The Following Sea (The Pirate Wolf series) (34 page)

Gabriel finished his rum and tossed the panniken aside. He strode across the width of the clearing and came up behind her, pausing only long enough for her to sense his presence and turn. Without a word, he leaned over, wrapped an arm around her upper thighs and hoisted her up, slinging her over his shoulder.

“Excuse us, gentlemen. The Mermaid is needed elsewhere.”

With the men laughing and Eva spluttering protests, he carried her out of the camp and back along the forest path, taking the fork that led to the pond. He did not stop on the bank or set her down, he walked straight into the water and waded out, dunking them both.

She came up gasping. “What—? How dare you! What on earth—?” She coughed and spat out a mouthful of water, then gripped his shoulders to keep from going under again.

She coughed again and when she looked at him, her expression was so befuddled, he laughed, pulled her close, and kissed her hard enough to take her breath away.

“It might shock you, Mermaid, to know that many a ship’s captain share women with their men, especially when those men have performed admirably in battle. Some even consider it part of the reward.”

“And does the woman have no say in the matter?”

“No. If she has agreed to become the captain’s woman, she accepts the shared responsibilities involved in keeping his crew happy.”

His hand came out of the water and cupped her chin firmly, tipping it up so she was forced to look him in the eye. “And have you no wish to be?”

His mouth was so temptingly close she could feel their breaths mingling. It was the subtle promise in the amber eyes, however, that sent shivers down her spine.

“He… I… would expect her to understand that she belonged to me and me alone. That if I caught her flirting or attempting to make me jealous by doing so… I would put her over my knee and turn her arse red.”

She nodded as if seriously considering his words. One of her hands slipped off his shoulder and sank under the water. “And… how would one know when not to be?”

Gabriel maintained the hold around her waist as he treaded water, difficult enough to do in sodden clothes and boots. When he felt her fingers slide down to cup the hard bulge in his breeches, he briefly lost his concentration and water lapped over his chin and into his mouth.

“That would be one way,” he sputtered through a laugh.

She tipped her head with an ingenuousness that belied the way her hand loosened his breeches and curled around his flesh. “Are there others?”

“I can think of one or two,” he murmured, capturing her lips again. Locked together, he took them back to the edge of the pond where it was shallow enough for him to stand on the sandy bottom. Once there he scooped her into his arms and lifted her onto the mossy bank where he peeled her clothing away then shed his own.

As the last garment was discarded, he lowered himself between her flared thighs and hooked each slender leg over his shoulders. Disregarding her squirms, he kissed his way down from her breasts, to her belly, to the glistening thatch of soft yellow curls. There, he ran his tongue down and up the silky folds then looked at her as she gasped in shock and clutched at his arms.

“This is
definitely
one of those times when modesty should be cast aside, Mermaid. Unless you have an objection to being mine, and mine alone.”

Eva felt another shivery thrill. It was not a declaration or even an admission of affection, but it was enough to send a stunningly sharp streak of pleasure through her body. She shifted her knees slightly opening herself to him. She clutched his upper arms to keep from flying out of her skin, then pressed her head back into the moss.

“No objections, Captain,” she whispered raggedly. “None at all.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said and lowered his mouth again.

As his tongue worked its magic, Eva’s fingers clawed desperately into his arms. Her heels dug into his back giving her leverage to lift her hips, to rock them this way and that as he probed and licked and suckled. She arched high, and his hands held her there, pressed against his mouth as the waves of pleasure rippled from her toes to the roots of her hair. Her groans and whispers and shivered cries kept him there, kept him teasing and tormenting until she could withhold what he sought no longer and the orgasm exploded in a series of hot, sweet spasms.

She had barely recovered from the first assault when she felt his body slide up. He did not let her lower her legs, but kept them over his shoulders as his flesh found the still-quivering mouth of her sex and plunged deep and hard to her core.

Eva dragged in a long, ragged breath as she felt the uncompromising possession of his thrusts. He laid powerful claim to what was his, stroking and plunging and filling her so completely that when he arched up and clenched his teeth through a hoarse, triumphant groan, she felt every pulse, every burst of liquid heat, every shudder as her own.

So intense was the pleasure that long after they had collapsed, panting and gasping in each other’s arms, little shudders and twitches continued to echo through their bodies making them reluctant to draw apart. They drifted to sleep with their bodies joined, their mouths no more than an inch apart, arms and legs entwined so it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.

CHAPTER T
WENTY-NINE

Rowly approached the glade with caution and whistled a tune that was more breath than sound. In the five days and nights following the ambush, it had become a well-known secret that the captain and his lady had staked out the privacy of the glade for their own purposes and few were reckless enough to intrude upon them without giving fair warning first.

Eduardo, who was more than half in love with captain’s beautiful mermaid, had made them a soft bed of palm fronds and blankets on the embankment. They were lying there now, Rowly noted, identifying a pair of pale, slender legs tangled with a pair of tanned muscular ones.

He moistened his lips and whistled again.

This time Gabriel lifted his head.

Rowly opened his mouth to speak but used a gnarled finger instead to point at the reddish-orange tint spreading across the dark sky above.

Gabriel nodded and rested his head back down on the blankets. Dawn was almost upon them. Dunn and Betts had returned the previous day and reported the three ships had made haste through the bight, showing no sign of slowing or turning around. The two Spanish galleons had turned south, toward Cubana. The
Cormorant
had turned north, moving too fast for the men to follow.

Gabriel stretched just enough to work a kink out of his leg, then wiggled his nose and blew out a puff of air to dislodge a strand of blonde hair that had settled across his mouth. Eva was using his arm as a pillow, something he was beginning to find more and more pleasing. He enjoyed waking up to find her curled up alongside him. He enjoyed having her hair spread across his chest and shoulders like a silken blanket. For the most part his past relationships had all been brief and intense, gratifying physically, but lacking in any desire to prolong them past the initial blaze of lust. His mother said it would strike him like a thunderbolt one day that he was missing out on the best part of love. He hadn’t quite understood what she meant until the night he had slept beside Eva in the cavern, content to hold her and to feel her breathing softly against his neck.

“I can hear you thinking,” she murmured.

Dante smiled and turned to find those lovely big green eyes watching him. “Really. And can you also hear
what
I am thinking?”

“It will be, soon. I can smell the cooking fires already and suspect your father is hard at work making his biscuits and boar fat.”

“Biscuits and boar fat,” she mused. “I wonder if the king’s court has ever broken their fast on such delicious fare.”

Gabriel laughed and slid his arm out from under her head. “Up, Mermaid. We have a long march ahead and I want to reach the coast before dark.”

Dante had informed Rowly of his intent to leave camp at first light. He had already dispatched a party of crewmen to retrace the route along the coastline and collect the men who had been posted along the bight as lookouts. Chandler had returned much of their unused stores of powder and shot to the cave where he kept his supplies squirreled away. He had also insisted, for the sake of their own souls, that the bodies on the beach have a decent burial. The men had not objected, hoping that had their fates been reversed, their remains would not have been left in the hot sun for the carrion and flies to feast upon.

Eva yawned and rolled onto her back, watching Dante gather up their clothing and shake the bits of moss and grass out of the folds. As always she was struck by the combination of power and beauty as his muscles rippled and bunched across his chest and shoulders. His back was almost completely healed and she reached out a hand, tenderly tracing a fingertip down one of the raised pink scars. She felt his skin shiver and relished the knowledge that it was her touch that caused the reaction.

“The first time I saw you,” she said softly, “I thought you were the ugliest man I had ever seen. Your face was bloated and purple. Your eye was swollen shut with scabs. I could scarcely bear to look at you, nevermind that I had to spend days locked away with you in your cabin.”

Dante turned his head and gazed at her over his shoulder. “Whereas I thought you a skinny, frail waif with big green eyes, half-drowned and wholly incapable of speaking more than a word or two at a time without tripping over your tongue. Now, however—“ he leaned over and kissed her—“I find that same tongue quite sweet and enchanting.”

Liking the sound of that, he made a low sound in his throat before reaching up, reluctantly, to ease her arms from around him. Her eyes, her lips, the pebble-hard peaks of her nipples all beckoned him back onto the blankets, but he could hear voices moving through the woods and knew they would not have privacy much longer.

He stood and pulled on his breeches, turning his back so she did not see how he had to struggle to lace them closed.

When he thought it safe to look again, she was dressed, tightening her belt, cinching the bulk of her shirt around her waist.

They returned to the main camp together and were handed hot, flat biscuits dripping with fat, and a cup of weak ale. Even William Chandler’s supplies were not endless and they were on the last dregs of the last cask of ale and in serious danger of having to drink straight water.

When they were finished eating, Chandler buried the big black kettle at the base of a tree and took a long, satisfied look around before setting off down the forest path with Eva by his side. Gabriel was the last to leave, joining the two men who waited on the path and fell into step behind him, their arquebuses slung over their shoulders.

~~

The trek back to the east coast of Espiritu Santu took them through the long hot day into dusk. When they arrived at the location of the underground caverns, Rowly posted a dozen lookouts on the surrounding hills while the main body of men shinnied down the knotted rope, eager and curious to see the wreck of the infamous ghost ship. To a man, having been told what they could expect to see, they stood around the edge of the underground lake and stared in silence as Billy Crab went on board and lit the lamps that hung over the submerged wreck of the
Nuestro Santisimo Victorio
.

Chandler, under no illusion that he could possibly spend as much gold as was in her holds, announced that at the end of the salvage, each man could take away whatever he could carry, stuff into his pockets, or sling in sacks over his shoulders.

Hearing the words echo around the chamber, no one moved or made a sound for a full minute. One by one the men turned and looked at their mates standing on either side, then with multiple reverberating hoops, they all dove fully clothed into the water and cavorted like fools.