Her Pirate Master (5 page)

Imi chewed her food and thought about it. She’d grown up in the service of Isis. Her whole family was devoted to the worship of the Great Goddess. She wondered where they were now. She did not even know if they lived. They had become separated from her during the uprising, and then she’d been captured along with Arsinoe and sent to Rome to walk in front of Caesar in a long procession of captives and booty. She remembered that he’d entered the gates of his city like a conquering god. The Romans had gone wild for him, their cheers rising to the heavens. And as much as they’d loved him, so they had hated the foreigners who walked before him. Sometimes in her sleep she could still hear the jeers of the Romans. They had pelted her and the others with tomatoes and rotten fruit. Arsinoe, though on horseback to denote her royal status, suffered no less than any of her people.

“Isis is the mother of us all,” she answered. “Without her, I would not exist.” She waved her arm to indicate their surroundings. “Nothing would exist.”

He said nothing, merely looked skeptical.

“You are not a believer?”

Seleucus shrugged.

“Years ago, before I became a pirate, I was captured by the Romans and sent to work in their mines. Every day I prayed to the gods of my ancestors to free me, but it wasn’t until I broke the neck of the overseer and fled that I gained my freedom. Now I am the hunted and not the hunter.”

Imi shrugged. “Perhaps it was your gods who gave the overseer into your hands that day.”

“If so, their aid came too late to save my belief in them or in any other I cannot see.”

Imi nodded. She could understand his loss of faith. Even now the same doubts as must have troubled him in the mines pricked at her. Had pricked at her, if she were truthful, since Arsinoe’s defeat and all through the humiliation of her captivity and subsequent exile. Imi sighed. Sometimes she thought she’d never see her home or family again.

“Do you wish more food?”

“No. Thank you.”

“I must go back on deck. Would you rather stay here?”

“I’m tired. I’d like to sleep. But, first, I’d like to take a bath, if you don’t mind.”

His smile lit his eyes, and she wondered if he knew just how his face was transformed by it.

“I don’t. I will send one of the women captives down with some water. I will be back later but will leave the food here in case you are hungry again.” He stood to go and seemed about to say something else but changed his mind and ducked through the door. His departure left her feeling very alone and overwhelmed, and she realized that she’d found comfort in his presence.

A soft knock distracted her from that disturbing thought. Imi opened the door to a slim girl with mousy brown hair with a pail of water in one hand and an empty washtub in the other.

“Do you want me to help you, lady?” the girl asked, her eyes wide and frightened, clearly hoping Imi would say ‘no’ so she could return to whatever remnants were left of her family among the captives.

Imi shook her head. “Thank you, but no.” She had long become accustomed to doing without the servants she’d grown up with as a child.

The girl backed out of the room. Imi shut it behind her with a sigh wondering what would become of her in Delos.

She unstoppered Seleucus’s bottle of cleansing oil and inhaled deeply. The scent reminded her of him. She pulled her tunic over her head and stepped into the tub. She started with her face, rubbing a little of the oil gently over her cheeks and forehead. The oil contained enough natron to make it a little gritty but not so much that it rubbed her skin raw. Imi massaged it over her breasts, her belly, working her way down to her feet. When she was finished, she poured the water over herself and dried off with one of the bed coverings from the armoire.

His smell surrounded her now. It brought her an odd kind of contentment, but that was nonsense, she told herself as she curled into a ball on the bed. The man had abducted her. He wanted to sell her as a slave, for Isis’s sake. How could she possibly be contented or comforted by anything about him? Dismissing the idea as evidence of her confusion and tiredness, Imi rolled over and tried to sleep.

Imi opened her eyes to darkness so complete she had to touch her eyelids to assure herself they were indeed open. Beside her, someone heaved and then was still. Imi froze. Her heart drummed in her ears. Panic washed over her in a wave as black as the night. She opened her mouth to scream and heard his voice.

“Do not fear. It is I, Seleucus.”

She remembered everything then and could have wept in mingled relief and fury.

“Why did you not leave me alone on the road?” she asked, her voice trembling.

Seleucus turned to lie on his back on the narrow bed. He didn’t know what to say. They had had captives enough, but she, there had been something about her. She’d intrigued him from the start—her foolish bravery, her stubbornness, her beauty.

“If I had, another might have found you who would have treated you worse,” he said, striving to make himself sound reasonable, though he knew she wouldn’t accept this.

“You took me from my life for my own good, is that it?”

“Your cart fell apart through no doing of mine,” he pointed out.

“You could have left me in Anxur, with Lucius.”

“I could. But then I’d not have been able to do this.”

He shifted. His hand fell on her stomach, and Imi drew a quick, sharp breath, as he dragged it up, up to her breast. For a second he was content to just let it stay there, cupping her fullness, but then his thumb began to knead slow circles around her nipple.

“I would have been on my way home if it were not for you,” she snapped, determined not to give in to him.

“Delos is but a day’s sail from Ephesus; even as we speak, we sail east.” His thumb did not cease its caresses. “Do you not believe I will take you where you wish to go if you please me?” he murmured. He leaned into her shoulder, pushed his face into her hair, and breathed in the scent of her. “I have given you my word,” he said, “and that is not something I take lightly.”

Some of the stiffness left her. “I am needed in Ephesus,” she whispered, sounding so small and lost he wanted nothing more than to hold her and kiss her. He rose over her and would have pressed his lips to hers, but he miscalculated and found her chin instead. She gave a muffled laugh, and then he was kissing her right where he wanted, his tongue slipping, hot and firm, into her mouth. She put her hand flat on his shoulder, and he thought she meant to push him away, but then she uttered a hungry little moan as she pulled and sucked on his tongue, her arms slipping around him.

Her ardor surprised and delighted him. He pressed against her, wanting her to know just how much he desired her. She thrust herself on him and rubbed, like a cat. Seleucus groaned deep down in his throat. He tore himself away from her mouth and slid down to tongue one nipple through the thin silk of her robe while he kneaded the other between his thumb and forefinger.

“Ah, Seleucus,” she murmured. It was the first time she’d said his name. He liked how it sounded on her lips, sibilant with the lust streaming through her. He bit her nipple gently, letting her feel the hard edges of his teeth, then sucked, sucked so hard she arched her back, her breathing short and sharp. Keeping his mouth on her nipple, he pushed his hand across her belly to where her legs met. As he’d expected, she was wet, slick with the desire he’d aroused. He slid a finger through her folds and then pushed it into her as she moaned. She thrust herself against his penetrating finger, but he wasn’t ready for her to come just yet. He withdrew to circle her swollen bead, and she arched her back once again.

“Pleeaassse.”

“Yes?”

“Inside me. I want . . . please.” She was nearly incoherent with lust.

“Your oath.”

“Your fingers.” She almost screamed it. “Please!”

So, he dipped his fingers into her again. Again and again, and he felt her vibrate, the walls of her inner flesh quivering against his fingers until the sensations roiling through her picked her up and flung her down again, shaking and exhausted on the bed.

“Oh, Isis,” she murmured as she panted. She reached over and planted a kiss on his chest. Before he knew what she was going to do, she slid down on the bed, her hands reaching for him. She freed him from his undergarment and took him in her mouth just as he’d hoped she would earlier that day. Her lips encircled the head of his staff, sucking them as she cupped and caressed his balls. Seleucus’s thighs quivered. All his senses, all his being was concentrated on the feelings she aroused in him. Nothing else existed for him at that moment but the damp heat of her mouth. His hips rose off the bed as he sought to push himself deeper into her. At first she resisted, pulling her head back away from him. He moaned his frustration and slid his fingers through her hair as if he thought to compel her. But then she bowed to his desire, her lips slipping down his shaft to encompass all of him.

And all the while as she sucked on him, her tongue danced along his shaft, sending rivulets of warmth coursing through his body. His fingers curled into fists as he sought to keep from crying out. He shoved his face into the pillows. He wanted to warn her he was close to spilling his seed, but he couldn’t stand the thought of not being in her mouth, so he said nothing. As his orgasm swept though him, he half–lifted himself off the bed, all his muscles taut, straining. His seed fountained, but still she sucked and sucked. Seleucus grunted and fell back on the bed, spent and panting for breath. For a minute more she kept him within her and then, with a final long swirl of her tongue, she released him to the air.

“Ah,” Seleucus groaned. He reached down and hauled her up to lie on him. She kissed him, and he tasted himself on her tongue.

Weak light seeped in through the slatted windows. He traced the outline of her face with his finger.

“I think your loyalties are misplaced,” he said, his voice coming out lower than he intended. The ship rolled, and he braced himself against the wall behind him.

For a minute, in the growing light, some dark fear roiled in her eyes. She blinked, and it vanished.

“I don’t understand,” she responded, pushing herself off him.

“It is Aphrodite who should demand your service, not Isis.” He smiled as he said it, wanting to reassure her he meant no harm.

“Aphrodite is Roman,” she snapped. She rose from the bed, swaying with the ship, and shrugged on her tunic. “She means nothing to me.”

Seleucus made a noncommittal soothing sound. He’d been foolish to say what he had. If he was right and his proud captive truly was in the service of Arsinoe, she would have no love for Rome or its gods.

“I did not mean to offend you,” he said.

Outside, he heard something roll and bump against the door. They must have struck rough waters.

“No?” Her smile was as cold as the winter sea. “Then you should have left me to my own devices on the road to Anxur and never diverted me from my intent.”

Seleucus sighed. He’d been half–hoping she would get back into bed with him and they could put the little unpleasantness aside, but he realized it was not to be. He needed to be more careful what he said to her. Accepting the fault, he rose and adjusted his clothes, noting as he did so how her glance skittered away from him. So, the sight of him did not leave her unmoved. He swallowed his grin.

“Captain!” Someone pounded on the door. “Captain!”

Seleucus frowned. It was amazing, he thought, how in one minute you could be in bed being pleasured as if by a goddess until you thought you were standing on top of the world, then, in almost the next instant, people were harassing you with no thought at all for your convenience.

“What is it?” he growled, wrenching open the door.

“A storm, Captain! Sweeping toward us from the north, and we have not yet cleared the coast.”

At the man’s words, Seleucus leaped for the door. Imi followed.

The sailor had not lied. Gray brooding clouds, like a shifting, menacing curtain, billowed and surged behind them. Imi stared at them and hugged her arms around her waist. The sea had turned choppy and dark. Seleucus shouted orders at his men to secure what they could. Crates and barrels rolled this way and that. Among the prisoners, some wept quietly while others muttered prayers.

“That is Salernum there,” Seleucus said, the winds whipping the words from his mouth. Imi looked and thought she saw the tiled roofs of Roman villas and farmhouses. By some trick of the gods, the sun was still shining on the coastal town, which revealed bright, white–washed walls and orderly fields.

“Are we going there?” she asked, but she could already tell that they weren’t. The helmsman had made no move to turn into the town’s man–made harbor with its extended jetties and the mole that tamed the entering waters.

“There is a small harbor just past Velia, further down the coast,” Seleucus shouted to her. “That’s where we’ll ride it out. Salernum is too risky. If the storm doesn’t get us, an alert magistrate might.”

“No,” she cried. “We won’t make it. Salernum is right here. We should stop here.” There was something wrong. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt it in her bones. That was no ordinary storm behind them. A malevolence issued from it. She couldn’t take her eyes off the ash–gray clouds.

“Don’t worry,” Seleucus shouted. “This won’t be the first storm we’ve outrun.”

She looked at him then and saw the excitement in his eyes. Goddess! The man thought of this as a game, a challenge to his abilities. Nothing she could say would persuade him to turn aside and seek shelter at Salernum. The deck pitched, and she stumbled into him.

“Imi, have no fear,” he said into her ear, holding her tight. “I promise I will keep you safe.” He had never said anything like that to anyone, but this slip of a woman brought out a streak of fierce protectiveness that surprised him.

She was about to ask him if he always threw his promises out so casually when a thunderbolt boomed right above them, threatening to break the world in two. The ship heaved. Even with Seleucus’s arms around her, Imi struggled to stay on her feet.