Fortune Trilogy 1 - Fortune's Mistress (10 page)

The memory of the Santa Cruz whore came bright in his mind’s eye. She’d been lovely in her own dark gypsy way. Her breasts were like ripe melons, and her olive skin was flawless beneath the dirt. But she had smelled of other men’s sweat and sour beer. She had been willing and eager. He had paid her fee with good French brandy. But one look at her stained pallet and one touch of her unwashed hair had turned his desire cold. His swelling passion had receded and he’d turned away, her jeers burning his ears.

He’d thought of Lacy then. And how he wanted her. How he wanted to stroke her firm belly and feel the eager dampness between her thighs. How he wanted to taste the clean, salty flavor of her skin and tease her nipples to ripe buds.

He’d known that there were other whores to be found in Santa Cruz. He could have found a cleaner one, or paid a wench to wash, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d drunk, and fought, and gambled the night away. He’d joined a game of piquet with empty pockets, and walked away weighed down with other men’s coin. He’d kept walking along the black beaches until dawn ... but he hadn’t walked far enough to stop thinking about this woman here before him.

Lacy slipped her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe. Her lips brushed his, and joy flooded through him. He claimed her mouth, ruthlessly plundering the sweet, fresh taste of her, tilting her head back and letting loose the yearning he’d felt for so long.

She made a small sound of surprise in her throat, but she didn’t try to pull away. In fact, she met his ardor with a surge of fiery intensity.

His fingers tangled in her hair as his other hand crushed her against him. His loins tightened and flared with lust as the heat of her body permeated his clothing and scorched his skin. His tongue delved deep into her mouth, filling her with his need. He caressed the curves of her rounded buttocks and traced the hollow of her spine.

He felt her breasts swell and grow taut, and he bent his head to taste the sweetness of her hard nipple. She moaned softly, and the sound sent a stab of burning desire through him.

Breathless, he broke away, not letting her go, just lifting his head to meet her gaze. “I’ll not be denied this time,” he warned her. “You’ll not taunt me until I’m rock-hard, then bid me stop.”

Her breathing was as rapid as his. She trembled beneath his hands. Her lips were swollen, her eyes heavy-lidded with passion. “No, I’ll not deny you this time,” she vowed.

“I make you no promises, Lacy Bennett,” he said. “What we do here, we do for the flesh.”

She leaned close and parted his shirt, running the tip of her warm, wet tongue across his skin. Her fingers found his bare chest beneath the cambric shirt and stroked a tantalizing pathway upward to tease his nipple.

“Do you understand, Lacy?” he repeated hoarsely. “I want no lies between us.” He cupped a rounded breast, marveling again at the silken texture of her skin. He wanted her, here and now, with every fiber of his body. But it was important that she not be caught up in any woman’s fancy. She had to know that he would never marry her—that his future would be in places she could never go. “I care for you, Lacy,” he said. “You know I do. But we are not from the same class.”

She laughed softly, a merry sound like water running over rocks, and gently nipped his skin. “Ah, Jamie,” she whispered. “You are a man and I am a woman. Will ye stop talkin’ and do what you’ve been wantin’ to do for the past two thousand miles?”

A roaring filled his ears. His blood ran hot with the urge to make her completely his, to taste every inch of her skin ... to throw her down and thrust into her again and again until he cooled this fever she had fired in him.

The throbbing in his groin was almost an agony. His manhood pulsed with turgid arousal as he removed her shirt and moonlight kissed her perfectly formed breasts. He dropped to his knees and laid his cheek against her flat, pale belly, running his fingers over the curves of her hips and waist, fumbling with the ties at the back of her seductive boy’s breeches and pulling them over her long, shapely legs.

She slid down his chest, kicking free her breeches and fitting her body to his own. He groaned and found her mouth with his, kissing her while his hands continued to explore the creamy expanse of her trembling body. His fingers found the warm place between her thighs, and she whimpered and arched against him. The damp feel of her drove him mad with wanting, and he pushed her back against the deck.

He stripped away his breeches, and his stiff cock sprang free. She glanced down at it and gasped.

“Sweet Mary!” she cried. “Are ye man or stallion?”

“Enough man to satisfy you.” He knew he was big, many women had told him so; but Lacy was an experienced woman and no mite of a thing.

Eagerly he kissed her mouth and throat, and tasted the damp hollow between her breasts. He caught her hand and guided it to clasp his throbbing rod. Her small fingers burned hot against his flesh, sending waves of pleasure more intense than any he’d ever experienced surging through him.

He took her nipple between his lips and sucked it until she whimpered with ecstasy.

“Please ...” she murmured.

He kissed her belly and the soft curls that sprang below. “Lacy ... Lacy ...”

Her breathing came in short, quick gasps.

He could smell her woman’s heat. He wanted to taste her, to bury his face in her moist folds. But another few seconds, and he’d spill his seed like a green lad. He pushed himself up and gazed into her face and saw her looking full at him with wide eyes. “Ah, Lacy, girl,” he murmured. “I cannot wait.” Her arms tightened around his neck and he thrust into her with a powerful stroke, driving deep into her sweet darkness.

To his surprise, he met resistance.

Lacy cried out beneath him, then pulled him down to her. He thrust again and the thin tissue parted. Her gasp of pain was replaced by a moan of desire, and he was overwhelmingly caught up in the tide of his primitive need. He knew that something wasn’t right—that he’d been deceived again—but the heady woman scent of her filled his brain and her willing softness urged him to keep driving deep until he found the release he was seeking.

Afterward, he lay still, not speaking, cradling her in his arms. She nestled against his chest, but her ragged breathing and the tautness of her muscles told him that he’d not given her the pleasure she’d given him.

“James ...” she began.

He laid a finger over her lips. “Hush,” he said. “Don’t spoil the moment with words.”

“But I need to tell you—”

“I said hush. ’Tis not often a man holds a genuine miracle in his arms.” He sat up and glared down at her. “Surely, it is a miracle, when a whore repents of her sins and has her maidenhead restored.”

“I tried to—”

“No. Be still. Don’t move.” He got to his feet and looked around. The sea was empty, the whales gone. Feeling hollow and confused, he went below and opened the green leather chest. Beneath the folded men’s clothing was a soft linen shift with lace around the hem. He brought it back, along with a cloth and a clean towel.

On deck, he lowered a bucket over the side and filled it with water. He brought the water and other things to Lacy. “Unless I miss my guess, there’s some blood to clean up,” he said.

Embarrassed, she turned away from him.

He sat down on the deck beside her and took her in his arms. Not trusting himself to speak, he hugged her against him, then took the cloth and dipped it in the water, carefully cleansing her thighs. She reached for the cloth, but he shook his head. “No. I caused the pain. I’ll do what I can to take it away.” She shut her eyes tight as he finished washing her, rinsed out the cloth, then rubbed the cloth over himself and pulled on his breeches.

He handed her the linen shift. “I bought it for you in Santa Cruz,” he said. She dropped the delicate garment over her head, then covered her face with her hands.

“Why did you tell me you were a whore?” he demanded. “I’ve shared embraces with many women, but I’ve never taken a maid before. You lied to me.”

She drew her hands away and walked to the mainmast. Taking hold of it, she looked away at the dark sea for several minutes. Finally, she took a deep breath and turned back to him. “I didn’t know I was a virgin,” she admitted.

“You’ve been with a man?”

“Once. I was fifteen. I didn’t like it much, though.” She flashed him a wan smile. “Not ... With you, it was different.”

“Well, whatever you did then, it wasn’t what we just did here.” He bent to wipe a stain of blood off the deck. “And you sure as hell knew you were no whore. Why did you tell me you were?”

“I had to.”

“Why would any woman call herself a slut when she’s not? What perverse reason could you have—other than to make me feel like a dumb ass?”

“I couldn’t tell you the truth.”

“Which is?”

Lacy straightened her shoulders and took a step toward him. Putting a hand to her forehead, she brushed away the lock of hair that covered her scar. “This W,” she said. “It doesn’t stand for whore.”

“I’ve figured that out.” His brow furrowed with impatience. “What does it stand for?”

“W for witch,” she declared firmly. “I’m a witch.”

J
ames scoffed in disbelief. “A witch.”

“Aye.” Lacy’s throat constricted. Moonlight shone on the angled planes of James’s handsome face. With a thudding heart she stared at him. His features were immobile, revealing none of the disgust and fear she knew he must feel at her revelation. “It’s true,” she said. “I am a witch.”

He raised a big hand and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Let’s see you fly, then.”

Her mouth went dry. “I can’t do that.”

“Can’t fly? What kind of witch are you that can’t fly?” He folded his arms over his bare chest and glanced down at the cat who was curling around Lacy’s ankles. “Turn him into a toad.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do that either.”

“Not much of a witch, are you? Can you cast spells? Sour milk by staring at it? Sicken cattle by singing to them?” He let his arms fall loosely at his sides and took two steps toward her. “Can you take off warts?”

She nodded. “I can do that, but it’s not witchcraft. My granny taught me. You take a turnip, cut it in half and—”

He covered the distance between them in a single stride and pulled her into his arms. “You’re no witch, you foolish wench.”

The heat of his callused palms warmed her blood, and she leaned against him. “But I am,” she protested weakly. “I am. I go into trances. And when I do, I have dreams—true dreams of things that have yet to happen.”

“God help us, but you are a superstitious peasant,” he exclaimed. He lowered his head and kissed her.

Tears sprang to her eyes as his caress erased her fears, and sweet desire kindled in her loins. “You’re ... you’re not afraid of me,” she stammered, when they broke apart.

A deep chuckle rumbled up from the pit of his belly. “A witch.” He laughed louder, all the while holding her safe and warm against him. “A witch.” His lips brushed hers, and he trailed a line of soft, teasing kisses down her cheek to the hollow of her throat. “Maybe you are, after all,” he murmured provocatively. “You’ve bewitched me.”

His hands were doing wonderful things to her as he nibbled her neck and whispered lewd suggestions into her ear. Her cheeks grew warm as she caught his hand and brought it to her breast.

“I want to love you again,” he murmured. “This time, it will be different ... I promise. No more pain ... only pleasure.”

His thumb rubbed her nipple, filling her with a heavy-limbed languidness. Sighing, she twisted to meet his mouth with hers. The texture of his tongue, the taste and smell of him, filled her with growing excitement.

What did it matter if they could have only a short time together? Being here in James’s arms felt right and good. Tomorrow might never come. This enchanted night was filled with magic ... and she would live every moment of it.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I want you too.”

He bent and caught her in his arms. She locked her hands behind his head and leaned back, staring up into his eyes and into the star-strewn heavens beyond. “This time I’ll make it good for you,” he said.

“You don’t care,” she answered raggedly. “You really don’t care that I’m a witch.”

His laughter echoed across the deck. “I don’t care, sweet, if you think you’re the devil’s wife. I mean to give you reason to remember this night.”

He kissed her again with a slow, teasing tenderness ... a kiss that brought curling sensations up from the soles of her bare feet ... a kiss that made her dizzy with wanting him.

“Sweet witch,” he murmured between kisses. His tongue traced the outline of her top lip. “Sweet, sweet, Lacy.” His warm lips caressed the scar on her forehead, bringing tears to her eyes.

She laid a hand on his cheek, feeling the contours of his face, willing herself to remember every second of this velvet night ... every detail of their loving.

She strained against him, lifting her swollen breasts for him to kiss and lick and suckle. “Don’t stop,” she whispered hoarsely. “That feels so ...” Her words were lost in the wonder of cascading sensations. She let her head fall back against his arm and closed her eyes.

Vaguely, she was aware of him lowering her to the deck, of his mouth and hands moving over her body, soothing the ache between her legs, washing away the pain and replacing it with overwhelming desire.

“I want you,” she whispered. “I want to be part of you.” She opened her eyes and stared into his, opening for him like a flower to the sun.

He uttered her name as he entered her, slowly, tenderly ... filling her with his love. And this time, he was right. There was no more pain. There was just this man ... this moonlit night . . . and the exquisite rapture of her own body.

 

On the twenty-third day out of Santa Cruz, the wind died. The ocean lost its bright blue hue and took on a somber brown. There were no whitecaps and no fish jumping. Mats of rotting seaweed floated on a murky sea—a sea as flat and lifeless as glass.

The sails had gradually lost their fullness until they hung limp in the hot sun. Lacy lowered a weighted line over the side to try and see how deep the water was, but she ran out of line at two hundred feet. She tried fishing, but to no avail. Nothing moved on the surface or below it.

“They call this the Horse Latitudes,” James said. “The area is known for calms. When we get farther south, the wind will pick up again.”

“If we get farther south,” Lacy answered. She had always loved the sea, but she found these conditions disturbing. Even the air seemed dead and full of foul vapors.

“If you were a witch, you could call up the wind and push us through this,” he said.

“Don’t make jokes about such things.” Her relief at his lack of fear concerning her curse was genuine, but she still wondered what he would do when she lapsed into another spell.

“It’s all a lot of nonsense,” he’d said, when she’d explained to him why she’d been sentenced to hang. “The judges should be hanged for stupidity. No intelligent person has believed such hocus-pocus for a hundred years.”

Nothing she could say could convince him that she did have true visions of the future.

“I’m an educated man, chit,” James said as he took a reading on their position. “I’ll need more proof than your tall tales before I believe in what I can’t see.”

“The English court believed in my curse.”

“The English courts are run by asses.”

She didn’t want James to be afraid of her, but neither did she want to be dismissed as being too stupid to know what unnatural power she possessed.

“I never claimed to be a devil worshipper,” she protested. “My granny said everything comes from God. She said if I did have the gypsy sight, it was God’s will, not Satan’s.”

“There are a hundred explanations for what you call your visions,” he replied. “And none of them involve witchcraft.”

She knew that she had never practiced sorcery, but it made her uneasy when James spoke of witchery in jest. “I saw a woman burn once for less than I’ve done,” she said.

“Poor wretch. But the fact that someone murdered her doesn’t prove she was a witch any more than the fact that they wanted to hang me for piracy makes me a pirate.” He tapped the sundial, then checked his readings once more. “I’m sure of how far south we are. It’s the distance west of Africa that’s tricky,” he said.

Her eyes dilated in astonishment. “You don’t know where we are?”

“Of course I know where we are. We’re becalmed in the Horse Latitudes.”

“How far from land?”

“That’s the part I’m not certain of.” He carefully rolled the backstaff in oiled cloth and tied the bundle. “We’ve made good time, but I can’t be certain if we’re sailing at five knots or six. It makes a difference in determining how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go to reach the Caribbean.”

She regarded him shrewdly. “It’s been my observation that the more a man talks and the more fancy words he uses, the less he knows about what he’s doing.”

A red flush showed under his tan. “You can’t judge distance at sea like you can say it’s fourteen miles from here to Banbury Cross. The tradewinds blow in a circular pattern. We have to travel farther to—”

“I know about wind and current, James Black. And I know how long our food and water will last. What I don’t know is how long this voyage will take. Do you?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“And do ye know how long we’ll be becalmed here?”

“A few days, maybe.”

“Maybe. What if it’s weeks?”

“Then we eat less.”

“And if the wind doesn’t return?”

“It will,” he assured her. “Sooner or later, it will.”

“It’s the
later
I’m worried about.”

He dropped an arm around her shoulder and tilted up her face to kiss her. “We’ve not come so far and risked so much,” he said, “to end it all here. Have faith in me, Lacy.”

His mouth encompassed hers, and she sighed, knowing that James would put an end to her arguments by making love to her. He had only to touch her, and her thoughts tumbled over and over like driftwood in high surf. When he kissed her, nothing mattered but his caresses ... his provocative murmurs. He was a fever in her blood, and she couldn’t get enough of him.

James had kept his promise about giving her pleasure. He was a tender, passionate lover and a good teacher. It was so easy for her to be caught up in the rush of this new and thrilling emotion ... so easy to forget that what they shared couldn’t last. That although he made love to her, he didn’t love her ... at least not in the way that promised forever.

This moment. This hour. This day. It was all she had, and all she’d ever have. Why not make memories with James to keep her warm when she was alone again?

Why fight with him when it was so much nicer to kiss, and touch, and laugh at silly nothings?

They slept together now. They’d made a bed of folded sails on the cabin floor and covered it with blankets. When she woke in the morning, she was in his arms. He was the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes, and the first thing she saw when she opened them. He was her world. Yet he was as much a mystery to her as he had been when she’d first caught sight of him at Newgate Prison.

“Who are you?” she’d asked him over and over.

“You know who I am. I’m James Black, and I’m going to make you a rich woman.”

“I want to know about your past.”

“That’s not important,” he replied, taking a clean linen shirt from his green leather chest. James had won big at cards the night he’d spent on Santa Cruz, and he’d spent most of his money on a pair of calf-high Spanish leather boots and a gentleman’s wardrobe. “What’s important is who I’m going to be. When we find the treasure, I’ll be welcome in any house in England. I can buy a title. Charles has sold enough of them since he’s returned to the throne. What do you think? Shall I ask for an earldom, or something higher?”

She closed her eyes and let herself be swept up in James’s sensual kiss. He couldn’t hurt her as long as she remembered that he was a heartless rogue. As long as she didn’t trust him. As long as she used him, as he was using her ...

 

The winds returned as James had promised her. After eight days, the sails caught enough wind to move them fitfully west. A week passed and then two more. The provisions ran low, but there was enough water, and twice Lacy caught a fish to add to their larder. The weather was warm and the sea ever-changing, from blue-green to gray.

Lacy knew she should have been driven to distraction by James’s constant presence and the size of the boat, but she wasn’t. When they weren’t making love, they talked for hours without stopping and laughed at silly nonsense. As long as she didn’t ask about his family or childhood, James was good-natured and fun to be with. He showed a genuine willingness to treat her not just as a woman, but as a companion—a friend. And for a girl raised around rough seamen, it was a relationship she accepted easily.

The only thing she couldn’t share with James was her dream of owning a farm. She’d never been able to tell her father or brothers about her idea, and she couldn’t tell James either. If he ridiculed the notion, it would cut her too deeply. “You’re a wrecker’s whelp with salt water in your veins instead of blood!” Red Tom had shouted when she’d protested that she hated the life he led. “Born to it—die to it. Ye be no better than the rest of us. You who lured your first ship on the rocks before ye could man an oar.”

And it was true. Even now, she could close her eyes and see the bodies strewn on the rocks after that shipwreck. She hadn’t known why her father had told her to stand on that windy outcrop of stone and wave the lantern in the dead of night, but she’d damned well done it. The
Dover Merchant,
storm-tossed and desperate, had heeded the light and run closer to the cliffs when they should have sailed out away from them. Seventeen dead from that night’s work, and a goodly amount of silver in Red Tom’s pocket.

She’d never forgiven her father for that night. And she’d never forgiven herself. Child or not, her hands were stained with the blood of the passengers and crew. What right did someone like her have to judge James Black? And what right did she have to dream of fields of wheat and land that no man could take away from her?

So the long sea voyage passed, day by day. One morning there were dolphins swimming around the boat; they kept pace with the
Silkie
until dusk, then disappeared. Another day, Lacy sighted a flock of sea birds, flying too high for her to tell what they were. But the birds flew west, in the same direction the
Silkie
was sailing; and the sight of them assured Lacy that somewhere ahead was land.

The following afternoon, dark clouds scudded across gray sky, and the waves churned into frothy whitecaps. A squall passed just north of them. Sheets of rain drenched the
Silkie,
but although James trimmed the sails, the little boat was in no real danger.