The Pirate Prince (30 page)

Truly, wasn’t there a simple means for letting them both have their way? He could become the king, and she could be his mistress. Men in power kept mistresses openly, whispered the voice of the tempter in her ear, for these men married strangers for reasons of gain.

Sometimes they loved their mistresses more than their wives
. Why could she not be his mistress and see to it that he married Princess Nicolette Habsburg?

Oh, because it’s against the Sixth Commandment, for one thing, she scoffed at herself.

’Twas out of the question. If she did not remain firmly grounded in integrity, what use could she be to him or herself or Ascencion or anyone else, for that matter?

Perhaps she should do it anyway. Toss sanity into his sea like a halfpenny into a wishing well. Take the torment. Break her morals for him.

Maybe then he would be satisfied, she thought in misery, when he’d taken her pride in exchange for his own, when there was nothing left of her to plague him. He’d stripped her of everything else, her demon-prince. Why should she hope he would leave her her soul?

Finally, she rose, putting away the files she had been unable to concentrate upon. She squared her shoulders, smoothed her hair, and walked aft through the dark passageway, listening to Lazar’s ghosts.

She would be truthful. She would be steadfast. She would be proud.

The stateroom was empty, dim. Emilio had cooked no special dinner for them tonight. Vicar was nowhere in sight.

Allegra stilled the trembling of her hand and reached for the knob to the cabin door. The room was dark, the curtains billowing eerily over the door to the sea balcony. She could not see him in the dark, but she could feel him there. Then he spoke, his voice like black satin.

“Lock the door.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Heart pounding, Allegra obeyed his low command, then turned back to face the dark room, discerning Lazar’s broad-shouldered silhouette in the armchair. She could just make out his pose there in the shadows. He was fully dressed, she noted with some relief. Quite elegantly dressed, no pirate, he. He sat with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, elbows braced on the arms of the chair. He was sipping wine, trailing the rim of the glass back and forth against his lips thoughtfully.

“Come here.”

Hesitating, she went and stood before him, though she kept a safe distance, some five feet away. She did not need to go any nearer to sense his dangerous mood. This was the side of Lazar she had encountered only once before, the dark creature of brooding storm to whom she’d pledged herself when she had made her reckless oath.

“Closer.”

She took a step. He was silent. She could feel his gaze traveling over her, and to her shame, her body responded at once.

“Take down your hair.”

With trembling hands, she obeyed, as if in a trance.

“I will be gentle, you know,” he murmured. “I won’t use force. I won’t need to.”

There was a charged silence as they stared at each other with equal hostility and attraction. She strove for clarity against the drug of want.

“Why are you playing this game with me?” she asked quietly. “I only want what is best for you, as you well know.”

“We hedonists are fond of games.”

“Have you been drinking your poison again? You will have nightmares.”

“And I will lead you into them with me. Take off your gown,
chérie
.”

She swallowed hard, not knowing what to say to him.

“Must it be this way?” she asked, hearing the wistful note in her own voice, the longing barely denied.

“Oh, yes,” he whispered. “Take off your dress for me.”

She couldn’t.

She stared at him, trapped, awed by him. His eyes were black and feverish, bright with pain from those wounds he hid. He took a drink. She caught a glimpse of his white teeth in the moonlight when he licked his lips.

When she did not begin undressing, Lazar shoved himself up out of the chair and drifted toward her, predatorlike. Her breath came faster as she watched him approach. He towered over her. His shoulders seemed to her two massive cliffs, and every weathered line of his face was rugged. There was no sparkle in his eyes tonight, no smile on his narrowed lips.

“Please, I cannot fight you,” she whispered. “You will destroy me.”

“My, my, so dramatic. It is only sex,” he said, circling behind her.

She pressed her eyes closed dizzily when he began deftly unbuttoning her dress.

“Lazar, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would have liked so very much to live with you on your farm—”

“That offer no longer exists.”

She stiffened. “I did not presume that it did.”

His fingers paused midway down her back. “Yet here you stand.”

“Yes.”

“Waiting for a good fuck, eh, my little saint?”

She flinched at his words, deliberately intended to abase the beauty of what they had shared.

“No. I do not want to be here. You know as well as I do that it’s wrong. I’m here because I gave you my word of honor and because I am not a coward. Besides, there is nowhere on this ship to hide.”

“Right you are.” She could feel his hot breath on her neck as he ran his hands down her sides, grasping her by the hips from behind to pull her backside against his loins. “You are mine. There is nowhere you could hide from me. If you ran from me, I would tear the world apart to find you, and until I did, I would come to you and take you in your very dreams.”

She closed her eyes with want, every muscle straining, every inch of her skin alive with her awareness of him. He finished unfastening her dress with astonishing speed, then parted it from behind and slipped his hands under the material, reaching around to take her breasts in both his hands, caressing each nipple slowly with his thumbs, not gently. She bit back a gasp of desire.

She could not believe herself. She had been in the room with him for only minutes, and already she was teetering on defeat, playing right into his hands.

“Please, let me go,” she choked out.

“You don’t seem to know how much I need this,” came his dark whisper at her ear. “I am not a fantasy, Allegra. I am a man, of flesh and blood, and I have needs.”

She closed her eyes in desperation. “If you make love to me, I will never get over you, Lazar. I will hurt for you always.”

“But that’s what I want,
chérie
. Burn here with me in my hell.”

Weakened, she leaned against him, consumed by his passion, almost helpless with desire. He pushed her dress down on one side and began kissing her shoulder, teething it gently. Her body throbbed, pulled deep inside, craving him.

She had to rally her senses. When he slid his hands inside the front of her dress again, inching down her belly to slip his fingers between her legs, she nearly sobbed with need, dropping her head back against his broad shoulder.

“Mmm,” he breathed. “Wet, wet silk.”

“Lazar di Fiore,” she whispered, “you break my heart.”

He paused.

Withdrawing his hands from inside her dress, he turned her in his arms. She was shaking. Holding her by the shoulders, he searched her face almost tenderly.

“Why,
chérie
? Why do you say such a thing?”

She did not lift her head until he pressed under her chin with his fingertips. She looked up into his eyes.

“Because I understand now. You have survived at the cost of your honor.”

His dark eyes registered shock; then fury leaped into them. “What did you say?”

She stepped back in fear, yanking her dress up over her shoulder, heart pounding as she fought for her survival. “You would paint yourself the victim, justify taking whatever you want from anyone who stands in your path because you have been wronged. But it’s the people of Ascencion who are the real victims in all this. You say my father betrayed King Alphonse,” she wrenched out, “but you’re the one who’s betraying him now.”

He turned pale as he stared down at her, stock-still. “Don’t you dare say that to me.”

“It’s true. Look how your pain drives you to behave. Can’t you see you will go on suffering until you do what you know to be right?”

He stared at her in utter silence.

“I am here tonight because I care about you, and it is because I care that I must say this.” She drew a breath. “Your Highness, you have betrayed your people, your father, and yourself. I cannot give myself to such a man.”

Staring down at her in stunned silence, he opened his mouth, but he did not say a word. He shut it again, his square jaw tightly clenched.

Abruptly he pivoted on his heel, stalked to the door, and left the cabin, slamming the door thunderously behind him.

Allegra stood there shaking in the darkness. “Oh, God,” she whispered, “what have I done? Now he will kill me.”

She heard his footfalls march angrily across the stateroom and out into the passageway.

Swiftly she crossed the cabin and locked the door behind him, then braced the desk chair under the handle, her hands shaking violently all the while, for this time she knew she had pushed him too far.

She sat huddled in the darkness at the threshold to the sea balcony, trying to discern what the men’s voices were saying above. She thought she heard Lazar’s voice among them.

She had just closed her eyes in a futile effort to calm her scattered, panicked nerves with a prayer, but she gasped and jerked in place when the first cannon boomed.

Bitch
.

Lazar stalked to the stern, the blood thundering in his ears. There he ordered the drop of the anchor, baffling the helmsman and the night watch. Next he marched to the small cannon on the forecastle and personally sent off the triple boom, signaling to the other vessels for a full stop.

He paused to light a cigar from the sulfur match he had used to spark the cannon fuse, then waited, carefully restraining his fury as he smoked and willed his mind to calm, gazing broodingly at the waves.

Soon the six other ships signaled back that they, too, would cast anchor, but he knew it would be some time before his undercaptains arrived in their longboats.

“Cap, what’s amiss?” Harcourt asked worriedly.

“Look lively,” he growled at his faithful boatswain.

The man cringed and slunk away. Lazar prowled to the fore, one fist on his hip. Cigar clamped between his teeth, he climbed up onto the bowsprit and clung by one hand to the jib lines, staring up at the silent, steadfast stars beyond the spectral drapery of the sails.

Engulfing those tiny lights, dark heaven, he supposed, laughed in mockery at him, its whipping boy. All around him, the sea was black as an Arab’s eyes, and in it glided many silent sharks.

Now might his own soul be tried, he thought grimly, and he would learn if there was any of his father’s courage in him.

“So be it,” he said in soft menace to the skies.

As for you, my fair Allegra, you will eat your words, and God help us both
.

“It’s suicide!” scoffed Bickerson, captain of
The Tempest
.

Lazar cast him a simmering look. The lantern swung gently above the table in the stateroom, where he, Vicar, and the six pirate captains gathered.

“No reward?” Fitzhugh asked.

“None,” Lazar replied.

Captain of
The Hound
, Fitzhugh was a taciturn Scot with long gray sideburns and bushy eyebrows to match. He was about Vicar’s age, one of Wolfe’s first recruits from the earliest days of the Brethren. Fitzhugh was more cautious than most of their breed, and piracy, to him, was a business. However, his galleass, though antique in design, was the most heavily armed ship of their small fleet.

“You know I’m with you, Cap,” Sullivan muttered, “no matter what these quake-buttocks do.” The usually jovial Irishman paced the room restlessly, arms crossed.

Clearly, Sully had something on his mind, Lazar thought.

“Captain Morris?” Vicar asked the foppish young American, a self-styled buccaneer with no qualms about cutting throats.

“I’m thinkin’ it over,” the boy captain answered, toying with the dirty lace flounces of his sleeve.

Russo, the fiery Portuguese captain of the brig
Sultana
, slammed both hands down on the table, glaring at the company. He pointed at Lazar. “This man has made you rich and once took Wolfe’s beatings for you all!” he cried passionately. “One favor he asks—do it, I say!”