He heard Esterbrook whine from somewhere behind him. Felt the hot snort of a breath by his shoulder as Fat Tom sat himself down and lowered his head.
“Cap’n,” Cort whispered, his voice strangled with grief. “He’s…gone.”
Just gone. Just like that.
Then he felt a hand on his arm and looked down, and there was Cressida beside him. Her blue eyes were wide with fright, her expression destroyed, as she looked at him.
“We need to go,” she said softly. “We need to hurry on, away from this place, James. There’s nothing here for us but more violence. The tree could get hungry again.”
She was right; he knew she was right. What sort of hell of a place had he brought them to? What further monsters lurked in this jungle? He wanted to murder Reza more than ever now. Magic, the slave had said. Magic, not this sort of evil. Not evil literally rooted in the ground they walked on.
Kelly felt so many things at once, he grew dizzy with it. Grief and rage met and married in his heart, giving way to a kind of agony he had no name for. The disbelief and weight of having lost someone he’d been responsible for, a life he’d sheltered for so long.
“When we have the treasure,” he said darkly, “we’re coming back here and pulling that fucking tree up by its devil roots.”
Chapter 3
After Cressida and the pirates disappeared from his sight, into the jungle, Reza went to the waterfall to bathe. His mind was a confusion, his heart a knot. He knew he had to let go of Cressida, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself worrying about her. It was a dangerous, foolish quest to go for the jewel. Only a handful, in his memory, had ever tried—and they were even from his own tribe. They had never returned. And then Wentworth had tried, and when all his men were dead, he’d taken what few he had left and pillaged the village, as though they had not warned him of his folly. All he could hope for now was that Cressida realized how impossible it was and convinced Kelly to leave the island empty-handed before they got themselves killed. But she was brave and Kelly was determined, and he doubted their good sense would prevail.
Though the waterfall was a communal spot for the village, it had been dammed and separated into small ponds for washing clothes, washing food, and washing people. The bathing area was shallow and warm, the flora kept thick and tall to afford some privacy, though anyone was welcomed to use the pond at any time. His people were not concerned with the same kind of modesty as the lands Cressida and Kelly had come from. There was, of course, no mating in the ponds, as a courtesy, but nudity in and of itself was not so shamed as in those distant worlds beyond the island. A naked form was to be celebrated and enjoyed, not derided and covered up. In that way, Reza had decided, the civilized world was far, far from civilized.
He shucked off his trousers and laid them over a laundry line, then waded into the pond. The water lapped gently at his chest, and he cupped his hands to splash it over his face. It was refreshing but not cold. And he felt better at once, as though the clean, fresh water was rinsing the salt and sweat of years from his skin. He dunked his head fully under the water and let himself float a moment.
Even as he relaxed, limbs loose and light, his thoughts turned back to Cressida. The feel of her soft, pale skin in his hands. The taste of her lips. The way the sunlight struck her hair golden, and the way she trembled in his arms when satisfied.
Frustrated, he planted his feet on the pond floor and straightened out of the water with a splash, tossing hair out of his face, and then he felt a hand on his shoulder. A real hand, not an imagined hand. He blinked through rivulets of pond water and felt the heat of another human body behind him, that hand easing down over his shoulder to his chest. A woman’s touch. And not his sister. A breath hitched in his lungs. For a wild, preposterous moment he thought it might be Cressida, returned to him.
“Let me wash you,” she said, and then his fantasies were shattered. It wasn’t Cressida; the voice was Prija’s.
She pressed herself to his back, and he sighed to feel the smooth warmth of her bare skin against him. He was already aroused from his memories of Cressida, and there was nothing he could do to hide it, not with Prija against him like this, her hand sliding over his chest and down, to his stomach. Her naked breasts against his shoulder blades. Her sex brushing his buttocks beneath the water.
“We shouldn’t,” he managed to say.
“We’re to be wed.” She laughed softly.
“It’s rude…” Her hand drifted lower, fingertips brushing the base of his erection, and he had to cast about for the words. “In the pond…it’s…”
“There’s nobody here but us, Reza,” Prija murmured, taking him fully in her hand. He couldn’t help but tilt his head back a little as she slid her fingers up the length of him, and then back down, the movement creating gentle waves in the water around them.
It was inappropriate, but not wrong, by the village laws. They could pleasure each other as much as they liked before being wed so long as no offspring came of it. It was rude to do such things in the communal pond, but they could hardly be punished for it. Not on the day before their wedding.
She stroked him faster and he found himself leaning back against her, reaching back and around to grab handfuls of her voluptuous ass as he arched his hips to her hand. She kissed his shoulder, his back, and he squeezed her as his climax mounted. She was no naive little girl now, he realized. Her hand knew exactly what to do, and he was brought quickly to the brink.
It was when he turned in the water to take her into his arms that he managed to get a hold of himself. So quickly, passion had overcome him, and against all reasonable thought, he’d wanted nothing more than to bury his cock inside her. But when he turned, her hand falling away from him, and looked down at her, he realized with flagging desire that she was not the woman he wanted so desperately in that moment. Prija herself was beautiful, without a doubt. All rich brown skin and large green eyes, her hair the golden orange of her tiger form, falling down her back in thick waves. Flushed with desire and shaking against him in the water, she was, he thought, exactly what any man should have wanted. What any other man would have wanted.
But she was not what he wanted.
With a grimace, he eased her back from him, put space and pond water between them.
“Prija, I can’t,” he said thickly. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” She stared at him wide-eyed. “Reza? What are you doing?”
He was backing slowly for the shore. “I cannot have you.”
“But…” She followed after him. “But we’re to be wed tomorrow. You can have me. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I will not wed you either,” Reza told her, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I—”
“You must,” she cried. “You have to! My father said you have to!”
“I know that, Prija, but I can’t. I will make him understand I can’t. And you don’t deserve to be wed to a man who will never love you.”
That seemed to break through to her. Her mouth fell open and she stopped following him to the shore, shrinking back instead. He hated himself for so wounding her. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, to hurt anyone. He’d only wanted to come home. But now…now he wanted something else entirely, and he had no idea how to reconcile it in his heart. How to reconcile her in his heart.
He turned and slogged back to the shore, grabbing his trousers from the laundry line, and hurrying into the foliage to dress and dry and figure out what he was going to do next. He went far enough from the pond so that he could not hear whether or not Prija cried once he was gone.
Chapter 4
The loss of Harry weighed heavy upon them all as they trudged deeper into the jungle. Cort and Kelly did not speak, and Esterbrook and Fat Tom remained in their bear skins, but they did not move far ahead or behind as they had been. They closed them in instead, giant moving barriers between their captain and the unkind terrain they moved through. As a captain, Cressida had alwa
ys felt it horribly when one of her crew died. She could not comprehend, though, the depth of loss Kelly must have been feeling. He’d described these men as family. They were his den, not just his crew. His anger was an almost visible net around him, cutting him off from them.
More than once, Cressida considered suggesting that they go back. They could have just gone back to the village, fetched Reza, and returned to the ship. Or even if Reza wouldn’t go with them, they could have returned to the ship and left these waters forever. Found a home somewhere else, some other way. But she knew that Kelly would not turn back. Not now. It was perhaps a matter of pride, or—she thought maybe now, more than ever, he had to prove to his den that he could take care of them. And she could not tell him not to do that. She could not tell him to forsake his promises in favor of their lives.
He did not let them rest again. She suspected it was because he did not trust the jungle around them now. None of them did. If the very vegetation surrounding them was man hungry, no place was safe, it seemed. That in itself was a terrifying thought, one that Cressida tried to push from her mind in favor of blank, thoughtless movement. If they just kept going, they would make it there eventually.
But it was hot and the air was thick, and they had walked so long and far without a rest that she could feel her head starting to buzz with exhaustion. She looked at Cort, who was basically sweating buckets, and at the two bears, both of whom had their jaws wide open, panting as they carried along beside them.
“James,” she said softly. Kelly himself was dead-eyed and determined, but he too was covered in sweat and tired-seeming. He didn’t look at her. “James, we need to rest. Please.”
“We need to get to the bridge,” he insisted.
“No, we need to rest. We all need water. And just sit for a few minutes. Just a few minutes.” She looked at Cort for help.
The grizzled pirate cleared his throat quietly. “A rest might be good, Cap’n. A few minutes.”
Kelly shot a glare at Cort, but in the process seemed to actually see the man, and how exhausted he was, and he frowned. After a reluctant moment, he nodded.
“A few minutes,” he muttered.
They stopped right there they were, in a cobweb of branches and leaves and interconnecting vines, all just taking a seat on the grass at once. The bears bellied down, heaving great breaths, and Cort moved from one to the other, pouring what water they had for the bears to lap up.
Cressida eased her sore limbs down and took the remaining water flagon from Kelly when he passed it to her, upending it for a long drink. Those few minutes passed, all of them taking a much-needed moment to slump and drink and nibble some food despite the heat, and then Kelly roused them again. They all struggled to their feet and carried on, and blessedly nothing came lashing out of the jungle itself to try and eat them this time.
That brief rest did them good, however. They picked up their pace, and though moving through the jungle was in and of itself a slow and toiling process, made even slower by Reza’s insistence that they never cut into the plant life, Cressida thought they must all have been feeling like they were making better progress.
And then of course they came to the Stone Leap.
Cressida suspected they were getting close when the air began to thin out, some of the humidity chased by suddenly gusting winds. The breezes were a gift, ruffling their hair and cooling their skin, but then the jungle began to recede around them, the soft earth of the ground transforming into hard stone. And then the canopy disappeared completely and they arrived at a mountain cliff. At the bottom, a narrow ravine stretched for miles in either direction, empty of anything but dirt, rocks and, Cressida suspected, bones.
The Stone Leap perhaps had once been an actual bridge, but it wasn’t any longer. Cressida couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or not, but indeed an actual stone bridge had been built from one cliff to the other, but the very middle of the bridge was gone. As if sections had been hammered out, making it utterly impassable. Leap, indeed.
Beneath a bright blue sky, the sun a furnace above their heads, Cressida stepped out onto the smooth stone bridge and walked its length, to the jagged end. The bears and their captain stayed at the cliff’s edge, watching her. She weighed the least, so it only made sense that she should test the bridge’s strength. But it was rock, not wood, not rope, and it was strong enough to have been part of the mountain itself. Maybe once it had been. She squinted against the sun when she got to the edge, looking across the distance to the other half of the bridge, and sighed.
Twenty, maybe twenty-five feet. Not a distance any human could jump, or even a bear. But a tiger, she realized, probably could have made it. That annoyed her deeply. She turned and stalked back to the others.
“You’ve a rope and anchor, right?” she asked Cort. He nodded. “We’re going to have to tightrope across.”
Kelly and Cort stared at her like she was insane.
“That’s madness,” Kelly said. “We can’t…”
“You’re all bloody sailors!” she cried, waving at them. “You’re telling me you can’t climb across a distance on a rope?”
The two big bears sitting behind them whuffled worriedly.
Cressida rolled her eyes. “You are all children,” she declared. “And if there was another way, I would happily do it, but there isn’t. The break in the bridge is at least twenty feet wide and, according to the map, there is no other place to cross. The map doesn’t even mention trying to go around the ravine, so I doubt that’s an option either.” She looked pointedly at Kelly. “What do you want to do, Captain?”
Kelly frowned. He picked up Cort’s satchel and dug out a big bundle of rope, then gestured Fat Tom and Esterbrook forward, each of whom carried an anchor in their heavier sacks.
“She’s right.” He sighed, dropping the anchors to the ground, where they thunked softly. “Change back, lads. We’ve got to rope across. Fat Tom has the best arm. He’ll throw the far anchor.”
Cressida was not as confident in her plan as she wished to be, but she had to put on the show to get them into action. And she genuinely could not see an alternative way to cross. It was either this or turn back. A part of her kept hoping that Kelly would see how dangerous it was, and give in and call it off. Another part of her loved to see his determination win out. As ever, she found herself quite torn in half over James Kelly, in some way or another.
She watched, gathering dirt between her hands because they had no chalk to smooth their grips upon the rope, as Fat Tom lumbered forward onto the stone bridge and shifted, midstep, from gigantic grizzly bear into gigantic naked man. He hefted the anchor up onto a shoulder and marched to the edge of the bridge, the rope trailing like a long tail behind him.
He turned himself about in several circles before throwing the anchor like a javelin, hurtling it not only across the distance between broken bridge ends, but across the far section of the bridge itself, all the way to the earth and small scrub trees across the ravine. It latched, dug in, and Fat Tom gave the rope a strong heave to be sure it would stick. Satisfied, he nodded and led the rope back to the other side, tying it tightly to the remaining anchor, which he and Cort proceeded to bury in the ground.
They were good sailor’s knots. The rope was taut, the anchors deep. But none of them looked at each other with any kind of real confidence. Just hope and determination.
“I’ll go first,” she decided, once Esterbrook had shifted back into his man skin and the five of them stood at the edge of the stone bridge.
Kelly reached forward and took her hand, pulling her back just a step, so he could bend down and kiss her. It was a soft kiss, lingering, and Cressida did not like it. It tasted too much of worry. She squeezed his fingers as it broke and then let go of him, turning to the tightrope.
The men, she knew, would have to slide along with feet and hands. That was safer. But Cressida did not do that. It felt uncomfortable and strange, for one so accustomed to having perfect balance.
So without looking down, she stepped onto the rope and started quickly across it, arms out to either side, trusting her natural ability to carry her across.
The wind knocked her once, so hard she had to stop and bend down to grab the rope, but though she wobbled, she didn’t fall. And once she understood how the wind would gust against her, between the sides of the ravine, she rose shakily back to her feet and carried on. The rope itself gave a little beneath her weight, but held firmly. It was not as quick a walk as she might have done between ships at sea, but eventually she made it to the other half of the bridge, and managed to jump to safety. Her heart beating a wild hammer in her chest, she at last looked back to Kelly and his men, and nodded. Cort and Fat Tom and Esterbrook were cheering, jumping up and down. Kelly just stood there smiling, relieved.
Kelly came across next, with Cort behind him. Cressida sat on the other side of the cliff and watched, picking nervously at whatever brown bits of grass were sprouting up around her. They moved slowly, but they both made it. Fat Tom crossed alone, his heft so great that they were afraid adding Esterbrook to the mix would snap the rope. He made it across but called to Esterbrook that the rope felt like it was loosening a little. Esterbrook tightened the anchor on his end and Cort tightened the anchor on theirs, and Esterbrook started across.
The rope didn’t break. The anchors didn’t give.
Cressida thought he must have simply been too tired from the journey, or too hungry or thirsty, or unaccustomed to the height and the wind. For whatever reason, his grip slipped, fingers failing, and he dropped, hanging on for a horrible moment with his feet before those gave too, and then he dropped from the rope, gone.
Alphas of Black Fortune (Complete Boxed Set) Page 11
