Page 66

“Stole that shirt from Page John, didn’t you?” I ask, my mind going back to how she felt as she came on my fingers, the sounds she made. Christ.

She doesn’t look at me, just stares at the ruins of the city and the reef beyond. “I didn’t kill him,” she states.

“I never said you did, but you knocked him out cold. Poor fella, I should have known he’d be powerless against the likes of you.”

Her brow raises and she eyes me. “What about the likes of me?”

I gesture with my hand. “Your feminine wiles. No one can resist.”

“You resisted.”

My mouth parts for a moment. This woman drives me to madness. “Is that so? I resisted?”

“You took me with your hands, not your staff,” she says.

“Would you have wanted my cock inside you while you hung from chains?”

The heated look that comes over her eyes, similar to the one she had while I was making her come, says she would have readily taken it.

And now, no surprise, my cock is stealing the thoughts from my mind, my skin growing tight and hot with need. As much as I want to take her right here and now, my ship is still gone and I’m surrounded by a mystery.

I decide to try and get some answers.

“Are you very good at holding your breath or something to that nature?” I ask, nodding at the sea.

“Are you?”

“Answering questions with questions is not answering the question.”

“That’s because I have no plans to answer the question.” She pauses. “Did Nerissa really send her dead Sy—dead mermaids after me because you wanted to do a trade?”

I sigh, pushing my wet hair off my face. My skin already feels scratchy from the drying salt. “Theywanted to trade you for Sedge.”

“And you were going to let them.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You were. I know it.”

“Okay, maybe at first,” I admit.

She glares at me. “I knew it.”

“But if you didn’t happen to notice, I offered to take your place. Me. Captain Battista, of the good shipNightwind, offered to be traded to the sea witch and her skeleton crew so that the likes of you wouldn’t have to. If that isn’t a noble sacrifice, I don’t know what it.”

“Oh, how very honorable of you,” she says, sarcasm dripping. “But you’re the one who told me that the curse can have no effect on you. You knew you’d come out unscathed.”

“Unscathed? You don’t understand sea witches. They are still witches, and they are our natural enemy. I may have had good luck with one in the past, but witches will always find a way to make your life a living hell.”

Her eyes flit over my face, trying to read me. I widen my eyes at her. Not sure if I can be more sincere.

“So then, why did you do it? Why offer to take my place?”

Oh, she is daft at times. “Because of that mark on your hip, luv. Because you belong to me. You’re my property.”

She flinches at that. “I don’t care for being called anyone’s property.”

“You were property of the crown before.”