“End this marriage.” I straightened my spine. “Let me go, and you can have the compass.”
I didn’t mean it. Relinquishing my father’s gift would’ve been worse than losing a limb. I wouldn’t give it up without a fight.
“I already have the compass.” He twirled the instrument beside his leg. “As for you, I’m incapable of letting go.”
The instant I’d heard his Welsh lilt in the tavern, I knew it would come to this. He wanted me for reasons I couldn’t fathom, but none of those reasons mattered. Not after what he’d done to me.
Evading him for two years had been sheer luck, and now my luck had run out. The only way to escape him was to kill him.
Might as well run a sword through my own heart.
I couldn’t do it.
His gaze stayed on mine, and somewhere in that cruel scowl, he knew.
He knew I still loved him.
But if he thought we could pick up where we left off, he was out of his mind. Did he think that after the lies and infidelity, I would graciously forgive him? That I would welcome him back into my bed?
As if he gave a damn what I wanted. Priest Farrell took, plundered, and raided for his own enjoyment. He was a cold-blooded pirate who acted without moral restraint or conscience, especially when it came to his primitive desires.
“Where’s your ship?” I glanced at the shore behind him, unsurprised to find him alone. “No crew?”
“I released them this morning when I located you. Gave them the ship as a parting gift.”
Cold, silent dread filled my stomach, solidifying what I’d already surmised.
He had every intention of coming with me. And why not? His loyalties lay with no one and nothing. He was a lone sea wolf, bouncing from ship to stolen ship, seizing and discarding without attachment to the crews or the vessels he captured.
He meant to treat me with the same callousness.
Again.
“Return the compass.” I held out my hand, knowing damn well he wouldn’t surrender his only insurance.
“Not until we’re aboard Jade.” His mouth curved up at the corner, and his tongue caught the crease with a teasing lick, as his gaze descended to the bodice of my gown. “Once I remove that garish travesty from your body with my teeth, I’ll reacquaint myself with what lawfully belongs to me. Then I’ll return your precious compass.”
My nipples hardened in memory of his fastidious touch, and my pulse fluttered angrily in my throat. “The devil fetch you, you rotten, unfaithful bastard.”
“Your temper still makes me hard.” The velvet darkness of his voice curled beneath my rage. “Not an inch of your satiny skin will go unmarked before I’m hilt-deep inside you again.”
Reynolds leaped in front of me and thrust out his cutlass. “You lost the privilege to touch her.”
“Watch yourself, Reynolds.” Priest slipped a dagger from his belt and picked his fingernail with it. “I’d hate to kill you. You’re like a brother to me.”
“I am your brother, you bleeding cunt.”
“By half. God knows I have enough of those to fill a galleon.”
“Because your mother was a whore with the sores of syphilis dangling about her stretched lips.”
Priest closed his eyes and went preternaturally still. The air cracked on the next breath, and they lunged at the same time. But I was braced for it, already jumping between them with my arms outstretched.
“Enough.” With a hand on each marble-hard chest, I shoved them apart. “By my account, both of your mothers were whores, and your father was no better, seeing as he tried to kill his only sons.”
“Just so.” Reynolds stepped away from my touch. “We were pirating his ship.”
Stealing from their own father. It had been Priest’s idea, and Reynolds and I had gone along with it. I almost lost them both that day, but in the end, the battle had turned in our favor. It had been my sword on which their father fell.
“I saved both your backsides, remember?” I shoved them farther apart, keeping an eye on Priest, as my hand tangled in the laces of his shirt.
I should have pulled away, but it had been too long. Two years too long. I felt that separation in the pads of my fingers as they slid across familiar ridges of hot muscle, basking in his masculine strength. Fearing it.
His nostrils widened, and he leaned in, pushing against my palm, testing my courage.
In the blackness of night, my senses sought the tempo of his heart, which pounded as furiously as my own. “Don’t come any closer.”
One touch would be my undoing. I could barely breathe in his presence.
His jaw set, and the lonely gap between us swelled with years of contempt and distrust. If I allowed him aboard my ship, in my cabin, I courted a harrowing outcome. He would seize the last of my determination, my dignity, until there was nothing left worth salvaging.
Unless I turned the tables and gave him a dose of his own deception.
I relaxed my fingers in his shirt and let him press into my space. He didn’t hesitate to crowd in, dipping his head and placing his words against my throat.
“We need to go.” He bit my neck, his teeth sinking fast and deep, making me whimper. “We have company.”
I jerked back, slapping a hand over the hurt as I searched the pier behind him.
Sure enough, silhouettes emerged from the shadows on the shore and strode in our direction. Moonlight illuminated their uniforms, and my pulse took flight.
Priest and I were wanted for murder and piracy and would be hanged if those men recognized us. Priest wasn’t even wearing a disguise, but his face didn’t show a trace of concern. On the contrary, the abyss in his eyes pledged to slay anyone who tried to interfere with his plans for me.
I spun toward the jolly boat while keeping the compass in my periphery. Staying alive was more important than a sentimental trinket, but I desperately needed both.
As Priest moved to leap into the boat, I swiped at the compass. He caught my wrist, yanked me against his solid frame, and pulled me down with him.
We landed against the stern, and my descent lacked all the grace of his. I stumbled back, stubbornly blocking his attempt to catch me. My backside hit the middle seat, and my feet went up, giving him an indecent view beneath my skirts.
Damnation!
Frantically putting myself back in order, I waited for a licentious comment. Thankfully, he spared me that, but there was no escape from his smoldering gaze.
Those hooded gunmetal eyes knew how to seduce a woman without words, pleasure her without touch, and make her feel like she was the center of his entire universe. He did all of that now. With a millisecond look.
My blood pounded, and my insides quivered as hunger spiraled through me, making it impossible to focus, to plan, to reason, only to crave the ecstasy I knew he could give me.
But I wasn’t his one and only.
How many women had he fucked over the past two years? How many times had he panted I love you into someone else’s ear?
God damn him, it hurt. The pain was never-ending, festering inside me and wringing my emotions into something ugly, vile, and unrecognizable.
I could never be with him again. Never trust him again. Hell, if I were even half the fierce pirate captain the stories claimed, I would torture him to the point of death, heal his wounds, and torture him again.
Another thing I could never do. But I did have a plan for him and would see it through before the night’s end.