Veiled in Stars and Silver: A Peter Pan Fairy Tale Romance

Chapter 18

We landed hard on the freezing pavement between two homes, my heart racing. Ezra had pushed Uncle out the window. Was he dead? Injured? Enraged even more than he already was? At least we were out of Uncle”s sights. I wanted to know what happened to him, but not badly enough to check.

James jerked up over me, his good hand feeling down my body. “Wendy, are you shot?”

Hell, I liked his touch on me. “I”m fine. You?”

His hand paused on my thigh. Then he withdrew, leaving me feeling empty.

“Good.” He stood and helped me to my feet. “We need to find shelter.”

James”s voice was strained from the cold.

I nodded. The frigidity dug into me, too. But this late at night, and dressed as we were, we”d be hard-pressed to find a place to stay. Well, there may be one place. “There are rooms on the outskirts of town, paid for by the evening. Perhaps they will have something open this late.”

“Lead the way.”

“Let”s walk a street or two before we fly.” I wanted to be out of my uncle”s range before we rose into the air, to be safe.

“All right, but let”s hasten.”

We hurried down the road, the breeze blowing snow into our faces.

“Your uncle is quite the brute,” he growled. Seeing James in that room, his hook ready to rip Uncle open, had left me with a mixture of feelings. Part was surprised that James had responded so strongly to Uncle hitting me. Part of me wanted to let him finish the man for good. But Ezra had been standing there. And I couldn”t.

“Right before I came to Neverland, he was about to marry me off to a war buddy. Someone who”d keep me in line.” I spat the last words.

“Ah, that”s how you got to Neverland.”

“You can”t come unless you are trying to escape something,” I said. “Ivy told me.”

“That”s right.”

We reached the end of the second street. “Here, let”s fly.”

James gestured toward me. “After you, Wendy Darling.”

We flew to the edge of town where the transients of winter tended to settle. After landing, I knocked on the paint-chipped door of the landlord”s apartment, my clothes stiff, my fingers aching.

We could have returned to Neverland, but things were ridiculously dangerous there now. We needed a good night”s sleep and some food before going back to battle evil and chaos. Plus, I wanted time to think.

I glanced over at James, who had his good hand under his other arm, his breathing coming in large puffs from near purple lips. Guilt slithered inside of me as I held the dagger in my hands. The weapon I had agreed to turn over to Peter Pan. I slipped it behind me as a stooped, weathered man opened the door in his nightcap and squinted up at us. “What d”ya want?”

“We”d like a room,” I said.

The man looked us over, his narrowed eyes stopping on James. “Would ya now?”

What was wrong with him? We were clearly in danger from the cold. Was our less-than-conventional clothes more important than the fact that we were about to freeze to death? “Yes.”

“Not sure what kind of place you think this is, but this is a respectable establishment. We don”t house your kind.”

James gave him a nonplussed stare. “That”s too bad, because we can pay.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ruby.

The man”s eyes bulged, and my jaw dropped. I had thought I”d have to sell off a few of my throwing knives. The landlord didn”t haggle on price, he accepted the ruby as if that wasn”t significantly more than the nightly fare. “I only have one room left, and the furnace is broken.”

At that point, neither of us cared. “W-We”ll take it,” I said, clutching my arms around myself. Anything to get out of this weather.

The man gave us a crooked, half-toothed smile. “Pleasure doing business with ya.” He unhooked a key that hung by the entrance and held it out to us. “Last door on the left. Stay as long as you”d like.”

James took the key from the man and turned to me. “Let”s go.” So much snow clung to his hair that it fell whenever he moved.

“Where”d you get the ruby?” I asked through chattering teeth.

“Cora offered me a few gems she had from the last time I paid her,” he said.

That made sense, though I was sorry I”d asked.

We stumbled over to the door the landlord had indicated. My feet and hands were numb. I didn”t know how James managed to get the key in the lock. His hand shook so badly he almost dropped it before we heard the click, and he shoved the door open.

Both of us rushed into the room. I immediately began brushing snow out of my hair and off my clothes, dropping the soaking overcoat to the floor. Even if the space wasn”t warm, it was at least dry. A bed with a single threadbare blanket occupied the small space, along with the broken furnace. I frowned up at the piping that was bent and cracked through, wondering how that happened. On a rickety table next to the entrance sat a low-lit lantern that must have run through the day because the wick had burned to a tiny nub.

James pushed the door shut, and then I felt a tug on the back of my dress. I stiffened as the wet fabric around me loosened.

“What are you doing?”

He continued to unbutton me, despite the obvious threat I”d laced in the question. “We are both dangerously cold. The only way to make sure we both wake up in the morning is to get out of these sopping clothes and warm each other in that bed.”

My cheeks stung with unexpected warmth. “You mean both of us together, completely bare?”

I wondered if he saw the tips of my scars peeking out above my corset, but he seemed too worried about getting them both undressed to notice. He finished with my buttons and corset ties before lifting off his shirt. At his tattooed chest and messed hair, the warmth in my cheeks dipped into my stomach. Shit. He was warming me, and we weren’t even under the covers yet.

“I swear to be the perfect gentleman,” he said.

I snorted, and a mischievous grin crossed his face.

“As close to the perfect gentleman as I can manage,” he amended. His arm brace spanned over both shoulders and down his hook arm, but his movements remained easy, as if it wasn’t there.

When his hand gripped his pants, yanking off his belt in one fluid motion, I turned away, despite a fervid curiosity. A part of me knew he wouldn’t mind if I watched. He’d probably like it, but if he reacted to my looking, I’d never be able to climb into that bed with him.

The mattress creaked from movement under his body. I risked a glance, and he was sitting up. I traced the muscles of his abdomen to where the blanket covered his bare lower half.

He raised an eyebrow, his blue eyes teasing. “You’d rather freeze to death than join me?” He patted the space next to him.

“Perhaps I would,” I returned, but I placed my back to him as I gripped my dress. Despite the reaction James elicited in me, I was still shivering. “Don’t look.”

“I”ve seen naked women before, Wendy.”

I turned to shoot him a deadly glare. “Gentleman,” I reminded him.

“Yes. Yes.” He sighed and lifted his hand over his eyes.

After I slipped out of my gown, I drew my knives out of my undergarments and then peeled off their wetness. Before I thought twice about what I was doing, I raced for the bed, gripped the blanket, and slid under, pulling it up to my chin, facing away from him. But the thin cover did little to heat me, and I trembled, quaking the entire mattress.

James sank down, and his arm came around me, urging me against him. The lantern would go out soon, but for now, I enjoyed the small amount of light. Right before my spine hit his chest, he paused. His finger traced over my back. Damn. My scars from Uncle Reuben”s lash.

“I should have finished gutting the bastard,” he seethed. My heart burned at the dark emotion in his voice.

He tugged me tight against him. The warmth of his body rolled into me, and his brace brushed over my abdomen. His other arm dug beneath me until I was locked in his embrace.

Remembering the stone settled against my chest, I lifted the chain, but James nudged me with his shoulder. “Leave it on. Always leave it on, even here.”

My face contorted. “Surely he can”t control us from Neverland… Or in a world with so many...”

“It has always been uncertain the extent of Peter”s power in this world. It”s better to leave it on.”

I nodded, releasing the chain and settling into James”s arms. I shut my eyes, a slight ache moved through my limbs as I heated. The comfort of his arms was like coming home to a roaring fire and a cup of hot cocoa on a winter day. A calmness settled me. Why had I been so nervous? This felt better than anything I could remember.

“You aren”t ruthless,” James muttered.

I opened my eyes. “I”m sorry?”

“You feed the children in the street. You buy from the poor even when you know their product is a sham. And overpay every time. You are not ruthless. You, Wendy Darling, are kind.”

I twisted to give him a side-long glance. “Have you been following me?”

He lifted his head and displayed a roguish grin. “You had my dagger.” His smile faded, and his arms tightened around me. “You”ve lost everything. And after tonight, discovering what kind of man your uncle is... You fight for what you have left. Like me.”

“The people of Neverland are your family.”

A solemnity came over his expression. “Yes.”

Just like I”d do anything for my brothers, he”d do anything for them. I thought of the jeweled dagger I”d left on the floor with the other knives and turned away from him, a frown on my lips.

“What were you trying to escape?” I asked.

He became still. “What?”

“When you came to Neverland. What were you escaping?”

His head dropped onto the bed behind me. “My family.”

That wasn”t what I was expecting. “You mean your wife and child?”

“I loved my wife. We weren’t well off, but we got by. Then we had a child, and what little money we had seemed to shrink into nothing. I was frightened. The responsibility was too much. I-I convinced myself they would be better off without me. My wife could say I was dead and remarry someone more capable. So I left. I received an offer to come to Neverland, and I came.” Pain laced his voice.

I lay there, unsure of what to say. Abandoning family. What a horrible thing to do.

“I regretted it almost instantly, and I wanted to return to them,” he muttered. “But once you are there, there’s no going back. Not if Pan doesn’t want you to. It was him that decided I should become the dread pirate captain. Because a child leaving their family behind is one thing, but only the worst sort of man abandons his wife and child.”

My disgust melted away, and a heaviness moved through me, for the pain in his words, for the man who could never return to find his family. For the way he’d obviously tortured himself over it for so long. “Everyone has doubts about new changes, especially big ones. A life of enslavement is not a just exchange for a moment of doubt.”

“I don’t know, love. Sometimes it seems the only reward for making such a choice.”

“You said you wanted to go back.”

He let out a slow breath that brushed my hair. “Every day.”

“What happened to them?”

“When I acquired the stone and found I could leave Neverland, the first thing I did was try to find them. But they’d died a long time ago. I searched the local records of the town I’d lived in. My wife never remarried. Turns out, she became a healer woman. Arabella had always been strong-headed and capable. She’d learned a bit of the healing arts growing up from her grandmother. She must have done well for herself because both she and my daughter lived extended lives.” He sighed. “But that changes nothing. I failed them.”

I thought about not being able to return and see loved ones because of a single mistake. And now it was too late. Years and years too late.

“I can’t fail the people of Neverland, Wendy,” he said. “Whatever they were running from, they deserve to go back if they want. They deserve to be liberated.”

My brows scrunched. “And how are you going to be free? If you take on the power of Neverland through the dagger, you have to stay.”

A silence spanned between us before he finally said, “You and I both know there is always a price you pay to save those you love.”

When I was a child, I had thought Peter was brave, even honorable because he punished the bad and stood for the good. But there was something different about James”s version of bravery and nobility. It was complicated, merciful. Beautiful.

He shifted. His warm fingers moved across my abdomen in a gentle massage. The metal of his hook left a cold trail down the outside of my thigh. A heat gathered in my core. I was suddenly aware of every part of him shoved against me. His muscular chest against my shoulder blades, his legs that had somehow become tangled in mine. His hips pressing unforgivingly into my backside.

His breath brushed across the back of my neck, followed by a touch of wetness as he caressed my skin with his lips. He descended inch by inch, trailing kisses down to my shoulders. My eyes shut, enjoying every moment of the tender sensation.

“Wendy,” he whispered, and I sensed the question in his voice. I rolled my body against him in response, my hips grinding against him, and he hummed in answer.

His hand didn”t stop there. His fingers roved over my skin, tracing the outline of each of my ribs, moving steadily upwards. Slowly, his hook traveled to my inner thigh, leaving a cold path. Any moment he could rip into me, shred me from end to end, and I”d be completely helpless. I moved against him again, my breaths becoming shallow.

“I thought you were going to be a gentleman,” I murmured.

“What can I say?” he said, a wicked edge to his voice. “I am a black-hearted rapscallion.”

His fingers brushed the underside of my breast.

I gasped, an unexpected pulsing starting between my legs. “You’re a dark-souled braggart.”

His hook dragged up the inside of my thigh.

“A yellow-bellied codfish.” He grabbed my breast and squeezed.

My back arched, a moan ripping from my lips. “An unscrupulous scoundrel.” My voice was so breathy I barely understood myself.

He fondled my breast, then the other, his experienced fingers kneading, brushing, tugging. Every agitation claimed me for himself. “A rotten, no-good build’s rat.” He sounded low and sensual in my ear.

“Jas.”

The sound of his harsh growl was so sudden and consuming, it sent my heart skittering.

He shoved the rounded part of his hook between my legs. The coldness pressing into my heat caused a small cry to rip from me. And then he began to move—rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. I couldn’t get enough air. I’d never experienced anything like this, never known anything could be this consuming, this demanding. My hips rolled, and he moved the smooth metal over my apex in time with my movements.

“Call me that again,” James’s voice had become so dark, I barely recognized it.

I gulped air. “Jas.”

His hips rolled with mine but all I knew was the wetness pouring out of me, of the cold hook warming between my legs, spreading that wetness, of the pulsing that had given way to a desperate throbbing.

James’s voice was depraved in my ear. “Are you a virgin, Wendy?”

A moan escaped as we rocked together under the covers. “Yes.”

His hook pressed even harder, and I released a whimper of pleasure. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

“Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

“I want…you…to make love to me.”

He rolled with me. “Are you sure? It will hurt at first.”

I moaned yet again and gripped his hooked hand, shoving it deeper into my throbbing apex, rolling faster, faster. “Please, Jas, please.”

Before I knew what was happening, he’d ripped the blanket off of us. His good hand had latched onto my shoulder and pulled me onto my back. He was over me, his eyes sparking, as gray as the sky during a storm. Redness flushed around his neck and shoulders, and he took in large heaving breaths.

The muscles in his arms became hard, and his jaw locked. He dipped his head toward me with a groan. “You are driving me crazy. I want this to be good for you.” He leaned over me, peppering kisses along my collarbone, his fingers returning to my breasts, his hook still pressing into me. “I want you to be fully pleasured before I enter you.”

He resumed massaging my apex, and I sucked in more large gulps of breath. I was so sensitive now that every press of his hook left my nerves raging. It spread to my thighs and lower abdomen. My nails dug into his forearms as he continued to press, and my hips moved with him and everything built and built until my back arched and reason fled, a cry tearing from me as I tipped over the edge.

“There it is,” James said, his expression pleased. His gaze remained black, swirling with hunger. “That felt good, didn’t it, Wendy, darling?”

All I could do was nod as my body came down from the wild pleasure coursing through me. “Enter me… Now, Jas,” I gasped.

Desire flashed in his stormy gaze.

He spread my legs. There was no going back. I didn’t want to.

A knock came at the door.

As if he hadn’t heard the interruption, he dropped onto me. Or perhaps he had, and he didn’t care. Something pressed between my legs, a pressure ready to enter me.

The knock came again. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to intrude…”

James’s body tensed. Anger flashing across his face. “Go away.”

“I beg your forgiveness, but we have no other choice,” a woman’s voice sounded on the other side of the door. “I have wee ones, and there are no rooms. Won’t you have mercy? We will sleep on the floor.”

His hand curled into the sheets, looking ready to rip them from the bed. I pressed my palm to his face and his gaze met mine. And softened. With a nod, he rolled off of me.

“One moment.” I gripped the blanket off the floor and wrapped it around myself.

“Wendy.” James tossed me a throwing knife. “Just in case.”

Nodding, I tucked the blade within the folds of the blanket. My eyes roved over his bare form, for the first time seeing him fully naked. The tattoos covered his chest, and I saw the names of his wife and child. Then traced the ink markings on his skin lower, my gaze pausing in the space between his legs. My cheeks flamed red at the same time that a disappointment settled in my gut for what we didn’t get to do.

I spun around and cracked the door.

“Sorry for the wait, we were…” What could I say? I had no excuse. “... busy.”

I had never blushed this much in my life.

A woman in bedraggled clothes clutched a heavy shawl about her shoulders. She had two small children with her, shivering in the cold, looking up at me with sad eyes.

“I’m so sorry to ruin your evening, miss. I wouldn’t if it weren’t a matter of life and death.”

“Oh, no, don’t apologize. You and your children are more than welcome to take the bed. I’m afraid me and my…husband’s… clothes are wet and drying, so we must take the blanket for proprietary purposes.”

“Not to worry, miss. We have our own shawls and blankets to keep us warm.”

I checked to make sure James was no longer in such a distracted position. To my relief, he was sitting on the floor next to the wall on the far side of the bed.

“Give us a moment to get situated and then you can enter.”

“Thank ye, miss. Thank ye so much.”

I left the door open just a crack. As I walked over to James, I kicked my throwing knives under my clothes and picked up the Dagger of Forgotten Souls before unwrapping myself from the blanket. He stared up at me, a soft admiration in his eyes. Opening his arms, I sat, his skin heating my shoulder blades, his legs coming up on either side of me. He engulfed me in his embrace before pulling me onto the floor with him while I adjusted the thin blanket around us to ensure we were both covered. The jeweled dagger rested within our arms, its metal cool between our shared warmth.

“You may come in now,” I called when we were settled.

The woman and children entered, and the mother quickly shushed her little ones and their curious stares, ushering them up onto the bed. A few seconds later, the lantern on the worn table extinguished.

James nuzzled my neck. “Go to sleep, Wendy. I swear on my mother’s grave, a perfect gentleman I’ll be. Or, at least, I’ll be an honorable scoundrel.”

A smile tugged on my lips. “Now that there are children in the room.”

He chuckled, and he pressed a soft kiss to my bare shoulder. “Good night, love.”