The Captain of All Pleasures tsb-1

by Kresley Cole

  In the second box, she found a circle of soap in her favorite scent, matching slippers and small cloth boots for all three dresses, and even all the foundation accessories necessary for wearing them. While she bathed, she thought of her gifts and marveled that Sutherland—Derek, she corrected herself—that Derek had remembered she liked the fragrance of almond oil.

  After her bath, she combed her hair until dry and twisted it up in an elaborate knot, allowing a few loose curls to frame her face. Before dressing, she stepped in front of the mirror, and her eyes widened at the reflection. She looked fuller. More busty even. She noted happily that the flare of her backside, the only part of her figure she’d never despaired over, was more pronounced.

  She enjoyed an awareness of parts of her body she’d once thought hopeless. Now, as she spun in front of the glass, she liked flaunting her new figure. She wanted to show off those features that Suther—that Derek lavished praise on each night. After she dressed, she gazed one last time at her reflection and recognized that she carried herself much as the old headmistress had tried for months to instill in her.

  When he arrived to escort her, his first reaction was to suck in a shallow breath. She panicked. Years of feeling scrawny and ungainly made her lose some of her new confidence. Although Derek made her feel beautiful, she remembered a time when she’d hated her looks.

  He was silent until at last he bent down to her ear and murmured in a low, rumbling tone, “You are stunning, Nicole.” Tears pricked her eyes, and she smiled to mask her reaction.

  He answered with a devilish one of his own. “Even more so when you smile, love.”

  His open praise unsettled her, and she looked away. Some of the crew jumped back to work with smiles on their faces. Embarrassed, she changed the subject. “I know of a place we can eat, if you like.” Then, feeling the soft night air rolling off the high tide, she suggested in a more casual tone that they walk.

  He grinned and bowed. “Lead the way, sweet. I forget I’m not showing you a new town.”

  She smiled as they descended the gangway together and started walking, but after several steps, she realized he’d lagged behind. He stood there watching her.

  “What? Is something wrong?” she squealed, checking her skirts.

  His lips tugged up in a grin. “I’ve never seen you walk at length on land.”

  She frowned, and then her mouth made a little O at his sultry expression. In a deep voice, he said, “I like the way you walk, Nicole.”

  That night, she enjoyed herself far too much. Derek was attentive and demonstrated a dry wit she appreciated. Deflecting his overtures and steeling herself against him seemed more and more a lost battle. The sooner they parted, the better.

  Another worry preyed on her mind. For several days, no other ship from the race had docked. After what had happened to the Bella Nicola and the Southern Cross, she had no cause to doubt other ships had been damaged as well. But Derek could find nothing on Tallywood.

  She thought that Derek sensed her uneasiness and was going out of his way to make her happy. This night he’d taken her to a play, a play she didn’t remember the first line of because he’d sat holding her hand, tracing her inner palm, slowly stroking each finger. He hadn’t bothered to hide his hunger.

  She believed he wanted them to spend every evening in bed as they had been. She certainly wouldn’t mind, but seeing how proprietary he became with her around other men was also thrilling. In his mind, she belonged to him.

  One time tonight, it’d gotten so bad she’d thought Derek was going to haul her back to the ship.

  Later, on their way back, she chastised him, “You didn’t have to glare at that old man!”

  He lifted his eyebrows and laughed. “He wasn’t much older than I am. And even though he gathered you were with me, he continued to ogle your ripe, young breasts.”

  She blushed, not used to him speaking so frankly to her outside the haven of his bed. “I thought he was harmless.”

  “That’s because you don’t know what men like that are thinking, whereas I do. Honestly, if you had any idea, you would have run…” His voice trailed off. “Nicole, what is it? You’ve turned white as a sheet.”

  Her body went cold as her breath tripped in and out. She forced herself to continue walking because behind her, not more than ten feet away, came a voice from her nightmares.

  “You’re gonna get us lashed for this, you just wait ’n’ see,” Pretty whined. When Clive replied, “Bugger you, Pretty, Cap’n can’t keep us locked aboard ship for our whole stay,” the blood left her face.

  “Love, what’s wrong?”

  She’d slowed too much. The two would be abreast of them. Without thinking, she turned her back to the street and grabbed Derek by the collar to bring his lips to hers.

  “Now, this I like,” he murmured.

  “Hush! Just keep me turned this way,” she whispered against his lips.

  “I take it you’ve seen someone you’d rather not?” he asked in an amused tone.

  When she’d given them enough time to pass, she broke from him. “Those two up ahead, the wide one and the weasely one. They—they are the two men who attacked me back in London.”

  It was as if she could see aggression fire through his body.

  “I don’t know what they’re doing here,” she said in a shaking voice, “but maybe we should trail them and find out how they got to Syd—”

  “Stay here!” he ordered, and charged toward the two men.

  She hitched up her skirts to follow and got there just in time to hear Clive’s nose crunch as Derek pounded him to the ground. When Pretty scurried to escape, he lunged after him, yanking the wiry man around into his other awaiting fist.

  “Th-they said something about a captain,” she stammered from behind him.

  He looked from the barely conscious Clive slumped on the ground to the visibly quaking Pretty.

  “Now, which one of you wants to tell me who your captain is?”

  The search of Tallywood’s ship took less than an hour. The watchman had arrived just as Derek learned the English earl was their captain. Upon hearing Nicole’s story about her father suspecting Tallywood of being behind the damage to several ships, the Australian authorities called for a search of the Desirade . Word swiftly spread around the small sailing community, and crowds flanked the docks. Derek coerced his way onto the ship, and since he obviously wasn’t letting Nicole out of his sight, she marched aboard as well.

  “This is an injustice!” Tallywood cried, the pale, flaccid skin of his face and jowls shaking in outrage as the Australian authorities restrained him. “I’ll have your positions for this, you heathens,” he spat at the men who held him. “I’m a bloody earl! You’re nothing but some convict’s spawn.”

  The two officers were a brawny, rough-looking pair, and each time he whined they jostled him enthusiastically.

  After picking Tallywood’s safe, an officer uncovered detailed lists and intricate plans for several ships in the race.

  When she spied the lists, Nicole rushed forward, dragging Derek along. “Are we in there?” she cried to the marshal. “Did he sabotage our ships?”

  “The Southern Cross?”

  Derek nodded.

  “He had your water tainted before it was even loaded on the ship.” He turned to her. “The Bella Nicola?” At her anxious nod, he said with obvious regret, “Yes, miss. They loosened your rudder and compromised a support in your hold.”

  She could feel her lower lip trembling. She didn’t want to appear weak in front of these men, but she had to know why. Turning to Derek, she glanced at Tallywood in question, but Derek looked as though he’d stop her. Before he could say a word, she crossed the deck to where the two men held their prisoner.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  He ignored her, and she thought he wouldn’t answer. The second she pulled her eyes from him, the coward spoke. “You all laughed at me,” he began in an eerie voice so low that she had to strain to he
ar him.

  “Common sailors and dockside whores openly mocking me. But I won,” he spewed in an increasingly violent tone. “I won the greatest race of the century….” He continued ranting.

  Nicole wanted to interrupt, to answer his words. But she didn’t think one could argue with a man like this, a man so full of his own importance that he couldn’t fathom the rest of the world wouldn’t want to bring him down from his lofty position.

  One of the two big officers holding Tallywood said, “You can give him something to remember you by, miss, if you like.”

  “Stop this, this bloody instant,” Tallywood shrieked in response. He turned to Nicole. “You’re nothing but a commoner. Do you know what will happen if you strike a peer?”

  The other officer leaned down to her and said with a wink, “Don’t hurt your hand, little bit.”

  It was useless to try to find some wise, reconciling words to convey that he’d won the race but lost everything else. Instead, she hiked up her skirts and planted her boot squarely between his legs.

  With great ceremony, the Great Circle Race award had been bestowed on Derek by the mayor of Sydney. Afterward, he and Nicole walked to his ship as though isolated from the revelry around them. His hand reached down to clasp hers.

  “You, uh, you…” he began in a gruff voice, “could have taken the race.” Although he looked away when admitting that, she simply nodded.

  “Your ship was unstoppable.” He looked down at her now. “And you and the Irisher worked her like clay in your hands. It should have been you and your crew feted in Sydney today.”

  “We can never know that for sure,” she assured him, but she had a good idea he was right.

  “I never realized how hard this must be for you.”

  She wanted to deny it, but he said, “If it helps at all, I want you to know that I…care about you. So much that the win feels hollow.” He opened his mouth to say more, but fell silent and walked on.

  When they entered his cabin, he strode over to her and wrapped her in his arms, pressing his hand to the back of her head, keeping her next to his heart. She couldn’t stop herself from clasping him back.

  He whispered into her hair, “I’m sorry.”

  She cried against his chest, her tears wetting his shirt and her little hitching noises against his chest embarrassing her, until he made a vow to her with such intensity she believed it.

  “No one will ever hurt you again.”

  Chapter 22

  Derek concluded that they couldn’t continue the indefinite nature of their relationship. He needed to cement something between them, and broached the subject one night while they lay in bed relaxed and sated together.

  “I want you,” he began confidently, “to be my mistress.” She started to speak, but he held up his hand. “Before you answer, let me tell you how I’d plan to—”

  “No.” She extricated herself from his cumbersome limbs and jumped up to get dressed. Derek watched her in grim silence as she pulled on her last boot and briskly brushed her hands. “I don’t believe I want to be your mistress, Captain.”

  He didn’t know if he was more infuriated at her refusal or her flippant tone. She treated it as though he’d made an immature, half-cocked suggestion, when in fact he’d thought about little else since he’d realized she had nothing to do with the poisoning.

  He’d never known a woman who made him so angry he wanted to put his fist through a wall! He didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. “Of course not, you would want more—a title, perhaps? I’ll warn you, if you angle for a marriage proposal, you’re wasting your time. I won’t give you more than an offer of carte blanche.”

  “Whoa, my lord,” she said, dripping contempt on his title. “I don’t want more—I want less. I have no desire to make any commitment to you whatsoever!”

  He stared at her with thinly veiled surprise—damn it, she meant that. Her heated refusal of any tie that might bind her to him rattled him to the core.

  “From what I understand about upper-class men and their mistresses, in compensation for…intimacy, a man keeps his mistress in a house he provides and gives her jewels and silks.” She stood looking down at him, her eyes sparking. “Well, am I close?”

  He agreed, impatient to hear what she would say next. One could never be sure with Nicole.

  “Why on earth would I want to be kept in a house on land, stuck in the same place day after day for your convenience, all for some jewelry and finery I’d never wear?”

  He’d only offered what had always worked in the past. Women liked to have things bought for them, to be cosseted. He’d had no reason to doubt that every female wanted fine things—expensive things—not only for her enjoyment but also for security.

  Did Nicole even realize how abject her life would be once they returned to England? “In light of all that’s happened in the last few months, who do you think will take care of you if I don’t? Even if your father’s been released, you’ll have to get back to England to find him. How will you manage that?” He jumped out of bed and yanked on his clothes, his own temper threatening to boil over. “Your ship is on the bottom of the South Atlantic, and I stranded your crew at the Cape. You don’t have a guinea to your name.”

  Her face took on a scornful, even haughty look. “I have means to survive. I’m not brought so low that I have to—oh, how did you put it that night in London?—bag an earl, either by marriage or by becoming your mistress,” she snapped. “When you leave me here in Sydney, I’ll be just fine.”

  During the hours that she wouldn’t talk to him, he eventually cooled and considered their relationship more objectively. His desire to find some means to bind her to him hadn’t dimmed, but he wouldn’t force the issue. For the next several days, Derek said nothing about the future.

  Really, what right did he have to offer her a future with him when his own life was so miserably set?

  At first uneasily, then wholeheartedly, they forgot about the argument. To make up for it, Derek escorted her to downtown Sydney’s upscale district. He could watch her excited, radiant face for hours. She had no reason to affect a bored, world-weary mien like the women he’d been around for most of his life. He might have expected it, since she’d seen and experienced more of the world than the women, and many men, of his acquaintance. But she delighted in every little detail around her.

  After an hour of casual strolling, they passed a jewelry store, and something in the window stopped him. Pulling her to join him at the thick glass, he saw a pair of sapphire pendant eardrops with a matching necklace showcased in the elegant display. What caught his attention was the depth of their dark color.

  Wasn’t the dark color indicative of the stones’ rarity? More than that, they matched the color of Nicole’s eyes.

  “What do you think of the sapphires?”

  “They’re very beautiful,” she said, only half-looking at them, her attention focused on a peddler in the street. She tilted her head, wondering what he was selling.

  To reclaim her wandering attention, he pressed a kiss in her hair. “Would you like—”

  “Oh, Derek,” she interrupted, placing her hand on his arm, “look over there. That man’s selling strawberries . Do you know how long it’s been since I had some?”

  He had only a second to note the name of the shop before she dragged him away.

  So that he could spoil her with strawberries instead.

  When Derek awoke just before dawn, Nicole was cuddled in his arms breathing softly. As usual, the merest touch of her skin against his set him off like a randy boy. But he needed her for more than just the release. True, his body craved hers, but he wanted that closeness that came afterward, when she let down her guard.

  Though she slept, he slipped his hand down to stroke her, readying her, reveling in her quick response. She awoke with a quick inhalation of breath when he entered her, then sighed in pleasure as he pushed himself in, loving her.

  He thought about their morning the rest of the day
while he inspected offers for him to transport goods. He caught himself whistling as he signed the numerous contracts securing the flood of business the win had brought.

  Grant would be floored when he learned of their success. The ship would be loaded in two days, and it looked to be a very promising run back.

  But what to do about Nicole? He was running out of time. Sometimes she acted as if she would stay in Australia and wait for Chancey when Derek sailed, but those times were becoming fewer each day. He sensed he was wearing down her defenses.

  He would talk to her tonight, he decided. But before he got a chance, they made love again. Then after dinner, she began reading the new book he’d bought her in town. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he’d tell her she was coming with him.

  And if she refused? He would have to play his final card. It was unseemly, but each day he grew more attached to her. He would tell her that she could be pregnant. He hadn’t been careful with her. He’d meant to; he had been careful all his life. But it felt impossible to pull away from her. It felt…wrong.

  He didn’t think it had even crossed her mind. In so many ways, she was inexperienced. She’d never had to count days, never fervently hoped for one outcome or another. He would teach her—harshly—but it had to be done. There was no way he could walk away from her.

  Derek’s musings were broken when he saw her scampering across the bed toward him, book in hand. She looked absorbed in thought, and he tensed while scrambling up against the headboard, certain that her knee would unswervingly connect with his groin.

  Prepared for it, eyes closed and teeth gritted…he found only her breasts delicately pillowing across his lap. She lay perpendicular to him, the backs of her elbows touching his hip as she held the book open to read. He kept his eyes closed to better feel the luxury of her body.

  He’d had her several times last night, twice this day, and still, at his age, he immediately turned stiff. When he strained against her breasts, her lips tugged up. Not in exasperation at his continual lust, not even in amusement. He knew because he ran his hand up her leg and under her gown to part her. He felt her breath catch when he touched her silky wetness. She smiled because she was ready.