“On the island?” he murmured.
“No. The last time I thought I could have a relationship with my employer.”
His hands stroked her, soothing rather than arousing. “It wasn’t just that he was your employer, was it? Tell me.”
“I should,” she said. “After what you told me back on the island.”
“You don’t have to unless you want to,” he said. He took a breath and said, “I’m not sure I would have told you those things if I had been able to hide them from you.” He paused again, then said, “You don’t have to tell me. I won’t think less of you.”
“Hold me tighter,” she said.
This time she did hear his heartbeat; she could feel it against her back. Deliberately, she slowed her breathing to match his, and gradually she relaxed against him. He shifted his weight until they were even closer than before, in body at least.
“After I left off being a privateer,” she began, “it wasn’t easy to find another ship. Even in the empire. There’s always a suspicion of piracy, even when you’ve spent years fighting piracy. I suppose you know not all privateers are as scrupulous as we were.”
She opened her eyes and stared out the porthole into the darkness. “I didn’t want to be dependent on my mother. It seems ridiculous, when she could easily, willingly, have found me some sort of position, but I’d been on my own for several years by then. The things she expected of me…it was like wearing an anchor around my neck, growing heavier each time she told me I should apply for an exemption to enter the navy, should enter the civil service and work unpaid in the hope of an honorary position, or that I should marry. Going back would have been horrible, and I would have felt a failure.”
She turned in Maxime’s embrace and wrapped her arms around his waist, pillowing her cheek against his chest. “I went to the borders of the empire, and beyond. I was running out of money when I found a ship that would take me as its starmaster.”
“You trained as a starmaster,” he said. “I remember.”
“I never imagined I would find something as good as that, not at first. I was willing to sail as a common sailor. I thought…my hair had grown back by then. My tattoos weren’t visible. I thought that was the reason I was hired this time, when all the times before I’d been denied. But it wasn’t the reason.”
Maxime’s hands slid up and down her back, pressing softly. She continued, “Even though I needed money desperately, I considered refusing the position. Privateers have honor, you know. We have to. Otherwise, it’s too easy to slip, to become like the pirates we hunt. I went back the next day to tell the captain I’d been a privateer. But he already knew. He said he’d seen me in the port and been smitten by me, that he’d been driven to find out more. That the offer of a berth came after he knew I had the skills he needed, but that wasn’t his first interest in me.”
She paused, gathering herself. “He was charming, amusing. I liked him. We were good together. He spoke of a partnership. I began to imagine marriage. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to think of marrying. I was drunk with the idea. It seemed like a freedom I’d never before known.”
She stopped, and swallowed. “I think I need more of the wine,” she said.
“I’ll pour,” Maxime said. He brought a single glass back to the porthole and they drank one after the other. She sat on one of her padded trunks and he sat next to her, holding her close to his side.
She took another tingling swallow of the wine, and said, “I thought I loved him. I did love him.”
She fell silent. After he’d finished the wine, Maxime said, “But?”
“He was a pirate.”
“Ah. Surreptitious, I take it.”
“Yes. Otherwise I would have known immediately. But he was mostly opportunistic. Called it salvage. Even when crew was still aboard a damaged ship. I wouldn’t have learned of it at all, except…the purser was ill. I helped her with her inventory. I knew our ship had never legally taken on some of the cargo I found.”
“And you confronted him?”
She nodded. Her throat drew tight, preventing her from speaking. Maxime rubbed his hand over her back and kissed the top of her head. When she could speak again, she said, “I thought I was pregnant.”
“Were you?”
“No. I think—I think now that I was late because I was so upset about what I’d discovered. I made sure of the piracy before I said anything to him. I spoke to the other officers, I spoke to the crew. I was very careful not to let them know my opinion on the matter. I wanted to have all the evidence before…before—” She stopped. She didn’t want to relive those days, not now. “What happened?”
“What do you think?”
“He betrayed you,” Maxime said softly, squeezing her against him.
“He had me tossed over the side,” she said. “If I hadn’t made friends with the purser, and she’d sent one of the boats down to me, I would have died. I nearly died anyway.” She stopped, swallowed. “When I reached land, I reported him. He was caught later, and executed. Do you see? You understand why I can’t just—” Unable to continue, she laid her hand on his thigh and held it tightly.
“Let’s go to bed,” Maxime said. “You need sleep.”
“I’m not finished,” she said. “When he was caught. There was a reward. A substantial reward. And I was still licensed as a privateer, though without a ship. So the reward went to me. All of it, since I had no shipmates with whom to share it. I used the money to buy Seaflower. I took his betrayal, and I bought myself a life with it.”
Maxime said, “Good.”
“It was blood money,” she said.
“The knothole-fucker threw you overboard,” Maxime snarled. “He said he loved you, and then he threw you overboard.” He cupped her face in his palms, his expression fierce. “You had no choice but to turn him in. You did your job, and you did it well. He was no different from any of the others, except in the way you felt about him. But that can’t change what he was.”
“I know that,” she said. “I know.”
“Believe it, then. You earned this ship. Every plank and peg.” He kissed her, lingering. “Come to bed, Imena. I’ll make you forget it all for a while. We can talk more in the morning.”
“I want you to make me forget, but it’s wrong. Wrong of me to want that.”
He smiled gently. “Not if I say it isn’t. Not if I want to do this for you.”
“Take your clothes off,” she said, stripping off hers with shaking hands. “I want to touch you all over.”
When they were both naked, Maxime caught her up in his arms and laid her in the bunk. “Lie down,” he said. “Let me massage your shoulders. I don’t want your head to snap off while we’re making the tide.”
She tried to laugh, but only managed a croak. “Don’t put me to sleep.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he said. He put his hand on the back of her head and pressed down. “Lie still. Breathe.”
“I don’t know,” she said after she’d turned her head to the side. His large hands closed over her shoulders and squeezed. It felt so wonderful that tears sprang to her eyes. “I don’t know if I can marry you, Maxime. I don’t want to marry a stranger whom my parents have chosen, but I don’t know if I can marry you. What if it all goes wrong?”
He sighed. “We could talk about this in the morning.”
“I have to do it now, before I lose my courage.”
“You, lose your courage,” he said, with heavy irony. He leaned down and kissed her ear before resuming his massage.
“Yes, me,” she said. “You don’t know that about me. You think you can depend on me, that I’m never afraid.”
“I can depend on you. Because you are afraid.” The manipulations of his fingers crushed out any reply she might have made into a soft moan. “If you’re saying I don’t know your faults, then please, tell me them. I can refute you for hours on end. It’ll be great fun.”
“Maxime!”
“I’m sorry,” he sa
id.
“Listen to me. I don’t know if you can trust me. I don’t know how to mingle work with emotions, and I might betray you.”
Maxime’s hands stilled. “Betray me. How? By discovering I’m a pirate?”
Imena rolled onto her back and glared up at him. “That is not what I meant.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Answering questions with questions infuriates me,” she growled.
“It’s effective,” he said. “If I was a pirate or, for example, someone in my employ turned to piracy, I would want to know. You know that. Don’t you?”
“Yes.” She paused, and amended. “My mind knows it.”
Maxime sat on the edge of the bed. He rested one hand flat on her belly. “We aren’t going to solve this tonight.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I’m pretending I’m not,” he said.
“Pretending very well.”
“I have years of practice.” He leaned down and kissed her belly, then her breast. “If you won’t let me massage you, then perhaps we should make the tide.” His hand slid down her thighs. He brushed between them with his thumb, a pang of pleasure. Imena sighed and eased her thighs apart.
“No more. Just come into me, please.”
Maxime looked at her, seemed about to speak, but then didn’t. He climbed into her bunk and pushed her knees apart with his hands before entering her.
“More,” Imena whispered into his ear.
He nuzzled her cheek and throat. His hips nudged at her gently. “In time. It’s low tide, not a squall.” His mouth closed over hers, and she shut her eyes, losing herself in the hot wetness of his kiss and the steady pressure of his chest on hers.
Gradually, he eased his cock inside her, each increment a new hint of pleasure. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. She rubbed her cheek against his braced forearm. “Deeper,” she said.
“Breathe,” he said. “Open for me. Think of water dragging against the beach.”
Imena’s hands slid in the sweat on his back. She scratched him lightly with her nails, to hear his breath catch, to feel his uncontrolled jerk that seated him more deeply inside her. She braced her heels and thrust up against him. He grunted. “What are you thinking?”
He rubbed fiercely against her, pushing her into the bunk. “I’m thinking it would feel really good to—” He thrust hard, seating himself fully.
Imena gasped, then laughed. She squeezed his hips with her thighs and rocked. “It does,” she said. “Now, where is this tide you said we would make?”
“If you’d let me go I could move,” he pointed out. When she loosened her grip, both hips and arms, he reared back and plunged his cock deeply into her, reseating at a slightly different angle, simultaneously higher and pressing more deliciously inside her. “Better?”
“Oh,” she moaned. “Oh, Maxime, fuck me now.”
“Be with me,” he said. “Imena—” He kissed the side of her mouth, and after that they didn’t speak, only gasped for breath.
She came first, pressing her mouth hard against his shoulder and trembling helplessly from scalp to toes. He coaxed her into another orgasm with his hand as he continued to seek his own pleasure, rocking her against the bunk. Weakly, she lifted a hand and scraped her nails over his belly; he moaned and his head drooped as he thrust faster, harder. “Come,” she said. “Come for me.”
“Not yet,” he said through clenched teeth. “I never want this to end.”
She summoned all her remaining strength and pushed back at him, grinding hard, little sobs of effort escaping her lips.
“Fuck,” he said, and lost control. At the last moment, his ragged thrusts shoved Imena over the edge once more, and she jerked in helpless ecstasy beneath his weight.
Unusually for him, Maxime immediately fell asleep. Though Imena had craved just that result for herself, instead she lay entangled with him far into the night, listening to his steady breathing, inhaling their mingled scents and staring into the dark.
Maxime was nothing like Ying. She’d had opportunity to observe how Maxime worked with his captains, and some of how he ruled his duchy. She’d had a much closer view of his aunt Gisele, who served as his chief minister in matters of bureaucracy. He respected women; not just Imena and his aunt, but Duchess Camille, and Sylvie, and even the woman he’d refused to marry. All her instincts said he was honorable, thoughtful and trustworthy. He hadn’t been unfaithful to her. She was sure he loved her. But she was too afraid to explore whether the caring she felt for him was love.
Why did she resist? Why was she still so afraid?
She knew Maxime would not betray her as Ying had. It didn’t seem to help. There was no chart for emotion that could guide her.
Perhaps she should do what she’d done at the very beginning: forget that marriage to Maxime might lie in the future. Forget that there was a future.
Maxime had said he was willing to give more than he took. It wasn’t fair to him, but…she was too afraid to be the woman he truly wanted her to be. And too weak to give him up.
The next morning, when he woke smiling into her eyes, his smile warmed her whole body with pleasure so intense it burned. She slid down his body and pleasured his cock with her mouth. That way, she didn’t have to speak. And while he still basked in relaxation, afterward, she made sure to remember an important ship duty to which she was required to attend.
Maxime found her on deck as the sun was sinking. He had washed his hair, she noted, and tied it back with a blue silk ribbon; he wore a clean pair of sailcloth trousers and a new linen tunic.
Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs as she awaited confrontation; the feeling was all the worse because during the day she’d been able to subsume her worries in her role as captain, and almost forget her tortured nighttime thoughts.
Maxime stood next to her, mirroring her pose, with hands clasped behind her back, gazing out to sea. She could feel his warmth on her arm. He said, “If you don’t want to talk about it now, just tell me.”
At first she couldn’t make sense of his words, then she was overpowered with a rush of relief. She said, “I don’t want to talk about it now.”
“May I inquire when the right time would be?” he asked, distantly polite.
She could not be cruel and tell him she didn’t know. “After this is over,” she said.
Whatever over might mean.
CHAPTER TWENTY
TWO WEEKS PASSED, DURING WHICH IMENA RISKED a brief stop at a peninsular port; they remained anchored overnight while she sent Chetri ashore with a letter to Lady Gisele, informing her that Seaflower would be returning to the duchies, and giving an approximate date. Once there, Imena would again send a messenger ashore to find out if it was safe for Maxime to return home.
Maxime did not argue with this plan.
He continued to share her cabin, but they rarely spoke, rarely joked. He saw to her pleasure with scrupulous care, but only once, in desperation, did she force him to forget himself and fuck her with abandon. After that one occasion, he rose and departed the cabin, not returning until the morning, while she sat awake and steadily drank rice wine in the hope of an oblivion that never came.
She found that what she missed the most were their hours with the charts and tools of navigation; not only the satisfaction when he grasped a concept, but the quiet times as they watched each other record angles, compute azimuths and calculate lunar distances. When she woke in the night and ventured topside, she still took pleasure in the cool silences, but missed his warm presence at her side.
Delaying discussion of their relationship wasn’t the wisest choice she’d ever made. Fear was a terrible guide. She was angry with herself for succumbing to it, and a little angry at Maxime for accepting her choice.
Thus she welcomed the chance of action. They’d made landfall in the hope of obtaining news of the duchies. It might already be safe for Maxime to return home. She didn’t think on what she would do then.
The port was smal
l and limewashed, its income reliant on an odd mixture of summer visitors and a brisk export trade in both pickled eels and the distinctive blue-trimmed barrels in which to store them. It was a good place to buy small, pretty gifts, eat freshly fried eel with mugs of foaming ale and gather information.
As Imena wandered the streets with Norris, she began to have second thoughts about sending Maxime with Chetri. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Maxime to be discreet, because she did; it was only that he didn’t have the skills she did as a spy. Chetri would have done well enough on his own, or with Norris. No one was after Chetri, so far as she knew, and he had only been intending to speak to some of their usual contacts, people who had never realized Seaflower had more purpose to her journeys than mere trade. And buying pickled eels.
“You’re worried about him, aren’t you, Captain?” Norris said. “His Grace, I mean.” Norris had long legs, but Imena realized the girl was skipping a little, to keep up with her headlong strides.
Imena slowed, pretending to look into a shop window. The shop was full of millinery, ornate constructions of straw and netting and beads and feathers, many of them accessorized with enormous beaded pins that resembled stilettos more than a lady’s decoration. Perhaps that was the true purpose of the pins—weapons. Imena tried to imagine herself wearing one of the bonnets, even to conceal weapons, and almost laughed at her mental picture. No, she could not redesign herself.
Maxime had not asked that of her.
Norris stopped short and began examining the merchandise with great interest, her breath leaving a cloud on the wavy glass. Imena admitted, “I would feel better if I had my eyes on him.”
“Chetri can protect His Grace,” Norris said loyally. She shifted from foot to foot and said after a few moments, “Do you think it would be all right if I— It’s not a dress, it’s just a bonnet. Do you think it would be all right if I wore a hat like one of those? Sometimes?”
Norris was skittish about her female clothing; Imena had learned that, growing up, she had suffered greatly for being born a boy who nonetheless wished to live as a girl, and had only truly been able to dress as she liked after she went to sea, where strange customs abounded. Norris knew she didn’t care what her crew wore, but still felt the need to seek reassurance on occasion.
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