked like uncured leather? If your ribs pressed against skin or your smile bore rotten teeth?”
“I don’t know.” His expression blanked.
“How did you meet her?”
His eyes hardened, warning me not to mention her again. “What about you, Bennett? If I were ugly as a wart, would you have married me?”
“Yes.” I traced the sculpted bow of his upper lip. “Your pretty face has its appeal. But it was the intelligence in your conversations and the intensity of your devotion that ensnared me. When I realized that devotion wasn’t real, your looks held no significance.”
He didn’t need to know how many times tonight I’d acknowledged the effect his physical perfection had on me. It didn’t matter. At the end of this, it would be the vivacious soul of the man that I would mourn the most.
His mouth flattened beneath my finger.
“Don’t look so offended.” I patted his cheek. “I only wonder what might have become of us had you been an average-looking fellow. Would you have been so easily lured from me?”
“I wasn’t easily lured away, and though you are painfully gorgeous to the eye, that wasn’t what enthralled me, either.”
“Is that so?” I asked dryly.
“The first time I saw you, you were standing at the helm of this fifty-gun galleon, tearing into a man three times your size. He took his punishment with nothing but respect in his eyes.” He
smiled a reluctant smile. “I’ve watched great men rule great ships, and they don’t hold a fraction of the esteem that you do. You, this tiny ferocious woman, commanding a crew of one-hundred-and-twenty unruly, quarrelsome, lusty-minded men, and none of them so much as touch you. They wouldn’t dare.”
“One of them dared.” I leaned in, hovering a breath away.
“Yes, well, I’ve spent a lifetime taking risks.” He brushed his lips against mine. “But none so satisfying as the one I took with you.”
Then he took again, with his hand in my hair and his tongue in my mouth. That hot stolen kiss, from the man who broke my heart, did exactly what it meant to do.
The tension in my limbs loosened. The ice in my veins thawed, and the shreds of my reason disintegrated as I sank into his splendor. His addictive taste, his confident touch, his throaty sounds, his salt-water scent—all of it would forever reside among my best and worst memories.
I could’ve spent an eternity feeding on his lush lips. The seconds in which we fell into effortless passion would’ve required weeks with anyone else. Our bodies came together in a mutual grind. Hearts finding the same beat. Tongues sliding in sync. Breaths melding as one.
He broke the kiss.
I followed his glance to the side, watching as he flipped over the hourglass, initiated the trickle of sand, and slid a hand beneath the skirt of my shift.
With a single finger, he traced my thigh from knee to hip before sinking between my legs and tunneling directly into my soaked heat.
I ceased breathing, and my pulse ran away from me as erotic tingles swept through every inch of my body.
He slowly eased out and drew an unhurried circle around my entrance, once, twice, igniting spasms along my grasping, greedy muscles. Then he plunged that finger again, groaning when he felt how hot and tight and wet and needy I was. I might as well have been a virgin, given the way I responded to his intrusion. It’d been so damn long since I’d been touched.
This was dangerous. Insane. Unsound. And so very right.
I had years of regrets, but denying myself one last ride on his experienced hand would not be one of them.
And so it began. In and out, around and around, he fingered me with a skill of a libertine. I liquefied around every curling pull and moaned with every leaden thrust, sagging against the pillar of his torso as shivering bursts of pleasure wound me tighter, hotter.
I was slippery and unashamed, and he was the intoxicant, spinning me and drowning me with his mastery of my body. Relief was so close I could feel the shimmering, taunting edge of it.
At the centrum of the sensations was his mouth—his hot, treacherous mouth moving against mine in a languorous slide of damp flesh and heated breaths. He tasted like the ocean, deep and turbulent, liberating and comforting, familiar and sacred. There was a time when he’d represented all those things.
Sinuous pressure coursed through me, gathering around the stroke of his finger. But a peek at the sandglass filled me with dread. Such an insignificant amount of grains had passed through.
“By my estimate, that’s one minute down.” He crooked his finger inside me and dragged my lips back to his, panting hungrily. “Nine more to go.”
He didn’t need ten minutes to give me a release. He could do it in two. But outlasting the clock wasn’t my aim.
With his breaths crashing against my mouth and the impossibly long, swollen length of him pressing against my inner thigh, it was time. He was mindless enough, his guard effectively compromised as he closed his eyes and drove his finger deep into the drenched folds of my flesh.
My throat constricted as I put my lips at his ear and whispered, “Let this be a lesson in betrayal.”
“Wha—?”
I shoved his chest with all the strength in my arm and smashed the bottle of rum against the side of his head. Through a spray of liquor and glass, the world stood still as he stared at me in disbelief.
Then he slumped like a sack of grain. His back hit the mattress. His body went limp between my legs, and blood spurted from the jagged wound near his temple.
He was unconscious.
The rancid taste of grief flooded my mouth. My sinuses burned, and fire scorched the backs of my eyes. What kind of woman hurt the man she loved?
“I’m so sorry.” I lay my cheek on his chest and released a choking cry of relief and agony.
I cried for the marriage I’d bungled so miserably. For the man whose faithlessness had taught me a hard lesson in trust. And for the love I was letting go after so many years of holding on.
It was time to move past this. Time to find the compass, lock my demon in the bilge, and hold him captive until he was as finished with me as I was with him.
Wiping away tears, I stretched toward his face and kissed his slack lips. It hurt to do so.
It hurt to climb to my feet and not kiss him again.
It hurt to turn away and straighten my undergarments. But I did it.
I put him behind me, pulled in a deep breath, and shouted for my quartermaster.
“Strip him.” I cleared the nervous jitter from my voice and gave Reynolds my back, leaving him to deal with Priest’s unconscious body. “I want him naked and defenseless when we lock him in the hold.”
Where did I put my favorite shirt? Ah! There. I snatched it from the floor and pulled it on over my linen corset.
“Naked?” Reynolds asked behind me. “You sure, Captain?”
“Yes.”
Was I? Seeing Priest without his breeches wouldn’t exactly help me let go and move on. But I wanted his humility. I needed it.
“Nudity doesn’t affect my brother like normal folks.” He shifted, creaking the boards with the sway of the ship. “If anything, it gives him more confidence. Especially around you.”
“He hid my compass, Reynolds, and you’re going to search every crease and crevice, starting with the ones on his person.”
“He did what?”
As I updated him on Priest’s latest treachery, I exchanged my slip for a pair of trousers and laced on my knee-high boots.
Fully dressed, I turned to find Reynolds bent over the nude, unmoving form on my bed. “Tell me you found it.”
“Not the compass. But Captain… He was hiding something else.”
The caution in his tone drew me closer. When I reached his side, my mouth dried. My eyes grew hot, and I shook my head, unable to make sense of the ravaged body before me.
From hip to ankle, Priest’s flesh rippled and warped like melted leather. Dear God, his entire leg was unnaturally bubbled, hairless, scarred.
Burned.
He’d been burned so horrifically and completely on his left side it made my leg throb in sympathy.
“How?” I clutched my throat, recalling the flawless lines of his physique from two years ago. “When?”
“Not recently.” He rolled Priest onto his unmarred side and leaned down for a better look. “He’s fully healed.”
It was a wonder he’d survived the trauma. The burns all but swallowed his leg. He’d clearly lived through it, but at what cost? Had he endured the agonizing recovery alone?
I should have been there for him, taken care of him, for no rational reason I could name. He didn’t deserve my help or my sympathy.
“Put his breeches back on and tie his hands.” I couldn’t look at his ruined skin. Not because it made him less beautiful. But because his suffering made me feel like a failure, like a worthless, absent wife. “I’ll interrogate him once he’s secured in the bilge.”
Reynolds followed my order, restraining and heaving thirteen stones of listless muscle and menace over his shoulder.
I led him out the door and grabbed the first crew member I spotted—a rangy, malodorous, unwashed cabin boy.
“D’Arcy, assist Reynolds down to the hold.” I gave the stinky boy a shove, hurrying him along. “And call for the surgeon. I want Mr. Farrell’s head wound examined before the last bell of the dog watch.” My next order came with all the bark
of my mother’s condescending voice. “Then you will find some clean clothes and a bucket to wash yourself.”
“Yes, Captain!” D’Arcy jumped, eager to please.
Reynolds lumbered after the boy, adjusting Priest’s body high on his shoulder. When they slipped around the corner, I returned to the cabin and leaned against the closed door.
At least, I had my father’s boots back. Now to recover the compass.
The hunt stretched late into the night. Anything not bolted down in my cabin was upended, pulled apart, and turned inside out. Even with Reynold’s help, the search was onerous. Frustration fused with exhaustion, and sometime after the last bell, I stood amid the debris and admitted defeat.
“It’s not here.” I collapsed into the desk chair.
“Shall I help you clean up?” Reynolds rehung a Caribbee chart tapestry on the wall and rubbed his forehead. “Or continue the search topside?”
“It can wait until sunrise. All of it. Get some sleep.”
“Will you?” He opened the door and glanced back at me.
Would I sleep? With my husband shackled just a few levels beneath me?
I gave a wan smile. “I’ll try.”
Sleep, as it turned out, proved as challenging as staying away. Priest was the flame to my moth-addled head. Every thought, every emotion, fluttered toward him, incessant. Restless. Destined to die a disgraceful death.
I waited five eternal hours before I emerged from my cabin.
In the faint light of dawn, I ordered a ship-wide search for the compass. As Jade sailed farther away from Jamaica, the crew scrambled to locate the prize, motivated by the extra ration of food I promised to the man who found it.
Leaving them to it, I descended below, beneath the galley, crew’s quarters, lower deck, and deeper still, through the hatch of the bilge.
At the bottom of the ladder, his voice—deep, self-assured, elongating the vowels of his Welsh accent—greeted me from the shadows. “I’ve been expecting you.”
I lit the lantern on the wall, squared my shoulders, and turned to face him. “Tell me about the scars.”
His head tilted, his expression momentarily unguarded and decisively mean. Just as quickly, his features blanked. A blatant refusal to talk.
