Pan's Revenge (19 page)

Her soft hands come up to rest on my chest.
If she wants to push me away, she’s not trying very hard. “If you
have everything, why did you come for me?”

Encouraged by her lack of resistance, I run
the tip of my nose from the bridge of hers down to the tip. So
close, her warm, hitched breath feathers against my skin, and I
like it. Then I realize she’s not pushing me away at all. She’s
actually feeling me up. I take her face between both my hands and
tilt her head up, just a little, so she’s looking me straight in
the eyes when I tell her, “Because you’re the reason that made
thinking of eternity bearable for me.”

It’s the
truth in my voice, I think, that she hears and that makes her gasp
as she realizes I don’t want to cause her any harm. All I want is
to crush my mouth to hers. And she certainly sees that coming too.
Her fingers claw slightly against my chest, digging into my shirt.
Gentler than should be possible for anyone in my very position, I
touch my lips to hers.

Angel doesn’t
bite me, hiss, or spit at me. Neither does she
scream murder
like she
threatened earlier tonight. She just lets me kiss her and I know
I’m one step closer, even if most likely she still has no clue of
who I am. Our lips mold together. Tender. In a slow, soft rhythm of
their own. Heck, she feels so good, tastes so good, I want to eat
her up.

But there’s
still some hesitance in her kissing me back.
Surrender
, I want to
yell at her. How can I make her trust me completely? How can I get
through to the girl that slept in my arms at Mermaid Lagoon? I
don’t know. But I do know that I won’t let her go now…for nothing
in the world.

I deepen the
kiss. My tongue sweeps through her mouth and tangles with hers. Oh,
the glory of kissing Angel again! And she so easily relents. Every
last doubt is blown from my mind that she really is giving
everything right now. No matter what she thinks of me, no matter
how scared she might be, she wants this as much as I want it. My
hands drop to her shoulders, and I run my fingers down her arms
until they come to rest on her waist. She actually
shivers.

When she
inches back but let’s me rest my forehead against hers, she
whispers against my lips, “Who
are
you?”

The truth is I no longer know the answer
myself. I’ve been a pirate for such a long time, but when I’m with
this girl there’s always only one person present. “I’m Jamie,” I
tell her on the same whisper and kiss her again.

T
his time, she gives in to me
completely. It’s not my tongue that tries to catch hers anymore,
but hers that starts to explore my mouth. Like finally feeling the
gravity that’s been between us from the start, she clings to me as
if there’s no other man in the world she ever wants to kiss again.
My arms react of their own accord and wrap tightly around her,
pulling her harder against me. I love that little moan of hers that
I catch with my mouth, I love her trembling hands that roam up my
chest and get a grip in my hair at the back of my head. Frankly—I.
Love. Her. She’s been mine to hold from the beginning, and I’ll
find ways to convince her of it time and time again if
needed.

As I ease back and gaze down at her face, her
breaths take a few seconds to cool down. A sweet, soft blush sneaks
to her cheeks that makes her all the more adorable. Although she
tries to pull back from me and her fingers loosen the death grip in
my hair, I don’t let her go. With my hands firmly where they were
the past couple of minutes, she should figure out herself that she
can’t pull off a kiss like that and then just put that annoying
distance between us again. No freakin’ way.

I take a moment to catch my breath myself.
Then a smirk comes out to play. “You like it, don’t you?”

“Listen.” There’s no volume in her voice just
yet, so she forcefully clears her throat and tries again. “I don’t
know what just happen here, but it’s certainly not the right thing
to do to kiss a savage pirate after midnight.”

“
That
shouldn’t be a problem. We can change the after-midnight-part to
whenever you want.”

She gives me a hard glare. “It’s certainly
not the after-midnight-part that concerns me.”

I know, but I
couldn’t resist teasing her. When she places her hands over mine
behind her back, however, and pries my arms away from her, my easy
smile goes into hiding. “What? You’re still scared of me?” She
holds my gaze for a moment then lowers hers to her toes, and it
dawns on me. “No, you aren’t. The kiss awakened
something
, didn’t
it?”

“Will you leave me alone if I say no?”

“No.”

Her eyes shoot up to mine. She gasps. “But
you promised. Last night—”

“
Love, I’m a
pirate. I make promises all day long only to forget them a minute
later.” Strangely enough it’s the promises to her that I tend to
keep. “You might have stood a chance of getting rid of me if you
really felt nothing. But what happened between you and me just now
was definitely
not
nothing. So, I’m afraid this time you won’t get
your way with me.”

“What do you mean?”

What I mean? That I have magic dust left for
one more night. If I go back to Neverland without her then, I might
not see her ever again. But if I take her with me tonight, there’s
enough dust left to bring her back in a little while. Heck, I’ll
not leave alone for sure. All the fighting for Angel, all the shit
I put up with and put Peter through to finally get to her—that sure
wasn’t only for a dance and one helluva kiss.

When Angel sees the determination in my eyes,
her body tenses like taught wire. In a brave dash to the left, she
tries to escape, but I’m faster than her and have my fingers
wrapped around her wrist the instant she moves. “Sorry, I can’t let
you do that.”

Spinning her around, I press her back flush
to my chest and whistle, using two fingers of my free hand.

“What are you doing? Let me go!” The girl
actually stomps on my foot. Not as bad as the blow to my chest she
gave me the first time we met, but still quite impressive. I
wince.

“See, I only have one more night in your
world,” I growl into her ear, “and chances are, you won’t let me
see you again tomorrow. I can’t have this. We’re going back to
Neverland, now. You and I.”

“
Are you
crazy?”

Maybe a little bit, but that as well is just
her fault.

“
What about
Peter?” she hisses.

Why the hell does she always have to care
about him more than me? “Peter will stay behind. I’m not going to
hurt him.” When my men abducted him from the ball and tied him up
to the highest branch of a birch tree in the park not far from
here, I just couldn’t bring myself to slice his throat, however
much he’d deserved it. “He’s after all my brother. But I won’t let
him interfere with this again.”

The tighter I hold Angel the harder she
struggles in my arms. It doesn’t matter, she can fight me all she
wants. In the end, she’ll be happy I did this. Hopefully.

On my signal, Smee dropped one end of a rope
that now dangles in front of us. Wrapping it around our bodies, I
press one hand over Angel’s mouth to kill the scream she just
barely got started and shout, “Get us up, Smee!”

A steady pull begins. We’re lifted into the
air, out of her garden, through the shielding magic clouds and onto
the Jolly Roger. I hate to frighten Angel like that, but as it is,
I don’t see any other way at the moment. “Set sail!” I bark to the
crew as soon as we stand firmly on deck. Well, I stand and Angel
still squeals in my arms. “We’re going home!”

Smee gives me the lightest of frowns, but he
knows better than to question me right now.

“All hands on decks, ye scabby dogs!” he
yells out to the others and busies them with getting the Jolly
Roger ready for departure.

Since I still
have my hand over Angel’s mouth, there’s no sound coming from her.
Yet by the way her chest doesn’t move for a minute, it’s not hard
to figure out how much finding herself on the ship with actual
pirates on it surprises her. Just like the first time I took her on
board. What are sweet memories to me might not be so nice to her.
Then again, she doesn’t remember anything, so we’re good on that
front, I guess.

It’s probably not a good idea to release
Angel just yet. A silent place to talk and explain everything seems
to be the way to go about this. I lift her from the floor and sort
of drag-carry her into my quarters. Heck, but that girl puts up a
hell of a fight. It makes me smirk but not put her back down.

Once in my
quarters, I kick the door closed and stop in front of my bed. “I’m
going to let you go now. Just don’t freak out or run away. There’s
a reason why I brought you up to my ship. So can you please just
promise to stay here and we’ll talk about this?”

The hoped-for nod never comes. At least she
breathes again, but way too fast through her nose. Not only can I
feel her chest lift and fall under my embrace, but her warm breaths
also damp my hand over her mouth in quick intervals. I decide to
take that hand away first.

“You bloody, freaking pirate! Take your
goddamn hands off me! You dirty liar! You kidnapped me!”

That was quite nice for round one. I cover
her mouth again. “I meant I was doing the talking and you listen,”
I say in her ear with some annoyance because of her swell of
curses. Am I really that bad?

Angel thrashes about but, let’s face it,
she’s a fragile girl and I’m—well, I’m a pirate. I know how to
handle stubborn people. Too fast for her to see it coming, I push
her flush against the wall and trap her, using the weight of my
body behind hers. Both her hands now in mine, I lift them over her
head and pin them to the wall too. Her head is turned sideways. It
can’t be comfortable how her cheek rubs against the rough wall when
she let’s go of round two of curses, but this time I don’t
interrupt her.

Only when she becomes aware of me nuzzling
her neck and the side of her head all this time, she falls
silent.

“Feeling better now that it’s all out?” I
tease her.

“Go to hell,” is her answer to that.

“Give me a chance here, Angel. Please. Let me
tell you what really happened the last time you fell into my
world.”

She snorts, but I get the feeling that she’s
at least ready to listen. Whether or not, I have to try. “Peter
saved you while dropping from the skies, but he wouldn’t help you
find your home at first. That’s when we met. I took you on board,
admittedly, with the worst intentions, but you stole my heart so
easily—and I like to believe that I stole yours too. In the end, I
could do nothing but help you get back to your world, because your
longing for your sisters killed you, and your pain killed me.”

“And you got me back how?” she snaps after a
moment.

As always,
her sassy spirit provokes my smile, but I make sure to hide it from
her right now. “Peter figured out that you had to actually
fall
to get
back. And we managed that. But when you were gone from my life,
nothing felt right for me anymore. I needed you. In the end, I
guess, I had rather died than face a life completely without you.”
There’s no need to tell her all about the drop into the volcano and
the morning after with the fairies. There’ll be time for that
later.

“So you did something to make Peter age and
both of you came to see me in London.” From her flat voice, I can’t
tell whether she believes that part or just reiterates what we both
told her before of our own versions.

“
I didn’t
mean to make him age so fast. Actually, I had no idea it would
happen, but yes, that’s pretty much how it all went. Of course he
got mad.” And strangely enough I can totally understand. “That’s
why he came after you first. See, he kept coming back and telling
me how he was about to steal you from me. He even left this picture
in my quarters the other night.”

Angel turns her head just a little more my
way and her gaze finds me over her shoulder. “What picture?”

“The one where he carries you.” I can’t help
the growl that comes with that memory. “I couldn’t believe how
happy you looked in his arms.”

“He surprised me when he picked me up so
quickly,” she snaps. Then her frown intensifies. “Why am I even
defending myself?” she mumbles and turns her head as far away from
me again as possible with the wall at the other side.

It might make
her mad at herself, but it sure raises a stupid swell of joy in my
gut. “You do, because somewhere deep down here”—capturing both her
wrists in one of my hands now, I place my other on her stomach—“you
feel that I’m telling the truth. You might not remember what
happened with us, but you do still care for me.” I nuzzle her hair
and revel in the wonderful scent of it. “Don’t you?”

She doesn’t reply with round three of cursing
me, which could mean that she’s starting to let me in. It feels
safe to ease my grip on her. When I let go, she doesn’t make a dash
for freedom. Instead she keeps standing in this very spot, staring
at the broken door in confusion for just another second, then she
turns around with a scoff and stalks off toward the deck. Of course
I follow on her heels, but with this first little success of
breaking through to her, I restrain from grabbing her arm to hold
her back. Where can she run to? We’re in the middle of a canopy of
stars after all.

Or so I
thought until I step outside. The velvety blue of the skies around
us has disappeared. In its place the warm sun rises over Neverland.
The Jolly Roger is descending, and it only takes another minute
until she touches the familiar waters a little off shore. Damn, how
long have we been in my cabin? It didn’t feel half as long as we
obviously were.