The Following Sea (The Pirate Wolf series) (23 page)

~~

Eva stretched and purred, then sought to curl up tight against Gabriel’s big body… only it wasn’t there. She lifted her head and found him in the shadows attempting to find his breeches and boots. After staring at his naked flanks for a very long moment, she settled back onto the rumpled bedding with an exaggerated sigh.

“Go back to sleep,” he said, glancing over at the sound. “It is nowhere near dawn.”

“Then why are you awake?”

“Because, Mermaid, I am the captain and this is my ship and the bell for the ghost watch just sounded, so I think I ought to relieve Stubs or he’ll steer us into a bank of rock out of spite. Where the devil is my other boot, can you see it?”

Eva rose on all fours and crawled to the edge of the bed. She spied the boot under his desk but sat back on her heels and said nothing, content to watch him search. He had very long legs, splendidly taut and powerful. His waist was trim and his belly flat, and the pale wrapping of bandages around his midsection only emphasized the breadth of muscle across his chest and shoulders.

She smiled and shivered deliciously, then smiled again.

Dante looked over. She was kneeling at the edge of the bed, her hair spilling every which way around her shoulders. The pale, firm rounds of her breasts peeked through the curls, the nipples ruched into tiny pink buds.

“For someone who was uncertain of whether she knew how to seduce a man or not,” he murmured, “you seem to have acquired the knack rather quickly.”

“If I have, the fault is yours, Captain.”

He dropped the one boot he had located and approached the side of the bed. “Indeed? How so?”

She had to tip her face up to meet his gaze, but then her eyes slowly meandered down his body until they came to a halt at the junction of his thighs. She tilted her head to the side, the fascination not yet waned as she watched his flesh start to rise and swell. A fingertip traced lightly down the hard, flat surface of his stomach and followed the narrow strip of fine dark hairs to the explosion of darker, tighter curls.

“You are a very good teacher,” she whispered as she kept tracing, circling, exploring, teasing.

She saw the quiver passed through his belly as he threaded his long fingers in her hair and forced her to look up again.

Despite how they had spent the last two hours her cheeks darkened with shy young blood, for those eyes that normally guarded his every thought were telling her how beautiful she was, how much he wanted her

“On second thought,” he mused, easing her back onto the bed, “Stubs can wait.”

CHAPTER EIGH
TEEN

Eva did, eventually, manage a few short hours of sleep. It ended abruptly when the hull of the ship struck something solid and she was nearly thrown off the bed onto the plank floor. She was alone, Dante had been gone long enough that the sheets held no trace of his warmth.

She rubbed her eyes and looked around the cabin in a panic, not knowing what had caused the ship to shudder and groan so loudly. Her first thought was that they were under attack again, and the spike of fear lasted as long as it took her to leap out of bed and dash to the gallery windows. She raised one of the heavy boards and fastened it to the hooks, dreading what she might see through the glass.

The fog was gone, save for a pale, lingering haze that suggested it was shortly past dawn. There were no galleons facing them beam-on, with cannons ready to spit smoke and brimstone. There was nothing to see at all, in fact, but sheer stone walls flanking either side of the
Endurance
.

Her mouth went slack with surprise. The jagged walls were perhaps a dozen yards off either beam and as she craned her neck to look up, they rose at least that high above the deck of the ship and were capped by tall, spindly pine trees.

She washed quickly and found her clothes, then hurried out of the cabin, joining the rest of the crew topside. Men had climbed the shrouds and perched high on the yards. They lined the rails and stood on the cannon barrels. Even some of the wounded men who had passed through the surgery last night had been helped up on deck by their mates.

Eva turned a full, slow circle. At first glance it seemed as though they were surrounded by cliffs. But she could feel the gentle roll and sway of the boards, and realized they were gliding through a narrow channel.

There was another bump and groaning of the timbers as the hull scraped against rock. Men shouted and heaved on long wooden poles to push her clear. Gabriel Dante was among them, stripped to the waist, his chest, arms, and face gleaming with sweat. As he pushed and heaved on the pole, his hair sent little silvery droplets of sweat flying out before him. His teeth were bared in a grimace, which turned into a shout of satisfaction when the ship responded and nosed further into the middle of the channel.

There were still longboats in the water and men on oars towing the galleon forward. But there did not seem to be the same sense of urgency in either the speed at which they rowed, or the laughter of the crew as they shouted down comments about pulling on the oars like schoolboys stroking their puds.

Dante handed off his pike to another man and snatched up his shirt, using it to wipe the sweat off his face and neck. He spied Eva standing by the rail near the quarterdeck and beckoned her to follow him up and join him there.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"An excellent question, Mermaid. The best guess is that we somehow managed to enter one of the smaller inlets without crushing the hull up against the rocks. And to answer your next question, no, I have no idea where the channel ends or how long it is or where we will end up when we are through it. As you can see, there is no room to turn this bitch around, so we must keep inching forward in the hopes of not ending in dead water. It also follows that we have no way of knowing where Muertraigo and his ships might be."

He shook out his shirt and pulled it over his head, the thin cloth sticking instantly in wet patches to his skin. As he was tucking it into his belt, Stubs came up beside him, tugged a forelock in Eva's direction, then gave Dante the not-so-good news.

"We sent a jolly boat on ahead to see where the channel leads,” Gabriel explained to Eva, “and of course it leads nowhere. We'll have to reverse the tow and haul her back out to open water. Hopefully, if we can climb up top, we'll be able to see where we are and where we've been and if anyone is waiting for us when we drag her out again."

"Stubs said there was a sandy place to land. I promise I will not leave the beach, I'll just sit there and wait for you. I've not set a foot on solid ground for over two months. Please, Captain."

The amber eyes held hers, a second refusal on the tip of his tongue.

"Please," she whispered.

Dante blinked. The word, and the way she said it, was an echo of the soft cry she had made in his ear when she was clutching him, shuddering through an orgasm. It was a distracting thought and he frowned, intending to turn away with a more adamant "No." But Stubs was still within earshot and he was nodding, sympathizing with the girl.

"Ye can send young Eduardo to sit with the lass," he said. "No harm in that."

Dante narrowed his eyes. He looked from Stubs to Eva, whose eyes were so green and hopeful it caused another twinge in the vicinity of his groin. "Fine. She can sit on the sand.
Eduardo
!"

"Aye, Captain?" The shout had gone down to the main deck, but the lad was standing right behind him, which caused his scowl to deepen.

"I am placing Mistress Chandler in your care. Lose her or take your eyes off her for one second and I’ll peel the skin off your arse with my teeth. We leave in two minutes."

~~

Eva sat in the middle of the longboat, her pulse racing as two oarsmen in front and two behind rowed the tiny landing party through the channel. They travelled several hundred yards, around lazy bends and darkly shaded narrows before there was a noticeable decline in the height of the stone walls on either side. Birds nesting in crevices and on ledges squawked as they passed. Some flew up, startled, which was the signal for others to join in and soon the echo of their cries was bouncing back and forth off the walls as the seabirds circled and swooped overhead.

Around a final bend, the wall off the starboard beam turned into more of a rocky slope which ended where the inlet itself ended, in a perfectly round, incredibly blue deepwater hole with a sandy ledge off to one side. It was there they landed the jolly boat and pulled the bow up onto the sand. Eduardo hopped out first and offered a hand to Eva, followed by Dante and Stubs, both of them heavily armed, wearing a brace of pistols each, as well as belted swords and daggers.

Leaving Eduardo and Eva with the boat, the men set off up the slope. They found a goat path and made the climb with relative ease, then vanished over the top of the cliff.

Eva thought once she stepped onto the sand, she could dance and spin about, happy to have solid ground beneath her again. The opposite happened, however. Her legs felt as awkward as a newborn's. She had become so accustomed to balancing against the roll and sway of a deck, that to stand on solid, unmoving land almost made her nauseous.

"Goodness," she said, reaching for support against a large boulder.

"Sea legs," Eduardo explained. "Takes a few hours, sometimes a day or more to get your land legs back after a long voyage. Helps if you sway a bit, like this." He rocked his upper body by way of example, which only made Eva's head spin faster watching him.

She focussed on the water instead, noting where the sandy ledge turned into rock then dropped straight down into the depths. The water was so clear she could see a long way down before the bottom turned midnight blue, then black.

"Bottomless holes," Eduardo said. "No tellin' how deep they are. Seen them here an' there on other islands where the natives say creatures that are half shark and half octopus live below. Some say if you swim out to the middle, one of 'em will come up and suck you down like in a whirligig."

"I guess I will not go for a swim then," Eva murmured.

"You can sit here in the shallows safe enough," he suggested. "Might not get another chance for a while."

Liking his own idea, he hopped onto one foot and removed a boot, then hopped to the other. He waded in fully clothed and, after dunking himself underwater, used handfuls of the fine sand to scrub the soot and gunpowder residue from his shirt and breeches.

Eva glanced down at the state of her own garments. Having nothing else, she’d dressed in the same clothes she’d had on in the surgery, which were spattered with dried blood stains.

She sat on a rock and removed the supple leather boots Eduardo had scrounged for her. She walked gingerly to the edge of the water and swished her toes around, then stepped in until she was wet to the tops of her thighs. She copied Eduardo and lifted handfuls of the fine silt from the bottom, working it into the stains on her shirt and breeches until both garments were somewhat cleaner.

Eduardo, scarlet-faced from trying not to notice how the wet shirt clung to the shape of her breasts, walked to the edge of a rock rim where the water came up to mid-chest. He peered into the midnight depths and when no monsters were forthcoming, gave a loud hoot and dove into the water. He swam the width of the pool, which was a goodly hundred yards across, and lingered there a while before paddling leisurely back. By then, Eva was perched on a rock, twisting the water out of her shirttails and hair.

It was still early in the morning and eastern wall of rock was keeping the sun from shining down on them, but they could tell by the brilliant blue of the sky that it was going to be another hot, clear tropical day.

"How long have you been with Captain Dante?" she asked.

"Since I was ten," Eduardo answered proudly. "I was born on Pigeon Cay. My father and Cap'n Gabriel's father—Captain Simon—have been best mates since they both sailed with Cap’n Drake.”

“Geoffrey Pitt. Spaniards call him… Geoffrey Pitt.” He laughed at his own joke before continuing. “I've an even dozen brothers an' sisters. My next older brother, Ramon, sails with Cap'n Juliet, an' the oldest one, Simon, sails with Cap'n Jonas."

"Quite the family affair," she said, smiling.

"More like an honor, Miss. Father makes us learn as much as we can from books—not even allowed to step foot on one of the big ships without memorizing every star in the sky or knowing every cleat and line and strake on a ship—but what's in the captains' heads is way more exciting and important. Can't teach it out of books, nope."

"You're not afraid... when the ships go into battle?"

"Course I'm afraid. We're all afraid. It was real bad on the
Valour
, when them Spanish captured us and tied us all up to the shrouds. Lost some of my best mates." His handsome young face fell for a moment, remembering. "But you can't think ‘bout what happened yesterday nor worry about what might happen tomorrow. We're livin' an' breathin' an' the sun is shinin' today an' that's all that matters."

Eva looked around at the heavy shadows and shivered in her wet clothes. "The sun is shining somewhere, for sure, just not here. Do you suppose I might be allowed to climb to the top long enough to warm up and dry off?"