Hook & Jill (The Hook & Jill Saga) (28 page)

He scanned the sky and turned his steps toward his cabin, to give her an opportunity to prove her valor. Again.

* * *

Wendy reclined on the day bed, concentrating, examining the details of the world behind the curtain. They were illuminated by the sun shafts that forced their way into the cabin, the plunging light of the sunset on the sea. Wendy blinked, lying there, under the sunlight’s violation.

She no longer felt the stomach ache or the sting of the scratches along her arms. Nor did she feel the freedom of her hair since it had been unbraided and the beads removed, nor the damp scrape of Mr. Smee’s sponge on her lips, nor the heavy strangeness of her body. Her observations crowded out the sense of shock, and while she observed, she felt nothing.

She tried to feel nothing when she thought of the weapon she won, at last and too late, from Pan. Smee had cleaned and polished it for her, and now it lay next to her pistol on the desk, a bright silver dagger. It meant nothing.

Pushing away the encroaching emotion, she scrutinized the couch. The long, raised side was carved in dark wood, a swan, the feathers of its wings locked forever in the glossy finish, half spread and poised for flight. But looking at it only reminded her; like this bird, Wendy was unable to fly. Nibs and Tom had supported her, just as John and Michael did, that day she should have run away with the pirates.

Too raw, she rejected the feelings. Wendy pressed her lips together, concentrating again.

The fabric of the couch was shiny, woven in patterns of medallions and laurel leaves. The pillows were of crimson silk, with golden tassels. Next to the couch, the Oriental runner swirled with exotic shapes in varied colors, fringed with wool. It was too detailed to remember perfectly, and it troubled her. If she could just fill her mind with these little things, instead of—

She began again.

The room was elegant. It was polished and padded. Its contents were so well tended that, apart from the mutilated desk top, she believed only six inches of ragged material existed in it— the edge of the curtain where the nap of the velvet was shorn away, evidence of its master’s grip. That single flaw held her attention for quite a while.

She heard swift footsteps on the companionway, then voices outside the door. It opened, then closed, and the curtain was hooked at the very spot to which her gaze was attached. The velvet was gathered, and cast aside. Hook stood stone-faced, high above her. She sought out the details: blue eyes, golden earring, black hair, white shirt—

Brown bottle.

Wendy stiffened.

“I have the antidote,” he said. “Will you trust me to administer it?”

“I want you to kill him.”

“That was never an article of our accord. The first thing to purge must be his poison.” He stepped toward her and inclined the bottle. “Open it.”

Repulsed, she sat up higher on the pillows and looked at him, questioning. His aspect remained stern. She didn’t want to look at the bottle, not any bottle, didn’t want to touch it. But she had trusted him; she came here willingly. There was nowhere else to run. No way to fly.

Hook nodded, commanding, and she forced herself to focus on the neck of the bottle, her face creasing with revulsion. She fixed the image in her mind, then reached out, steadied it, and pulled the stopper. She held it before her eyes, driving out the sensation the sight of the bottle invoked, intent instead on memorizing the pattern of pits on the cork.

“Wendy. Drop the stopper.”

Reluctantly, she released it, hearing nothing as it bounced on the runner. Hook sat down at her side and locked her gaze to his. He raised the bottle to his mouth, then tipped it up, taking a long draught. He brought it down. Still watching her, he swirled it with his tongue before swallowing.

Her heart pounded and she went cold. “No.”

“It is rum. You’ll not have tasted this kind of spirit before.”

Sitting up further, she inched back, raising one knee to secure herself on the slippery silk. Scarcely moving, she shook her head.

“I will warm it for you.” He put the bottle to his lips again, filled his mouth, then set the bottle aside. He leaned toward her, raising his hand to her cheek. With gentle force, he pushed her down upon the pillows. His hand slipped into her hair, his other arm moving beside her head so that the hook hung harmless above her. His face bent over her and his lips barely brushed her own, then pulled back.

She could smell the potency. His lips brushed hers once more, and once more, pulled back. His eyes were solemn, encouraging her to join with him. The lips touched again, more insistent, and his hair draped around their faces and fell trickling down to the scar at her throat. He pulled back.

Her own lips parted, breathed in, and he lowered his again to enter them and when the drink was warm enough, he released it to her, a gentle, fiery stream. Burning rum flowed into her mouth, overwhelming every taste that had come before. She swallowed, its flame purging her throat, the vapor cleansing her lungs. It was pure power. His tongue followed the fluid, making sure it was gone. He kissed her, and she pressed against him, burning like the drink. Lifting his face, he drew the sweetness from his lips with his tongue. He took it from her lips, too, and then he sat up and let her catch her breath, his own chest rising. His fingers followed the path of the rum, from his lips to hers, over her chin, down her throat and between her breasts, finally coming to rest just below her stomach. His hand lay on her, as fiery as the drink.

And then his hand left her and her skin was cold where it had lain.

“Once again.” He reached for the bottle. His eyes intense, his breathing hissing through his teeth, he toasted her. “To your good health!” And then he did it all over again while her arms rose to welcome him and wound around his waist. And this time, she opened her lips and admitted him as he imposed his will on her, and his body, and his liquid.

She drank him in, and her hands moved upward, dragging in circles on the tautness of his back. Seeking his shoulders, she inched her hands higher, and stopped. She had found a barrier to his shoulders, a rigid line that wrapped around him, under his shirt. She traced it with her fingers across his back and around to his chest. Capturing her hand at his breast, he sat up abruptly.

“So. You have discovered the inner workings of a damaged man. Shall I leave you now? Give you time to recover?”

Wendy sat up, turning her hand to clasp it in his. She shook her head. “Time doesn’t exist here.”

He smiled stiffly. “How you tempt me.” Satisfied for the moment, he stood to yank the ends of his shirt from his waist. He hauled it over his head, one-handed, shook his mane from his face and freed the claw from its sleeve. He bunched the shirt and sent it flapping over the wooden swan.

Wendy sucked in her breath. Beyond the thrill of his honed physique, she felt the panic rising within her. She pushed herself up off the couch to really see him, and she stared. She saw, now, how in her storytelling she had made him suffer. She hadn’t imagined this. It had never occurred to her to describe it. But it was so basic to who he was, who she had made him— why hadn’t she?

Because she had been a child. Believing innocence could do no harm, she had never questioned. As a result, a man stood before her, wounded, mutilated, incomplete. Here was the consequence of championing a white knight, blindly, unthinkingly faithful. Filled with dread for the next, more ghastly revelation awaiting her, Wendy braced herself. But, no longer a child, she accepted that it must come.

His hair veiled part of the harness. The leather was segmented, laced together, to allow movement. His opposite shoulder was strapped as well, but less so. Its bonds didn’t hide his contours, proclaiming instead the strength beneath his trappings. He bore a tattoo there, the black flag of the Jolly Roger, rippling between and linking the mounds of his upper left arm.

The leather cup on his right shoulder was held in place by the strap she had discovered around his chest, with one clip securing the harness to his body. It connected to his wrist by means of more straps, reinforced by a cross-band near his elbow. All the pieces worked toward a single purpose— to anchor the wooden form into which was driven his wrist at one end and the disguise for the damage at the other. His infamous hook. She recalled the shock of the first time she’d seen it. She believed she knew better now, but it struck her exactly the same way, and she swayed.

Hook had been observing her. He held his arms out at his sides. “Barbarous, is it not?”

She tore her gaze from the workings of his wound, and met his eyes. “I won’t lie to you.”

“Hardly what a girl looks to find in her first lover’s arms.”

“Hardly.” She fought the panic down. “I expect to find much more in… his arms.” And shutting her eyes to his hook, she moved herself into them. He closed them around her, pressing her cheek to his chest, her temple to the strap, so that she caught both the rich scent of his skin, smooth under its black fringe, and the dry smell of the leather. But only momentarily.

He held her away from him, and studied her with narrowed eyes. “What has changed since last night? I have not. I am still a pirate. My ship is still a bird of prey. Is it that you now have no where else to go? Is your new love, in truth, a port in a storm?”

The rum must be affecting her hearing. “You can’t believe that of me!”

“And what can you believe of me? Anything? Everything?”

“I believe you have saved me, again.”

“So you are merely grateful, repaying me for my many kindnesses.”

“Kindnesses?” She recognized him again now, the ruthless sea captain of her stories. “In showing me kindness you have sacrificed little, and gained everything.”

“It seems not quite everything, yet.”

“But a moment ago—”

“A moment ago, last night! Questions of Time. My question remains. What has changed?”

She looked at him and lifted her shoulders. “Nothing. Except that I admit it.”

His eyes became hard, like ice. “If you think to enter my game, I can change your mind, and very quickly. Shall we test your strength? Shall we see the truth, in all its glory?” Raising his hook, he regarded it, then smiled at her, coldly. “Yes, I believe it is the moment.”

She backed away, her hands at her mouth. Had she been wrong, again? And when he suddenly raised his hand to her face, she flinched.

His sneer was swift. “I thought as much. No matter what I see in your eyes, you harbor doubts. As do I.” He reached out again and snatched her wrist. “Put my mind at rest, girl. Show me that you really want to know me.” He pulled her roughly against him, slapping her hand on the clip at his breast. “Once again I will command you. Open it.”

Her hand clutched the clip, her resolve slipping away. “I will.” She believed she was trying, but it shook in her fingers. The metal tongue was too stiff for her thumb to bend. Entreating, she raised her eyes to his. “Help me.”

Hook looked down at her and shook his head, his silken voice reproachful. “My hand is no more. It is yours that must open the way, for both of us.”

“But I don’t have your strength.”

His remaining hand covered hers. “You’re wrong. But how can I share what you will not accept?”

“I will accept it, I do. The scars you have to show me… and the consequences of what I’ve done to you, the horror of it. I was a thoughtless child!”

“Ah! Now go on. Connect the story.” Still, he pressed her hand against the leather.

She thought, and she remembered, and her eyes widened. “You said— you said you’d been after the wrong fox!”

“So I did.”

“You knew even then that I wove your story.”

“Tell me.”

“
I
dreamt it up,
I
spoke the words—”

“Golden words!”

“And they came true!”

His grip tightened. “Just the words?”

“No… you. You came true, too.”

“And what else is true, Storyteller? What words will you speak to me next?”

She had to say it. She had to speak the truth. “It was I, not Pan, who did this to you.”

“Yes.”

“And it is I you want to punish!”

“Yes, and?”

“That is the reason you ended your blood feud against him.”

He turned his ear toward her, raising an eyebrow. “Against whom?”

She barely whispered. “…Me.”

He pulled her hand from his brace and presented it to her with an exaggerated gesture. “Half right, but full marks for effort. I had other motives as well. Knowing what you now know, what next?” Casually, he waved the claw. “Pray continue your narration.”

In shocked calm, she studied his eyes. “But this is the end of the story. You will kill me now, or punish me until I wish you had.”

He smiled, satisfied, and caught her in his arms. “Now you are thinking like a pirate! Yes, it is the end. The Wendy will die here.” She felt the tip of his hook boring into her back, just behind her heart. Gasping, she pushed herself further toward his chest, clutching at his arms. This was the moment she had dreaded, the crisis she strove to avoid since the first time she saw his ship and felt the blow of Long Tom, since she discovered with its bone-shattering blast that Hook was more than a story.

But strangely, she was not able to believe in him yet. “You’re right, I believe anything and everything of you. But I can’t believe you’ll kill me.”

“Yet that is what you would have me do to
your
enemy.”

“Yes, it was my first urge, but…”

The hook fell away from her heart. His good hand stroked her cheek and traveled to her neck, and his thumb pushed her chin upward. “Tell me the tale. How will I satisfy my dark urgings for Wendy?”

His touch was still warm, and something in his eyes sparked her courage. She looked at him shrewdly now, thinking. “You don’t really want to punish me further, or shame me.” With a sharp intake of breath, she realized, “If you did, it would already be done.” He inclined his head. Her face cleared. “You want me to learn.”

“I have told you. Wendy will not leave this room alive.” Once again his ear turned toward her, and one eyebrow rose. “
Whom
do I want to learn?”