arse of the suddenly apparently dead was a treatment I’d seen too many times. It never worked as far as I could tell. So how was I alive?
Ashley drew his bottom lip between his teeth, and that unholy gesture made my stomach dip. Did my eyes deceive me, or was he fighting a smile?
A muffled chuckle drifted from Flemming.
I craned my neck and glimpsed the doctor barely containing his grin.
“You’re jesting?” My mouth dropped open as I looked back at Ashley. “You made an actual joke? To excite laughter?”
“You’re not laughing.”
“I’m too shocked to do anything at the moment.”
“That’s good.”
“Why?”
“All done, my lord.” Flemming stood and gathered his tools. “Keep the foot elevated for a time.”
He finished? I couldn’t believe it. Ashley had deliberately distracted me from the stabbing needle. Why would he do that for someone he was condemning to the gallows? Why engage with me at all?
There was so much more to this man than he allowed to be known.
As Flemming stepped out, Sergeant Smithley set a pair of black boots inside the cabin. They looked small. Perhaps small enough.
The door shut, and it was just Ashley and me, staring at each other.
Ashley touched my chin, closing my still gaping mouth. I expected him to pull away, but his fingers stayed, drifted, inching their way to my lips.
“How was I revived when you pulled me from the sea?” I stared up at him, hypnotized.
“Flemming put his mouth on yours.” He traced the curve of my bottom lip. “He gave you breath until water squirted from your airway.”
“He did what?” I’d never heard of such a thing. “That worked?”
“I should say so.” His gaze lowered, caressed the rise of my breasts above the stays, and returned to my eyes. “I’ve never met anyone so full of life. It pains me to imagine your…vitality being choked from your body.”
A flutter swarmed my belly as the tips of his fingers touched my throat, tracing my pulse. Choking was exactly how this would end if he continued on his path. But for the first time, I glimpsed a genuine struggle in him, an inner battle that gouged creases into his serious brow.
While his king’s desires came before his own, he didn’t want to deliver me to England. Deep down, he knew I would be convicted and hanged.
Choosing a pirate over his country was nowhere near a possibility in his mind. But the situation unsettled him. He liked having me around, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.
He lifted me into his arms and lowered us into a nearby chair, arranging me sideways on his lap with my legs propped on the table.
“Relax.” He touched his lips to my temple.
I hadn’t realized I’d tensed. It seemed my body didn’t trust him. As it shouldn’t.
Releasing a sluggish breath, I ordered my muscles to loosen one by one. Softly, gently, I sank into the cradle of his brawny frame and dropped my head onto his shoulder.
He stretched out his legs and deepened his recline, letting the cadence of the storm lull us into a profound sense of serenity. Now and then, he indulged in his need to untangle my curls—unraveling the wet strands with patient fingers, smoothing out the tresses from roots to ends, and breathing rhythmically with the movement of his hand.
With each stroke, I snuggled closer until my lips rested against the hard lines of his jaw. He had the smoothest skin I’d ever felt on a man, and he smelled delightful, so clean and virile. I couldn’t resist the pull to nuzzle him.
He allowed the intimacy and played in it, too, brushing his mouth across my cheek and against the ticklish place beneath my ear. Off and on, he dropped tender kisses along the frame of my face, seemingly unaware of his effect on me as he absently petted my hair and stared off into the rain.
His affection was neither lust-filled nor expectant. He didn’t grab me or grope me or hurry this along to some indecent end. He was giving me a connection, a closeness that was bigger, stronger than bedplay.
We were meaningful together. Intricate. An unlikely bond formed in the dwelling place of souls.
The moment felt unreal, like a dream between time and space, with no boundaries, no titles. We weren’t enemies in this sphere. We weren’t captor and captive or lord and pirate.
We were but two people who came from and belonged to the sea, reaching for each other because it felt right. It felt natural.