by Andrea Jones
Because Jill did feel entranced. Cecco watched as, with the tip of his tongue, Hook worked the tender territory of her throat, inducing her to close her eyes and tilt her head. Her husband knew that her skin must be tingling. Gooseflesh rose upon her bare arms. He understood that after her difficult afternoon, Jill was susceptible. Only moments ago, Cecco, too, had played upon her distress. He could easily imagine that Hook’s hot breath at her shoulder melted what little reserve the trials of this day had bequeathed to her.
“Hook,” she gasped, pressing his hand to her abdomen. Jill cast a glimpse at Cecco, and he knew that she witnessed the indignation on his face. Her eyes did not plead with her husband. Rather, she averted her gaze, granting him choice in whether to stay or to go. Neither she nor Cecco was certain what Hook had seen pass between them, but she behaved as if she discerned what Hook sensed, and as if she deemed it safest, for them both, to allow Hook’s attentions to flow unopposed.
And Cecco understood that, as always, Jill was acting in honesty. At this pitch to which her two men had roused her, to pretend modesty would, in her opinion, be disingenuous. Clearly, she was exhilarated by each of them, right at this moment. A yen for both of her lovers had stolen upon her, evidenced by her hands. Her left still pressed Hook’s to her body, and her crimson hand turned upward, open, as if she wished to offer it, at last, to her husband. Like Cecco, Jill seemed intrigued by Hook’s test of harmony, and with her movements she encouraged him, seeking to please herself as she did so, and showing no shame.
Cecco was astounded by this turn of affairs. For the moment, he stood considering his wife’s empty red fingers, and what he should do. Unabashed by his company, Hook brought his hand wandering low again, to the home of his delectation. Cecco could not turn away from the sight of Jill’s body as she followed her lover’s motions, her hips angling to enhance her sensations. When Cecco forced himself to move a step backward, his exit was barred by a look, cool but uncompromising, from the commodore himself.
With barely a shake of his head, Hook commanded Cecco to linger. As his heart jumped and pounded, Jill’s husband discovered that, although his manhood stood up and ready, he himself was as yet unprepared for impending events.
While his whiskers tickled along her collarbone, Hook caressed Jill’s most sensitive sites. Now her breath turned to sighs, and Cecco watched the hook come into play again. Following his instinct to protect his wife whatever the circumstance, he felt pulled to move before her. Here, he braced himself against the shifting of the ship, observing the claw to guard against its tricks. Circling one hand round Jill’s upper arm, Cecco steadied her where she stood, and he kept an eye on the hook— even as it came for his throat.
As if charmed by a serpent, Cecco followed the point with his gaze. It reached for him. In two iron taps, the backside of the curve struck the flesh of his chest. Chilled by the cold touch of metal, Cecco twitched, but he did not retreat. Nor did he fear that Hook’s gesture was a warning. Instead, the hook caught his vest. When Jill’s blue eyes opened to engage her husband’s, he was persuaded to let the commodore tow him nearer.
As he came close to her, Cecco knew what to do. He did not ask permission. Released from the strictures of his exile, he caught his wife in his arms. As if Cecco was not in the room, Hook disregarded him. He returned his ministrations to Jill. With both lips and one hand, Hook pandered to her passion, while Cecco, with the dignity of one who claimed his rights, initiated his own amorous measures.
Cecco’s body remembered; he tended his wife in the manner she loved. With his hands he caressed her torso, with his mouth he kissed her throat. In a miraculous action that set his soul soaring, she touched him with her scarlet hand. Her fingers roamed over him, fondling his face, his chest, the gilt of his armband, and, beneath his breeches, the stalk where his gold ring grew tighter.
At length, the hook manifested again, to slide under her chin, coaxing her face upward, an offering, so that Cecco leaned down to kiss her lips, now— as avidly he and she had kissed when alone only minutes before— while Hook himself breathed in her ear.
At last, the iron touch nudged Cecco backward, and Hook took possession of that kiss, covering Jill’s mouth with his own. Cecco held her, and he held her crimson hand as she stroked him, and he watched her free fingers adore Hook’s body, too, sliding upward to rake through his hair, down, to knead his thighs behind ebony velvet. As Hook ended his embrace, Cecco’s body throbbed with wanting. He was certain Hook must feel the same. At her backside, Jill had to know Hook’s awakening, too. Among the two men, however, an agreement seemed to hang. This moment was Jill’s. Attending to her desires, each man set his own drives aside.
Between them, Hook and Cecco sustained her. Surrounding her, front and back, her attentive men pleasured their mistress. She trembled, her agitation increasing, her body twisting. Through the rent in her dress, Cecco pressed his hardness to her valley, so filmily defended by her shift, and, moments later, she exhaled in long, husky moans, while the rapture they engendered together heightened, lengthened, and declined. The three remained thus in the dusk-darkening cabin, listening to the murmur of bay water, and the cries of a gull, while Jill basked in the joy of their proximity.
“Jill.” Hook looked down at her, and his voice seemed to emanate from the shadows. “For obvious and pleasing reasons, you shall never forget what we have shown you.”
Cecco stepped back, to discern his expression. But Hook reached out with his barb, jarring Jill and snagging her husband by his sash. Hook tugged Cecco closer, so that he leaned in again, and so that, again, the lady felt her two lovers encompass her.
Hook cupped her chin. He raised her gaze to meet his eyes, his lips a mere whisper from hers, and her cheek just inches from Cecco’s.
“When the madness of the blood-rage descends, this, my love, is how your men will protect you. One at your back, and one of us, always, before you.”
Cecco recognized Jill’s look. He understood that her heart stretched full. She seemed unwilling to employ the commonplace use of words to answer. Instead, each man’s hand felt the pressure of her touch as, with gratitude, she squeezed them. Cecco was more gratified by the pledge Hook made on his behalf than he was surprised by the seduction Hook had performed to underscore it. Long ago, its truth had taken root in his soul.
“Sì, Bellezza,” he affirmed in his most loving accent. Resolutely, he kissed her crimson palm. “I swear my oath upon it. Your men stop at nothing to defend you.”
“My Giovanni; Hook, my love.” Her eyelids fluttered to clear the moisture that collected. “I am grateful beyond measure. For my own self-respect, I shall do as my judgment commands me. Yet even the strongest woman may long for protection. This paradox, perhaps, is the riddle of my being.”
Hook raised one eyebrow. “And to think I had believed it to be your storytelling.” He smiled, half-way.
Cecco added, smiling, too, “And I believed it to be your gypsy virtues: courage and loyalty— and a decent disrespect for the law.”
“I presume,” Hook continued, lightly, “that the discussion that led to this interesting episode concerned our strategy against Lean Wolf.”
During his abstinence from Jill, Cecco paid little heed to the closeness of her connection with her lover. He recalled now, with a taste of bitterness, that Hook claimed to share her soul. Of course Hook intuited her emotions, and he knew that Cecco’s jealousy caused their clash. Cecco stilled, then, as the implications of this circumstance occurred to him. Hook might not have witnessed their first embrace tonight, but by his bond with Jill he knew of it. By the same token, on some level Hook discerned, and he always had discerned, whatever— or whomever— Jill wanted.
She had wanted Cecco. The first kiss, the one Cecco provoked from her, had proven it. And Hook, without reservation, had granted Jill’s wish.
But Cecco was no fool. He recognized that Hook’s act was not born simply of liberality. Without question, Cecco had received heightened standing. But
, in the giving, Hook’s bounty increased his own power. As when he rained jewels upon Jill, the more he bestowed, the more securely he bound her. Once again, Cecco’s ally was his adversary.
His emotions whirled in circles. He managed to stow his discomfiture while he assisted Hook in seating her on the daybed, by Hook’s side, and then his legs buckled and he knelt at Jill’s knee— at his commodore’s knee— not ungrateful for the gift he’d been given. Cecco made love to his Jill tonight, but was he any closer to keeping her?
“Yet at last,” Hook went on, once Jill nestled beside him, “we three have reached an accord, from which standpoint we are sure to prevail. You may strike the final blow to your foe, Jill.”
The imminence of Jill’s danger turned the current of Cecco’s thoughts. As fear for her safety resurfaced, he considered the wreck of her wedding dress, and the violation she endured at the hands of her abductor. Throwing his shoulders back, he rose to stand before her.
“We shall give our all to protect our beloved, Amore. Not only from Lean Wolf, but from anyone who threatens. I dare to speak for the commodore, as he dares speak for me: we stand in accord in another matter, too. We both revile the menace you invite with your vengeance.” Cecco strode to the wall, yanked his knife free, and posed before her once more.
“I held true to my vow when Doctor Hanover plagued you. I will keep it again.” Point down, he held his dagger aloft. “The man who handles you will not die before my weapon handles him.”
Looking upon her with his deadly brown eyes, Cecco slid the knife home in his sash. Where in the past he might kiss his fingertips in farewell, this time he took her face in his hands, unhesitating, and kissed her lips until his kiss was complete. When he stood again, he nodded to Hook, then turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Before he descended the companionway, his wife’s parting words, uttered softly, stroked him like waves on the sand. He did not turn to acknowledge them.
“Addio, amore mio.”
Cecco’s body felt tortured, but, for long, ecstatic moments, the heart in his chest had beat close to Jill’s. He sensed two emotions tugging at his insides. One old, and one new.
✽ ✽ ✽
“It’s strange how these merfolk know whatever happens on the Island,” Tom remarked to his companions. “Makes the hair rise on my scalp. There’s Zaleh, looking like he expected us.”
Guillaume turned from his rowing to view the merman. Although the Red Lady’s second officer was now confident enough in his swimming to navigate the Island alone, today he’d brought Nibs and Tom along. The time of the pirates’ sojourn on the Neverland was drawing to an end, and the three companions sought one last bask at Mermaids’ Lagoon. Guillaume smiled and hailed his foster father. “Salut, Papa!”
“Greetings, my son!” With powerful thrusts of his tail, Zaleh surged to the boat and, clamping the cable in his strong ivory teeth, he towed the sailors to Marooners’ Rock. Once the craft tapped the stone, Nibs and Tom jumped out to tie it to a rusty ring, then prepared to enjoy the scenery.
Guillaume shed his clothes for a swim. With a new sense of pride and barely a splash, the slender Frenchman entered the cool blue-green water. He and Zaleh sped away, racing, trailing brown hair and silver braids behind them, like seaweed.
Shading his eyes, Tom peered under the translucent surface. “No sign of his daughters, more’s the pity.”
“As you say, Tom, the mermaids are well aware that we’ll be shipping out soon. They’ll be here.” Sliding off his breeches, Nibs displayed a golden chain around his waist. As it glittered in the sun’s rays, he launched a sly look toward his brother.
“You dog!” Tom bellowed. But as he tossed off his shirt to bare his barrel chest, he, too, revealed bait, in the form of a necklace. Tom’s lure was studded with pearls. He shrugged. “Guillaume has his foster father to teach him. We have our own. Hook’s example never yet steered us wrong.”
Nibs’ more serious nature darkened the mood, and the skin creased between his eyebrows. Out of habit, he reached up to tighten his orange kerchief. His frown grew deeper as he remembered that Lean Wolf had robbed him of it. “Don’t forget that Hook’s advice included a warning. What we yield here, we yield freely. What a mermaid yields carries a cost.”
Tom considered the commodore’s caveat, rubbing the scar at his temple. Then he grinned again. “I’m feeling generous today.” Stretching out, he found a comfortable position with a good view of the environs. Even Nibs couldn’t remain serious this afternoon, and soon he too relaxed in the luxury of the Lagoon.
Zaleh and Guillaume dove and swam, then flipped up to rest on the rock shelf. The surf lapped the ledge, and Guillaume dangled his feet near Zaleh’s fins. The silver of the merman’s scales was tinted green where his tail trailed below the waterline. Guillaume’s feet appeared golden. Both creatures leaned back on their hands, their shoulders warmed by the sunshine that glinted upon the plaits of Zaleh’s hair. The air smelled of moss, fish, and brine. Here and there, sleek sets of heads and shoulders rose up in the waves, to peep at the sailors who seemed to doze on Marooners’ Rock. Guillaume noticed that, inch by inch, they drifted closer to Nibs and Tom— and their trinkets.
“You no longer ask me to protect your friends,” Zaleh observed in his musical voice.
“Non. They know the chance they are taking. I believe that mes amis enjoy the risk as part of the challenge.”
“Such is the nature of sailors, my boy. And because the sea, like its mariners, can be perverse…” Zaleh slithered into the water again, leaving Guillaume alone, to feel the kiss of waves against his legs, and to listen to cries of birds hovering over the cliff top. Within minutes, a strange new noise sounded, bringing with it a bevy of beauties.
Nibs and Tom sat up, looking around the Lagoon. Clearly they, like Guillaume, were astonished by the notes, and by the sudden appearance of what looked to be Zaleh’s entire tribe. Guillaume spotted the merman, bobbing at the break of the bay. At his lips, he poised a seashell as big as his hands. The silver scales on his forearms glittered in the light, reminding Guillaume of Captain Cecco and his bracelets.
Once again Zaleh blew through the shell, to sound a high, hollow tone. It carried across the Lagoon, then bounced against the walls of the cliff, echoing at Guillaume’s back. Both alarming and alluring, the sound resonated inside his heart.
Zaleh gestured reassurance to his family, dispersing them, then made his way in leaps and dives to Guillaume. Huffing with the exercise, he offered the shell to the young man, and with a flourish of his tail, his muscular arms hoisted his body from the brine to recline upon the ledge.
“A gift for you, my son,” Zaleh said, “to take with you on your voyages.”
Guillaume turned the shell in his hands. It was smooth on the inside, like one of LeCorbeau’s bone china teacups, where it curved to turn inside out. Its exterior was knobby and ridged, striped with pink and the lightest of browns. Where the peak of the spiral should be, a hole was cut instead.
“That aperture is where you blow,” Zaleh explained. “See,” and he took the shell back, to purse his lips and wind it again. As he blew, Guillaume watched his hand slide in and out of the open curve, modulating the pitch. This time, the reverberation from the rock wall came sooner, and louder. “Now you try it.”
“Oui, Papa.” Guillaume tried, and tried again. Before long, Zaleh had taught him how to shape his lips, and the proper rhythm to use for the call. Obviously this signal meant something to the mer-people, because the waters of the Lagoon had come alive with their presence. Over on Marooners’ Rock, Tom was beaming, and even Nibs cracked a lopsided smile as their attention was plucked this way and that by the abundance of curves and of colors. Soon the two men were mostly immersed, surrounded by a surfeit of sea women. Thanks to Zaleh’s gift, the afternoon that began with modest hopes now appeared bountiful with promise.
His silver-gray eyes shone down on his foster son. “I give you this horn, Guillaume, in hopes that you will nev
er need it. But if you find yourself on the water, and in peril, you must sound this conch, exactly as I have instructed you.”
“Papa, you have taught me much.”
“You’ve learned much on your own. Like me, you are an observer of your people’s behavior. Not long ago, I watched the woman your friends call their mother. She worked her wiles as naturally as one of my daughters. At the end of the day, I was interested to see her victim rise up, alive, and paddle away in his canoe. But it is not only here, in our Lagoon, that your humans show their true colors. And I trust that I need not remind you that the males as well as the females of your race are quite capable of treachery.”
“Aye.” Guillaume glanced at the scar on his hand. “It is a lesson I have learned. But, Papa, knowing the tendencies of your own race, your kindness overwhelms me. I shall value this gift, as I treasure your friendship.”
“Since the beginning, I have treasured your trust. But remember this caution, my boy. I can’t promise that my kindred will help you when you blow the signal, but I can promise you that they will come.”
“You grant me a chance of survival on the sea. It is more than most sailors can harbor.”
“Men are such foolish creatures,” Zaleh shook his head, “forever delving into mysteries they cannot hope to comprehend.”
“And merfolk are deeper creatures, Papa.” Carefully, Guillaume set the conch down, swiping its salty residue from his lips. “But we mortals are not so foolish that we forget a favor.” Sliding into the sea, Guillaume displayed his new prowess, gliding through the water to the dinghy, and swimming smoothly back.
Treading water, he raised his hand from the sea, and opened it. Over the mark on his palm lay a bracelet of beaten silver, inlaid with dark blue lapis-stone panels. Zaleh took it to examine it closely. Each panel was carved like a cameo to display a different symbol of the sea— a shell, a ship, a fish, an octopus, a crab, and a whale. Zaleh stopped turning the bracelet as he stared at the seventh and final carving: a three-pointed spear.
