The Pirate Captain (104 page)

Head bent, Nathan turned and took several pensive steps. Spinning around, he came back at her, stabbing an accusing finger at her. “So then, just what, exactly, were—I mean, are—you looking for?”

“I thought we were both looking for the same thing.”

“As did I!” He stalked the room with a flurry of hands. “Until I heard you in there beating yourself in the head for it, fool that I was. But don’t mind what I say: I’m known to be a little balmy! Balmy Nathan, that’s me, and getting balmier by the minute!”

“So, fill me full of lies, get me in bed, and then plead insanity? What’s next, Captain, throw me to the crew?”

Nathan stormed toward her, driving her back several steps. His eyes narrowed menacingly. “Mayhap you shan’t be so fortunate. I fancy keeping you here, torture you with me presence.”

Cate choked back a number of retorts. She turned her back as the tears of self-loathing began to well.

“I can’t believe I was so stupid, and so gullible!” She dropped her forehead in her hand with a soft smacking sound. “A few sweet words and I melt like a maid.”

“Go ahead, beat yourself in the head some more! You seem
so
much the better for it!”

“It must have been a bare challenge: tell her what you think she wants to hear and she’ll melt.”

“I thought you
did
want to hear it.”

“Fool that I was, I couldn’t wait to hear it from you.” Closing her eyes, she tipped her head back. “I wanted you so badly, for so long.”

“No longer than I, dear woman. No longer than I.”

“Lickspittle,” called Beatrice.

“Stow it!” they cried together.

From opposite ends of the gallery, their parallel soliloquies stopped abruptly. Cate looked to Nathan for affirmation that he had actually said what she thought she had heard, but found only the same look on him.

Cate sagged against the sill, propping her head in her hand. “Nathan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I mean it wasn’t…I thought last night was because you were bored or…something. Never once had you given the slightest hint you were even remotely interested.”

“Never once?” he echoed, gaping. “Suffering Jesus, I made every overture known to answer on seven continents. Seems me efforts were wasted then,” he sighed, ruefully. “Then what the bloody hell is all this huffing about…about?”

“This morning, you were so…so…gone,” she finished lamely. Her arm dropped limp at her side. “I thought you were done with me.”

Nathan sidled closer. “Pirate, eh? Naught more to be expected from such a blackguardly dog.”

There was no recrimination in his voice, but his barb was deadly accurate. Nothing hurts more than the truth, especially when it’s used against you.

“You said you didn’t wish just once,” she pleaded, looking up. “You said…I mean, I thought…? Didn’t you say…?”

Nathan cocked his head interestedly. “You claim there were negotiations, a parlay?”

Cate closed one eye, trying to recall. “That could be a word, I suppose.”

“And pursuant to said parlay, there was an accord?” he queried, sliding nearer.

“It could be said.” Suddenly she wished she had paid far more attention to the finer rules of piracy recited her first day aboard.

“I see.” Nathan's jaw twisted sideways in thought as he came nearer. “A pirate is either bound by his word, or be seen as a swivel-tongued mountebank. In consideration of said parlay, might you enlighten me as to what exactly were the terms to which I agreed?”

He batted his lashes at the end, the charmer!

“You said ‘treasure’ and ‘cherish.’ That’s what you said.”

Her breath caught as he stalked her, his eyes, dark and avid.

“Only a base-souled dog would fail to comply,” he said.

“You said more than once,” Cate repeated with as much conviction as could be managed. Damn him, he was doing it again, rendering her as palpating and breathless as that aforementioned maid. “I distinctly remember.”

“Then I must keep my word, or lose me honor as a pirate.” A finger tracked up her arm, pausing to brush the delicate skin at the inside of her elbow as he asked, “Two?”

“That’s more than once.” Things were moving much faster than she was prepared for. Hoping to slow things down, she fell back a step, only to come up short against
Merdering Mary
.

“Twenty?” Nathan was next to her now, close enough to feel the heat of his body radiating. His breath blew across her neck and she shivered.

“It’s…that’s…more than once.”

An arm slipped around her waist. His hips pressing insinuatingly against hers, as he said, “I imagine, then, I shall be obliged to defer to your meticulous expertise to keep an exact record of how many more than once is managed.”

“An exact count,” she said with effort, those same enchanting fingers now following the curve of her ear.

“Lovely,” Nathan purred against her neck. “And exactly where, then, are we?”

“One.”

###

The night before, they had been tentative, shadowed by doubts and fears, afraid to disappoint and of what might be discovered. Now, they rushed in eager anticipation of what was to come. Nathan undressed in snatching motions. Leaving a trail of boots and accoutrements across the floor, he bore Cate, stumbling out of her skirt, back through the curtain. In his haste, he abandoned shedding his clothing in favor of ridding Cate of hers, his fingers scrabbling at her laces. With an impatient grunt, he jerked the shift’s ribbon and lifted her to take her breast in his mouth. In one more final surge, he swept her onto the bunk. She giggled in delight as he came down on top of her.

Hungrily devouring her mouth with his, Nathan paused long enough to blindly fling aside his breeches. Weeks of pent-up frustration and desire manifested as they tore at each other, demanding restitution for their mutual anguish.

They briefly retraced paths explored before. Beguiling fingers sought again her most sensitive places, preparing and opening. He came up hard and quick, a silky stiffness to her touch, writhing and cursing through clenched teeth. He rose over her as she opened to him, stroking and guiding him to her slippery cleft.

“I’m sorry, I…I can’t be gentle,” he gasped and plunged to the root.

Nathan clutched her close, his body straining and taut. A quick move of her hips gave him the permission he sought. Bracing a hand at the small of his back, she helped him set his motion, riding each thrust, absorbing the shock with her own need.

Two. Three. Four…

His breath became more ragged. Each drive was felt all the way to her womb. She buried her mouth in the hard cords of his shoulder to stifle her cries. He sought to pull away just before his release, but she held him as he shuddered, her flesh stroking him to his end.

###

Nathan reclined on the bunk with his eyes closed, a sheen of moisture glistening on the bridge of his nose. His hand resting on Cate’s back, he contentedly twirled a piece of her hair between his fingers. She lay with her head pillowed on his chest, toying with one of his braids. It was what she had dreamed: to lie with him, have him to herself, touching and holding.

Together.

“Why didn’t you come in last night?”

Nathan twitched at her question, but his eyes remained closed. “I did.”

Cate ran a finger down the slope of his belly and watched it ripple with gooseflesh, delighted in seeing his body respond to her. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Aye, well, I was there, nonetheless,” he said in quiet affirmation. His head stirred against the pillow. “You were sleeping.”

She rose on her elbows to better see Nathan's face. “You should have woken me.”

One eye cracked open in stern observation. Weighted by his afterglow, the lid closed again. “I tried…twice.” One hand stirred enough to partially exhibit two fingers.

“I must have been more tired than I thought.” She laid her head on his chest, the soft curls of hair tickling her cheek. “I’m sorry, Nathan. I never—”

Nathan pressed the same two fingers to her lips. One brow lifted as an eye slitted open. “Is this how we are to spend our days: apologizing?”

“But I—”

“Hist! Belay.” He bent to kiss her, and then re-settled, closing his eyes once more. “Sorrows come in legions, luv. We’ll face them another day, together.”

There was merit in what he said. Over the last weeks, words had failed them. Words had spoiled and clouded, dammed and barricaded, confused and falsely pledged. To add more would only add fuel to a fire one sought to extinguish.

“Take your shirt off; I want to see you,” she said, sitting up.

One dubious eye barely opened. “You’ve seen me before; I had it off last night.”

“I must have been distracted,” she said, peevishly, tugging at his shirttails. “I don’t remember. Take it off.”

Huffing and bearing a suffering look, Nathan sat up. When the garment finally cleared his head, he leaned back against the bulkhead. Cate tossed it aside, then arranged herself on her knees before him.

Nathan reclined before her, one leg bent. A band of daylight through the port fell across his torso. She had seen glimpses of him, moving under the fabric of his clothing when he twisted or turned. She had thought him slight when first met; he was anything but. He was solid and beautifully made, with long taut muscles drawn across an elegant frame. Even then, in his relaxed state, his shoulders and forearms were tightly corded. There was an air of quiet strength about him, cured and hardened by years of ship and sea.

She splayed her hands across his chest, sliding up and over his angular, well-set shoulders to push back the heavy fall of braids. Any part of him touched by the sun was tanned to a tawny bronze. Elsewhere, his skin was ivory, not milky but with the antiqued patina of mellowed ivory. She was familiar with the woad tattoos at his neck, ankles, and wrists, but was surprised to see that another belted his waist. Older and faded, but still bright blue against the pale skin, its design was the same, yet more simplistic. It was a warrior’s body, marked, but victorious. Life had taken its swipes and shots, and he had sidestepped them all, his spirit undiminished and indomitable. The tattoo over his heart said it all: “Freedom.”

She slid her hand sideways to a long scar. Old but still vicious, it followed the curved of his well-sprung ribs. “This one?”

“A boarding axe of Malacca,” he said in a near whisper.

She traveled a little further down. Whorls of fine dark hair led from the mat on his chest, down the long slope of his belly, to the ferocious thatch between his legs. A shorter, thicker scar lay just above the jut of his hipbone.

“Sword.” A hooked end of his mustache tucked up grimly. “Hiriam Maubrick.”

She twitched at the name. Maubrick had been Nathan’s First Mate, and one of the pair who shot Nathan and cast him adrift to die.

Cate continued her journey over his body, halting at each mark, while Nathan gave his quiet litany: sword fight in Madagascar, a slave trader’s knife in Singapore, a bullet’s graze pirating off St. Augustine, stabbed by a whore, or bitten by an enraged boar. Splinters, knives, pikes, fragments, and blades; glass, metal, fire, and bullet. The list of places was a world’s atlas: Algiers, Goa, Puerto Cabellos, Mocha, Guayaquil, Havana, Campeche. Fights, battles, beatings, tortures, and imprisonment, every variety of calamity, wreck, and ruin that could befall a body was there. Some were old and faded, virtually erased by time. Many were interlaced, one over the other, over the other. Some appeared to have healed well, while others showed the ravages of infection. One such rested on his upper left arm.

“Broken arm; fell from a tree, trying to fly. I was six,” he added as an all-encompassing explanation.

The tattoo on his forearm she knew: a swallow carrying a stabbed and bleeding heart. The swallow a mariner’s symbol for thousands of miles traversed, she had seen it often, but it was still a wonder if it had been the heart that was stabbed, or the spirit? His hooded lids precluded her inquiry; it was a confidence Nathan wasn’t willing to share. Nor did she inquire as to the squarish patch of corrupted skin over his heart, just below the “Freedom” tattoo. Thomas had told her of it, for it the scar had been by his hand, when he had cut away where Nathan had been branded.

His right hand laid palm up on his leg, the “S” brand in plain view.

“Lord Breaston Creswicke, of the Royal West Indies Mercantile Company.” Otherwise detached, that came through a set jaw.

Nathan looked to see Cate’s reaction. He had told her of how he had come to be branded, but it had been a half-truth. His eyes hardened, desiring to know how much she knew. She dropped hers to the space between them.

Everything.

The corner of his mouth tucked up, and he sighed, displeased, but resigned.

Years at sea were revealed in the tattoos of the swallows on Nathan's knuckles. The harshness of that life could be seen in his fingers, the off-angled and enlarged joints from multiple fractures and dislocations. Violence showed in the lacework of scars and the severed tips of the last two fingers of his right hand.

On the fat of his underarm was the rounded mark of a musket ball, its twin directly across, where the ball had passed through. There were two more—on his side, another on his upper leg—in which he hadn’t been so lucky: their rounded shape distorted by whatever implement had been used to dig them out. High on his right breast was another. The margins were blackened, however, the result of a weapon fired at very close range. He flinched when she touched it, not from soreness, but a sensitivity of another sort. She placed her hand lightly over it and met his gaze. Nothing further was necessary, unless he was so inclined.

He wasn’t.

Even in such a moment of intimacy, she either hadn’t sufficiently gained his confidence—or he couldn’t bring himself to speak of it.

Nathan's thighs and calves were curved and dipped with muscle. The hair there was like that on his arms: nearly as fine on his head, and not near as dense on his chest. Down the length of his left thigh ran the wickedest scar of all, thick and gnarled, cleaving deep into the muscle. She didn’t have to ask; Thomas had told her. It had nearly cost Nathan his leg.