for two years had been sheer luck, and now my luck had run out. The only way to escape him was to kill him.
Might as well run a sword through my own heart.
I couldn’t do it.
His gaze stayed on mine, and somewhere in that cruel scowl, he knew.
He knew I still loved him.
But if he thought we could pick up where we left off, he was out of his mind. Did he think that after the lies and infidelity, I would graciously forgive him? That I would welcome him back into my bed?
As if he gave a damn what I wanted. Priest Farrell took, plundered, and raided for his own enjoyment. He was a cold-blooded pirate who acted without moral restraint or conscience, especially when it came to his primitive desires.
“Where’s your ship?” I glanced at the shore behind him, unsurprised to find him alone. “No crew?”
“I released them this morning when I located you. Gave them the ship as a parting gift.”
Cold, silent dread filled my stomach, solidifying what I’d already surmised.
He had every intention of coming with me. And why not? His loyalties lay with no one and nothing. He was a lone sea wolf, bouncing from ship to stolen ship, seizing and discarding without attachment to the crews or the vessels he captured.
He meant to treat me with the same callousness.
Again.
“Return the compass.” I held out my hand, knowing damn well he wouldn’t surrender his only insurance.
“Not until we’re aboard Jade.” His mouth curved up at the corner, and his tongue caught the crease with a teasing lick, as his gaze descended to the bodice of my gown. “Once I remove that garish travesty from your body with my teeth, I’ll reacquaint myself with what lawfully belongs to me. Then I’ll return your precious compass.”
My nipples hardened in memory of his fastidious touch, and my pulse fluttered angrily in my throat. “The devil fetch you, you rotten, unfaithful bastard.”
“Your temper still makes me hard.” The velvet darkness of his voice curled beneath my rage. “Not an inch of your satiny skin will go unmarked before I’m hilt-deep inside you again.”
Reynolds leaped in front of me and thrust out his cutlass. “You lost the privilege to touch her.”
“Watch yourself, Reynolds.” Priest slipped a dagger from his belt and picked his fingernail with it. “I’d hate to kill you. You’re like a brother to me.”
“I am your brother, you bleeding cunt.”
“By half. God knows I have enough of those to fill a galleon.”
“Because your mother was a whore with the sores of syphilis dangling about her stretched lips.”
Priest closed his eyes and went preternaturally still. The air cracked on the next breath, and they lunged at the same time. But I was braced for it, already jumping between them with my arms outstretched.
“Enough.” With a hand on each marble-hard chest, I shoved them apart. “By my account, both of your mothers were whores, and your father was no better, seeing as he tried to kill his only sons.”
“Just so.” Reynolds stepped away from my touch. “We were pirating his ship.”
Stealing from their own father. It had been Priest’s idea, and Reynolds and I had gone along with it. I almost lost them both that day, but in the end, the battle had turned in our favor. It had been my sword on which their father fell.
“I saved both your backsides, remember?” I shoved them farther apart, keeping an eye on Priest, as my hand tangled in the laces of his shirt.
I should have pulled away, but it had been too long. Two years too long. I felt that separation in the pads of my fingers as they slid across familiar ridges of hot muscle, basking in his masculine strength. Fearing it.
His nostrils widened, and he leaned in, pushing against my palm, testing my courage.
In the blackness of night, my senses sought the tempo of his heart, which pounded as furiously as my own. “Don’t come any closer.”
One touch would be my undoing. I could barely breathe in his presence.
His jaw set, and the lonely gap between us swelled with years of contempt and distrust. If I allowed him aboard my ship, in my cabin, I courted a harrowing outcome. He would seize the last of my determination, my dignity, until there was nothing left worth salvaging.
Unless I turned the tables and gave him a dose of his own deception.
I relaxed my fingers in his shirt and let him press into my space. He didn’t hesitate to crowd in, dipping