How To Please a Pirate (2 page)

She yelped and rubbed her bum with her free
hand.

“I warned you. You invited that with your
carelessness.” One corner of his mouth jinked up. “Perhaps when
we’re done here, I’ll take you over my knee and warm your arse
properly.”

After all, she was attempting to kill him.
The least she might expect was a paddling. He’d even try not to
enjoy it too much.

“You truly are evil,” she spat the words at
him.

“Did you hear that, Meri? Evil, Jack calls
me.”

“Only evil, is it?” Meriwether’s scrub-brush
eyebrows rose. “Aye, well, he don’t know ye like I do, else he’d
not be so charitable.”

Gabriel turned back to parry Jack’s latest
thrust. “I don’t like being called evil when I’ve done nothing to
warrant it. Not lately, at any rate.”

“I’ve no care for your likes or dislikes.”
Her chin jutted upward in defiance as she raised her sword again.
“All I wish is for you to die.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t quake in my
boots.” Gabriel cocked his head at her and gave her a grudging nod.
Perhaps he needed to change tactics if he hoped to expose her true
colors.

“You know, Jack, you took a nasty blow. Might
have cracked a rib or two in your fall.” He bared his teeth in a
wicked smile. “Best shuck out of your shirt so we can have a
look-see.”

Her eyes flared and she backed a step or two.
“My ribs are fine.”

“Don’t be so sure. You were knocked
senseless. A cracked rib might puncture one of your lights. Nasty
thing that. Have you bubbling blood in no time. Now, I ask you,
would an evil man be so concerned for the well-being of one who
tried to waylay him? Let me help you there.”

Gabriel flashed his blade and, quick as
thought, flicked the top button from Jack’s shirt.

She squealed and clutched the shirt closed,
but not before Gabriel was rewarded with a glimpse of the sweet
meeting place between two tightly bound breasts.

There be a hidden treasure well worth the
finding.
He smiled at having correctly divined one of Jack’s
secrets.
Two actually
, he thought as his smile deepened.

“Aw, Cap’n. Ye shouldn’t frighten the lad
so,” Meri chided as he inspected the gelding’s tack and cinched the
girth tighter. “Sours the liver, it does. Makes ‘em hardly worth
frying.”

“Steady on, Meriwether.” Gabriel circled the
girl slowly. She turned with him, her eyes spitting cold venom. “I
think I’ve discovered a better way to loosen Jack’s tongue than
your threat to fry his liver for breakfast. Come now. Off with the
shirt.”

She shook her head with vehemence. “You’re
not just evil. You’re a beast!”

“Freely admitted with pride.” He lifted his
tricorn and made a courtly leg to her. “You may dress him in lace
and gold trim if you like, but dandy or not, there’s a beast in
every man.”

“Don’t tar others with your sins.”

“No need, since I’m sure they have plenty of
their own.” With a deft movement, he caught her blade with his and
whipped it out of her grasp. The sword turned end over end, but he
caught the hilt cleanly. “But all men are part beast, the part that
craves what it does not have and stops at nothing to possess. Now,
Jack, if you value your skin, you’ll stand still.”

Gabriel stepped behind her and slashed the
back of her long shirt in a deep upside-down vee, exposing the
backside of her skin-hugging leggings and the muslin winding cloth
she’d used to bind her breasts. She gasped but couldn’t stop him
from looking his fill.

“Seems Jack’s already bound his ribs,
Meri.”

Gabriel’s gaze traveled lower.

No boy ever had such a bottom, the round
mounds shaped like an inverted heart. It was as snug a cove as a
man could hope for.

The beast in Gabriel roared for a moment,
tempting him with a vision of Jack bent over the nearest boulder,
leggings twisted at her ankles. His mouth went dry and his breeches
were suddenly uncomfortably tight. He’d been without a woman far
too long, but he bridled himself.

Once, in another life it sometimes seemed,
he’d been the son of a gentleman.

Perhaps he might be again.

“At least, an honest man will own up to his
beast,” he said between clenched teeth, as he tamped down the
desire she stirred.

“An honest beast,” she all but snarled at him
over her shoulder. “So you make a virtue of admitting your
faults.”

“A man like me must take virtue where he
may.” He came full circle and deliberately strafed her form with a
hot, knowing look.

Gabriel had never taken a woman by force in
his life and wasn’t about to start now, but Jack didn’t know that.
Let her think what she might. He needed answers.

“You’ll pardon me for saying so, but you’re
not much of a fighting man, Jack. Why did the men who attacked me
need you?”

Her lips clamped together.

He raised his blade. “You have more
buttons.”

“We were warned that the new baron was coming
to take possession of Dragon Caern. We were told you plan to turn
out all the souls who shelter there now. I was to lead a party of
fighting men to a likely spot to catch you before you reached the
castle,” she admitted.

“A totally unnecessary plan as I have no
intention of taking possession of anything,” Gabriel said.
“Besides, I suspect my father would have a thing or two to say
about being turned out. Rhys Drake may be getting on in years but
the old dragon won’t leave the Caern till they carry him out feet
first.”

Jack’s brows lowered and she studied Gabriel
through narrowed eyes. “Lord Drake is dead, God rest him.”

She wielded no sword, but she couldn’t have
delivered a more ringing blow. A stone lodged in Gabriel’s chest.
He sank onto the nearest rock as he tried to wrap his mind around
the thought of a world where his indomitable father was no
more.

“But unless you’re bastard born,” Jack said,
quick to follow up her verbal wallop with another telling strike,
“Lord Drake couldn’t have been your sire. The old lord only had two
sons and they’re both gone to God, too. The elder by a fever and
the younger by the sea.”

His brother dead, too. This was an
ill-starred day all around. Gabriel dragged a hand over his face
and looked up to find Jack staring at him quizzically.

“You can’t be him.” She swiped her nose on
her shirtsleeve. A nice boyish touch, but it came far too late to
fool him. “The youngest son’s ship went down with all hands.”

“Aye, well, there’s down and there’s down,”
Meriwether explained. “When we poor mariners what sank the
Defiant
found out Gabriel was a navigator trained, we sort
of commandeered him as it were.”

“Mariners?” Jack shot a glare at the old
rascal. “You mean pirates!” She turned back to Gabriel. “And you
went with them willingly?”

Gabriel snorted at her outrage. Had he ever
been that cocksure about anything?

“They fished me out of the burning wreckage
and offered me a choice. Turn to piracy or claim a watery grave
then and there.” Gabriel knew his father wouldn’t have approved of
his choice, even to save his skin. Not that Rhys Drake had ever
approved of anything Gabriel did. He crossed his arms over his
chest. “It was a compelling argument for a change of career at the
time.”

“And a brilliant career he made of it, let me
tell ye—”

“That’s enough, Meri.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Meriwether said with a grimace,
then he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “But ye ought to know
they called him the Dragon of the Caribbee—”

“That’ll do, Mr. Meriwether.”

A flash of recognition crossed Jack’s face.
“I’ve heard of you. The Cornish Dragon, terror of—“

“Just Gabriel Drake, if you please.” He rose
and sketched a mocking bow. “Your servant.”

“Gabriel Drake,” she repeated, her ears and
cheeks going scarlet as she realized her error. He was no usurper
after all. The man had every right to be here. Jack dipped in a
quick curtsey, then remembered herself and returned his bow. She
was doggedly determined to keep up her male disguise. “My Lord
Drake.” Then her eyes turned wary. “If that’s who you are in
truth.”

Gabriel was suddenly weary of the game.

“I’ve no need to prove it to you. Let’s away
to the castle,” he said as he lifted her up onto the gelding. The
lass gave a startled squeak when Gabriel pinched her bottom. He
swung himself up behind Jack with a satisfied nod. She tried to
wiggle down, but he pulled her tight to his chest. “You can go
upright or you can go flopped over the saddle with your bottom
bouncing to the sky. In fact, now that I think on it, I believe I’d
prefer you like that. But either way, but you’re going with
me.”

She went still as a hare in a thicket.

“That’s better.” He nudged the gelding into a
sedate walk. “To start with, you might tell me what a young lady is
doing traipsing about the countryside dressed as a lad.”

“My lord, I’m not—”

“Spare me your denials, or I’ll just have to
finish unbuttoning that shirt to make doubly certain,” Gabriel
threatened. “I may have been at sea a long time, but I still know
the feel of woman’s rump when it meets my hand. Now talk.”

He flicked open the top remaining button on
Jack’s shirt and moved down to the next one. Her bared skin was
satin to his touch. A bit of meddling with this cheeky wench was
just what he needed to ease the fresh ache in his heart. He
suspected the best way to irritate Jack was to make sure she
enjoyed it as well.

Irritating her was the best idea he’d had all
morning.

He dipped his head to take her earlobe in his
mouth and was rewarded by her sharp intake of breath. He bit down
just enough to make her shiver and then released her.

His voice rumbled by her wet ear. “Who are
you
in truth?”

“Stop, for pity’s sake, stop and I’ll tell
you.” She grabbed at his hand to keep him from moving on to the
next button. It was hard enough for Jacquelyn to breathe with her
breasts bound so tightly. Being mauled by a bloody pirate made
drawing breath even harder. “But in truth, my name
is
Jack.”

“Wrong answer,” Gabriel said, popping the
next horn button right off.

A deep vee of flesh showed beneath her throat
now as he parted the shirt. Where his fingers stroked her bared
skin, a shiver trailed in their wake.

“Try again,” he suggested as he toyed with a
lower button.

“You, sir, are no gentleman,” she said
between clenched teeth.

“And neither are you, Mistress
Jack.
”

His touch was maddening as he slid his
fingertips over the bulge of her breasts. She drew a hitching
breath. Who’d have guessed his naked hand was more dangerous than
his blade?

“You didn’t really think I was fooled by your
boy’s rags, did you? You may have bound them tightly, but there’s
no disguising a ripe pair of pips like these,” he rumbled, his tone
husky as he continued to tease the tops of her breasts. “As fine a
bosom as ever filled a man’s hand.”

Merciful Heaven! He found the crevice between
them and slid a broad finger into the tight space. Her nipples
hardened at his hand’s nearness and for a moment, she imagined him
plunging beneath her binding cloth to cradle her breasts in his
calloused palms.

A dark part of her wanted him to do just
that, she realized in dismay. She struggled against him with
renewed vigor.

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she
demanded. “No gentleman would believe it so.”

“Steady on, lass. Since I’ve already admitted
to being a pirate, the fact that I’m no gentleman goes without
saying. A name, my sweeting. That’s all I ask. Or perhaps you’d
like me to start unbinding you next?”

Had he somehow guessed at her body’s mutinous
reaction to him?

“Wren. Jacquelyn Wren.” She slapped at his
hand as the gelding’s jarring trot rattled her teeth.

“Well, Mistress Wren, it’s pleased I am to
make your acquaintance, to be sure.” He buried his nose in her hair
and inhaled. “I have been far too long at sea.”

“Pity you didn’t stay there.”

He leaned down to whisper in her ear. His
warm breath pricked the stray hairs that had escaped her boy’s
queue to stand at full attention.

“I love the grey swells of the sea, it’s
true,” he said. “But these swells give a man even more
pleasure.”

His hand splayed across her bound breast. A
jolt of something forbidden shot from her nipples to her inner
core.

What was wrong with her? She was no
light-skirt, after all. And this man was dangerous.

If only he didn’t smell so wickedly good . .
.

“Let me go!” she demanded.

Instead he slid his arm down to her waist and
cinched her tight against him. Her thighs rode on his muscular
ones. Her bum pressed against his groin. A hard bulge rose to meet
her softness.

“So sorry to disappoint you, Miss Wren. I’m
not in the habit of acquiescing to the requests of those who
attempt to waylay me,” he said with exaggerated politeness. “There.
Was that gentlemanly enough for you?”

“You wouldn’t know how to behave like a
gentleman if your hope of heaven depended upon it!”

“You’re probably right,” he said agreeably.
“The company of pirates tends to dull a man’s higher sensibilities.
But before you cast stones at me, Miss Wren, you might look to your
own actions. Leading a party of n’er-do-wells with murderous
intent, strutting about in breeches . . . you must admit your own
behavior has been far from ladylike.”

“But I was only trying to protect—“ she
stopped herself. The less this brute knew about those at the
castle, the better. She might still be able to hide them from him.
“I didn’t join in the attack on you, more’s the pity, but I did get
a clout on the head for my trouble.”