Footsteps sounded on the pier near the shore, announcing the approach of the governor’s men.
I held my breath and gripped the side of the rocking boat as Reynolds jumped in behind me. I didn’t have to look at my quartermaster’s face to glean his thoughts about our unwanted passenger. His silence roared against my back, making me shiver.
Without a word, Reynolds stabbed the oars into the water and shoved us out to sea.
To Jade.
My home and refuge.
I knew every cable, spar, and inch of canvas she carried. Every day I toiled as hard as her hardest-working crew member, proving I deserved to be her captain. After commanding her through years of cruises, with prizes and booty to show for it, I’d more than earned my position among the crew and thereby their respect.
Priest’s return to Jade jeopardized everything. He cared more about satisfying the urges between his legs than the common good of my ship and her mates.
The one-hundred-and-twenty-man crew was always spoiling for a fight. That worked to my advantage as long as the fight wasn’t against me. But if Priest undermined, manhandled, or challenged me in front of them, I would appear weak.
A weak captain fell in disfavor, and a democratic crew wouldn’t hesitate to rid themselves of the weakness and vote in a new leader.
Rallying that kind of mutiny was my husband’s specialty.
Through cunning, charisma, and clever language, he knew how to talk his way onto a ship, inspire the crew into throwing their captain overboard, and coerce them into voting himself in as the ultimate authority. Once he grew bored with his conquest, he moved on to the next one.
Three years ago, he boarded Jade intending to do exactly that.
Then he met me.
Somewhere between his shameless flirting beneath the ratlines and my orgasmic gasps to God against my cabin door, he decided he was more interested in my body. And my heart. Both of which he consumed, betrayed, and irretrievably lost.
Now he was back to reclaim and repeat.
I would let him believe he won, let him get physically close enough to lower his guard. Then I would clap him in irons and throw him in the hold.
As Reynolds rowed us into the shrouded safety of the sea, Priest’s steady gaze never strayed. He watched me with the focus of a hunter, heating my blood and affecting its flow through my veins.
“I’m sorry about Charles Vane.” Deep, predatory, and unapologetically lustful, his voice purred across my skin.
That voice, by Christ. It caressed me in places I gave no license to touch, and that enraged me beyond reason.
“You’re not sorry.” I flexed my hands, my breaths seething. “You knew I would come out of hiding for Charles and jumped at the chance to use my grief for your own gain.”
“I’m resourceful.” He wet his lips. “And truly, I regret the way Charles died. I would’ve preferred to execute him myself.”
He’d always despised my relationship with Charles, specifically the part where I gave Charles my virginity.
Priest’s jealousy had no restraint or shortage of skill with a cutlass. As several maimed men had discovered, anyone who touched me without Priest’s consent lost their hands, their tongues, and the flesh between their legs.
There was a time when I found comfort in his savage overprotectiveness. But now I saw it for what it was.
Mad hypocrisy.
While Priest didn’t allow anyone near me, he didn’t apply that rule to himself and the random doxies who stirred his lust. He loved women. He loved to fuck, and I was under no illusion about what he’d been doing the past two years. Imagining it prickled heat behind my eyes and spread poison through my gut.
“I hate you.” My broken whisper exposed too much. Too much pain. I gave him too much power to hurt me.
“I’ll rectify that.” He sprawled on the seat across from me and stretched out his legs, flanking mine. “When I kiss you, undress you, and lick you…here…” He hooked his boot between my legs and pressed the toe against the juncture of my thighs. “I’ll remind you why you married me.”
“Your cock isn’t the reason I married you. It’s the reason I left you. Because you liked to put it inside other people.” I shoved his boot away, but my fingers clung to the worn leather.
Familiar leather. Black and soft and creased with heavy use, it wasn’t just any pair of jackboots. Seven years ago, they were left on a beach by a pirate who died wearing deerskin moccasins.
“It sickens me that I gave you these.” A clamp squeezed around my heart, and I closed my eyes against the anguish. “You’re not at all the man I thought you were.”
“Perhaps not. But no man will ever live up to the ideal you hold for Edric Sharp.” He slowly pulled his foot from my grip and softened his voice. “I treasure these boots. For two years, they were all I had of you. For that, I don’t regret keeping them.”
His words hit their mark, burrowing beneath my ribs. Would the pain ever stop? It wasn’t supposed to end this way. He had done this to us.
I breathed carefully through my nose, trying to silence the agony he so expertly ran through me.
But Reynolds had heard enough, given the threatening growl in his voice. “If you loved her, you’d leave her be.”
“That weak mentality is precisely why you’re still alone.” Priest wedged my compass into the waistband of his breeches and scrutinized his brother. “Still pining after my wife, I see. You’ve had two years to stake your claim. How many times did you attempt to warm her bed in my absence?”
The oar smacked the water behind me, and Reynolds surged to his feet, jostling the boat.
“Don’t answer that.” I gripped Reynold’s arm, holding him back until he sat and resumed rowing.
“He doesn’t have to answer.” Intelligence glinted in Priest’s bladed eyes. “Had he claimed you, he would’ve killed me before I stepped onto this boat, your rules be damned.” He slanted forward, resting an arm on his knee. “Had he claimed you, I would’ve—”
“Mutilated and castrated him. I haven’t forgotten your threats.” I bent in, leaving a sliver of space between us. “Give me the names of everyone you bedded since we married. It’s time I follow your practices and collect some body parts of my own. It’s only fair.”
His mouth flattened into a severe line, and he leaned back. Effectively silenced. And there he remained until we reached Jade.
With my compass fastened to the leather straps around his waist and secured beneath his breeches, I had no choice but to follow him up the ladder and onto the deck with Reynolds at my heels.
The majority of the crew had gone ashore to debauch in the town for a few hours. But my most loyal men remained on board to defend Jade against anyone who might attack her. These seamen didn’t just know my husband. They had attended our nuptials and been his closest friends.
Priest rested a possessive hand on my lower back and escorted me past the boatswain, pilot, surgeon, carpenter, and a dozen other concerned faces. They all knew he’d betrayed me. They knew I’d been running from him ever since. I would only need to give them a signal, and they would charge him with weapons raised. He would fight back. Some of them would die. He would be injured, possibly killed, as well.
There was a better way to deal with this.