Chapter Seventeen #2
I swallow a laugh. “The ability to make any woman want him? Cocky bastard.”
Dylan leans back against a bookcase, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“According to Iris, the more desirable Zane is, the more valuable his desire becomes. The more valuable his desire becomes, the more valued the women he desires feel. That’s the fantasy Iris offered her readers, most of whom are women and relate more to the heroines. Value in the guise of desire.”
This tempers my amusement. Grams knew what she was doing. I need to trust that.
“Okay.” I set my fingers on the keyboard. “Where do we begin?”
Zane stood at the threshold of Amorosa’s small but tidy hut, taking in the furniture and personal belongings.
An ornate four-poster bed carved from Brazilian garapa.
A Japanese screen inlaid with cherry blossoms. A chest made from the ebony most common in Nigeria or Cameroon.
Since Amorosa had never left the island—or so she claimed—she must’ve collected the items from sailors like himself.
Whether they were purchased, received as gifts, or taken through less amiable means, Zane didn’t yet know.
His focus drifted back to the bed.
Amorosa’s smile widened as she followed his gaze.
“You have been too long at sea.” She didn’t sing the words, and yet, they sounded like music to his ears, melodic and enticing, suggesting she was right.
“Seven months,” he said, though it seemed like only seven days since he’d discovered Euphoria with Balbo, the pain of her betrayal still razor sharp.
Amorosa found his hand and led him forward, drawing him toward the bed.
“Seven months without . . . ?” Her eyes dipped lower, just past his waist.
He understood the suggestion.
Or rather, he understood the invitation.
His eyes dipped as well, lingering on the full swells of her breasts where her gathered chemise failed to fully contain them.
Then lower, where two dark, tight peaks pressed against the thin fabric, making him draw the tip of his tongue across his lips.
So perfect. So enticing. So ripe for tasting as she arched closer, willing him to do the same.
“I didn’t leave my ship for this,” he said, though he couldn’t quite recall any other reason he’d be here right now, standing before this beautiful woman, devouring her with his eyes, his body hot and hard with desire.
A key, he thought dimly. Hadn’t he come here for a key?
He’d been on his way somewhere. Somewhere important. Somewhere with a treasure the likes of which he’d never seen. And all he needed was a key to the cave.
A key kept on an island that came and went with the fog.
An island inhabited by a woman with hair the color of roasted coffee beans and eyes the color of tourmaline. They were the treasures he sought. The only treasures.
Amorosa sat on the edge of the bed, still holding his hand, drawing it to her breast, filling his palm and encouraging his fingers to press into her soft flesh.
“Tell me you don’t want this.” She found his other hand, leaning into his touch as he stroked both breasts with swiftly mounting urgency. Every stroke, pinch, flick, twist, or tug drew sounds from the back of her throat. Sounds he couldn’t get enough of.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said, the words little more than a breath.
She gathered her skirts, baring her strong thighs and a tangle of dark hair.
“And this?” she asked.
That, he definitely wanted, but he forced himself to drag his eyes to hers.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Mmmm,” she hummed, and god, that voice.
She could ask him for his sword, his beloved ship, his life right now, and he’d lay it at her feet.
“I want you, of course. The famous Zane Scarlett, who single-handedly bested seven platoons with only his sword and his wits, who reversed the curse of the salted moon, who sent the ghosts of Grim Gulley back to their graves and used their unguarded gold to save the city of Triton’s Reach.
I want you. All of you.” She released her skirts to reach forward and cup his—
“Wait. What term do we use here?” I ask. “Cock? Dick? Penis? Hard length? None of them sounds remotely romantic or right. Penis is too clinical, dick is too modern, cock sounds like a rooster’s about to spring from his trousers, and hard length sounds like we’re being coy.”
Dylan lets out a soft breath of laughter behind me. I spin around in the desk chair to see him scratching the back of his very red, very splotchy neck.
“I, um,” he stammers, “anything I say right now will sound like something I don’t mean.”
“Such as?”
“Such as your grandmother liked cock.”
I burst into laughter. Dylan’s entire face goes tomato red.
“She also liked rock-hard cock,” he adds. “And she was fond of a straining erection.”
“Oh my god,” I choke out through my sputters. “How did you do this with her?”
“Honestly, it was easier than this.”
“Because she knew what she was doing? As a writer, I mean. I don’t even want to speculate on her skills with a straining erection.”
Dylan blows out a sigh. He looks out the window. At the laptop. At the ceiling.
“Because it felt more technical,” he says. “The writing. Not the, um, other thing.”