Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
“If you could give me some room, that would be wonderful.” Skylights shoots Hook a tart look.
“Get on with it.” Hook hovers by my side as Skylights holds the lantern up to my face.
I can’t help it—I slap the sides of my palms together in front of my nose and hide. “Don’t look. I know it’s bad.”
“No, lass.” Hook sits beside me. “You’re beautiful.”
“I’m wretched.” I groan. “I feel like a piece of taffy that’s been pulled too far, and I look like …” I don’t think they’ll get my ‘Crypt Keeper’ reference, so I let it go.
Skylights presses his listening apparatus to my heart.
“It’s all right.” Hook takes my hand in his. “Once we find the Spinner, this will all be handled.”
“But what if we can’t find her? My mother never could.” I still can’t believe she’d been here, living a million lives, but all the while chained to the mainland in her physical body.
Though I’ve feared turning out like her, I realize that isn’t the case.
I’ve never once lapsed back to the mainland, never found myself staring at a cinderblock wall, never felt the pull to some other place and time.
I’m here. Body and soul, I’m right here.
I share my mother’s ailment to a degree, but I don’t suffer as she did.
I’m not torn in two, only reuniting with the other half of myself for stolen moments here and there.
I’m fully involved, every bit of me attuned to Neverland.
“Heart is still all right. Not as strong as it should be, but it’s still kicking.
” Skylights puts the metal horn on the desk and drops to one knee to inspect the mermaid bite.
“This looks really good.” He presses his fingers along it.
“Healed well, even if it took a while.” Looking up, he peers into my eyes, one after the other.
“Good. May I?” He takes my free hand and inspects the healing wounds along my palm. “How’d you get these?”
“I had to climb out of the cave. Some of the rocks were sharp, and there were roots, too. They cut me. My feet too—they took a beating.”
“Let me see.” He inspects one foot, then the other. “I can still see some remnants of the Guardian’s salve on these. They aren’t too bad.”
“They don’t hurt like they used to.” I sigh as Hook pulls me to his side. I rest my head on his shoulder.
“You’ve been through a lot.” Skylights stands up, his gaze lingering on my face.
I don’t hide this time. What’s the point? He already knows what Peter’s done to me. I suppose I’m glad there isn’t a mirror in here, at least not one I’ve found.
“Does anything hurt, lass?” Hook kisses my hair. “Tell me.”
“No more than usual.” I sound tired. No, more than tired, I sound utterly worn out.
“I’ve already set a course for the Fairy Village.
It’ll take us a few days to get there with the winds this time of the season, but we’ll get there.
I promise you, Moira. We’ll get there, and we’ll find the Spinner.
You’re going to be all right.” He gently takes my chin and turns my face toward his. “Say you believe me, lass.”
I want to believe him. Isn’t that how fairy tales end? Everything working out and the heroine sailing off into the sunset with her youth in one hand and her love in the other? But I can’t see that future. Not when I live in the shadow of Neverland, of Peter.
“She needs rest.” Sky gives Hook a pointed look.
“I suppose I’ll need your permission before I ravish her then?” Hook gives Sky a pointed look right back.
“Apologies, Captain.” Skylights grabs his bag and heads for the door. “Call me if her condition … changes.”
“You were going to say ‘worsens’.” My voice is still streaked with hoarseness from where Peter’s shadow strangled me.
“Sleep well” is all Skylights adds as he hurries out and closes the door behind him.
“No ravishing then?” I give Hook a half smile. “What sort of pirate are you?”
“The sort who will do any number of heinous, highly suspect, and seriously illicit things to you the moment you’re feeling better.” He kisses me, still fierce, but also with an underlying tenderness.
I run my hands along his sandpaper cheeks and into his impossibly soft hair. “I’ve missed you so much,” I murmur against his lips.
“I’ll never be parted from you again, lass.” He lays me down, then settles in next to me, pulling the blanket over us as he nestles me against his chest. “Rest now. We’ll sail her smooth and easy all the way up the island.”
“Has any voyage of yours ever been ‘smooth and easy’?”
“Now that you mention it …” He chuckles, the sound low and so damn sexy.
I may be worn out, but I’m not dead. Not yet. I push up and kiss him. He answers, his tongue sweeping against mine as he pulls me fully on top of him. Moving against him, I feel how hard he is, and I want it. All of him.
“You came for me,” I breathe and look down at him. “I mean, it took you a while, but—” I squeal as he turns me over and pins me onto my back.
“Do you have any idea what it felt like when I realized you’d run off?” His sexy growl vibrates through me.
“I—”
“Rhetorical, lass. Because I’ll tell you.
I was afraid.” He kisses me again, as if he can’t bear not to.
“I’ve known fear on the sea plenty of times.
Worry for my crew. But what I felt when I took off after you—that sort of terror …
” He shakes his head, his dark hair tickling along my forehead.
“It’s not something I recognize. It was like you had my heart in your hand, and you were squeezing it, lass.
Squeezing the blood from it and killing me slowly, painfully, the way I deserve. ”
“You always get so dark so fast,” I whisper.
He smirks. “You do that to me. Sent me straight to hell, you did. And when I saw that bloody coxcomb with his hands on you—” He bares his teeth.
“I’m here now.” I kiss him again and spread my thighs farther apart, his hard cock pressing against me in just the right spot. “I’m here.”
“Never again. Never. I’ll die before I’ll let him touch you again.” He kisses my cheeks, my forehead, the tip of my nose.
“It’s not as if you had a choice.” I want to soothe the beast inside him, the part that seethes and roils. “I’m the one who walked right into his trap.”
He glares down at me. “You did, lass. You ran away from me.” He plucks my bottom lip between his teeth and bites down lightly.
“No.” I gasp when he rocks his hips against me. “Not away from you. I was only trying to steal the fairy dust from Geo so I could—”
He pulls back. “So you could what?”
Shit. I was about to say ‘fly away from Neverland,’ but with the thunderclouds gathering on his forehead, I realize that is the completely wrong answer.
“You wanted to leave me for good, lass?” His voice drops lower, flirting with lethal. “Is that what you planned?”
“I wasn’t—ah!” I can’t think when he moves against me. Each stroke builds a fire deep inside me, one that’s swirling in a circle with tighter and tighter rotation.
“You aren’t leaving me, lass.” He runs his teeth along my jaw line. “I won’t let you. I ought to spank you—and I will soon—for even thinking it.”
“That’s a bit, um, kidnappy, of you.” I gasp when he bears down, grinding on me just right.
“I’ll do worse than just kidnap you.” He skims his tongue down my throat and licks my jugular before pressing his teeth into me.
“I’ll tie you to this bed and have my way with you in a million depraved ways.
Your pretty mouth, your tight cunt, that perfect little asshole that I’ll fill with my come—all of you.
I’ll give you so much pleasure it feels like torture, lass.
I won’t stop. Not until you realize this is where you belong. ”
“With you?” I’m so close, my body primed to burst in sparks.
“With me. Forever, lass. You and me.” He surges against me, and I cry out as my orgasm fractures through me.
He takes my mouth, swallowing my moans as my body rides the sensation of bliss, the complete unwinding of me.
I let it all go, like a piece of ribbon blowing in the wind, the ends free and floating.
He takes it all from me—my fear, my pain, my endless fatigue—he takes it and gives me heat instead.
I want it all, everything he has to give.
Peter has drained me, but James Hook has done nothing but fill me up. With trust. With love.
When I finally come back down, he smooths his rough palm along my cheek. “Better, lass?”
I take in a deep breath and let it out. “Better.”
He smirks. “I don’t mind a dry fuck, but I’ll be honest, I can’t wait to be inside your hot, slippery cunt again.”
“You talk such absolute filth, James Hook!” I laugh and press my lips to his, then have to stop so I can laugh some more. “Total sailor mouth.”
“You love it, lass.”
“I do.” I moan as he rolls me over and snuggles me onto his chest again.
“I knew you would. Your mother told me you had a prudish streak that hid something a bit more saucy.”
I groan. “She did? She said that?”
He nods. “I suspect she was right on that score.”
“I can’t believe you two talked about me like that.” My cheeks flame hot as I bury my face in the crook of his neck.
“I was starved for news of you. Always wanting to know more and more. The more I learned, the harder I fell. I loved you before we ever met, lass.”
Once again, I can’t find my words, couldn’t catch them even if I had a butterfly net and a head start. Hook always has me on my back foot, now more than ever.
He squeezes me lightly and kisses my crown. “Rest now, lass. You need it.”
“I do.” I can’t argue it. My body is worn out, but my mind keeps going back to Peter, to the horrors he’s wrought on me.
He strokes my back. “Would you feel better if you tell me about it?”
When he said he knew me, he wasn’t lying.
I’ve always been a storyteller, and I’m sure my mother told him that.
If I can retell things, or even tell them in ways they didn’t happen, I can make sense of the world—not completely.
Never completely. But enough so that I can rest easy in my own skin, at least for a time.
“Do you want to hear?”