by Susan Ward
Varian didn’t look at her. “You may not beat me at cards, but you win every other type of battle, Little One. Every battle you fight against me, except cards. I would let you win at cards if you’d be willing to lose at the others. The problem is, when you win, you are still not happy. You should explore that contradiction.”
“The only contradiction that needs to be explored is why you want to keep a woman who does not want to be with you, you odious insufferable man,” she snapped.
“Perhaps you should surrender to me, Little One, and then perhaps I will not want to keep you. You may be right. I might be the one behaving contrary in all this. I am more than willing to explore the possibility.”
Merry picked up the book beside her and threw it at him, almost hitting him this time. “Go away. I was enjoying the afternoon. You have ruined it.”
Without looking up from his task, Varian said, “Do me the courtesy of not doing that ever in front of the men. I would despise it if you forced my hand to hurt you. If you did that in front of the crew, I would have to respond unfavorably to protect you. Shay, however, does not count in this discussion. Which is why I am charmed by you throwing the book.”
Merry sprang from the bed before the words finished in the Captain’s mouth. Blankets, coin and cards popped up like a tornado around Shay. Even with Morgan sitting, Merry was a tiny figure in front of him. A tiny, furious, and fearless figure. Shay watched in fascination and disbelief.
“Why don’t you ever get angry with me?” Merry exclaimed. “It makes me insane that you never get angry. How is it possible never to lose your temper? I threw a book at you, you insufferable man. I treat you horribly. Why do you insist on keeping me?”
Varian sat back in his chair, watching her temper flash even brighter. “I prefer to do other things than fight with you, Little One. However, if I thought fighting with you would get me what I want, I am flexible enough to fight with you. But I don’t think it will. At least not today. You’ve been in a horrible temper since you woke. Though you do look stunning when you are fiery and angry. Which is why I always enjoy your temper and am never moved to anger by it. I adore you, even in temper. Men are decidedly the weaker sex.”
Frustrated and ranting now, she said, “You are infuriatingly inhuman in every breath. If you would allow me the pleasure of seeing just one unleashed emotion today to confirm that you are human. Anger. Irritation. Anything! If you went on deck and got dirty that might do, and perhaps my temper would pass.”
“I would be more than happy to show you my one nearly unleashed emotion, Little One. You need not throw a book at me to unleash it. You do it very well just standing there in my shirt with the light behind you.”
Merry went crimson from toes to hairline. Her temper had a way of biting her when she was with Varian. He was in a wicked good mood, even after her throwing the book at him, and if she kept it up, she’d be in for only more embarrassment.
She stared at him in utter frustration. There was no reason to this man.
The book sat sprawled beside his chair, and Merry spied pug already chewing on it, having settled at the Captain’s feet the minute he’d entered. Varian took note of the pug, arched a brow, and the mutt huddled closer to him.
She felt laughter and didn’t want it. Her humor bubbled upward and she found herself giggling even as she fought to stop it. Laughter always weakened her against this man. Temper always weakened her against this man. Everything weakened against the man. It was not a fair fight at all. She hated Morgan. She couldn’t protect herself from Varian.
Before she could escape him, Varian pulled her atop his lap, and she was laughing too hard to fight him. Once there, Merry didn’t want to fight him at all. She’d missed the feel of his body around her. Just being touched by him brought her flesh pleasantly alive.
Still, she said, “Let me up. I am turning your orderly existence to ruin and you are turning me into a madwoman. I was not like this before you, Varian. Do you know that?”
Varian smiled at that. Her curls were slowly being displaced by his kisses and every cell in her body began to burn. The lightest of kisses on the flesh beneath her ear made her only ease more into him.
He brushed the wayward tresses from her face in a gentling way. Varian breathed into her hair, “I have a suspicion you were a madwoman before my ship. I just did not have a suspicion I would find a madwoman so impossible to resist. I like the ruin you add to me, Little One. Give me ruin.”
His warm fingers made a slow course up the flesh of her arms. Everything from the waist down now was boiling in her like a kettle. Merry tried desperately to strain away from him and climb from his lap. His arms, careful but strong, held her against him.
“You are like a sea wind,” he told in her a low seductive whisper. “You are fast to temper, fast to laughter, fast to every shift of mood, dragged beyond your will in all of them, except the one shift I miss. Nearly perfect. However, you beguile in your imperfection. Unpredictably changing course and dragging me with you. I like it when you tack this way. When you don’t fight me because you don’t want to fight me. Don’t you grow weary in fighting the wind head-on?”
“No,” Merry whispered, struggling for some increasingly hazy remnant of need to continue fighting him. “I want to play cards, Varian.”
A thoughtful pause. “Ah. Then run along, Little One, before there is too much wind in my sail to change course.” He surprised her by letting her up from his lap without a fight.
Merry went back to bed and gathered the cards with hands that trembled. She looked at Shay and ordered, “Deal.”
CHAPTER NINE
The cabin was filled with a balmy heat, the sheets beside her were cool, and Merry came awake with the horrifying awareness she had just had a very naughty dream.
Sitting up in the bed and rubbing heavy eyelids with her palms, she looked at the cabin bathed in moonlight, and realized that she had such a wicked slumber and that insufferable man wasn’t even beside her. Where was he? She could sense a change in the ships movements. They’d dropped anchor.
She laid back against the sheets, this time curled around Varian’s pillow, yawned and tried to return to sleep. A dropped anchor meant land. Where the devil were they? She’d not been topside for weeks. Were they even in the Caribbean? Varian could have sailed to China. Merry drifted back into sleep.
Answers came at dawn, with Varian’s return. There was sand on his boots, which told her he’d gone ashore last night. Merry’s gaze fixed on the sand, wondering what the devil was wrong with her as a woman, since presently that was the element of his appearance that she found most appealing. She liked imperfection on this man.
Imperfection. Touch of Merry. That thought made her blush.
Varian settled on the bed close to her, smiling “You’ve stumped me. I don’t know what I have done this time to make you blush, Little One, but I do enjoy the color,” Varian said, amused.
“I am a girl who prefers imperfection, Varian,” Merry said flippantly. “I like the presence of sand on your boots. Confirmation that you are imperfect. That you don’t walk hovering above the earth. Perhaps you should go roll in the dirt and then maybe I will be unable to resist you. I find the sand on the boots only modestly tempting. Where are we?”
Varian laughed. “Ah, you missed me last night if you are so eager to be playful and want me irresistible.”
Varian gazed at her as if completely enchanted by her, the manipulations not even being summoned to hide it from her. The guises were almost always gone between them when they were alone. Every day she got a healthier dose of him. A little more of Varian unleashed. A little less dose of the Morgan drama. It made him all the more dangerously tempting and hard to resist.
“How would you like to meet another notorious pirate captain?” Varian asked, suddenly. “He is a lot less perfect than I am, and I hope you will not find it irresistible.”
Merry made a show of debating it and then frowned. “I don’t think I could survive
more than one pirate captain on any given day, you insufferable man. Exactly who are you referring to? Where are we?”
“Jean Lafitte. We dropped anchor at Barateria. My ship requires some repair after that foolishness with the British warship and when I need repairs and replacement armaments Jean provides me the courtesies, when he can manage them. It’s less complicated and less dangerous than going into port.”
Civility, even in this savage order of men, as though they were country squires exchanging gentlemanly favors. He made it sound like nothing, that they were at Barataria with Jean Lafitte. Merry wasn’t quite ready to be so trusting.
Her worry was betrayed by a thin ribbon in her voice. “If Jean Lafitte is a pirate why do you trust him? You didn’t trust Blackburn. I remember very well what you thought of Blackburn at Grave’s End. Why is Lafitte different? Won’t he try to steal your ship? What makes you think he won’t attempt to kill you?”
“He doesn’t fancy himself a pirate. So don’t call him that to his face. He is a privateer, legal in commerce sailing under the flag of Cartagena. He flies their banners from his ships and on his Islands. He is a man of business more than anything else. Though he is very flamboyant and women love him.” His black eyes caught the early morning rays of sunshine and held them there, letting them dance. “As to my safety, which you hearten me by worrying about, we have a truce between us, Little One. Men who are equally matched, equally skilled, and equally wise never do battle against each other, if they can manage a way to avoid it. He is a far cry from Blackburn. I think you will find him a pleasant entertainment. So you see, perfect safety for you in the company of two of the world’s most notorious, villainous pirate captains. If you would like to join me on Barataria, you are in total safety to do so.”
Merry sprang from the bed. Of course, she wanted to meet Jean Lafitte. Pirate or not, she was curious. She was laughing quietly to herself as she rummaged through her clothes. She was actually with the pirate Morgan about to be entertained by the pirate Lafitte. Kate would be so shocked.
Varian started to laugh as he watched her, his black eyes lushly warm as they smiled at her. She paused in her dressing to catch a glimpse of his face.
She loved it when Varian laughed in the manner he was doing so now, when it came from that private spot locked deep inside of him, that spot that belonged only to her. Each feature on his face relaxed until he was transformed into a beautiful man.
Fighting the fast escalating tempo of her heart, she told herself it was not so great of danger to indulge the little intimacies. She ran her fingers up his cheek and the burn in her flesh rose. She wanted to kiss him, so badly. The light brush of his lips against her wrist was her undoing. She lowered her face to his, wanting only to touch her own lips against his. At its inception it was urgent, the fiery need in her flesh exploding after days of wanting and not having him. Her lips softened and shaped his mouth, pressing into him a full, open kiss that left her trembling. Frantically, she broke contact.
She collected her body and shielded from his watching gaze herself by lowering to fasten her shoes. It was too much danger to look at him, and from beneath the cloud of her hair in a voice that for once obliged her by being what she wanted it to be, she said, “I will not be in a temper today. I want out of this cabin, Varian, since you will not take me home.”
It took all morning to get from the long boat to the fortress. Barataria was a thriving community of a thousand men, dozens of ships, a whirlwind of activity around them, but it was the earth with its endless array of beauty Merry could not ignore. Varian realized, as he watched her, he had lost reaction to too many things and he had grown weary of the world. He savored more of living just by living with Merry.
Catching Varian’s great dark eyes fixed on her as she examined a wayward blending of flowers, Merry laughed breathlessly and whispered, “I am sorry. I am not trying to irritate you, you insufferable man. I hope you know that. It is all new to me, beautiful and brilliant of color.”
“You never irritate me. I am a happy man just watching you. You charm me in everything you do, Merry,” he said.
He picked one of the sapphire starflowers she’d been studying and added it to the bundle of flowers which overflowed her arms.
Smiling into those eyes, shimmering discreetly with his tenderness, Merry eased back up, feeling a change in her body with the motion, noting Varian’s hand instantly on her elbow for support. His arm slipped around her waist, holding her close to him as they walked on. The color around them was dazzling and the touch of an ocean breeze carried her long hair until it sprayed a web around them both. She was pulsing for him in every cell, the desperation for intimacy sometimes cruelest in their quieter moments; these quiet moments which always snuck up on her and were dangerous. She felt vividly awake in her flesh and she hungered for him, and he had only placed a hand on her elbow and told her she charmed him.
When Varian’s arm tightened around her, Merry melted into his chest and knew in despair, He is right. I will go into his arms again. Whether it causes me ruin or not. Whether I am at peace with all the things he is or not. He is in my flesh, a necessity of my living, the suffering of my soul, the beat my heart, and I love him.
CHAPTER TEN
Merry saw Jean Lafitte for the first time at sunset. He was alone on the fortress canon wall, lying in a hammock, one leg extended, the other bent and dangling in a lazy swing over the side of woven ropes. Around his head was tied a colorful scarf and from his ear a gold loop sparkled. Through the parted buttons of his flowing shirt peeked a chest firm and tanned, which flowed into narrow hips beneath a wide leather belt sporting a cutlass. His well-muscled legs ended in high-cut boots.
He was a magnificent figure of a man, though she would not have called him handsome, but she doubted women realized he was not a fine looking man when they were with him.
Merry suspected his present pose was crafted for affect, allowed herself to wondered if all pirates existed on half drama, and was sure the erotic love song he sang, as his fingers teased the cords of a mandolin, was intended deliberately to shock her. The words, French, were scandalous.
She stood in the fading mauve light, moved by the sadness and beauty of the song he sang on a seductively low voice. He pretended not to notice her, though she knew he was aware of her. She could feel him studying her, though his eyes never sought her. Was that a pirate trick as well? Varian had used the same trick often.
Once the song was done and she was held in the electrifying hold of his gaze. “Ah, la petite. I am Jean Lafitte. Welcome to Barataria.”
He sprang from the hammock with zeal and soon her hand was against his lips.
“Morgan did not lie. You are most beautiful, but too young to be the mistress of such a legendary man. A woman so young and so beautiful should only be a wife of such a man.” His dark eyes were glowing now. “Do you know why?”
Merry calmly arched a brow. She been aboard the Corinthian too long, had experienced Varian in every mood and drama, to be knocked off her feet by Lafitte, or the grim realization Varian had provided her no dignity with the admission she was his mistress.
“I could not guess. Perhaps you will tell me.”
Smiling, he leaned a step closer to her. “Men fight duels over their mistresses. And with one as beautiful as you the Captain will have to fight many duels.”
She met his stare directly. “No, sir, he will not have to fight a single duel since I am not a foolish girl and he is not a man to toy with.”
Jean threw back his head and laughed. “Touché.” As he guided her into the main room of the fortress, he looked over his shoulder at Varian. “Ah, Morgan. You did not tell me she was clever as well as beautiful. It should make for a more interesting party.”
Jean showed her into a great room, which Merry suspected was intended to give the fortress a courtly gathering space, and she stood for a moment under a garish chandelier. As elegantly correct as all things were in Varian’s world, this nightmare was i
ts opposite.
From wall to wall was a hodge-podge mix-matching clutter of gilt French treasures, showy extravagant touches of gold and silver, weapons, heavy wood tables, and overly opulent brocade sofas with overly dressed women upon them. The room was without style, tasteless in its grandiose flair, just as the women in their gaudy, bejeweled garments were tasteless as well. It was precisely what she would imagine a pirate’s lair to be, women of loose virtue, rough uncouth men, and vulgar opulence.
Her searching gaze strayed to Varian as Jean, with a dramatic flourish, began introducing her to the room. It was swiftly evident to Merry that in this strange assembly of humanity, Varian required no introduction.
She was soon in the center of a small circle of men and women, and Varian was across the room in another group, which included a stunning blond who’s prettily pouting face betrayed unsettling things for Merry to read, fury, lust and false gaiety.
The woman took Varian’s arm in a familiar way, and her syrupy smile took turns favoring Varian and, from a distance, Merry. Varian said something and she tossed her flaxen locks, laughing; a flirtatious, cunning laugh which put Merry’s nerves on edge.
This adventure was fast becoming offensive. She wondered why Varian had brought her here, knowing how unkindly this society for her would be. The men did not talk to her the way Varian did. The way they smiled, the way they looked at her, and the things they said, had the strange power to make her feel vile. Mingled with the currents in this room was pulsing primal tension and greedy want. Lust ran rampant in the words, the touch, and the eyes.
“Ah. Dominique,” Jean announced. “It is time for the Captain’s council, non?”
Merry’s eyes fixed on Varian. The men were soon moving through the arched walkway. He did not look to her. He left her, alone, in this dreadful assortment of women.
She took a deep breath. The red and gold room still held the feel of being suffocating, even without the men. Some of the women sat in a small circle with Varian’s flaxen haired admirer. Others played cards at the tables set up for it. And others lounged beside an extravagant buffet table, indulging in ousters and champagne. The cluster sitting on floor cushions in the far side for the room Merry found most curious of all. They passed between them a small pipe, the smoke very strange smelling, indeed.
