Heart's Ransom

by Sara Reinke

  * * *

  Rafe got drunk again. He began drinking shortly after his brother and boatswain had left the room, and had not stopped until well after supper. He said little, if anything, the rest of the day, and Kitty had forced herself to keep mute. He was in a terrible humor, and she didn’t want to provoke him, especially given the amount of wine he downed over the course of the afternoon. He drank so much, glass after glass, in such rapid succession that she was astonished he was not unconscious or sick by dinnertime. He did not touch his supper that she was able to tell; she had nibbled on stewed chicken and root vegetables and listened in dismay to the soft, melodic ping each time the lip of the wine decanter tapped the mouth of his glass in refill.

  “We are sailing for La Coruna,” he’d mumbled. “Coastline be damned―Cristobal be damned. We will make it bloody well fine without him.”

  La Coruna? Kitty thought in dismay. He told me Lisbon! Since when are we sailing to La Coruna? They were three days out at sea; there could not be more than three days―four at best, if the weather proved unfavorable―before they reached the northern coast of Spain. She had been counting on at least another week in full, if not ten days, before reaching Portugal―plenty of time, she had thought, for her plan to charm her way into Rafe’s sympathies to work. She felt her stomach knot in sudden dismay. I cannot do this, not in only a few days!

  As he continued to drink more heavily, he lapsed from English into Spanish, and she could no longer understand him. He kept murmuring to himself, the tone of his voice alternating between fury and despair. It is all my fault, Kitty thought, as after supper, he began to stumble around the captain’s quarters, pacing clumsily, dragging her along behind him. She staggered with her shoulders hunched, her unbound hand raised before her face, lest he run her headlong into a bulwark or bedpost. I should not have told him. Why could I not just keep my bloody fool mouth shut? Now he is changed his course, and I will not have any time or hope to help Daddy!

  He hauled her about the cabin as he muttered and mumbled in drunken, slurred Spanish, staggering and reeling, his balance precarious. At last, he crumpled against the bed, sprawled at a diagonal across the mattress, with his head against her pillow nearest the berth wall. His position left her cuffed hand stretched out across him, her arm draped against his buttocks. Kitty held her breath for a long, wide-eyed moment, listening as he began to promptly snore, his breath rattling quietly, moistly.

  “Rafe?” she said, reaching up with her free hand, patting his shoulder. “Rafe, you have to roll over. My arm…”

  But there was no rousing him. He was out cold. Even her most fervent shakes didn’t break his wine-induced slumber. “Damn it,” Kitty muttered. His legs were outstretched, practically taking over the breadth of the bed, but she lay down on her side, curling into the narrow margin of space left empty beside him. This left her head tucked near the middle of his back, her feet dangling off the side of the mattress and her arm craned across his body in a clumsy and decidedly uncomfortable embrace.

  However, he was marvelously warm, and that part was not so unpleasant. She could feel the heat from his body radiating through his clothes, pressing against her. She closed her eyes, squirming slightly, trying to settle herself.

  She heard him mumble, stirring restlessly, and she gasped in sharp surprise as he moved, rolling onto his side toward her. She tried to jerk her cuffed hand away, to scuttle back from him, but it was too late. As he rolled, and as she moved her hand, her palm settled against the swell of his crotch, outlined in a discernible, palpable bulge. The sensation of this, her inadvertent touch, seemed to please Rafe; he uttered a soft, somewhat breathless murmur. “Isabel…”

  Kitty froze, horrified, holding him against her palm. Isabel?

  She couldn’t breathe; her throat, it seemed, had collapsed to the circumference of a pinhole. Her fingers closed reflexively about his measure in her shock, making matters all the worse as he stirred against her, semi-softness yielding unexpectedly to heat and hardening. She had never felt the likes of it; she felt desperate to turn loose of him and yet bizarrely unable to. More disturbing than his reaction to her touch was her own—a heavy, insistent fluttering deep within the core of her gut; her breath hitching, her heart suddenly hammering.

  “Isabel…” Rafe murmured again. He added something breathlessly in Spanish and Kitty panicked. Let go of him, she thought. He is going to wake up. Just pull your hand away and leave him alone.

  She tried to listen to that voice of reason, but the part of her that was both curious and excited refused to yield. When she moved her hand against him, he uttered a low moan, a visceral, longing sound that sent heat racing through her and kept her hand firmly in place. She moved her hand again clumsily, and again his voice escaped him.

  Stop it, a part of her mind cried out. Are you mad? What are you doing? Stop it!

  He rolled abruptly and Kitty gasped sharply in frightened surprise as he forced her back against the mattress, settling atop her. Her eyes snapped shut as his weight settled against her and she could feel the length of his arousal pressing against her with fascinating, terrifying promise.

  “What are you doing, Isabel?” he said, an unfamiliar, throaty quality to his voice. She could smell the wine on his breath as it pressed against her face, but did not move. She lay absolutely still, struggling not to tremble with fright.

  He is dreaming. He does not realize it is me, and if I just do not move, if I do not make a sound, he will go back to sleep.

  Rafe did not move, either, for a long, excruciating moment and then he touched her face, startling her, making her jerk as the pad of his thumb brushed lightly, deliberately against her lower lip. “Madre de Dios, woman,” he murmured, sounding dazed and drowsy. “You are so very beautiful, do you know…?”

  He does not mean me, she told herself, her inner voice a rambling, chattering mess. He thinks he is talking to someone else, this woman, Isabel. He does not mean me.

  But there was no preventing the fluttering heat his words stoked throughout her. No one had ever called her beautiful before, except her father. No man had ever offered any words to her like that, and certainly not with such longing infused within them.

  Kitty stiffened, her breath hitching in reflexive start as she felt Rafe’s lips press lightly against the corner of her mouth. She had only ever kissed one boy before, Michael Urry, in a fleeting brush of pursed and puckered lips. It had been only brief, and nothing monumental, but when Rafe’s mouth moved, settling gently against hers, Kitty’s senses flooded with the sensation of him, frozen in that moment; the warm, spicy musk of his scent filling her nose; the moist heat of his lips, his breath against hers; the texture of his skin, the grating tickle of his beard stubble against her cheek and chin; the gliding friction of his hand against her skin as he touched her, turning her head to him.

  Rafe groaned softly against her mouth, as if the kiss pleased him. His lips pressed against hers more firmly, and when they parted, Kitty followed his cue, opening her mouth slightly. Her heart hammered beneath her breast; this frantic cadence only grew as the tip of his tongue delved between her lips, slipping against her own. Again, he murmured in pleasure, and again, his mouth pressed further against hers. His tongue eased more deeply into her mouth, tangling against her own.

  He kissed her like this―slowly, deeply―for what seemed like the longest, most wondrous moments of her life, until she could no longer keep her breath strained and caught in her throat, and she had to turn away to draw in air.

  His mouth trailed gently along her cheek toward the angle of her jaw. She felt his breath, press against the side of her throat, the tip of his nose brush through her hair. Her body felt electrified and tingling, as if she had lost all control of thought or movement, and she quivered beneath him, trembling at his kiss, his touch. She gasped softly, unable to stifle the sound, as his lips settled against her neck. They lingered here, traveling slowly, warmly down the toward her shoulder, and she reflexively tilted her head
back, reveling in the glorious sensation.

  Rafe’s hand fell against her breast, his fingers toying with her nipple through the thin fabric of her shirt, and she gasped again in unexpected delight as the sensitive nub hardened at his gentle prodding. He whispered to her in Spanish, melodic words and lilting phrases she didn’t understand. He kept murmuring that name to her―Isabel―his voice hoarse with mounting need.

  Every touch, every kiss, every passing, kneading caress of his tongue and fingers left her trembling, frightened, fascinated and immobilized. When his hand moved from her breast, sliding down her stomach and pressing between her thighs, touching her through her breeches at her innermost, warmest recess, she couldn’t contain herself any longer. She moaned helplessly, her heart pounding, her breath hitching in eager delight.

  He paused, his lips pulling away from her. He was looking at her. She could feel it. He had heard her and now he was looking at her, trying to decide if she was awake or not. “Catherine?” he said, his voice still tinged with that unfamiliar thickness.

  Oh, damn. Kitty did not move. She could feel herself trembling uncontrollably, despite the warmth of his body pressed against hers.

  She did not move, and suddenly, Rafe drew away from her, shifting his weight and rolling back against his side of the bed. Kitty felt unexpected―and inexplicable―disappointment, a heavy coldness in the air around her when he was gone. “What am I doing?” he whispered. “God above…I have lost my wits…”

  She lay absolutely still, her breath still bated, her body still shivering from his touch, his kisses. After a few long, agonizing moments, she heard a soft snuffling sound, and realized Rafe slept again; his quiet, wine-prompted snoring had resumed.

  Oh, my God, she thought, still unwilling to move, uncertain if she dared to risk waking him again―kissing her again. She didn’t know who this woman, Isabel, might be, but if Rafe had tended to her with such passion, Kitty could not help but envy her.