Sea Change (21 page)

When they reached sick bay he thrust her in ahead of him, nearly throwing her across the room. She caught herself against the table as the door slammed, then she turned around.

Captain Fletcher stood across the room, arms crossed over his chest, dripping water onto the deck and blocking the only exit from the cabin. White lines of anger bracketed his mouth and his face looked--

Charley took a step away from him, then stopped.

"Take off your clothes," he said in a low voice.

"That is what I say to people, Captain," she tried to joke through chattering teeth.

"Take off your clothes," he said again. "That is an order. It is not a problem, is it,
Doctor
?" He advanced into the cabin and she backed up, until her back hit the bulkhead and she could retreat no farther. His amber eyes burned into hers, mesmerizing her.

"After all, we're all men here, aren't we? You have the same parts as everyone else aboard this ship, don't you, Doctor? Now, take off your shirt, or I will do it for you!"

"I cannot," she whispered as ice trickled down her spine.

He reached with a fluid motion and pulled out his knife, one she knew was as sharp as her own scalpels.

She froze and could only stand there, dripping, shaking her head.

"Why, you're all white, Doctor. Perhaps your humors are out of balance? Maybe you need a purging draft to restore them?"

It was his chilling smile that finally broke her paralysis. She burst forward and tried to make for the door, but he grabbed her shoulder and shoved her back up against the wall, pinning her there with his half naked body.

The cabin was silent except for their harsh breathing as David Fletcher's muscled form held her effortlessly against the rough wood. His face was like a granite carving, with no warmth and little humanity to it as he watched her.

He rubbed his thumb over her throat, bare from her cravat falling off in the water. Charley swallowed involuntarily.

And no Adam's Apple bobbed up and down at the motion.

"Why,
Doctor
, how very odd," he purred. "No, do not struggle. You don't want to get cut, for then who would bind you up?"

Out of the corner of her vision she saw the flash of his knife, and she closed her eyes. He took his free hand and grasped her chin hard, pulling her face up, not letting her turn away.

Her eyes popped open.

"That's better...Doctor. Such a smooth, soft face. It's a wonder I never noticed before. Look at me, Charley Alcott!" he barked. "I do not want any confusion about what we're doing here."

"What?" she whispered.

"Consider it an experiment in natural philosophy." He ran his knuckles down her cheek and she tried not to flinch away from his touch. "You see, I have a theory I wish to explore, and I need your assistance. What, no questions? No sarcastic remarks? You disappoint me, Dr. Alcott."

"Please...please don't do this," she said hoarsely, and then hated herself for showing weakness to this man, who was once again every inch the enemy who'd threatened her life when he hauled her off the
Lady Jane.

"Save your pleas for later. You may need them."

She stood there, motionless, his body pressed up against hers and her hands fisted at her side. She couldn't fight him. She could feel the heat of his body even through her dampened clothing, and she could also feel him hard against her belly as he pinned her to the wall.

No matter what else he was feeling, David Fletcher was aroused, and she could see that was fueling his anger. She might survive this encounter alive, but she feared she would not survive it intact.

The blade disappeared from her view. She felt his fingers on her coat buttons, undoing them, and she went still, not even daring to breath.

The knife moved up to the top of her shirt and she heard the "plink" of a severed button hitting the deck.

"Breathe, Doctor. I do not want you swooning on me. Of course, a strong lad like you wouldn't swoon, would you, Charley Alcott?"

She closed her eyes, but he shook her shoulder, just enough to force her to open them again, watching him as he took her carefully constructed life and dismembered it. Slowly the knife worked its way down the front of her shirt placket, flicking off buttons that pinged against the planks of the deck.

"That's better," he said huskily when he'd finished. "You are bandaged, Doctor. Have you injured yourself?"

"No," she whispered. She licked her dry lips and his glance flicked down to her mouth before returning to her eyes. She stared at him, mesmerized like a trapped bird held in an amber net.

"If you are not injured, then you don't need this cloth binding you, do you?"

"Do not do this," she pleaded again, but he just smiled, a lethally cold baring of his teeth.

She shuddered as she felt the cool blade slip up between her skin and her bindings, not cutting her, but the cloth separating like wheat before the scythe, exposing her to his gaze.

There was no sound in the cabin but their mingled breathing, and Charley did not look away from the tiger eyes whose dark gaze burned into her brain, not even when she heard the knife clatter to the deck and felt one warm, rough hand cover her breast.

His breath drew in as his hand explored her, verifying what she knew he felt when he hauled her wet body against his. The womanly curves, disguised, hidden, but there nonetheless. His touch burned her with a heat she'd never experienced, and even in her fear and dread there was a part of her wanting to respond with a welcoming embrace.

But that would have been a welcome for a different David Fletcher. The set lines of his face brought crashing home the reality that this man holding her captive robbed and killed people for a living. That brutality and violence were part of his daily life, so different from hers, and nothing in her short life in the English countryside had prepared her for this encounter.

"Why, Charley," he purred. "You've been keeping secrets."

She shoved at him in a last, futile attempt at escape, but he pushed her back against the bulkhead. His breathing came harsh as he stared at her again. His head jerked back as if fighting himself, then he swooped his mouth down over hers.

She had never been kissed and at first she panicked, not knowing what to expect, what he wanted of her, what he could do to her. His hands gripped her shoulders as he punished her with his kiss, forced her to accept his anger and his passion.

His passion, and hers.

Charley knew she shouldn't want his kiss, not like this, not as if he hated her even as he was lusting for her, but it was too late. She was swept up in her own needs, her own desires for this man who was her enemy and whom she wanted as her lover. She had longed for his mouth on hers, dreamt of it in her lonely bunk, imagined it when she saw the whores kissing at Madame Cornelia's house. The reality was far beyond anything she could have imagined or witnessed. She was drowning in unknown waters, her senses overloaded by her fervid fantasies brought to life, his kiss forcing them both to acknowledge that she was a woman, a woman at risk of danger physical and emotional.

His arms slipped down and wrapped around her like bands of steel and he held her prisoner as her knees weakened and he drank in her gasp. She wanted to push him away, and she wanted to pull him closer and never let him go. Davy was as solid as the oak of his ship, overwhelming her, his tongue slipping between her slack teeth to startle, then sensitize her with feelings she'd never experienced before.

Charley tentatively responded to his tongue's caress, touching him back, and he made a noise low in his throat before pulling her even tighter against him, his hand again moving across her chest to the breasts he'd bared in his anger. Now his touch was firm, but gentle, his fingers stroking across her nipple. She moaned and moved deeper into his touch, longing for more of the sensations stoked by their passions. There was anger, still, she felt it vibrating through him, but there was something more. She wanted to experience more, she wanted to experience it all, the consequences be damned.

He pushed his thigh between hers, spreading her, bringing him into contact with her with a groan that seemed pulled from deep within his chest.

Her hands moved up his back to his head, fisting in his hair, holding him, and she returned his kiss, her mouth blossoming open beneath his, her blood singing with the sensation of Davy Fletcher's luscious lips moving across hers, his tongue stroking between her teeth in a motion that brought a cry of need from deep within her soul.

He pulled back now and looked down at her, his eyes wide and confused before narrowing to slits, his breath coming out harshly.

"I have been blind, and played for a fool! There was no need to visit Madame Cornelia. Not when we had our own whore aboard ship!"

David's words struck her like a blow from his fist as he pushed himself away from her. Charley leaned against the wall, clutching her torn shirt closed. She wiped her hand across her bruised lips, afraid for a moment she would faint to the deck in front of him. She would not give him that satisfaction, and found the strength to pull herself upright and face him on her feet.

"Whore? How dare you call me names, you pirate!"

He raked her with his hot eyes, his lips drawing back in a sneer. "It is clear that you are no lady!"

Charley's hand fisted at her side and her anger flared like the powder in the hold. "A
lady
could not have saved Henry Fletcher! I am this ship's
surgeon
, Captain! If it was a lady you wanted, you are doomed to disappointment!"

"You are not a surgeon! You are a woman!"

"I am doctor enough to care for you and your poxed crew of miscreants! I have healed the sick and bandaged the wounded, and this is how you respond? How
dare
you judge me?"

Charley advanced into the room, wishing now she'd taken up Davy Fletcher's offer of weapons training, because at this moment she would like nothing better than to run the scoundrel through. Then see who would stitch him up!

"You stole me off the
Lady Jane.
I did not ask to be here!"

"I would have put you off this ship at any time you revealed your sex!"

A knock at the sick bay door made them both freeze.

"Doctor? You in there? Reynolds's cut his hand and he's bleedin' all over the deck."

Charley watched the man blocking her door, but he said nothing.

"I will be right there, Jenkins."

Captain Fletcher made a small movement and Charley braced herself, but he turned away from her and put his hand on the door handle, pausing to look at her over his shoulder, his lips compressed with fury.

"Cover yourself, and deal with Jenkins. But do not think this conversation is finished,
Doctor.
"

Charley's shoulders relaxed a fraction, but then he suddenly turned and strode across the room, muttering an expletive before grabbing her and hauling her up against him one more time and kissing her fiercely. Even though she knew more of what to expect, it still took her breath away and made her afraid for that future conversation.

He stared down at her, his face thunderous, before striding out, slamming the door behind him.

Charley stared at the door, then shook herself and grabbed fresh bindings for her breasts. She fastened her spare shirt and coat with shaking hands, then paused briefly to look into her mirror.

Charley--not Charlotte--Alcott looked back at her.

I can do this. I am needed.

She brushed her wet hair back away from her face, so it lay close to her head. With steady hands she reached for her satchel and went up on deck to see to the injured sailor.

David Fletcher knew what anger felt like. But he had never felt anything like the white-hot emotion that gripped him when he realized Charley Alcott was a fraud. And he had never, ever thought about doing violence to a woman.

Until today.

He stood in the middle of his cabin, his fists clenching and unclenching as his damp clothes steamed from the rage radiating off of him.

How could he have been so blind? He pawed through his trunk looking for a dry shirt and remembered what it felt like to cut through Charley Alcott's shirt. As he yanked on his trousers he recalled every soft inch of her trouser clad belly pressed up against him, making it difficult to button up over a cock still swollen from the revelations in the doctor's cabin.

He nearly drove his fist into his desk in frustration and fury but stopped himself. If he hurt his hand, if he broke something, he'd have to go to that, that
freak
, and she would put her warm hands on him and treat him with compassion and he would have to restrain himself from kissing her and pulling off her clothing.

Again.

David liked women. Not on his ship, of course, but when he was on land he enjoyed being in their company. He liked them clothed in their fripperies and unclothed in all their glory, curved and rounded and sweet smelling. He liked the contrast of their softness to his hardness, their gentle ways and delicate natures to his life among rough men. And the ones who weren't so delicate but gave as good as they got in a game of slap and tickle, he liked them, too.

What he did not like was the thought of a female who talked like a man, and dressed like a man, and thought like a man, and spent her day examining the naked bodies of men when it was no proper place for a lady to be!

Clearly, Charley Alcott was no lady, but was a lying, deceitful hussy. And his body didn't give a tinker's damn for any of that. He could still feel that soft breast, small, hardly more than a handful, but fitting just right beneath his palm. The delicate skin of her throat, and the pulse that throbbed there, urging him to lean forward and put his lips on it.

He scrubbed his hands through his damp hair in frustration. He'd called her a whore, but if she was, she was a whore who'd never been kissed. He could tell from her naive response that she was a novice at lovemaking. She'd looked up at him, those smoky eyes wide and unsure, frozen with fear, but he knew she wanted him. He knew it from the drawings he'd discovered and the looks he'd intercepted, and he knew it from their kiss today.