Island Flame (22 page)

It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. If not for the gentle breeze it would have been almost hot. The
Margarita
was moving on a southerly course, and Cathy could only suppose that Jon had concurred with Harry’s orders when they were set. Their stores of food and water were getting low again. But when she pestered Jon about where they were headed, he teasingly refused to answer. She would see, was all he would say. Cathy shook her head. Really, he was becoming more like a mischievous small boy every day.

She was smiling when she walked back into the cabin, her cheeks flushed by the sun and her hair blown into curling disorder. Her smile changed to a severe frown as she saw Jon, clad in a pair of black breeches that were far too tight around his heavily bandaged leg, sitting at the table and studying some charts. She crossed to stand behind him, her thighs pressing into his broad, well-muscled back and her hand coming to rest on his bare shoulder. He
grunted a hello without looking around. Cathy grimaced. As an impassioned lover, he had some definite failings.

“You shouldn’t be up,” she told the back of his head sternly. His arm came out to hook her waist, and he pulled her around so that he could see her. He was smiling, the gray eyes twinkling roguishly. Cathy felt her heart melt with tenderness for him.

“You look like an angel,” he said by way of a reply, his eyes warm on her reproving face. “But a very bossy angel. I think I’ve spoiled you. Don’t you know that you’re supposed to quake at my every frown? I’m a vicious, bloodthirsty pirate, remember?”

“And I’m not an angel, I’m your nurse,” Cathy replied lightly. “If you don’t do as I tell you, I’ll be terribly clumsy when next I change your bandages.”

Jon laughed, and pulled her around so that she was sitting on his good knee. His arm squeezed her waist while his hand wandered upward to trap tenderer game. Cathy pushed his hand away with a show of indignation, but was soon distracted by his warm mouth nibbling teasingly at the curve of her neck. His hand stealthily returned to caress its prize. She stiffened automatically, then relaxed. The feel of his hand on her breast tingled pleasurably down to her toes.

“Let me up,” Cathy ordered without much conviction. “The door is wide open. Anyone could walk in.”

“Who cares?” Jon murmured abstractedly, his attention centered on the tempting valley revealed by the gentle scoop of her bodice.

“I do!” Cathy flashed him an admonishing look. His lips traced lightly along her cheekbone and down her nose before coming to rest at the corner of her mouth.

“Do you really?” he asked against her quivering lips. Then his mouth took hers with leisurely expertise and Cathy had to admit that at this moment she didn’t care about anything except the delicious way he was making her feel.

“What are you doing?” When he lifted his head at last, Cathy’s heart was thudding unevenly. Cathy hoped that the question would serve to distract him.

“Admiring your beauty,” he answered promptly, his hard arm moving up close beneath her breasts to hold her tightly and cause the neckline of her gown to gape away from her curving flesh. His eyes feasted pleasurably on the bounty thus exposed to his view.

“I meant with the charts.” Cathy nipped his arm sharply with her fingers. With an aggrieved sigh his attention turned to the papers spread out on the table.

“Calculating how long it will take us to get where we’re going. Harry tells me that we’ve run into some strong westerly currents, which has pulled us slightly off course.”

“And where
are
we going?” Cathy asked casually, hoping that he would answer without thinking. Instead he grinned down at her.

“Curiosity killed the cat, sweet,” he teased.

“And satisfaction brought it back,” she retorted smartly. Then, on a coaxing note, “Please tell me where we’re going.”

“Persuade me,” he murmured in her ear. The wicked glint in his eye left her in no doubt as to the type of persuasion he had in mind.

“Certainly not,” Cathy answered primly, but couldn’t resist trailing a provocative finger down his hard arm. Jon rewarded her boldness with a playful bite on her ear.

“If you must know, my nosy cat, we’re going to Las
Palmas,” he said, leaning back in the chair and shifting her so that he could hold her more comfortably against him. One brown finger played idly with a strand of golden hair. Cathy rested back against his hard chest contentedly.

“Las Palmas?” Cathy questioned, eyes dreamy. She was no longer particularly interested in his answer. The warm male smell of him was acting like a drug on her senses. Idly, she continued, “I’ve never heard of it. Is it a city?”

Jon smiled slightly, shaking his head as he pulled one of the charts closer.

“No, my lovely ignoramus, Las Palmas is not a city. It’s an island. We use it as sort of home base between voyages.”

“Between thieving expeditions, you mean,” Cathy corrected, a slight edge sharpening her voice.

“All right, between thieving expeditions, if you prefer,” he agreed carelessly, his eyes narrowing a little as he looked down at her.

Cathy’s eyes flicked away from his to return to the charts.

“Have you ever thought about giving it up?” she asked, deliberately offhand.

“What, my life of debauchery and sin?” he mocked. “No, why should I? I like what I do.”

“How can you like murdering and stealing?” Cathy snapped, straightening away from him.

“It has its rewards,” he replied, joggling her up and down on his knee, as an adult would a fractious infant. Cathy glared at him, and he grinned. “I earn a good living, I call no man master, I sail my own ship, and—uh—I have a very pretty bedmate.”

His eyes ran over her with exaggerated lasciviousness before twinkling down into her own.

“I’m serious,” Cathy insisted, frowning at him irritably. “You can’t be a pirate forever. It’s against the law. One day you’ll make a mistake and you’ll be caught. Then you’ll hang.”

“And does the thought bother you, my cat?” One silky black eyebrow twitched quizzically. “Not so very long ago, I could have sworn that if you had had access to a pistol or a knife, my life would have been abruptly terminated.”

“Oh, you’re impossible!” Cathy stormed, struggling to get off his lap. His words made a mockery of the concern he must know she felt for him. Thank God he had no idea of the true state of her emotions where he was concerned! He would really have a field day if he knew that!

“I wouldn’t want to see any man hang,” Cathy added with what dignity she could muster, still squirming to be free.

“Not so fast, little cat,” he murmured, restraining her easily despite his injuries. Cathy could have affected her release by kicking or hitting his wounded thigh, she knew, but she didn’t. Her love for him was such that she wouldn’t willingly hurt him. “Why is it that you always want to leave just as the conversation gets interesting?”

Reluctantly Cathy stopped struggling, aware that to insist on being set free might reveal more than he had any right to know. She rested back against him guilelessly, aware of the prickle of his wiry chest hair through her dress.

“Would it matter so much to you, if I was hanged?” he persisted.

Cathy lowered her lashes to screen her eyes, careful to let no hint of her emotions show in her face. He could read her expressions like a book, she knew. For a moment she was tempted to confess her love, but cool caution restrained
her. It would be a powerful weapon in the hands of a man who was, after all, a rogue and a blackguard. Unless he was rendered similarly vulnerable, her confession would leave her wholly at his mercy. She decided to confound any suspicions he might harbor by skating as close to the truth as was possible without actually revealing it. He wasn’t stupid, after all. He must already know that her care of him meant something.

“Of course I wouldn’t like to see you hang,” she answered coolly, her blue gaze untroubled and candid as it met his piercing gray one. “Against my better judgment, I’ve grown rather fond of you.”

The flickering light in his eyes died at her words. They grew harder, unreadable. His teeth came down to nip punishingly at the creamy bare flesh of her shoulder.

“So you’re ‘rather fond’ of me, are you?” he murmured silkily, his mouth resting on the pulse that pounded just beneath her ear. “Your heart’s beating mighty fast for mere fondness.”

“You’re a conceited animal, aren’t you?” Cathy asked, her voice chill as she tried to get her wayward pulses under control. “You’re lucky to get fondness. I should hate you forever after the beastly way you’ve treated me.”

“I’ve treated you like a queen, my cat, and you know it.” His voice had hardened to match his eyes. “Have I—starved you, hurt you in any way? Have you ever stopped to think how you would have fared, a prisoner in the hands of any other man? You should be grateful.”

“Grateful?” Cathy flared disbelievingly, her eyes snapping sapphire sparks at him. “You kidnapped me and kept me prisoner! You raped me and humiliated me! And you think I should be grateful?”

Her voice cracked indignantly on the last word. Jon looked down at her, bristling on his lap like a small ruffled hen, then smiled ruefully. For the past few days his she-cat had purred like a kitten for him, and he had grown to like it. Too much, as he now realized.

“Oh, Cathy,” he murmured with half-amused resignation. He definitely was not in the mood for a quarrel. Indeed, he had something altogether different in mind. “I take it back. I was undoubtedly brutal to you, and I apologize.”

“So you should,” Cathy told him severely, trying again to get up off his lap. He restrained her with ludicrous ease. From the hardening of the muscles beneath her, she could tell that her movements had merely succeeded in exciting him.

“I seem to spend half my time telling you that I’m sorry for something or other,” he lamented in her ear. “This has to stop. I’m afraid it will go to your head, and then I’ll be spending the rest of my life apologizing for trifles.”

“But I won’t be around for the rest of your life, will I, Jon?” Cathy asked sweetly, taking advantage of the opening. “Sooner or later you’ll have to let me go.”

Jon’s eyes gleamed briefly. He buried his face in her bright hair, breathing deeply of its soft fragrance, without replying.

“When are you going to let me go, Jon?” she prodded softly.

“When I get good and ready.” His answer was clipped. “You weren’t so anxious to leave me in Cadiz, if you recall. You had the chance.”

“The other prisoners were released in Cadiz,” she reminded him. “But you were planning to keep me even
before you were hurt. Why weren’t you going to let me go with them?”

“Because, my beautiful shrew, I have this strange craving for the taste of your skin. I don’t propose to let you go until I’ve had my fill of it.” His eyes leered down at her, but the rest of his face was guarded. Cathy began to feel that she was making progress.

“Not my leg, sweet,” he grinned. “But other parts of my anatomy ache sorely.”

“The cure is in your own hands,” she replied unsympathetically, catching his meaning. “Let me up.”

“I prefer another solution,” he growled, his hands moving suggestively over her. Cathy shook her head at him, not bothering to evade his caressing fingers. She wasn’t in the mood for any more verbal sparring. Deliberately she curved a soft arm around the back of his neck, pulling his head down to plant a soft kiss on his sandpaper cheek. Let him think about that as well!

“Your bark is much worse than your bite, Captain, as I know very well. Now let me up. I have things to do.”

The look in Jon’s eyes warmed. That kiss was the first spontaneous gesture of affection she had ever given him, and it made his heart beat faster. He felt for all the world like some infatuated schoolboy. Somehow this soft, little female on his lap was succeeding in making him feel things he would have scoffed at in the past. The experience wasn’t to his liking at all, but there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it. He had already tried to cast her out of his mind by every means he could think of, and failed.

Cathy twisted in his hold, her eyes widening at his arrested expression.

“Jon, is anything wrong?” she purred.

His eyes glinted down at her rather dazedly for a moment, as if he was having trouble getting his bearings. Then his gaze focused on her face, and he bent his head to return her kiss right on her sweet little mouth. This wench was not like the others, he was certain. She was as innocent of guile and feminine schemings as a new-born babe.

“Excuse me, Captain.” Harry’s voice was wintry as he spoke from just inside the cabin door. “I’d like to go over the charts with you.” He slanted a burning look at Cathy, pink-faced and cozily ensconced on Jon’s lap. “If you can spare the time.”

Cathy frowned at Harry as Jon reluctantly released her, and pointedly ignored him as she turned away. Really, if he weren’t careful, Jon would get wise to his pursuit of her—for pursuit was what it had become—and then the fat would be in the fire for sure! Her pirate captain had a fierce temper and a strong sense of possessiveness where she was concerned. His eyes were already suspicious as they looked at Harry.

The two men talked for some time, drawing lines on the charts and measuring the distance to various points. Their conversation was largely unintelligible so she soon stopped listening. She wandered over to one of the bookcases and selected one of the volumes, and then settled herself in the alcove beneath the window to read. The book was extremely dull, and eventually she put it aside, passing the time instead by looking out at the ever-changing sea. She was unaware that the afternoon sun had turned her loosened hair into a fiery aureole around her face, or that her averted profile had the sweet purity of a perfect cameo. Both men’s eyes wandered from time to time to feast on the enchanting picture she made,
Jon’s openly and Harry’s whenever he thought his captain wasn’t aware of it. Their conversation became more and more desultory and finally ceased altogether. This cessation in the flow of talk attracted Cathy’s attention, and she turned to find both men eyeing her hungrily. She smiled warmly at Jon, ignoring Harry, and got to her feet, stretching a little as she rose.