My Lady Pirate (15 page)

With a cry, she came against him, wave after wave of searing pleasure that left her shaken and numb. Then, ever so slightly he tipped her up, then groaned deep in his throat as her fingers reached for, then closed around, his arousal.

They stayed like that for long moments, she breathing hard as her spasms finally quieted, he large and hot within her hand.

Slowly, she ran her thumb over his swollen head.

“Sweet Neptune,” he gasped, sucking in his breath as she squeezed and stroked him as

mercilessly as he had her. He went rigid and pulled her back up, but she only increased the pressure, ringing him with thumb and forefinger until he was groaning, thrusting, gasping.

“Heave to, lass,” he ground out, through clenched teeth, “heave to, or by God, you’ll have me on a lee shore—”

His grip on her slipped, and he almost dropped her. Mercilessly, she let her thumb rove over the velvety tip of his shaft until his head fell forward, his breath warmed her shoulder, and in her hand, he began to convulse, to throb. . .

“By all that’s holy, woman—belay this torture, I beg of you—I . . . can’t . . . wait . . . any . . .

longer—”

He didn’t allow her to tantalize him any further. Shoving forward, he plunged himself

deeply into her soft, welcoming recesses, groaning with pleasure and dropping fevered kisses on her neck, her cheek. She felt him stumble beneath her, recover, gain his rhythm, then his pace, as he began to pump savagely, almost angrily, into her, the movements oddly slowed, deliciously thickened, by the dragging pull of tide and seawater and current.

She met each hard thrust with blind abandon. Her nails bit into his wet back, her arms clung fiercely to his neck, and still he strained, pumping, slamming, driving himself harder and harder, deeper and deeper, until the gathering waves began to build, to pulse, to soar, to come together with an explosive, blinding violence once more.

The force of it rocked him like a ship’s broadside even as she closed around him, cried out, and began to climax. He drove into her, wanting only to make it lasting and beautiful for her.

“Gray,” she cried, gasping, “Oh,
Gray!”

She lost herself to him, crying out as wave after wave tore through her until at last she lay spent and drained against him, his big, strong arms tight around her back, the sea swirling around their hot flesh. He shut his eyes and held her, lovingly, tenderly, loath to let her go, loath to do what he now knew he must.

Betray her.

For as much as he desperately wanted to, he could not trust her enough to tell her the truth about himself. She was, after all, a pirate, and despite his own intuition about where her loyalties would lie, he could not gamble the fate of his country on it.

His heart ached.

“Duty,”
Nelson had once told him,
“is the great business of a sea officer. All private
considerations must give way to it, however painful it is.”

His hand drove upward, tangled in her wet hair and pressed her head against his chest. His heart was hammering, and he wondered if she could sense the inner turmoil there, the angst and the agony, if she could see into his mind and know what he was thinking, plotting, planning— dreading. But no. Her legs tightened around his torso, her arms around his neck, and he felt a gentle, feathery sensation against his nape, then his earlobe.

He shut his eyes, his lips a grim slash of pain.

“You are everything I ever hoped for in a Gallant Knight,” she murmured. “You may be a

pirate but I would not change anything about you.”

God help me,
he thought, sick at heart. Why had he ever let himself seduce her, be seduced
by
her? But he hadn't counted on her sudden change of plans to keep him here. What else could he do?

He stared bleakly out at the darkened schooner, thinking himself the most wretched of

creatures.
Get it over with. Gray,
he thought.
Get it over with now.

He couldn’t.

But there was Nelson. There was Villeneuve. There was his country.

He had no choice.

She pulled back, her eyes reverent and adoring as she gazed up at him.
Harden up, man.
But doing so was the most difficult thing he’d ever done in his life.

“Do you believe, Gray . . . that we could ever have a future together? That you could ever lo

—I mean, have feelings for—a hardened pirate queen like me?”

He looked at her and forced a smile that tore at the deepest part of his heart. “You mean, love you?”

She looked away afraid and unable to meet his gaze and face a possible rejection. “Aye.”

“I am already in love with you, Maeve,” he murmured, steeling himself. “. . . Though I can’t say my mistress on Barbados will be very happy about it. . . .”

He caught himself, trailing off as though he hadn’t made the mistake on purpose. If he could have spared her, if he could have afforded to take the gamble of confiding the truth to her, if he could have lain down and died—he would have.

But he couldn’t. All he could do was wait for his deliberately cruel words to pierce her to the very center of her heart and bring about the effect he desperately needed.

Her lips froze against the side of his jaw; then, she pulled back as if stunned, as if someone had just slapped her across the face.

“What did you say?”

He felt himself breaking up inside, all of his hopes, his dreams, falling to his feet like a shower of lifeless ashes. She was everything he’d ever wanted; she had trusted him, and now he had to betray her.

And
desert
her.

His throat constricted and the blood ran cold through his veins, sieved through his heart like ice water. If only he hadn’t seduced her, begun to fall in love with her . . . but dear God, she 'd said she was taking him to Nelson! He hadn’t thought she’d end up wanting to
keep
him here . . .

“Gray—” her voice was a bare whisper. “Did you say what I
think
you just said?”

“’Twas nothing, madam,” he said lamely, and looked away, as though unable to meet those

stricken, shocked eyes. “Merely a slip of the tongue . . .”

“A slip of the tongue?”
She stared at him, her face paling to white in the darkness. Already, she was pulling away. Already, the fragile threads of trust and hope had been severed,

irretrievably broken. “Is there something you’re not
telling
me, Gray?”

He shrugged. “All men keep mistresses,” he said, blithely.

“Well, I hope to God you don’t
still
intend to keep one after”—smudges of color stained her white cheeks—”. . . after this!”

“After what?” he said, with forced innocence.

She stared at him, disbelieving. “After . . . making love to me . . .”

“So. What difference does
that
make?”

She flinched as if struck, too dazed by his callousness to find the anger he prayed would come, the anger he was depending upon to get him off this damned island and back into the service of his country. “Doesn’t what we just did mean
anything
to you?”

“Look, Maeve—”

Her voice rose. “Doesn’t it?”

He heard the waves lapping against the schooner,
her
schooner, and felt more wretched than he’d ever been in his life. The night was suddenly too big, too cold, too empty, and it grew more so as she unfastened her arms from around his neck, slipped down into the water, and began to put distance between them.

“Look, Maeve,” he began again. “I’m just a sailor. God knows, I want you, yes, but I”—he

steeled himself to utter the cruel words—”I like variety. You understand, surely?”

She shook her head disbelievingly. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

Get angry,
he thought, desperately.
For God’s sake, don’t make me hurt you more.
“Doing what? There’s nothing wrong with keeping a mistress, most men do . . . Look, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll keep my activities with her a secret—”

“How can you be so vile, so wretched, so cruel? Damn you, I—I
trusted
you!”

He grinned, although the gesture cost him another shred of his heart. “Really, my dear, why are you so vexed? She’s just a dalliance—”

“A dalliance? Is that what you think of me? A
dalliance?”

“Now, Maeve, darling—”

“Don’t you
now Maeve darling
me!” she cried and swung her open palm against his jaw with all the force in her body.

He stood there and allowed her to slap him. He saw the fire blazing now in her eyes, hot

angry fire that burned him to the core.

“Did you feed her with pretty words, too? Did you worm your way into her bed and play her like a violin and then betray her, too, you slimy bastard? You vicious dog! You deceitful, cunning, filthy
blackguard—”

“Maeve, you’re being unreasonable,” he said, grabbing both her wrists. Her knee came up, and if not for the drag of the water, would’ve damaged him beyond repair. “I can’t see what you’re getting all upset about; it’s perfectly acceptable for a man to keep a mistress—”

“It’s not acceptable to
me!”
she raged, tearing free of his grip. “I knew you were too good to be true! I knew you couldn’t be what I wanted you to be, what you seemed, no matter what I wanted to believe! Why the hell didn’t I listen to myself?”

Unexpectedly, her other hand came up and slammed against the side of his jaw hard enough

to make him see stars. He staggered and she yanked herself free. “Bastard!” she cried. “May you rot in hell!”

She struck off, not for the shore as he would have expected but for the schooner, as though it was her only friend, her only comfort. Shaking his dazed head, he dived after her, but she had a head start on him, and moments later was scaling the vessel’s side, her hair streaming down her bare back, her legs flashing white in the darkness. He was a scant five feet behind her. Lunging upward, he grabbed the rope ladder and began hauling himself up the side of the ship, the water rushing down his own naked shoulders, his back, and into the sea.

Her feet pounded hollowly over the deck above him. “Get away from me, you snake, and get

the
hell
off my ship!”

She half dived, half fell down the hatch, just as alarmed voices rang out from the shore.

“Captain?”

Splashes, curses, lights, shouts, and from the beach, the crack of a pistol, shattering the night.

Gray lunged over the gunwales and onto the deck.

He had no time to survey the double rows of guns, no time to admire the neat readiness in which she kept her vessel, no time to examine this singular little warship from up close, for at that moment his quarry came flying up from the hatch, a blunderbuss in her hands and pointed straight at him.

She fired.

The explosion blew the night apart, brilliant orange-and-blue flames roiling from the lock and a split-second later, the barrel. How she missed him at such close range Gray never knew, and he had no time to ponder it as he dived for cover, landed on his elbows, and crashed heavily against the stout carriage of a cannon. His mind screamed with pain, and then there was nothing but a horde of dark shapes above and around him, and an array of swords, rapiers, knives, and cutlasses all pointed at his heart. He rose up on one elbow, cursing under his breath, and supporting himself with one hand. Someone kicked him in the ribs; someone else slammed a foot into his shoulder and shoved him onto his stomach with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. A bare foot drove between his shoulder blades, and he heard the sounds of a gun being loaded, felt the cold press of its gaping mouth as the Pirate Queen jabbed the blunderbuss hard into his spine.

He let his forehead rest against the deck and shut his eyes, his lashes brushing the varnished planking.

From above came an ominous click as she drew the weapon to half cock, and the tight,

choking sounds of her harsh breathing.

She brought the gun to full cock.

“Don’t, Maeve.” A voice said quietly. “You’ll regret it.”

“The only thing I regret, Orla, is—is—that I even l-let this d-d-dog near me.”

The blunderbuss was withdrawn. Another foot slammed into his ribs.

“Get up.”

Slowly, he did so, acutely aware of his own bare state. His ribs, his back, his elbow ached, but nothing could match the anguish in his heart over what he had done, what he had
had
to do.

A dozen angry women faced him, cutlasses drawn, pistols leveled, eyes fierce. Their bold

eyes raked his nakedness and dismissed it with contempt. He saw the small, spritely Irish woman with the elfin face shielding Maeve’s naked body with a piece of sailcloth.

Then the tall African stepped forward, majestic, fierce, angry. The others gathered behind her, watching her. Her skin was darker than the night, her eyes blazing. She let her gaze roam contemptuously over his nakedness, but he drew himself proudly up, refusing to quail beneath the savagery in her eyes.

“Whatever you did to her,” the woman said in a dark, ugly whisper, “believe me, you’ll pay for it. “ She jabbed a pistol into his chest and shoved him roughly toward the bow. “Move,” she ordered, with the authority of a general. Gray obeyed, aware of her eyes nailing him between his shoulders; he felt the press of her pistol in the small of his back and knew she would like nothing better than to blow his kidneys out. Had he gone too far in trying to enrage the pirate queen?

Would he pay for this with his life?

He walked toward the bow and when he could go no farther, paused, standing straight and

tall and silent.

He did not turn to face them.

“On your knees!”

Eyes straight ahead, he muttered, “Go to hell.”

Her booted foot drove into the back of his knees. He crumpled, falling against the windlass and gritting his teeth against the pain. One of the pirates held a cutlass against his throat, and unable to move, he could only lie helpless as they lashed him so tightly to one of the bow chasers that blood rose from his wrists and trickled down his arms. Someone hurled his clothing, picked up from the beach, at him. Then they stood back, and Gray, grimacing in pain, looked up to see the Pirate Queen standing above him.