Page 14

All these days, they had been avoiding each other, even sleeping on different watches, as if to be less than a foot apart would ignite the whole ship.

Now, Rebecca followed without hesitation.

If this conversation ended, that would start a fire.

If Sharkhead looked away from her, he might as well strand her on the island with the slave-trading sailors.

It was dark below deck. In the aft, Mrs. Adams bleated. Sharkhead led Rebecca into the little alcove of barrels they called their own.

“If you’re thinking to have your way with me, you won’t,” Rebecca said as the space closed in on them. She didn’t know why. There was no chance Sharkhead would force a kiss. He hadn’t even done that when the whole crew was watching.

And she certainly wasn’t afraid of it if he did.

She was being a brat, same as she always had done. It would get her kicked off the Ghost as surely as it had gotten her kicked out of Cook’s kitchen at Placid Manor and out of the senator’s son’s heart in Rhode Island.

Sharkhead didn’t react physically at all. But he had heard her: “All I ever wanted to do was protect you, Rebecca.”

It was the way he said her name. Softly. Tenderly. As if by saying her name, he could cut through the thorned vines that had thickened around her heart.

Too bad for him the vines were so layered that not even a machete could do the trick. “I protected myself, same as I’ve always done and same as I always will. I know I’m the only person I can count on.”

“You can count on more than that.” Sharkhead’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Jack Davies just told me he thinks the captain did wrong by you. If he had known you needed help on the Whimsy , he would have intervened.”

And what was Rebecca supposed to have done to let Jack know? Let out a scream the moment that terrible captain had looked at her?

Into her silence, Sharkhead said, “I’m sorry, Rebecca. It’s not worth much, but I am, and I know Davies would be too, if he knew what really happened. Everyone on this ship would be.”

“Everyone except the captain.”

The ship—preparing to sail away from Pirate Island—shifted so a stream of light through the porthole illuminated her not-husband’s inscrutable face. Except it wasn’t so inscrutable: written plainly in the frown and the tensed jaw was fear.

Fear that he spoke aloud: “Yes, I’m afraid you are right.”

The admission sliced away the last of the angry thorns protecting her heart. Rebecca offered Sharkhead her hand, which he accepted with the gentlest of touches. “Perhaps Captain Boukman considers us properly punished now. He hasn’t ordered me any which way since the battle.”

Sharkhead rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. “I hope so. I would like to be loyal to him.” His voice strengthened as he added, “I am loyal to you first, though. If it happens again, I will protect you at all costs.”

A promise that Rebecca hadn’t known to request. She fell forward with the sway of the ship and steadied herself on the great wall of his chest. “I have been bad. I’m sorry for it.”

“You were fighting for your life. It was kill or be killed.”

Her head shook no. “I have been bad to you. I blamed you. I’m sorry.”

He stepped away, dropping her hand, and sagged backward against his hammock. “ I’m sorry. I should have protected you better.”

“All you have ever done is try to protect me.” It was the truth—and yet, how she had punished him when he failed. Rebecca reached out again, her hand moving through the air to the rhythm of the swaying ship.

From somewhere above, Captain Boukman bellowed, “Sharkhead!”

Her not-husband took her fingers in his. It was a hot day, hotter below deck, and holding hands did nothing to bring down Rebecca’s body heat. She found she didn’t care.

“The captain wants you.”

“I am indisposed.” He tugged her ever so gently, and Rebecca followed the momentum into his arms.

“So you forgive me?” she asked, her lips only an inch from his.

“Do you forgive me?”

They answered each other with a kiss. Soft.

Sweet. Urgent. Hot. His hands moved to her waist, his weight shifting backward onto the hammock, and Rebecca climbed with one knee then the other to straddle him.

Underneath her skirts, his palms landed on her bare arse, holding her to his lap.

The hammock swayed beneath them like a swing.

They only had a few minutes. No time to say all the things that had been swirling through Rebecca’s head for days now. No time even to stoke their desire like a winter’s fire.

Good thing her want was instead like the tropical sun: constant, hot, unrelenting.

She could feel his cock straining against his trousers, and that was enough to remind her of the pleasure it could give when inside her.

His hands squeezing the naked skin beneath her skirts activated all the nerves she had been ignoring for days.

His breath breezed against her cheek, and she was drenched with desire like a sudden rainstorm.

“Chow!” Captain Boukman shouted again, his voice carried above them by the wind.

An obedient sailor would bound up to heed his captain.

Her not-husband lifted his feet from the floor so the hammock swung freely.

“We’re being bad,” Rebecca whispered, smiling against his ear. He chuckled—a sound she had never heard before—and slid two fingers between her legs.

“As pirates should be.”

Their minutes were dwindling. They didn’t have time for him to tease her with those fingers—yet he did.

They didn’t have time for him to rock her against his thumb and coil her desire like a white-hot spiral inside her body—yet he did.

They certainly didn’t have time for him to do all of that and for her to unbutton his trousers and take his cock inside her and swing their hips with the hammock and feel that ancient rhythm release them into pure pleasure.

But they did.

Foreheads together, sweat mingling, breaths huffing, Rebecca admitted: “I have missed you.”

His palm cupped the back of her neck, as if she were precious. “I never went anywhere.”

Someone clattered down the ladder. Rebecca hopped off his lap, throwing her skirts down. He stood and turned, still buttoning his trousers as Fuego found them.

The youth smirked. “Captain is looking for you, Sharkhead.”

“I’ll come up, then.” He said it coolly, as if he hadn’t heard any of the captain’s earlier summonses. To Rebecca, he said in his quartermaster’s voice, “See to the goat, won’t you? She is bleating something awful.”

His eyes told a different story. They connected with hers for just a moment and were so soft, so sweet, that she felt all the unspoken words between them swell like a rose about to bloom.

“I’ll be good,” she promised. And he smiled.