Master of Paradise (14 page)

“I went to a great deal of trouble to get you
here and—”

“
You!
Get
me
here!”

“It was on my order that Jonah Fitch braved
exposure in Mahé and waited for you to come to him. So if you think
I’m going to let you collect your brother and sail away, you’re
sadly mistaken.”

She was dazed by the ease with which she’d
been manipulated. Even so, she was in no way defeated by this
master puppeteer.

“If you think I’m going to kneel before you
and call you master, you’re out of your bloody mind!”

He stared into her eyes. She locked her gaze
with his, refusing to look away, watching as any tenderness or
mercy left their depths to be replaced by a cold and cruel
desire.

“Quartermaster,” he said quietly, without
looking away.

She felt Wallace’s presence beside them.
“Sir?”

“This woman is henceforth my captive. Rummage
through the booty and find her a dress to wear. See that she puts
it on if you have to strip her and place her in it yourself.
Then—”

His eyes searched hers and caught the
rebellious raise of her chin.

“Then, Captain?”

“Then secure her in my cabin.”

There was a momentary pause. “
Secure
her, sir?”

Rodrigo’s hands dropped from her shirt as if
he could no longer bear the touch of her skin. “Lock her in my
cabin. If she tries to escape, tie her.” His eyes flicked back to
hers, full of the quiet confidence of a man who knows his orders
will be obeyed. “I’d like to see you escape me this time,” he
added, before she was dragged away.

For hours, Gabrielle fought back the panic
that threatened to make her scream. Wallace had done his dirty work
well. He’d dressed her in the only frock he’d been able to find, a
rich gown of ivory satin embossed with lace. Without a corset, the
gown was too small, cutting into her waist and crushing her breasts
so they throbbed from the constant pressure. When she’d tried to
gouge his eyes, the quartermaster had tied her hands behind her
back. In the process, her breasts were thrust forward, pushing the
deeply cut bodice farther down the generous globes of flesh.

But that wasn’t the worst. She could suffer
the indignity of being dressed for a pirate’s pleasure, as if going
to a ball—or like an unwilling bride. She didn’t even mind so much
that her tangled hair was falling in her face, and without her
hands, she couldn’t effectively fling it back. She could survive
the cramped muscles from staying hours in one place. What she did
mind—what terrified her and kept a scream lurking at the back of
her throat—was the heavy iron chain around her neck.

Rodrigo had made it clear he would brook no
chance of escape. In order to accomplish this, Wallace had forced
her to kneel by the stove in his master’s cabin. After fastening
her wrists behind her back, he’d wrapped a thick metal chain about
her neck, securing it to the black stove behind her. She had just
enough of a tether that she could lower her head, giving her aching
shoulders a rest. But it was impossible for her to stand, or to
alter her position in any way.

Since the age of seven, when Hastings had
forced her to watch her mother’s execution, she couldn’t abide
having anything about her neck. Even a soft silk scarf caused her
to feel she was choking. Being chained by the throat brought back
that dreaded nightmare—the one of watching her mother hang and
slowly realizing it wasn’t her mother at all they were hanging, but
herself. It had left her with a premonition that she, like her
mother, would die of hanging.

It was one of the many reasons the life of a
pirate filled her with such horror. If she gave in to temptation
and accepted Rodrigo in her bed, she knew she could never let him
go. By joining forces with him, she’d effectively be placing her
own neck in the noose.

She was so close to tears, they burned in her
throat. As the hours passed and the room grew dim, then darkened to
a deep pitch, she struggled with the blackest visions of her
tormented soul—all that she forgot during the day but relived at
night in visions of atrocities that left her drenched and trembling
in her bed. In daylight, she was a fearless woman, but in the dark,
she became a child again—the child who’d shaken in her bed night
after night, longing for a consoling touch, only to be awakened by
Hastings whispering in her ear. “They hang bad girls like you.”

She couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stay for
one more moment with this wretched chain around her neck, seeing
her mother’s face as her once-beautiful eyes bulged in death.
Hearing Hastings’s voice at her ear, sinister and pleased. If she
had to brave this one minute more, she felt she’d go insane.

Her only distraction was focusing on her
hatred of Rodrigo—hatred fueled by the humiliation of her
unexpected and effortless defeat in the duel. If she concentrated
on Rodrigo, the anger made her strong.

Concentrating on Rodrigo wasn’t hard. She
could even smell him in the room. He’d always had a distinctive
aroma, partly man and partly the sea. But there was something else.
She recalled it sharply now, as if the years had disappeared, and
she was kneeling before him, a girl of seventeen, on their island
of love. She’d reached for him, caressing him with her hands,
bringing him to her mouth. To worship his beauty with a kiss. To
breathe deeply of his scent. Ever after, she’d associated that
scent with forbidden sensual desire.

The worst of it was that, as she grew more
weary by the hour and her mind began to slip, another vision
flashed of Rodrigo entering the cabin, yanking the chain back, and
entering her as she was, bound to his stove on her knees. As
shocking an image as it was, she couldn’t get it out of her mind.
Her breasts, spilling over the binding of her dress, ached to be
crushed and molded by his pirate’s hands; the nipples, hard and
tight, longed to swell beneath his tongue.

Just then she heard the bolt slide back. She
swallowed, realizing how dry her throat was, how parched and
swollen her tongue. Nervously, she licked her lips but couldn’t wet
them. Her heart thundered in her breast and she cursed it, bade it
to be calm.

He entered then, with a candle in his hand.
She couldn’t see him at first. All she could see was that single
blinding light. Accustomed as her eyes were to the darkness, the
flare of light obscured his features. The door closed behind him,
but he didn’t move. He just stood there looking at her as if time
stood still. With a valiant effort, she raised herself higher on
her aching knees and tossed her head to try to pitch her hair back.
But it was useless. It was too heavy and it fell like ribbons over
her face, forcing her to look in his direction through a gauzy
veil.

Eventually her eyes adjusted and the beacon
took its true perspective, becoming just the meager flickering of a
candle’s flame. He walked forward soundlessly and his face came
into focus. The wide forehead. The high cheeks. The Roman nose.
Those full, sensual lips. The golden hair that gleamed and beckoned
her fingers like a trunkload of Spanish coins.

He set the candle aside without taking his
gaze from her face. In his other hand he held a heavy golden
goblet, mellowed with the age of a hundred years, and brilliant
with rubies. They winked in the light and reminded her once again
of rumpled scarlet sheets. He held it negligently, dangling from
his palm, the stem between the third and fourth fingers of his
hand.

She looked away because the sight of that
hand, cupping his goblet as he earlier had her breast, seemed too
intimate a sight for her present shattered state. Lowering her
lashes, she rested her gaze on the gash she’d inflicted on his
thigh. It had been cleaned of blood so only the flesh wound
remained. But she could see the flexing of muscles beneath the
overlay of golden hair. Her eyes followed the inevitable line to
the juncture of his thighs and saw him harden perceptibly beneath
her gaze. A shiver of excitement rushed through her. Her lips
parted in an effort to draw air.

“What have you been thinking about?” he asked
in a hushed voice.

She looked up and, with difficulty, met his
gaze through her hair. “Of how dearly I’d like to kill you.”

It was then that he noticed the chain. With a
sudden forceful lunge, he wrenched it from the stove. Unwrapping it
from her throat, he let it clatter to the floor as he pulled her to
him in a fierce embrace and put his lips to the soft, bruised flesh
of her neck.

“I didn’t know,” he murmured into her
flesh.

She stiffened in his arms. “If you think
that’s going to make up for what you’ve done to me—”

He let her go so suddenly that she lost her
balance. With her hands still tied behind her, she couldn’t reach
out and right herself, so she fell in a crumpled heap at his
feet.

Squatting on bent knees, his elbows resting
on them for balance, he brought his face close to hers. With his
free hand, he gently brushed the hair back off her face.

His soft touch startled her. It made her
weak, opened her to him in a way demands never would. It frightened
her, so she jerked her head from his grasp and willed him to wither
before her gaze. But he merely traced the line of her bare
shoulder. Then he slipped his finger beneath the straining material
that bound her breasts, and coaxed it down, exposing her completely
to his gaze. With her breasts bared before him, she felt the veneer
of civilization fall away with her frock. She felt him stroke the
softness of her flesh. Not hesitantly. Not asking her permission.
Just grazing her with the back of his finger as if asserting his
right to do so. She felt more helpless, more enslaved by the
involuntary exposure of her breasts than she did by the tethers at
her wrists.

She tried again to swallow and couldn’t. She
was struggling for self-possession. Struggling against his siege.
The vibrations he emitted through the touch of his hand, the
whispered power of his words, were so provocative, they threatened
to sweep her away. She felt flooded with flame, mowed down by
images and sensations so intense they left her trembling in their
wake. Never had she come across a force so trenchant, so utterly
seductive. It was like reliving the temptation of her dream all
over again. The dream where she gave herself to him completely and
begged for more.

His eyes lifted from her breasts and bore
into hers, the eyes of a wild beast.

“Come,” he coaxed. “Quench your thirst.”

He put the goblet to her lips. She could
smell the wine, heavy and rich. But she knew he didn’t mean the
thirst of the afternoon. She knew he wanted her to slake her
desires in the temptation of his touch. He dangled the bait before
her like a devil inducing her soul. It would be so easy to drink
her fill. But at the last moment, she turned her face away.

She felt his rage before he moved. Then,
suddenly, with the spring of an enraged beast, he was on his feet.
His fist tangled in her hair. He jerked back her head, put the
goblet to her lips, and poured. She had to open her mouth or it
would flood her face. The fear of choking won. She parted her lips
and swallowed convulsively as he forced it down her throat.

When she’d drunk the contents, he withdrew
the cup. But he stood over her still, keeping her face turned to
him by yanking back her hair. Her lips were pursed. She didn’t say
a word, just stared mutinously into his eyes. Slowly, his hand
still in her hair, he lowered himself to her level once again. With
his face inches from hers, she spat the wine she’d saved in her
mouth into his face. It spread and dripped from him like blood.

Red as rubies. Scarlet as those accursed
sheets.

So calmly it frightened her, he wiped the
elixir from his face. “You spilled some,” he told her. With his
finger, he scooped the drop of wine from her chin. Then he put it
to her mouth and made her suck it off.

“I know what you want,” she said in a voice
vibrating with passion. “But I won’t do it. You’ll have to kill me
first.”

“You used to feel differently about me,” he
said lightly.

“That was before—”

She stopped, realizing suddenly that they
were in the midst of a bizarre reenactment of her play.

“Before I what,
carícia
? Became a vile
rogue? As I recall, you liked me being a vile rogue when we were
children.”

Obviously, he’d read the play more than once,
and was now taunting her with her own words.

“You’re not playing your part,
carícia
. I believe your line is: ‘You left me to pursue your
evil designs.’ ”

“Fiend from hell!” she hissed, falling into
his trap. “I shall never believe another word you say. I shall
never trust you again.”

He stood then and, looking melodramatically
into her eyes, put his hand on his chest and said: “ ‘My name is
feared all across the Indian Ocean, from the Horn of Africa to the
Celebes Sea. I’ve looted ships and collected bounty worth a king’s
ransom. But without the woman I love, I’m only half a man!’ ”

She sat back on her heels and glared. “How
dare you mock me?”

“Ah,” he said in his natural voice, with the
ghost of a smile flickering at his lips. “You do not see the
absurdity of it all? You curse me now, but I have fond memories of
you as a wild little girl with flying hair and a taunting laugh,
boasting that she could best me at swordplay as she ran across the
English hills with her skirts about her knees.”

He helped her to her feet, then untied her
hands. Gently, he rubbed her wrist where the rope had chafed.
Realizing that he was trying to disarm her, that she was yielding
to that part of herself that loved him still, she pulled her hand
from his and settled the bodice back over her exposed breasts. Then
she spoke seriously, if without the anger that had earlier colored
her words.