Rising slowly, silently, I curled my fingers around the daggers and sneaked up behind the sergeant. Ashley didn’t glance at me as he stepped backward, following the soldier’s orders.
Together, they shuffled into the tenebrous hole. When the soldier coughed, distracted by the stench, I charged.
Blades out, I swung them with all my strength. The steel slid easily into either side of the man’s neck, the tender flesh giving little resistance. A gurgling sound bubbled from his mouth. Warm blood spurted over my fingers, and Ashley caught the waving pistol, wrenching it away.
The man dropped. I pulled the daggers free and heaved a shivering exhale.
Another soldier dead. Another body to hide.
“Thank you.” Ashley’s gaze latched onto mine.
I nodded, breathing heavily. “You were saying…”
“My plan was to acquire clean frocks and breeches.” He stepped to a bucket of water and washed his face. “If we lure two soldiers down here and subdue them without bleeding them”—he cast me a narrowed look—“we can walk out wearing disguises.”
“Oh.” I grimaced at the gore saturating the sergeant’s frock. Blast it.
“We’re going to take care of each other, Bennett. You and me, from now on. No matter what happens. We’ll get out of here. I promise.”
His vow flowed through my veins, warmed my blood, and penetrated my heart. But I knew, even dressed as the admiral’s soldiers, we wouldn’t make it off the flagship without inquiries and detention.
“We’re even.” I squatted before him and cleaned my hands in the bucket. “You saved me from the admiral. I saved you from the soldier.” I closed my eyes against the resolution hardening his face. “I need you to go. Leave. Now.”
“No.”
I made a sound of frustration. “Think, Ashley. I’m a savage. A murderer. My fate is decided. This ends with me hanging, and you know it.” I met his searing gaze. “You are going to walk out of here. Right now. Tell them I murdered these men, and you managed to escape. Do it. For me. It’s the only way.”
“Never.” He rose in a blur. In the next breath, he pinned me against the wall beneath the furnace of his hard, shirtless chest. “If you ever suggest a preposterous idea like that again, I will punish your lovely arse until you can’t sit for a week.”
I sighed. That was the commodore I knew and loved.
Confident, stalwart nobleman.
Irritating pain in the arse.
Tipping my head back, I gazed into his beautiful, passionate blue eyes, and whoa. I was dizzy. Head-spinning, heart-racing dizzy. Probably stress and nerves. Or hunger. Or perhaps it was the floating, mystical magic I always felt in his presence.
Honest to God, if we weren’t surrounded by the stench of death, I would’ve planted an adoring kiss on his lips.
“We’re not equals.” He cupped the side of my face and brought my cheek against his warm chest. “And we’re not even close to being even, madam.” His mouth lowered to the top of my head, his breath rustling my hair. “I’m beneath you, less than you, in every way that transcends this world. Perhaps someday, I’ll do something great and good and earn your forgiveness.”
“You are great and good.” I circled my arms around him and squeezed tight. “So good, in fact, it’s positively annoying and not at all attractive.” Pressing my face into the chiseled heat of his torso, I found heaven. “Damn, I missed you.”
“I missed you, too, but we need to—”
A deafening boom exploded above us. The detonation hit so hard it blew me out of Ashley’s arms and across the hold.
The wind knocked from the lungs. The keel of the ship canted with a mighty groan, and the world slanted to the starboard, rolling every barrel, cable, and body in the hold to one side.
I must have hit my head, given the colossal pang hammering in the back of my skull. I couldn’t find my bearings, couldn’t see anything through the cloud of smoke that engulfed the space.
“Ashley!” The stench of sulfur burned my nose, my eyes stinging as I searched the gray haze. “Ashley! Where are you?”
“Here.” His voice came from behind me, right at my ear, and his arms hooked around my waist.
“What happened?”
“The flagship’s under attack. Don’t let go of me.” He lifted me up in the air and tossed me over his shoulder.
Then he took off. I clenched my whole body around his shoulders and back and held on as he scaled the ladder and shoved open the hatchway.
Another eruption shook the ship, the magnitude of it so loud it