A Pirate's Possession (21 page)

Her hand was silk as it cupped him. He looked past her mouth to her breasts, which swayed slightly. He'd never touched such sensitive breasts. And hell, he thought as her teeth grazed him, he couldn't think about that, not with what Claire was doing, or he'd spill his seed into her mouth. Though the thought held merit, it wasn't her mouth he wanted to pour himself into.

He managed a few more minutes, but his toes were curling and sweat that had nothing to do with the sun beaded his forehead.

He flipped her over again, kissed her deeply. He ravaged her with his mouth. His hands found those sensitive breasts and cupped them hard in his hand. She gasped.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, pulling back.

“No. I've just never felt—”

“Me either,” he said. He shifted lower, drew his fingers across her core, and felt the hot stickiness of her desire.

She wasn't a virgin, but she was his. He plunged inside her to the hilt, rocked with her until she gasped his name, until she wrapped her legs around him. He withdrew, slid back in, slick and hot with her heat surrounding him.

He held her head between his hands, mated his tongue with hers. He felt it now, the flick of flame, the promise of release. Not yet, he thought. He wanted it to go on forever.

But she moaned, raising her hips to meet his thrusts. Hell, he couldn't hold it anymore. He lowered a hand to her breast and plucked the nipple into a tight peak. Hearing his name on her lips drove him harder. But he wanted her with him. He moved lower still, slid a hand between them to the tight bud of her arousal. He pressed into it, circled it.

And felt her clasp around him like a fist.

He moaned, buried his head into her neck, and gave in to the pleasure of knowing Claire was finally his.

Sixteen

Claire lay in a cradle of warmth and safety. She didn't have to keep her ears open for sounds of men approaching. She didn't have to worry that she'd be discovered or be caught unaware. She closed her mind to the palm fronds swaying around her and the sounds of parrots chattering from their roosts nearby. For the first time since she'd left her parents' home, Claire knew what it was to sleep deeply.

She woke, softly and gently as the whisper of a spring breeze. The warmth of the sun, diluted through the leafy canvas, fell softly onto her face. The air smelled of forest, rich with life.

Nate was pressed against her, his hand curved around her middle, and one long leg draped over hers. Claire had learned to rely on herself for shelter, money, and food. She'd been forced by circumstance to depend on nobody but herself and what she could do with her own two hands. But with Nate breathing evenly behind her, with his heat curling around her, Claire knew it was going to be difficult to go back to that life. It was hard, it was cold, and it was lonely.

“You didn't sleep long,” his murmur rumbled just behind her ear.

Needing to see him, she turned in his arms and smiled at the sleepy expression on his face.

“How did you know I was awake?”

“You stopped snoring.”

Laughter bubbled from her throat. “Then perhaps I ought to count myself lucky I had my back to you. Otherwise I'd be accused of drooling as well.”

His brows arched; his fingers trailed her neck. “I'm not opposed to a little of that, now and again. Under the right circumstances.”

“Is that so?”

“Hmm.” His fingers dipped between her breasts. His thumb brushed her nipple.

The reaction was instant. Her flesh responded to his touch, and it yearned for more. In a fluid motion, he rose above her, pressing her into the boughs. His mouth feasted on her, from neck to belly and every speck of skin in between. His tongue washed her and it set her ablaze. He didn't have to ask for her to part for him. When he slid down her body, she eagerly gave him everything he was after. For it was the same as what she wanted.

To be connected, and oh, as his tongue once again swept her away in a pool of desire, to be wanted with such hunger.

He took her, with mouth and hands, to the edge of the world. And once he had her there, he held her suspended.

“Nate, please,” she begged. Her hands latched on to his slick back and her fingers dug in for purchase.

“Please what?” he asked as the proof of his passion teased her opening.

She may have wept, she may have pleaded. She wasn't sure. She only knew that when her body bowed, when everything inside her let go, Nate was there, taking the fall with her.

 

 

The sun was sliding its way toward dusk. Though it was bright yet, darkness would come soon enough and Claire wanted to be back at camp by then. She'd left Nate sound asleep and, once clear of the trees, had charged down the beach. She didn't relish what had to be done, but the idea of not doing anything was intolerable. Regardless of the past, her father deserved some sort of burial.

And so she picked her way over the rocks, which were cooler now, toward the cave. The tide was coming in and the sea was now halfway up to the waterline. When she dropped from the rocks to the entrance to the cave, the water rolled around her waist.

After her near drowning, it wasn't a comfortable feeling.

She peered in, and as she'd feared, it was darker now than it had been earlier as well. With the water filling and the sun lowering, the light had been cut by half.

But it was enough, she told herself. It had to be. Gathering her courage, Claire waded into the cave. It seemed to close around her when she stepped through the mouth of it. Her chest tightened and her loud breaths echoed off the stony walls.

Her father hadn't been found far from the opening, and Claire could only hope that that hadn't changed with the incoming water. Knowing the bottom was flat with no sudden drops, Claire moved as fast as she could. Her eyes searched the surface of the water because, she thought with a twist of her stomach, the skull would float.

Some light rippled beneath the surface. Fists of sunlight pushed their way through the boulders above her head. They helped her not only to see but also to keep going. Had it been darker, she wasn't sure she'd have had the courage to come inside. Even for her father.

Water licked the walls as she moved. A gentle wind breathed through with the light. A dripping sound came from somewhere in the darkness. Alone, she thought, as her father had been.

“Don't think about that,” she scolded herself. Neither would she think about how the water was now riding under her breasts or how her heart was shaking.

She'd have to find it soon. Claire knew a cave full of water, especially one that had already claimed her father, was the last place she wanted to be trapped in.

Pushing on, Claire cast a glance back to the cave opening. It was half filled. Her whimper echoed off the walls and filled her ears. She couldn't go on. Already the icy fingers of panic were clawing in her throat. She plunged her hands into the water to help push her way forward and promptly felt something hard brush her fingers.

Her scream ripped from her throat. Hundreds of her yelled back with the echo.

“Oh, God, oh, God.” Her hands shot from the water, fisted at her throat. Breathing through her mouth, she gulped in air even as the skull bobbed to the surface before her. She choked back another scream.

“Claire!”

She spun, her heart galloping in her chest.

“Nate.” She said it on a long breath of relief.

“Are you coming out or do I have to come in there and pull you out?”

He wasn't happy. His tone was a sharp blade of annoyance but Claire didn't care. She'd never heard a more wonderful sound.

“I'm coming.”

She looked at the skull, had to will away any sentimentality. For the moment, until she could get out of there, it was just a thing.
Just a thing
, she told herself. But her hands trembled violently when she took it between her palms.

 

 

He'd woken to find her gone, again. This time, however, he didn't believe she was simply tending to nature's needs. He'd had a feeling, deep in his gut, where she'd gone. Because he'd have done the same thing.

He'd rushed through the trees, earned himself more than a few slaps across the face from the fronds he didn't bother to shove aside. He'd had thoughts of her slipping off rocks, knocking her head, and drowning. Or simply getting caught in the incoming tide. His thoughts on that had been warranted when he'd skidded onto the beach and seen that the water was indeed rising.

Running past the unopened chests, he'd raced to the rocks. Only then had he slowed his steps. Then he'd heard her scream. He didn't remember climbing the rocks, or jumping into the water. The next thing he knew he was in the cave. She'd been all right, he reminded himself, but it had angered him to think she'd come back alone.

But when she'd waded to him, her hands held high and the skull clasped between them, her face gray as ash, he'd bit back his anger. He'd held it while they walked to the remains of the town and the graveyard beyond it. He thought he'd done a fine job of keeping it tethered when she'd refused his help and dug the small hole with her own two hands.

Though it cost him, and his teeth ached from the effort, he'd waited until she'd eaten and a fire roared to ease the darkness that had fallen. But damn it all, a man had his limits and Nate had reached his.

“Why the hell didn't you wake me? I'd have gone with you.”

“I know that.” She poked at the fire with a branch. The wood shifted and hissed.

He ground his teeth some more. “And?”

She shrugged. “It wasn't for you to deal with.”

“So that's the way of it, is it? I can bed you but nothing else?”

Her gaze snapped to his. “You weren't complaining about that this afternoon.”

“Did you think I cared so little for you that I wouldn't help you with such a thing?”

“You were sleeping.”

“That's a sorry excuse, even for you.”

Claire threw down her stick and leapt to her feet. “What is that supposed to mean, ‘even for me'?”

He stood as well, went toe to toe with her.

“Only that you always have an excuse, don't you, when it's convenient? I was sleeping—therefore, you didn't bother to wake me. I waited too long, so you married another man.”

Her mouth pinched. “That hurt me every bit as much as it hurt you. I'll not stand here and have you throw it in my face!”

“How am I to know it hurt you when you won't tell me anything of it other than he was a sorry sort in bed?”

She reared as though slapped, but managed to keep her eyes on his. Eyes which were shadowed with hurt.

“That's right,” she answered coldly. “He was.”

“Hell.” Nate rubbed his hands over his face, took a deep breath, and fought to rein in his temper. “You could have at least trusted me enough to tell me where you were going.”

“And if I had, you'd have let me go alone?”

“I don't know.”

“At least you're honest about that.”

“I've never lied to you. Never.”

“And we're back where we started.” She threw her hands wide. “I've lived with the thought that you broke your word to me. I believed it for eight years. Forgive me if it takes me more than a day to accept otherwise. Besides, it's not as though you're brimming with trust. You wouldn't trust me to sleep below decks without bedding half your crew in the process.”

He sighed, stepped back. “I never thought you'd sleep with my crew. That was a way to strike at you.”

“Well,” she breathed out. “You hit the mark.”

“Trust doesn't come readily for me either. I was young when I came to the orphanage but I vowed, once I stepped inside those doors, that nobody was going to hurt me again. A physical blow I could tolerate, but no other. I gave you more of me than I ever thought I could trust anybody with.”

Claire looked down, properly chastised. “You never told me that.”

He'd never told her any of it. She'd asked, of course, many times in those years they'd shared at the orphanage, but he'd been too mortified to tell the truth. Rather than lie, he'd said nothing. To this day, nobody knew his past, not even the women who'd run the orphanage at the time he'd arrived.

“It's why I never went looking for you. I was mad that I'd let you get close enough to me to hurt me like that. I felt like a fool for believing the words you'd told me.”

Claire sat on their bed of boughs and looked up at him with sad eyes. “Was it so easy to believe that nothing we'd shared had mattered to me?”

Nate exhaled, looking out into the darkness. He'd never dreamed of telling his past to anyone but it seemed the time had come. He needed to bury it the way Claire had buried her father. And the only way he knew to do that was to exhume it first.

“I had reason to believe that nobody could love me.” He took a deep breath, then another. “I never knew my father. Or,” he added with a shrug as he turned back to her, “perhaps I did. Who's to know?” At her confused expression, he explained further. “My mother was a whore. There's no gentle way to put that, for that's what she was. She peddled herself on the street, in the taverns, on ships. She was always surrounded by men. It's possible one was my father and I never knew it.

“Our life,” he continued, hating the way the memories were still so clear after all this time, “consisted of sleeping in strange beds. Well, she slept in a bed, I was always relegated to the floor. A few times, she made me sleep outside.”