He was scared, if such a thing were possible.
As much as I wanted to crush him with claims of orgies and passionate affairs, I couldn’t lie to him. It wouldn’t get my compass back, and I refused to sink to that level of vindictiveness.
But the truth made me feel small and beaten.
My loneliness was only part of it. I’d been holding onto the residue of hope that he hadn’t cheated, that it had all been a misunderstanding, which nursed my twisted need to remain faithful to him. Not to mention this sickening depth of love that hadn’t faded after two years without him.
It all rose up in a wall of self-loathing, putting pressure on my chest and closing my throat. I could do nothing but gulp back the lump that tried to escape as a sob.
He didn’t need to hear my answer. Comprehension softened his mean mouth. His shoulders fell with a shuddering exhale, and his gaze moved over me, not with its usual predatory gleam but in the assessing way of a concerned husband.
“If my heart was half as cold as yours,” I said, holding his unblinking stare, “I would’ve sought comfort in the arms of another man.”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had.” He stepped toward me, his gait graceful and deadly. “Make no mistake. I would’ve hunted down every bastard who touched you and torn him limb from limb. But I’m…” His gaze warmed, and his fingers twitched at his sides. “I’m overwhelmingly, undeservedly relieved. You humble me.”
There was nothing humble about him. His intimidating shadow fell over me, dwarfing everything in the room. Then his body closed in. Shirtless. Sculpted. Devastatingly handsome. Devastatingly dangerous. Just…devastating.
He was a feared man, a ruthless criminal, his very stance pulsing with power. But it wasn’t his physical strength that made me want to run.
I forced myself to hold still, pinned between him and the desk and the thickly charged air around us.
He took forever to make his next move, and when he did, it was with his hands on my face, cupping my jaw, tilting my head back. He regarded me with long-lashed, languid, molten-metal eyes that glowed in the shadows.
“I’m sorry.” His Welsh cadence was gloriously uneven as if the apology affected him more than me.
He wasn’t one to hide his emotions. He wore them like a badge. Even now guilt furrowed his forehead. Regret sank into the down-turned corners of his lips. And there was something else. Something that made him look at me like he never had before.
“Don’t you dare pity me.” I turned my head, pulling away. “I’m not your victim.”
“Pity? By God, Bennett, I admire you. I respect you, without reservation or design. I hold you on a damn gilded pedestal.”
Words.
Lies.
Everything out of his mouth was a blasphemous ululation.
“If I wanted to fill my ears with shit, I’d dunk my head in the chamber pot.” Clapping my gaze to his, I gave him my stoniest glare.
He glared back.
Unbending. Deadlocked. He wanted to entangle our future. I wanted to undo our past.
We stood at an impasse, a strait with no outlet that stretched heart beats. Fathoms. Leagues.
Timbers creaked around us. Footsteps groaned overhead. The rumbling of male laughter muffled the soft skittering of a nearby rat. And amid it all, the deep notes of Reynold’s voice commanded the crew to set sail.
A moment later, the thunder of the anchor’s great cable clanked through the hawseholes, and Jade heaved into motion.
Priest’s shapely mouth curved up at one edge.
I went for the compass.
The instant my fingers pushed past his waistband, I felt brass. He jerked back, but I held on, yanking the instrument free as he broke away.
With a triumphant shout, I tucked the treasure safely behind my back and darted around the desk, watching him as carefully as he watched me.
He didn’t chase. Didn’t so much as flinch in anger or grimace in defeat.
His inaction might have put me at ease if the guilt hadn’t remained in his expression. Remorse, apology, and again with the pity—it was all there in his luminous eyes.
Why was he looking at me like—?
Realization dumped ice water into my veins, and I swung the compass into view.
The instrument in my hand was the same size and shape as the one I cherished.
But this one wasn’t mine.
“No.” I shook my head and frantically scanned Priest’s rigid stance, even as I knew the compass wasn’t on him. “No, no, no—”
“Shhh.” He held up his hands and took a cautious step forward. “Bennett, listen…”
“Where is it?” A roaring started in my ears, and my heart cracked in my chest. “Tell me!”
“It took me two years to find you, and right now that compass is the only thing stopping you from putting more years between us. I can’t let you do that. You’ve given me no choice.”
Fear and rage burst from my lungs in an earsplitting scream. “What have you done?”
“I’m doing this for us.”
“You’re a dead man!” I hurled the brass impostor at his despicable head.
“Calm down.” He ducked, easily dodging it.
“Spineless dog!” I threw a porcelain platter, and it shattered on the wall behind him. “Heartless fiend!”
“Bennett…” He sidestepped another projectile plate, his reflexes like that of a serpent. Slippery. Venomous. Straight out of hell.
“Tell me where it is!” Blinding hysterics tunneled my vision, ravaging me from all corners and painting the room red. “Right now!”
“Can’t do that, my love.”
I grabbed a bottle of rum from the desk, preparing to fling it next. But as my fingers closed around the glass neck, I remembered my plan.
My breathing tightened with determination. My muscles hardened with focused fury. Where I had compassion for him before, now there was none. I needed him to hurt.
“You know what that compass means to me.” I lifted the rum, swilling it with a calm I didn’t feel. “You wouldn’t have left it in Jamaica.”
“No.”
“You didn’t toss it into the sea.”
“Never.”
Breaking my heart was one thing, but he wouldn’t destroy that gift from my father. He wouldn’t be so cruel. I had to believe that.
Everything inside me relaxed. The compass was on the ship.
But where?
As my mind raced for answers, I straightened my corset, trying miserably to cover my breasts from his humiliating stare.
He knew this vessel from bow to stern. Every alcove and nook. Every shadow and hiding spot. No doubt he’d determined the best location for the compass the moment he’d swiped it in the tavern.
With sleight and quick-wittedness, he probably secreted it away on the upper deck when I wasn’t looking. Or slipped it into a wall on his way down here. Or… I glanced around, deflating at the stockpiles of weapons, cocked hats, rolls of sea charts, maps, and random treasures that cluttered the cabin.
It could be anywhere.
Once I locked him in irons, I would launch an exhaustive search. I would rip up every plank. Empty every chest. Topple over every barrel. If it failed to turn up, I would resort to torture. The psychological kind.