Hook's Pan (22 page)

“Yeah, that. Totally that. Wow, I should let him kidnap me more often.”

Then, kissing the tip of his nose, she got up and walked to the dresser where he kept his pitcher of water. “Let me clean you this time,” she said.

Crossing his arms behind his head, all he could do was pant and stare at the ceiling. Now that the fog of lust had cleared, he was able to analyze this. Something had changed between them. That’d been fierce, untamed, wild. And infinitely more than just sex. Had she felt it too?

Her touch, her looks, it said she did. He couldn’t be the only one feeling this wild level of desperation and need. Could he?

“I feared he’d kill you,” he finally admitted, not only to her, but to himself as well. “That I’d never see you again.”

She twirled on her heels. “What?” Her cheeks were rosy and flushed. “But I am leaving, Hook. If not with Peter, the fact is I can’t stay.” Dipping a rag into the pitcher, she returned to his side and gently cleaned his body as she pulled her lower lip into her mouth.

What did that look mean?

He trembled at her touch. Was that what she really wanted? Or was she just saying that because she thought she should? Passion like that, it couldn’t be faked. No, this didn’t make sense, but did you always have to understand what everything meant? Wasn’t it just enough to know you enjoyed another’s company? Why did everything always have to get so complicated?

She was supposed to leave. That’s what he’d wanted too. Until she’d been kidnapped, until her absence had shown him what a liar he’d been, until they’d just made love. Not sex, love. And that’s what it was now. It was a bonding of two like souls, the type of connection he’d craved since losing his Talia.

Trishelle had called to him from their first verbal sparring match.

But maybe she wasn’t ready, maybe she still believed leaving was the only way. The best way. Did he still have time to prove she was wrong?

“I’ve come to admire you, Trishelle. I enjoy your company and had he snuffed out your light I would have…” He clenched his jaw. He would have razed the entirety of Kingdom down to a cinder. That’s what he would have done. He’d have turned into the true villain history had always made him out to be.

Tossing the rag to the floor, she placed a finger over his lip and crawled back onto the bed. Her green eyes were intense as she gazed on him. “Are you asking me to stay?”

On the one hand, he knew he had But this was fast. What if he was wrong? What if it was just sex? What if what he mistook for passion was nothing more than compatibility?

They barely knew one another. Not that that’d stopped him with Talia, but when he loved, his love consumed—it burned bright and hot and wild. That type of passion could kill a man, it almost had the first time.

On the other hand, he didn’t want her to leave either. He wanted more than three days. They needed more time. He wanted to tell her that, share that with her, but something inside him sensed that this epiphany might be his alone. Because she was looking at him with panic in her eyes—the little bird was ready for flight.

“I know that Danika is my fairy godmother and desires me to find my happiness, but I am not certain you think you should stay.” He twined a blonde curl around his finger, letting it slide through his fingers like water, before turning his attention to her breast.

She looked good in nothing but a smile.

Toying with his hair, she scooted in closer to him. “No, I don’t think I should. I like you, but I barely know you. Not to mention the fact that I’m really not sure love exists, not the pure, beautiful kind anyway. My parents might still be married, but they shouldn’t be. All they do is fight and yell and cheat on each other, it’s pathetic and makes me miserable to see it. My sister’s husband, well,” she snorted, “you know how that went. The only romance I’ve seen in a while is Betty and Gerard and I’m not sure that one will last either.”

Until now, Hook had always assumed a woman wanted nothing more than to shackle a man to her hip. That all her hopes and dreams in life, her only aspiration was to find love. Even with Talia, it’d been that way. She’d been in love with love. Unlike Trishelle, he did believe in love, because he’d experienced it firsthand, but he also knew and believed it to be rarer than stealing a dragon’s opal from within its nest.

“If I may,” he cleared his throat, “perhaps what you’ve seen hasn’t been love at all. Because without respect and kindness, all you are left with is lust and desire. Without the affection, without the awe of one for the other, the lust will fade and then you have nothing but bitter memories which soon turn to hate. It did not ever seem your sister’s husband loved her. But as much as I loathe that French bastard, Gerard, even I can see the man is completely besotted by his bride. Of their love, I have no doubt.”

Her eyes were soft and dreamy as her gaze covered his face. “You aren’t at all what I expected. You know Betty and Gerard came to me, right before I came here. Told me you were my fated mate.” She laughed and shook her head, running her fingers along the warmth of his jaw, his brow. “My first thought was, no way. Not him. Not Hook. The man who plays with boys. Our stories have you all wrong.”

His grin was cocksure. He’d read the book even though all in Kingdom knew the stories were always skewed in favor of the so called ‘good men and women’ of the land. In his travels, Hook had learned one thing—no one person was entirely good, nor entirely bad. Even the most evil had a tender side and the most pure, the propensity for destruction.

“And how do they portray me?”

“Well the movies usually give you funky teeth, a ridiculous curly black wig that hangs to your waist, and, of course, the perpetual hook.” She flicked the tip of his, then ran her finger slowly along its curve.

“The wig is hanging in my closet.”

She blinked. “What? Really?”

He fought the grin.

A second later she slapped his chest. “You’re teasing me. Ohhh,” she murmured in mock disgust as she wagged her finger underneath his nose. Catching it, he kissed the tip. Eyes going round and soft, she breathed. “But seriously, how did you come to be here in Neverland?”

“I was born in Kingdom.”

Her fine brows gathered into a tight vee. “But I thought you came from England? That’s how the stories go?”

“The stories your kind lauds are often wrong.” He circled the fine tip of her rosy nipple. It puckered under his touch and he felt his body begin to respond again. Inhaling sharply, she nodded, lightly raking her nails over his chest. “All fairy stories start with a measure of truth, a mere kernel of it, really. But by the time it’s finished, they rarely resemble truth.”

A frown grabbed hold of her luscious lips. Lazily he traced the contour of her bottom one, the need to touch her constantly nearly overwhelmed him. He enjoyed her body, yes, but he enjoyed
her
. If he couldn’t convince her to stay, she’d leave him tomorrow. He could survive it, he knew that now, because he’d survived Talia. He’d go on with his life, pirating, looting, sailing the seas. Trishelle would go back to her life, eventually she’d begin to think of him as a dream, a memory born in the wee hours between awake and asleep. She’d question whether he ever really existed and eventually she’d forget him completely.

Maybe they didn’t know each other, so what. The condition of being brought to Kingdom was that you must stay three days—that didn’t mean you couldn’t stay longer if you wished. Hatter had, and now he was as much a legend as the fabled Captain Hook.
  

“But I don’t understand, Peter Pan was written by a human. His name was J.M. Barrie.”

“Such a gullible little bird.” Sliding his leg along hers, he lowered his chest until he was flush against her, chest to chest. Leaning in he breathed against her mouth, “Did you think the fae folk lived only in Kingdom?”

“Ohhhh,” she whispered and then couldn’t speak again because he was kissing her and she was panting and moaning and making his body shiver with need and he didn’t think it possible to crave the heat all over again, but he did.

She was ready for him the moment he slid in and this time it wasn’t fast and furious, it was slow. Like poetry, where each vowel is tasted, each word thought out, they moved as one. The silken touch of her hands smoothed over his back, glided down his ass, up his arms.

Her scent of roses filled his head, heart and soul… Maybe they didn’t know each other as well as he or she might like, but their bodies did. They moved together like they’d been doing it for an eternity. She knew just where to touch him, how to please him. And when he took her tongue into his mouth and thrust in one final time she shuddered into him.

And in that moment, staring into her flushed and beautiful face he knew he’d do whatever it took to keep her with him. Trishelle belonged with him, now it was just a matter of making her see that.

The pleasure was building, he pulled out before it was too late. She wrapped her hand around his cock, it took only two more swipes until he was shattering apart and gasping her name. His vision went black, his head full of Trishelle. Of her beautiful green eyes, her delicious, wicked tongue, and the sensual curves of her body. He came and came, trembling when the violence of his release finally began to fade.

Again they cleaned each other up and again they found themselves wrapped up as they’d been before. They spent hours in that bed, until day rolled into night. There were realms to explore and treasure to discover, but Hook only wanted to be right here, right now. The gentle rocking and swaying of his ship was like a lullaby, easing them into a sensual languor.

“So you mean,” she picked up where they’d left off, “Barrie was a fairy?”

He smiled, such a tenacious little bird. “I do not know for certain, but of a surety, whether it was he who wrote it or was merely told the tale, the stories originated here.”

“That is so cool. You know Sircco told me when we went to his realm that there was magic even in my world. I didn’t really believe him, because to see my world and yours, there’s no comparison. It’s easy to believe in magic here, there…it’s all science and facts and whatever magic does happen, happens in Las Vegas, which involves smoke and mirrors and wires.” She smiled. “Then tell me, who are you really?”

A million thoughts flitted through his head. Both good and bad, should he tell her he loved to laugh, loved to read, to hear the breathy sounds spill from her lips as he moved inside her? Or that he was sometimes known to have a violent temper, that he enjoyed looting, the thrill of a chase? But he found that he wanted her to draw her own conclusions where he was concerned.

“I am a man. That is all.” He kissed the palm she placed against the corner of his mouth.

Malachite eyes roamed the length of his face, the moment full and pregnant with something powerful. Hook wished he could name it, wished he even understood what it was happening between them.

“You’ll be leaving in a couple of hours.”

“Yeah.” She didn’t sound happy about it, more resigned.

If he was going to prove to her that her place was here with him, he didn’t have much time left to do it. Determination gripped him. “Get dressed,” he said, pinching her ass.

She slapped his hand, then stretched and gave a loud yawn. “I’m so sleepy. I feel like I haven’t slept in years. So tired.”

Tweaking the tip of her nose, he scooted off the bed and gathered his clothes from the floor. “I do not wish to waste another hour with you. Meet me above deck, I’ll set a course.”

Smiling broadly, she hopped off the bed. “That sounds mysterious and exciting. Fine. I’ll be there, give me about ten minutes.”

Shrugging his shirt on, he gave her one final look. Nude, blonde hair spilling around her back and shoulders, she reminded him of Venus being born from the waters. The temptation to walk back and toss her onto the bed was strong, and if they had more than a few hours, he’d do just that.

“Call me a bastard,” he growled, refusing to censure his thoughts in that moment because his heart was thumping too hard and his chest ached with something he could not name, “but I aim to ruin you for any other man.”

Trisha stood, mouth gaping like a dying fish as she stared at the closed door. Had he really just said that? No way.

Clearly still in a sensual fog, he hadn’t known what he was actually saying. Because there was no way he was actually telling her what she thought he was, right? Right? This wasn’t real.