Chapter 23 #2
Alister took her mouth again, making her eyes shut once more. He kept his one hand gripping both of hers, but more tenderly, and with the other, he slid it from her neck into her hair to grip it.
Tilting his head, he waited for her lips to part, and then he slipped his tongue forward to lick her. She gave a moan, her tongue hesitantly brushing against his.
He’d half expected her to bite it.
The longer he kissed her, the more relaxed he felt her becoming. He slipped his knees back and lowered his body until he was laying between the nook of her legs.
A groan strangled its way from his lungs and up his throat when he gave a heavy thrust with his hips, his hardened shaft stroking against her.
Alister had been hard the moment he’d pinned this deceitful, beautiful woman against this bed. With just that one simple movement against her, he knew he’d lose his ever-loving mind if he got the chance to slam his cock inside her again.
A loud gasp broke from her, pausing her kisses and making her eyes snap open wide. He didn’t care. He just wrangled her lips back into the kiss with force, taking complete control.
She didn’t stop him, was no longer trying to break away.
The passion he had for this woman burst inside him tenfold. It heated his skin, quickened his mouth, tightened the grip he had on her.
He thrust against her again, knowing he must be hitting somewhere pleasurable when her breath hitched. For good measure, to make sure, he did it again, just to hear that subtle sound once more.
“Fuck,” he groaned, finally breaking from her lips so he could start a path down her jaw. He licked the skin over her pulse before he nipped at it. “I want inside you so badly.”
The last time he’d told her those words, she’d melted for him. The night in Tortaya when he’d been gentle with her had been one he hadn’t been able to forget. It had been filled with emotion after sharing parts of himself, after finding out she accepted his horrid face the way it was.
“I-I can’t,” she whispered around sweet little pants.
It wasn’t a no. He grinned against her skin when he stroked his tongue across her neck and felt her shiver in reaction.
Oh aye, she wants me alright. He knew it when he slipped his hips over hers, and this time, he felt her ankles brush up against his thighs like she wanted to wrap them around him.
She only did it when she didn’t want him to get away.
“Let me have you, lass.”
He released her hair and brought his hand down. He hefted her breast, thumbing her nipple through her tunic. A sharp gasp snapped from her, like his touch had scalded her.
“I met someone else,” she blurted out so fast he’d barely understood it.
But he had, and he pulled back to glare down at her.
He let go of her perky little breast he’d much rather play with than hear a lie like this.
“Nay,” he refused, such a dark bite to it that he watched her head press harder against the sheets. “Then where is he?”
Where was he to stop Alister, who knew he wasn’t far from getting Rosetta to a place where she wanted him pumping inside her as much as he did? Why hadn’t he come to protect her? To take her out of his arms?
“H-he’s not here.” She wouldn’t meet his gaze as she turned it to the side to look at the bed beneath her.
He noticed her eyelids flicker, just like his mother had told him the did. His mother hadn’t been useful in finding her, but she had given him some information to help him.
“But he’s sweet, and wonderful, with hands that aren’t covered in blood.” Seeming to grab more courage with each word, she turned her head forward and met his eye with unwavering doubt. “Someone who isn’t covered in scars. He’s everything to me you could never be.”
He thought his heart might have stopped beating.
“You love him.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
“Yes.”
Alister’s nose crinkled so tightly, it bunched the skin around his cheeks and made his eye patch dig in.
He reached down, grabbed his dagger from his boot, and sunk the blade of it into the mattress right next to her head.
“Then I’ll fucking kill him.”
Someone had stolen what he wanted, all because she’d run away and hadn’t given him a chance!
It should have been me! If she hadn’t run away, he may have been the one to gain her love for himself! He wanted it, wanted it just as badly as he wanted her body to swallow his.
A sense of betrayal cut him so deep, he had to snuff out the impulse to turn his dagger on her.
She knew she’d made a mistake when he saw her face drain of its rich colour completely.
“He has to be on board, Rosetta, because I know you’re not stupid enough to return to Luxor.”
Her eyes went stark. “How did you know I was in Luxor?”
“You sank that fishing boat, but you didn’t kill everyone.” He lowered his head with a sneer. “A man turned up in Dunecaster. You led me right to you.”
He watched her chest start to heave in quick bursts, anxiety riddling her expression. It was obvious she had been hoping he didn’t know where she’d docked, because it would have made her story more believable.
“Aye. Let’s go find him, shall we?”
Alister would gut him, push his corpse in front of her, and then walk out that door.
If she had replaced him so easily and given her heart away after everything Alister had done to find her, he wanted nothing more than his love to turn into unbridled hate.
He started to back up onto his knees once more.
“I told you, he’s not here!”
He pointed the tip of the blade at her. “He’s either here or he’s not real.”
Her statement was a lie. If she loved this so-called man, then she wouldn’t have left him in a port she couldn’t return to again, or head towards a hemisphere where it would be impossible to find her once she was far south enough to dock.
“I-I...” she floundered, her eyes falling everywhere but to his face. Her bottom lip trembled so wildly it was making it hard for her to talk.
She was trembling so much he could feel it in his hand as it shook her arms.
“I said it because I just wanted you to leave,” she admitted, her body falling limp. A tearless, defeated sob fell from her as her gaze fell to the side. “I didn’t ask for you to come here, to do this to me!”
Everything inside him felt like it was spinning out of control, a cyclone of emotions all at once.
That octopus slithered in his chest and clutched at his mangled heart.
His gut twisted. It felt like his insides were wriggling and writhing beneath his skin in such an intense way it almost made him nauseated.
Was there someone else, or wasn’t there? Did she want him, or didn’t she? Did she hate him because he was covered in scars, had a bloody history, and was arrogant, or did she possibly care for him?
He felt like he hadn’t gotten a single answer he’d come here for. And I’m hurting her.
His mother had begged him not to hurt this woman. He’d come here with no intention of it, but he could see that him being here was eating at her.
I don’t want to hurt her.
Alister knew what he needed to do. If he wanted the truth, then he had to stop being a coward.
She’d told me I held the sun and the moon in my eyes. If she hated his scars, she wouldn’t have called what most found repulsive something so mystical.
He dropped the dagger and cupped the side of her head, an apologetic expression filling his face. He cringed at his own behaviour. Shit. I frightened her. He was as bad as every bastard she’d ever met.
“I–” he started before he winced.
He didn’t want to lay his heart on the line. He’d never been a hesitant man, never afraid, and yet, he couldn’t even speak three bloody words to this woman!
Three words that could solve everything, or nothing.
“Rosetta, I’m–”
A strange sound caught his attention.
He paused, his eyes widening as he stared at her. We’re not alone. There was someone else in the navigation quarters of her ship.
Neither spoke as a silence fell upon them.
He knew it was true when he heard it again, a soft sound he couldn’t distinguish. Rosetta tensed beneath him.
There really is someone else.
Alister grabbed his dagger and yanked her off the bed. Pulling on one of her arms, he dragged her from the room.
He’d decided he wouldn’t kill him, wouldn’t do that to her because he was angry and selfish. She’d been through enough. He finally wanted to give someone who actually deserved it mercy.
However, he wasn’t going to confront a man who could possibly be holding a weapon without having one himself. He’d dropped his cutlass when he’d knocked her sword from her hand. It was easier to block a sword with another blade than with a pistol.
He flung open the second bedchamber he knew was there, ready to grab a man and fling them both into the middle of the navigation room so he could look at them. What kind of coward hides while their woman is captured?
He wanted to see him for himself. He wanted to know what kind of man had stolen Rosetta. He wanted to sear the image of them together in his mind, so that if he tried to let his pain and loss bother him, he would remember she was beneath someone else.
What he hadn’t expected to find was a woman.
“Take one more step... and I’ll blow your brains out,” Rosetta threatened.
The moment he’d opened the door, she’d ripped her wrist from his hand that had loosened its grip in his confusion. Then she’d grabbed his pistol from its holder and put it to the back of his head.
She cocked it to show him she was serious.
What the hell is going on?