The unpleasant thought echoed round and round in his mind until, against his better judgement, he reached over and shifted, pulling her small form protectively into his arms. She nestled against him. He smiled tenderly as through the soft light he stared at her upturned face. As if she knew she had finally arrived. If only in the dark edge of night where dreams can not lie, she knew at last she was safe. . . .
Morning light filtered into the room and Juliet stirred, toasty warm and aware before anything else of a most pleasant scent. Rich spices, the sea, and him—
Him?! Garrett! She opened her eyes, prepared to be shocked. She laid full against his hard warm body, cradled in his arm, her arm resting over his chest. She froze, just froze, her body moving from the ignorant bliss of sleep to sheer panic in the space of a moment. Stopping the cry of alarm in her throat, she carefully withdrew to sit up. He still slept, and she stared at him accusingly, maddened by the way even sleep loved his face. Bronze against the white sheets, he looked recklessly handsome: the carved muscles of his arms and bare chest, the dark tufts of hair, everything so blatantly masculine. The growth of his beard and the licks of dark curls over his forehead only enhanced the impression of strength carved into the handsome features. With his head resting in raised arms he looked as if he had not a care in the world. She half expected him to start whistling a happy tune.
How, dear God, had he taken her clothes off while she slept?
She pulled the thin sheet over herself, inadvertently exposing his virile form to her startled gaze. She gasped upon encountering the shocking sight of his nakedness. She remembered seeing it, him, that . . . part, and being terrified, as she placed the sight against the memory of the few other times she had seen naked men. In truth, she had never seen a real man, only Greek statues in parks and paintings in museums; there the phallus had looked so small, flaccid, harmless really, the absolute opposite of his. She had wanted to ask if he was normal, if lust made all men so enormous, harder than the flex of a muscle, and if it was lust that changes its shape, then why, oh God, why did he get like that as he slept? Her hand flew to her mouth and her face reddened more as the answer came to her. He had unchaste dreams! Twas too terrible, even his dreams were unchaste-She came off the bed dragging the sheet with her. She looked around for her clothes. Her slippers and stockings lay on the couch where she had fallen asleep. She searched the space of his quarters, her eyes on the floor. Would he have been wicked enough to take off her clothes, leaving her in this immodest state, but then hang up her dress to prevent wrinkles?
An examination of the dressing room said no. He was simply wicked. Then where was her dress? She looked over to where he slept, unable to encounter the sight without blushing more. Could he have taken her dress to keep her naked? To keep lust in his loins?
A hundred terrifying questions came to her mind. He had promised not to hurt her more and she wanted to believe him; despite his name and his infamous history, she wanted desperately to believe that. Yet even if that were true, did it include rape? Did he know how badly that hurt? Even if he did, could he control himself when his ... his phallus filled so?
She didn't know, but the odds seemed astronomically against her. The thought of her shame in front of his men stopped her from running outside. What if they were all like him? "Are you innocent enough to imagine you'd rather sleep with a group of men? I trust my men with my life, you are another matter entirely. ..." Dear God, what could she do?
Garrett's dreams filled with visions of her. Dreams of large, dark blue eyes shining with the light of a summer's day, hair the color of sun-washed sable, falling in streams to cover the beauty of her unclad state, and in his dream she was laughing, laughing until he stopped it to taste the honeyed nectar of her lips and to part her slender thighs. . . .
The dream faded, and Garrett awoke. He opened his eyes to see first the empty bed at his side, then he turned, only to encounter a sight he would never—as long as he lived and as short as that might be—stray far from his memory.
Juliet sat in a chair arranged a safe six or so paces away. Upon seeing him wake, she pulled herself erect, lifting the sheet over herself, and with considerable difficulty leveled his long-barreled, ivory-handled pistol at his head. An alarming look of determination was in the bright pools of her eyes and he started praying for the fortitude not to laugh at her.
He would not laugh at her, he would not, he said over and over again as he bit the inside of his mouth hard, laying back to ask the pressing question: "Do we have an agenda, love? Or will you just shoot me as I lie?"
She lifted her chin, determined not to let his calmness disarm her. It had to be pretense, a show of bravado meant to intimidate and weaken her resolve. She'd not let him. As for his question, she had thought about it for the better part of an hour now, but—"I'm not certain" -she confessed in a voice strained and weak from the desperation of this measure, a voice that affected him as a grip tightening on his heart. "I can't decide . . . exactly. I think I should shoot your-that you probably deserve it—but that's not what I want, what I really want. I want you to turn the ship around to take me back. Will you do that?"
She could not account for the way his expression changed upon hearing this. Not knowing what to make of it, she tightened her grip just in case.
"Well, I see you need some ... ah, help with this threat. First, if you plan to shoot me, raise the pistol a good inch higher. It shoots low, you see. You don't want to miss, do you? It would be bad enough to have my blood and flesh splattered against the wall but you can believe I don't want to linger to see it." He watched the change in her expression, and with fear laid over the weight of the pistol in her hand, she started to tremble. "And may I suggest you rephrase your question into a demand? Not that it really matters, for of course I can't do that."
"Why not?" The desperate cry came in a whisper. "If I keep this pistol aimed at you—"
"My crew, for one thing. They object to being forced to do anything. Hell, I practically have to take a vote on each and every order I give. You can imagine how uncooperative they'd be if they knew you were forcing me to give that order, even more if they knew you had shot me. Besides, love, I'd probably only pretend to give the orders while I waited until you had to eat or use a chamber pot or simply fall asleep. You can see the difficulties. Insurmountable, if you think about it."
As he suggested, she raised the pistol an inch. Her hands still trembled and defeat appeared in her eyes, contradicting the measure. "Don't think I won't, Garrett. I want to ... I do."
"I believe you, love."
The whispered confession came on the heels of a pause. "I don't know what else to do. . . ."
"Are you asking me for alternatives to shooting me? Well, love, I'm still at your mercy." With emotion underlying a shift to honesty he said, "I'll give you anything I can."
The promise raised her chin with renewed determination. "I ... I want you to stop that."
"Stop what, love?" With confusion he followed her anxious gaze to the point of her alarm, startling her when he lost his resolve and started laughing. For too long he could not stop. Furious now, not knowing why, she tightened her hold on the pistol. "I see it alarms you, too. Look, Juliet," he tried to stop laughing long enough to explain, "I'm afraid there is only one way to stop . . . ah, 'it,' and for starters, it would take at least a day and a night and then, no doubt, 'it' would be, ah, harder to get rid of each time thereafter."
He was trying hard to stop laughing at her, she saw, but she hardly understood anything else.
"You mean . . . you can't stop it?"
"Not with you in the same room. No, but I will try to control the greater instincts arising from ah, 'it."'
She stared in obvious mistrust. The information raised a hundred pressing questions but to say she did not feel comfortable discussing male anatomy with Garrett was, if anything, an understatement. "You don't seem to be able to give me anything I want."
A strange smile changed the handsome features o
f his face. "If you'd only want something I could give."
Garrett watched the confusion brought on by his words. A more sophisticated woman would have known without words, and her confusion made him acutely conscious of how young she was—too young. The strain of the situation began to take its toll, too. She still trembled, and while he knew she had somehow in the course of her hard life lost the ability to cry, the tears shimmered there. The desire to comfort was nearly as great as the desire to draw her slender form against him. He suddenly wanted this over.
Her eyes widened more as he rose and, heedless of his nakedness, came to her. She thought he would take the pistol but no, he knelt in front of her. His hand came over the barrel of the pistol and aimed it point blank to his chest. "Put the pistol down or shoot me now, love. You won't get a second chance."
Emotions rose like a strong, swift tide to greet the outrage of this measure. He knew she wouldn't, he knew it! He could at any moment move the barrel or take the pistol yet he waited for her. Waited for her to accept her helplessness.
Consciousness centered on every strained nerve in her finger, her hand ached with a preternatural heaviness, and while she never wanted anything as much as the courage to prove him wrong, she couldn't.
Murder was not in her soul.
She dropped the pistol, letting the weight of it fall on his hands as she covered her face in her hands. With his eyes firmly fixed on her, he set it on the hardwood floor. The horror of the measure sank through her strained nerves, scaring her as she considered the awful idea of what he would do to her now. "What . . . how will you pun—" She stopped, momentarily unable to articulate the idea. "What will you do ... now?"
He lifted her face to stare into the shimmering blue pools of her eyes. That strange compassion reached his eyes, an inexplicable gentleness. "Listen, love, will I be jeopardizing my life if I tell you there is nothing you could do on earth that would bring you . . . ah, punishment by my hand?"
She could hardly believe he would do nothing when she threatened his very life. Despite the poetry in his eyes, she could not trust him enough to answer as he stared at her; this he saw. "Juliet," he said her name in a whisper as he reached a hand to her face. She gasped slightly as his finger followed her hairline to her neck, stopping when he felt the rush of shivers this caused her. She slowly reached a hand to cover the spot, stopping the sensation as she shook her head.
When she looked as if she believed the small protest might incite him to violence, he stood up and moved to retrieve his breeches. "I think ... I think what I will do now is hit the cold blue ocean water. Have your clothes on when I get back."
An intense wave of relief washed through her, sweet and heady and hot. Her next breath felt like her first as she watched him shut the door. "My clothes?" she questioned in an anguished whisper. What does he mean by it? He took her clothes!
She looked around the room as if she might have i missed something. An audible thump sounded loud in the quiet of the room. Her eyes lifted to the culprit. Tonali sat on his throne on top of the bookcase. Beneath him lay her dress. "You! You took my dress . . . ." Here she had been thinking Garrett took it, and for the most malicious purposes, when, when it was Tonali! She won-. dered wildly if she would have taken his pistol, if thej whole awful scene might never have happened, if only she had looked up to see the cat. "Oh, Tonali, how could you?"
Tonali rose and leapt to the ground. She watched with wide eyes, trying not to be afraid as he slowly stalked to her. He sat like a perfect gentleman, his long tail curling neatly in front of him as his gold eyes held her mesmerized for a long moment. His paw lifted and caught her braid. He bounced it in the air, batting at it like a toy.
She carefully took it back. Animals do not smile, she told herself, unnerved nonetheless, more so as Tonali * rose and in an unmistakable gesture of peace rubbed himself against her legs. The feel of his sleek fur passed through her like a caress, for a moment more unsettling than the sight of razor-sharp teeth. Then she chided herself for her imagination and got up, positioning the chair beneath the bookcase to retrieve her dress.
She froze as her eyes held the torn and tattered remains of what was her sole possession on earth. It looked as if he had tried to eat it. ... With what seemed like malicious intent, Tonali had shredded the cloth in front so it hung in irreparable tatters. She saw the buttons on the floor and turned it over. Not one button remained attached. Not one . . .
In a very real sense, this was the least of what happened to her, a thing not to be compared to the long years of living beneath that fear in her uncle's house, years culminating in her abduction, rape, and captivity, being kept from the only thing that mattered to her by arguably the most dangerous man alive. A ruined dress did not compare to these things, and yet as she stared at it, the biblical story of Job came to mind and she understood for the first time how life could be such a constant defeat that one might finally want to forsake it.
She still stood there on the chair, clutching the ruined shreds of her dress, when Garrett finally stepped inside, dripping wet. He met accusation in her eyes, seeing what she held in her hands.
He slowly approached the chair she stood on. He said nothing as he took the ruined dress from her, knowing why Tonali did it. Tonali hissed, baring his teeth, but contradicted the gesture by coming to lean against Gar-rett's legs.
"I'm trying so hard," she said in a whisper. "You don't know ... I keep thinking nothing worse can happen to me, but then—"
"It's only a dress, love. I'll get you something to wear as soon as we get to a port—"
A finger came to his mouth, sudden fury shone in her eyes as she shook her head. "Don't you understand? I don't want anything from you! Anything! I don't want a new dress! I don't want your protection! I don't want to be held here against my will!"
The dress dropped. In a single movement, Garrett took both her hands in his and brought them behind her back as he lifted her down to the floor. Yet her feet never touched it as he held her tight against the hard wet outline of his body. While he held her with the gentlest restraint, the touch of their flesh stole her breath.
"Your complaint is registered, Juliet. And while you might not want my protection, you have it. Accept it. No outburst will change that. But, love," the rich timbre of his voice lowered ominously as he slowly let her hips slide over his. She tensed with a shocking rush of chills as her feet finally touched the floor, "believe me when I tell you, your anger plays a tempting tune. If I see much more of it, I'm going to want to show you what's hidden beneath it."
She frantically searched his face, desperately fighting the effect of being encased in those arms against his body. Neither the thin cotton of her chemise nor his breeches were an adequate barrier for the hot rush of warmth, warmth that brought quick color to her cheeks and made a slow thud of her heart. "What can you mean?" she cried in a breathless rush. "What can you imagine lies beneath it but my struggle to overcome this terror you've brought to my life?"
His next breath was released in a low chuckle followed by a soft curse. "Are you that innocent, love?" he asked as he took her hand and pressed it against her heart. "Am I imagining that? Or the color I've put on your face, the warmth of your skin against mine, the sweet rush of your breaths?"
With an outraged gasp, she tried to push away, but he kept her to him, not at all willing to let her go now. Not with rage darkening those eyes. Not when her small breaths pushed the soft fullness of her breasts against his chest. Not with the riot she incited in his body.
"Your conceit is monstrous if you imagine I might want to submit to your rape again!"
The breathless rush of words paired with the mutinous impulse to slap him brought a warm, lively amusement to his eyes. "Ah, but that's not what I'm imagining. What I'm imagining, love, is that you are one kiss from discovering the difference between what would be rape and ... its opposite." He said this as his lips lightly touched the curve of her neck. Light kisses on the nape of her neck and ear brought a
rush of chills, the forbidden feelings that threatened to melt her fury and fear. He caught her gasp as his next breath, his mouth a dangerous inch from hers as he asked, "Shall I show you, love? Shall I?"
A rhetorical question . . . Garrett did not intend to wait for an answer. Then he saw her disbelief and fury change to fear. Wilting like a flower beneath a too-hot sun, she collapsed all at once, her eyes begging him to stop when she could not. Still he hesitated, his desire a voracious, impatient force, unconcerned with the capriciousness of her emotions.
"This game we're playing, Juliet. As much as I want you—and believe me, it's a good deal more than you can imagine—you can stop me by showing me your fear. Believe me, too, this fear is your only defense. So love, I suggest you nurture it; you will be needing it often." , He released her then and she fell back against the bookcase, her head spinning like a child's top. She tried to catch her breath, to calm down, not realizing that her fist was clenched in an effort to control the sudden force of her emotions until she followed the amused light in his gaze to her hands. Like the sudden crest of a wave, all emotion rose to renewed desperation, a desperation released in a whispered plea, "No . . . please," as her arms crossed over her nakedness.
None of this was lost on him. "At least, love, you learn quickly," he said as he turned away, heading to the dressing room to remedy the situation.
She tried desperately to recover, but it was impossible, even as he draped the clothes on the bed and left. She looked from the door to the clothes, approaching slowly. A nightdress? How did he come to have a woman's nightdress in his closet? Not just any nightdress but no finer one had she ever seen. It was made of silk and trimmed in expensive German lace and looked as if it had not been worn. A robe too. She lifted the dark blue silk, surprised by how heavy it was. It had long sleeves, and, as she held it against herself she saw it was too long by a I foot. The wonder was the stitchery on the back: an elaborate and detailed picture of a magnificent peacock spreading his colorful feathers.
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