Chapter 2
She’d done her best to avoid being alone with Kelly, which over the course of months at sea had proved quite a challenge. She had done the same with Reza, but that had been less difficult since he had withdrawn so completely from everyone aboard that half the time she couldn’t have said where he was, had she actually wanted to look at him. Like any feline, he seemed able to find hiding places even in this finite amount of space, and she envied him that gift. Despite her spectacular sense of balance, Cressida was struggling to maintain an even keel on this ship.
This ship of bears.
She was almost grateful that she’d only been told the truth well after they had left port, and that her choices had been to accept it somehow or to jump overboard of her own volition. Cressida had a powerful sense of self-preservation. So powerful it overwhelmed and then undermined, perhaps, her sense of reason. A ship of bears. And having seen it with her own eyes, she could not refute it. And being among them these long months had forced her to reconcile herself to it. Kelly could turn into a bear and Reza could turn into a tiger. Perhaps more accurately, they were these beasts, at least in part. She wanted no further details on that score. As it was, she slept each night in her hammock, besieged by feverish dreams filled with sprouting fur and shifting bones.
She walked into Kelly’s quarters to find him slouched against the edge of the long dining table, head bent over the map.
He was, she thought, still damnably attractive. Which was no small feat, at sea for so long. His dark hair was pulled back from his face and the laces of his shirt left untied, revealing a vee of sculpted chest and dark hair. Broad shoulders tapered to hips adorned with rapier and pistol, and when he hunched with his hands on the desk like that, the muscles in his arms shifted beneath the linen of his shirt.
She shook herself a little. Bear.
“Don’t tell me we’re lost,” she quipped, folding her arms beneath her breasts as she approached the table.
“I don’t see how you think we could get lost finding an island we’ve never found before,” Kelly muttered.
She frowned. “That doesn’t sound very confident, James.” And he, of all people, could not lose confidence. Not now.
“We need to talk about what’s going to happen when we get to the island,” he said.
Well, she’d rather he sound preemptive and ambitious than defeatist.
“All right.”
“I’m surprised the slave hasn’t told you already.”
She arched a delicate eyebrow. “He isn’t a slave, Kelly.”
Kelly shrugged, waving a dismissive hand. “I never expected it would be you, Cressida, but I was always going to need a human on this trip.”
She felt her stomach flip-flop, dread swelling all the way up from her toes right into her eyes as she looked at him. But she didn’t flinch or look away, just held herself still, feet planted, and gazed right back at him until he looked away, back down to the map.
“What does that mean?” she demanded.
“Well, I’m going to tell you,” he said, voice sharpening. “So don’t get hysterical.”
“Keep talking to me like that, James Kelly, and you will see hysterical, all right.” She glared at him and gave the pommel of her rapier a pat where it sat low on her left hip.
“It requires,” Kelly finally said with a deep sigh, looking at her again, “two shifters and a human.”
“To do what?”
“To acquire the jewel.”
“How?”
“I don’t know the details.” He held up his hands to forestall the protest that was right behind her teeth. “I’m sorry. All I know is that it will take three of us, and one of the three must be you. My information is limited. There will be challenges.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What sort of challenges?”
“I don’t imagine they will be more complicated than your average bear trap. They were constructed by primitives, after all.” He smirked, stepping away from the table’s edge, rounding its corner towards her. “But my agents in the East only barely speak the language of this place. Specifics are hard to come by. But I do know someone who could tell us exactly what we’re up against…”
To her surprise, he reached out, catching a stray lock of her hair and looping it about one finger. She blinked, watching the pale blond strands slide against his knuckle, and looked up into his face. His dark brown eyes were very serious.
She smacked his hand away from her. “You want me to ask Reza.”
“We need to know, Cress.”
“He won’t tell you, so you want me to…”
“Ask.”
She expected him to back up, but instead he reached for her again, and this time his hand landed on her hip, curling tightly. A breath caught in the back of her throat as he turned her slightly, pushing her up against the edge of the table.
Months and months and she’d not let him touch her.
“James, stop.” She flattened a hand on his chest, which stilled him, but he didn’t let go of her or step away. “You want me to seduce this information out of Reza? And you are seducing me into it?”
He smiled down at her. And it was an incredibly appealing smile, and she hated it and longed for it all at once. He bent his head close, lips brushing her cheek, breath warm at her ear.
“I can’t stop thinking about having you in my bed,” he whispered.
She felt her color rising. “James, we can’t.”
His hand slid up from her hip, beneath the hem of her shirt, fingers gliding over the skin of her waist towards the ladder of her ribs.
“I can control it,” he murmured as he kissed her jaw. “I can control myself, and my crew. You need to control the…tiger.”
“James, please…” It was hard for her to even listen to what he was saying like this. Cressida was not a woman accustomed to denying herself. She had built a life based on the notion that no woman should ever be forced into denying herself the things she wanted, and here she’d been stuck on this ship for months, desperately wanting either one of these men and stopping herself from having them both.
Damn Kelly. Damn him and his lips kissing the thrum of her pulse just below her jaw. Damn his hand, as it curved over her breast beneath her shirt, lightly squeezing. She caught a gasp between her teeth but couldn’t stop herself arching a little into him.
“That’s my girl,” he chuckled, lifting his head to catch her mouth with his in a kiss.
She sank headlong into it, her lips parting against his, and as their tongues twined and their breath mixed, she found herself pulling him against her. He lifted her onto the table and settled between her thighs, kissing her back down to the table’s surface.
“James,” she sighed, as the kiss broke and he began plucking loose the laces of her blouse and kissing down between her breasts. “I’ll ask Reza but I won’t go to bed with him.”
Kelly paused, his nose to her sternum, and then lifted his head to look at her. Dark eyes glimmered, interested but wary. “Why not? I know you desire him, Cress.”
She stared back at him, astonished for a moment, and then pushed him back by the shoulders and sat up, hastily tying up the front of her blouse. “Because I’ll not deceive him. Either I’m with you or I’m with him, Kelly.”
He’d stepped back when she pushed him, and grimaced, looking away a moment. And then, with a spark of temper igniting in her heart, she understood. He looked back at her when she scooted forward to the table’s edge.
“Cressida,” he said carefully. He must have seen the realization crawl over her face.
“That is precisely your plan, isn’t it, you dog?” she demanded, hopping off the table to the floor. “You intend to share me?”
“Not…well, I…”
“I will not be passed back and forth!” she cried, lifting a hand to strike him across the face.
He caught her wrist, though, before her palm made contact with his jaw. His
grip was firm, and his eyes had gone hard in a second as he gazed down at her.
“I thought I’d be doing you a favor,” he muttered. “Since you seem incapable of choosing one of us on your own.”
She hissed him and yanked her wrist free of his hand. “You’re a bastard.”
He sighed and looked away. “Maybe I’d just rather have you any way I can get you, Cressida. Have you considered that? And maybe you have forgotten that I am a pirate, not a gentleman.”
“You will have me in exactly no way,” she told him, fury flushing through her body like boiling oil. She didn’t wait for him to make a witty riposte, just turned and stormed out of the captain’s quarters, slamming the door soundly behind her. Instead of going to the deck, where all the crew would be working or dicing or lying in the sun, she went further down, and to the crew’s shared quarters. She needed a moment to think, to work through this anger, because she knew that she could not hold onto it. The ship was too small to allow for a grievance such as this between herself and Kelly.
She had to get over it. Quickly. She might have his run through later, once they’d gotten to the island, gotten the jewel, and gotten her Fortune back. But now there was no use for such anger, or hurt. And though she was loath to admit it…it did hurt. She knew it had been foolish for her to assume that she’d meant more to him than a warm body between the sheets, but sometimes the way he looked at her…
She stormed into the crew quarters, shoving beneath the spiderweb of hammocks filling the space, to make her way over to her own berth. It was just a corner of the room, which the pirates had been generous enough to give her instead of forcing her to sleep in their midst. It wasn’t exactly private, but she felt more secure simply by having a wall at her back. It was the only thing she actually did have, after all. Her clothes, her sword, all given to her by James. Her very life, arguably, he had given her on loan when he took her off the slave block.
These long months, she’d thought more than once that perhaps she did love him.
“Idiot,” she muttered to herself. “Fool.”
“He’s the fool.” She jumped, turning at the voice, surprised to see Reza standing only a few feet away. As ever, she hadn’t even heard him walking towards her.
“Perhaps we are all fools,” she sighed, looking away from him. To the floor, the wall, anything. “What do you know of it?”
“I know that if I had you, I would never share you,” Reza murmured.
Her heart skipped a beat, but she refused to look at him still. Because she believed him. They had never spoken of it, not over the course of months at sea; never had either one of them mentioned the passion of their first night together. It hadn’t needed to be said. She saw that he wanted her whenever she looked at him. It sat naked in his clever green-gold eyes. Along with a predatory kind of hunger, a fierce intellect, and a seemingly perpetual, if quiet, agony.
It was the certainty of it that scared her, she thought. The same as Kelly’s ambiguity appealed to her, that Reza seemed so certain he wanted her was overwhelming in its turn. Being loved and loving, after all, could be the death of freedom. The demise of independence. For a woman, at least.
She knew that he drew nearer, then, because she could feel the warmth of him at her back, but he didn’t touch her.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, either,” he said softly.
“No?” She stared at her own feet. “Then tell me what we’ll find when we get to the island.”
“My people and the treasure whose shadow they’ve lived in for so long that none of them remember what it’s for.”
“Kelly said there would be challenges.”
She heard him sigh. “I’m not going to tell you how to get it.”
She turned sharply to look at him at last. “Why not? Reza, it’s been months. You know me now. You know that I won’t hurt your people, or let Kelly hurt them. I need this.”
He surged forward, his hands catching her by the waist, so quickly that all she could do was grab his arms. They were nearly nose to nose, and his fingers gripped her tightly, but she held his eyes and didn’t flinch. Those exotic, changing eyes, fierce even beneath the jagged fall of his dark hair, his face hard and smooth at once. She could feel the muscles in his arms flexing tightly, burning beneath her hands.
“It’s been months,” he said softly, looking into her eyes. “And you have been as much a prisoner on this ship as I.”
“I need the treasure,” she whispered, breathless.
“I will help you get it.”
She searched his eyes, tried to find the truth through the wildness blazing in their depths, but knew even as she did that she could not betray Kelly. He may not have loved her, but he had saved her. She’d seen the desperation in his eyes when he spoke of reuniting with the lost members of his family, his den. It had looked not unlike the desperation she saw now in Reza’s eyes. Both of these men longed for home so powerfully. Cressida had never had much of a home to long for, and all the homes she’d known had come with the weight of unwilling dependence.
“I want you,” she told Reza as they gazed into each other’s eyes. “But I will not betray him when it comes to the jewel.” She swallowed, throat suddenly tight. “But you can have me, Reza, if you mean everything you say…”
Chapter 3
The longer he touched Cressida, the more Reza’s entire body felt as if it was on fire. When she looked at him and said those words, I want you, he bit down on a growl of desire so powerful it nearly overwhelmed him. He could tell that she was conflicted, though, and that she was frightened. He’d been watching her over the months, watching as she struggled with what she now knew of them, struggled with understanding it and accepting it. He’d watched too as she wavered, when her smiles were more for Captain Kelly or more for him. He’d watched her heart tear in half and he could do nothing. Even as she stood now in his hands and offered herself to him, he knew that one half of her heart was still above, in the captain’s quarters.
He had considered killing himself, more than once. At ends, overwhelmed both by the presence of all the bears and by the certainty that they were going to destroy his people, however inadvertently, he’d thought about just diving into the sea and letting it drag him down. But it was not in his nature to give up, or he’d have been dead a long time ago. No, his nature told him to fight tooth and claw for what he wanted, and to defend the things and people he loved most. And he loved Cressida Avery.
He’d resisted it at first. Then told himself that she was the only woman aboard the ship and the last one he’d been with, after a very long drought, so of course he wanted her again. But the more he watched her charm the crew, work just as hard as anyone, and demand treatment equal to her own worth…the more he began to realize, with dread, that it was more than simply wanting her. And moreover, his current predicament was far larger and more dangerous than the unrequited love of a seafaring madwoman.
Home. Home. It was forever on his mind, haunting him in dreams and awake. At once a hope and a horror. He had no way of knowing what would greet him on the shores of his island. In truth, he could not tell Cressida exactly what she wanted to know, because he had no idea himself. The secrets of the jewel had never been his.
He pulled Cressida even closer and kissed her, unable to let her go without at least one kiss, though he half expected her to try and stab him for it. It was a pleasant surprise when she didn’t, when she kissed him back instead, and he found himself backing her up against the wall when her fingers worked their way into his hair.
“Do you choose me?” he asked, lips still against hers, as he slid a leg between her thighs.
“Yes,” she gasped.
He let out a growl of triumph and kissed her again, yanking impatiently at the fasteners on her trousers to get them loose. He couldn’t mark her here, now, on the ship with all of the bears and he probably wouldn’t even have time to properly claim her, but he was going to make her moan his name before th
ey were interrupted.
And she was as ready as she’d been the first night they’d been together. She lifted her leg as they kissed, thigh brushing his hip, and though he wanted to plunge himself into her, he didn’t. Patience was a virtue he had perfected over the course of years. With one hand he gripped her thigh, pressing her back against the wall, and the other he slid between them and down the front of her trousers, to the heat between her legs. Her fingers tightened in his hair and she tried to move against him, but he held her still, pinned there between his body and the wall, as he slid his fingers inside her.
She made a desperate little mewling noise against his lips, trying to buck her hips, but he wouldn’t let her. He just slowly drew his fingers out of her and then sank them back in, teasing another sound from her throat, her breasts heaving against his chest as she inhaled through her nose. Everything about her was delicious and soft, from her smooth, pale skin to her slick, warm cunt. He wanted to taste her, but first he wanted to satisfy her more. There would be time for tasting and languishing later. Now was for haste and quiet. At the third noise, he lowered his head, whispering Shhh, and kissed her throat, her collarbone, her shoulder, as he fucked her with his hand. He inhaled the scent of her golden blond hair, licked at the sweat on her skin. Her thigh began to tremble in his grip, and she tilted her head back against the wall, eyes fluttering shut, and bit down on her bottom lip.
He slid a third finger into her and she gripped at his shoulders, fingers curling tightly into his shirt. He wished awfully that it was his cock driving into her, but knew that he’d not have been able to control himself if it had been. It wasn’t safe. This was safe, and though he was so hard by now that it was painful, he knew it would eventually be worth it. Her pleasure was more important to him now. He curved his fingers inside her, hastening the thrusts, and she arched her back against the wall and bounced a little against his hand, lips parted in desperate ecstasy.
Alphas of Black Fortune (Complete Boxed Set) Page 6
