24. Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
Tristan stopped before the cabin door long after midnight, when the ship had settled into the darkness before dawn.
The passage lay empty. A lantern swung at the far end, its flame low.
Beyond the planks, the sea moved against the hull with the slow insistence of something that never tired, never explained itself, never loosened what it claimed.
Tristan braced against the scarred wood of the door.
Moonlight slipped through the stern passage and silvered his knuckles.
Where it fell over his hand, his skin seemed too tight, his blood too near the surface.
Tristan closed his fist against the door.
What hold did she have on him? He had wanted women before. Yet desire had never made the air unfit for breathing. And here he was, standing outside his own cabin like a thief, lungs refusing proper work because Marguerite d’Ailes slept beyond a few inches of wood.
They had a bargain, had they not? Until Naples, she was his. He did not have to stay away. He did not have to name what drove him here. He could enter, take what they had agreed to take from one another, leave before dawn, and restore the world to weight and measure.
His hand found the latch. It opened without sound.
The cabin was dim, washed in a diluted silver that entered through the stern windows. She slept with the sheet fallen to her waist, her calico nightgown loosened at the throat, her hair spread over the pillow. The moon caressed her with an intimacy that made his jaw tighten.
His heart gave a slow, painful pull. He crossed the cabin, every step too loud, and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped.
Tristan watched her breathe, the faint crease between her brows even in sleep, as if she argued with dreams.
After a hard exhale, he lay beside her and drew her back against his chest. Her warmth entered him through his shirt, through skin, through bone.
She made a soft sound, then her mouth searched for his in the dark.
He cradled both her cheeks in his rough hands and kissed her.
It should have steadied him. Instead, it widened the wound.
She was soft with sleep, her lips parting beneath his.
She pulled back enough to find his eyes. He tried to kiss her again. He could not let her look. Not now. Looking made weight. If he saw more of her, he might take more than the bargain and never forgive her for giving it.
“You came,” she whispered.
He had tried to stay away, but he would only have succeeded if someone had tied an anchor to his legs and thrown him beneath the ocean.
“If you are tired,” he said, and did not recognize the hoarse thing his voice had become, “I can come back tomorrow.”
She was silent for a beat. Then she sat up. “Not at all. I am never tired of fulfilling my promises.”
The last word was so low he nearly missed it.
Before he could answer, she drew the nightgown over her head.
The moon took her. Her breasts, her shoulders, the pale line of her stomach, the shadowed narrowness of her waist. She was silver and warmth and living flesh, and his cock rose hard against his stomach, blood surging with brutal gratitude.
He needed to be inside her. To bury the tightness, the terror, the memory of cannon smoke that had never happened and splintered glass that might have. There would be no question of weight then, only heat and flesh and the wordless place where a man could lose the shape of his own fear.
She lay down again, facing away from him. Her back gleamed in the moonlight, hair spilling over the pillow and across one shoulder. She did not reach for him or offer him her mouth.
A coldness moved beneath his ribs. He reached with a hand that was not quite steady and touched her spine. She trembled. He followed the line of her back, the dip at her waist, the curve of her hip.
“I have to be inside you, Maggie.” The confession scraped out of him.
He took himself in hand, guided by touch and heat and the unbearable nearness of her. When he lifted her leg and entered her from behind, she cried out, then buried the sound in the pillow. Her body closed around him, hot and wet and known.
For one breath, the hurt stopped. He pressed deeper until his hips met the soft curve of her backside. His arm slid beneath her head, folding around her, giving her a place to turn her face. Holding her waist with his other hand, he began to move.
Tristan shut his eyes, focusing on the heat, the slide of his body into hers, the damp grip of her around him.
He thrust harder than he intended, then checked himself, jaw clenched, breath burning.
He could not see her face and told himself it was better this way.
Without seeing her eyes, he could not be asked to carry what was in them.
But he could hear the muffled catches of breath, sounds she tried to swallow. The way her fingers gripped the bedding. She was there, giving him exactly what she had agreed to give.
Pleasure built fast, too fast, a hot pressure at the base of his spine. He needed her to feel it too. If she came apart under his hand, then perhaps the room would again become what it had been before.
Tristan slid his hand over her belly, lower, searching the folds of her sex for the place he knew would draw her back from wherever she had gone.
She caught his wrist. The restraint struck him like a door closing.
Hurt opened under his ribs, even as pleasure burst from his spine.
He withdrew and spent against her hip and the curve of her backside with a broken sound he barely recognized as his own.
Panting, he reached for her. He did not know what he meant to do. Pull her close. Kiss her shoulder. Gather her against him and keep the morning from coming.
She rose. The sheet came with her, drawn around her body like armor.
“Can you leave now?” she asked. “I’m tired.”
The words hit with the clean force of a blow and left him naked in the wreckage of the bed. Her face had gone quiet in the worst way. Hurt, carefully folded and held out of reach.
Christ, it hurt to see it.
“I tried to come sooner,” he said. His voice scraped out of him, rough and useless. “But I—”
“We did not bargain for obligation.” She gathered the sheet higher over her breasts. “The Sea Wolf was always free to come and go.”
His jaw tightened. “That is not what this is.”
“No?”
He stepped closer before he could stop himself. His hand lifted toward the sheet, hovering above her as if touch had become a language he no longer spoke.
He was losing her. A vise clamped over his chest. He could not lose her.
He could have her back. It would be easy.
He could take the sheet from her clenched fingers, gather her against him, and tell her he had stayed away because he had been trying, like a coward, to survive wanting her.
He could say he loved her, and the hurt in her face would break. Perhaps his own would break with it.
His throat closed.
“I never thought of this as obligation, Marguerite.”
“No,” she said softly. “You see it as weight. And it is time we cut it. Before it sinks us both.”
He had taught her that language. He had given her the blade and called it survival.
Now she held it between them. His hand fell.
He took one step back. Then another. He turned before he could beg.
The latch was cold beneath his palm. He opened the door and stepped into the passage, where the lantern still swung, and the ship still breathed, and the world had the indecency to continue.
Marguerite had given him all he had asked for.
And it was not enough to survive.