We didn’t wait for anyone to drain and carry out the tub before staggering to bed. As I snuggled into Corbin, my limbs boneless and heavy, I double-checked that our activities hadn’t stressed his wound in any way, then kissed his chin and wrapped my arms around him with a happy, tired sigh.
He pulled me even closer, arranged my legs so that one of his was resting between mine, and kissed my ear.
“Amy?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you know what you said? At the end?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Ten seconds passed. “And?”
“Corbin, I’m warm, sleepy, and sated,” I said, pressing a kiss against his neck. “Too warm, sleepy, and sated to deal with anything but rest.”
He was silent for so long I thought he’d gone to sleep. “You said you loved me.”
I bit his shoulder.
“Ow.”
I smiled, but he didn’t see it.
“Amy?”
“Mmm?”
“You’re going to have to face your feelings some time.”
“I know.”
More silence. His breathing slowed and deepened. I relaxed, my breathing matching his.
“I love you, too, sweetheart,” he said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest.
I didn’t say anything to that, but I snuggled into him even more, listening with pleasure to the reassuring steady thud of his heart beneath my ear.
Chapter 22
For your foes are fierce and ruthless,
False, unmerciful, and truthless. . . .
—Ibid, Act II
“You, sir, are a poop.”
“I may be, but you love me. You, madam, love a poop.”
I glared at the man who alternately made my heart soar with joy and left me with an almost overpowering urge to throttle him. “We are not discussing personal things like emotions and who loves whom, although I’d like to point out that you declared your love for me first.”
“Keeping score, are you?” he teased.
“No. But it makes me go all warm and fuzzy that I didn’t have to pry it out of you. Back to the subject at hand—bringing an end to the blockade and providing supplies to my poor, starving townsfolk.”
Corbin leaned back in one of the chairs in Bart’s library, steepled his fingers, and tapped his chin with them. “No one in town looked to me to be particularly poor or starving. And I don’t deny in the least that I was in love with you before you finally decided to reciprocate. I’m a man. I’m superior that way.”
“I didn’t decide to reciprocate; it just happened,” I said, getting up from the big desk and marching over to stand in front of him. “And superior, my butt.”
He leaned sideways to look around at my backside. “Yes, it is, but you’re changing the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject; you are! I’m trying to bring an end to these stupid hostilities, and you keep distracting me with talk about our relationship.”
His eyebrows rose a hair. “I thought women liked to talk about relationships.”
“We do, but not all the time. Now, if you’re through discussing whether I may or may not love you—”
“Oh, you love me,” he said with a self-satisfied smile. I wanted to kiss it right off his face.
“—then perhaps we can move beyond these transparent attempts to distract me and get to the meat of the problem.”
“Your desire to repress your emotions?” he asked.
“Argh!” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air. “I am not repressing anything other than possibly the urge to wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze.”
“I’d rather you wrapped your hands around something else and squeezed,” he said with a wink. “Ever heard the ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’? There’s a line in there I think you’ll like: ‘Squeeze my lemon ’til the juice runs down my leg.’ ”
“Corbin!” I yelled, frustrated near to the breaking point.
“What?” he asked, an innocent look on his face that didn’t fool me in the least. “Don’t like the blues?”
“Argh!” I yelled again. “I don’t know whether to have you thrown off the island and never see you again, or rip off all your clothing and make wild bunny love to you.”
“There’s a fine line between love and hate,” he said placidly, then started laughing when I yelled a third time. “All right, sweetheart, I’ll stop, but you make it so easy for me.”
I glared at him. He held up his hands and promised to be good.
“
That
has never been in question,” I said, going back around the desk to reclaim my seat. I picked up the pre-sharpened quill and dipped it in the inkwell, trying to write without leaving huge black blotches and smears. “Now, I’m going to write up a statement that says you relinquish all claims on Turtle’s Back, then we can both sign it, and the blockade can end.”
“I’m not going to sign any such thing,” Corbin said pleasantly.
I looked up from the parchment. “You’re not?”
“No.”
“But you said you’d stop the blockade.”
“I said I’d come here and discuss an end to the blockade, yes. I never agreed to forgo my intentions to take Turtle away from Bart.”
“But he’s not here. I am,” I pointed out.
“Yes, you are now, but what if he was to come back? Would you fight him for control of the island?”
The serious mien of Corbin’s face told me he was in deadly earnest about this subject. I decided that the time had come to get a few things straight.
“No, I wouldn’t fight him for control. He left me in charge until he returned. It’s understood I would hand back the reins at such time as he comes back.”
“As I thought.” His fingers drummed on the arm of the chair. “And what about the mine?”
“The emerald mine?” I asked, a dull feeling cramping my stomach. I knew that money was the motivation for almost everyone in the game—the acquisition of it and the spending of it—but I had assumed that Corbin had endless resources as the game’s creator, and thus must be above such mundane things as acquiring wealth.
He nodded.
“Well, I talked to the town leaders about it, and they said it had been closed down a short while ago.”
“And?” he asked, his eyes burning on mine. I frowned, unsure what the intensity of his gaze meant. “What do you intend to do about it?”
“The mayor says that the mine brought prosperity to the island. I thought it would be good if it was reopened. This island has few natural resources and can’t even support the small population that’s here now. It just makes sense to use—after a detailed environmental impact assessment, naturally—the resources available. Within reason, of course. I certainly wouldn’t support any practice that provided the wholesale destruction of valuable resources and commodities.”
“You wouldn’t?” Corbin asked, a steely note in his voice. “Valuable resources such as, oh, say, people?”
“Huh?” The quill had dripped a big black inky blotch on the parchment. I set it down and gave Corbin a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? What people?”
“Try the sixty-five men that Bart sacrificed to his greed,” Corbin answered, his words sending a chill down my arms.
“Sixty-five men?”
“Surely you knew about that? Or has his stranglehold on this island precluded even the mention of the murder of sixty-five members of his crew?”
The chill swept up my arms to my back, making the skin on the back of my neck tighten with horror. “What are you talking about? Bart didn’t murder his crew—you did.”
It was Corbin’s turn to look stunned. “I
what
?”
“Well . . . murder might be a bit harsh since everyone died in battle, but it was your ships that destroyed them. Pangloss told me all about how you tried to take Turtle’s Back and lured Bart’s men around to the other side of the island where you had set up a trap.”
The look on his face was indescribable, but it made my heart wrench regardless. “You think I killed Bart’s crew? You really believe I’m capable of something like that?”
“It’s not a matter of capable, Corbin. They’re computer people—I knew you knew that, so I figured either you were testing out a function of the game, or you got a little too much into the role of scourge of the Seventh Sea. Are you telling me you didn’t kill Bart’s crew?”
“No, I did not kill them.” His eyes flashed as he jumped out of the chair, pacing the length of the room before turning and marching over to me. He leaned across the desk until his face was an inch from mine. “When Bart discovered that emeralds were the only thing this island produced, he started mining for them without any sort of expert help. And yes, before you ask, we did program in mining experts. They are expensive, though, so a player needs to have a good resource base to use them. But Bart didn’t. He sent team after team into the mines, regardless of their safety, all in the name of his desire for wealth. But one day his dreams came crashing down . . . along with the roof of the main shaft in the mine, killing all sixty-five members of his crew that he’d forced to dig emeralds.”
“Oh, my God,” I said, my stomach twisting in a sick ball. “How could that happen? It’s just a game—”
“An extremely complex game with literally hundreds of thousands of variables programmed for almost every eventuality. And since I believed that Bart was a computer player, I didn’t think anything of it at the time other than noting that his character chose to ignore a possible option for great wealth. But now I wonder if Paul hadn’t taken over Bart’s character right from the start. Disregarding the welfare of others seems very much his modus operandi.”
That I could believe.
“There was no battle between us, Amy. No luring, no trap, no honorable death for that matter—just a bunch of innocent people sacrificed to one man’s greed.”
“But . . . but Pangloss said . . . oh, God, he lied to me? He said he was off foraging for food that day.”
Corbin frowned. “The characters can mislead, but only a few can outright lie, and from what I recall of him, he’s not one of them. It’s possible that Bart lied to him about what happened, hiding the truth behind a story of an attack that killed everyone. That would explain the lack of bodies.”
“But . . . people would notice!”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. If he wanted to remain in charge, Bart may well have covered up the origins of his crew’s deaths—the loss of the crew to an attack by a feared pirate would bring the survivors together in a desire for vengeance, rather than setting them at his throat. I didn’t say anything about it because I was curious to see how the scenario would play out.”
I slumped back in my chair, having some trouble readjusting my mental impression of men I’d trusted. “I suppose it makes sense that Bart would hide it. Especially if he really is Paul, and not a computer player. Although I can’t believe that even Paul would be so . . . so . . . heinous as to sacrifice his crew like that.”
“Believe it,” he said grimly, going over to a leaded window to look out at the sea beyond the edge of the cliff. “You seem to have no trouble believing I was capable of doing the same thing.”
I caught a hint of pain in his voice that I knew I couldn’t allow to remain. I jumped up and went over to him, wrapping my arms around his stomach. “That was different, Corbin.”
He didn’t turn around and let me cover his face in kisses, as I had hoped. “Oh, really? How is it different?”
I kissed the back of his neck, instead. “It’s like I said—
you
know that these people aren’t real, but they don’t have the ability to make any such distinction, unless you programmed that into them.”
“I didn’t,” he said, pulling my hands free so he could turn around. “I suppose if I can believe you supported Bart’s intolerable cruelties, it’s only fair you can think me a mass murderer.”
“Waaaait a minute,” I said, pulling back. “You thought I supported Bart’s cruelties? I didn’t know he was doing anything wrong until you just told me.”
“You knew I wanted him out of power.”
“Yes, but I just figured it was you fulfilling your part in the scenario. All I heard was that you attacked the island willy-nilly and slaughtered almost all the men here. What was I to think but that you were taking the role of pirate to heart?”
He stared at me for a minute, then sighed. “I’m sorry, Amy. It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t know what happened. I’m an idiot for not remembering that no one knew the truth.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, too. Even if they were only computer people, I should have known that you wouldn’t do something so underhanded.”
“Am I forgiven?” He made big gray puppy dog eyes at me. I laughed.
“Yes. Am I?”
“Absolutely. Let’s have make-up sex.” He kissed my knuckles, then sucked one fingertip into his mouth.
“Man, what you can do with just your tongue,” I said, breathing heavily, praying my knees wouldn’t buckle. It took a massive effort, but I managed to pull my hand away from him and calm my suddenly racing heart. “Let’s take care of this blockade issue first.”
“Party pooper,” he said, watching as I (shakily) made my way back to the desk.
“True, but if I wasn’t, all we’d do is spend the day in bed having wild jungle sex.”
He retook his seat, a slight smile curling his lips. “And what’s wrong with that is . . . ?”
I thought. I couldn’t come up with anything. “Good point. However, before we indulge ourselves, I’d like to get those blockade ships out of my harbor, and supplies into town. What if we write up a statement whereby you recognize my authority in Turtle’s Back and promise not to attack while I or my duly appointed representative is in control?”
“Or you could just give me control of the island, and I’d allow you stay captain of Bart’s crew.”
I frowned. “
Allow
me to stay captain?”
“I could fight you for control of the island and crew,” he said with a smile that I didn’t much appreciate.
My eyes narrowed. “Then you’d lose on both accounts. You think I’m some sort of pushover who doesn’t know how to defend her island?”