PotC fic -- Force of Nature
Next in the Outlaws and Inlaws series -- in which the Pirate King deals with several forces of nature.
PG-13, Jack/Elizabeth, background Elizabeth/Will.
This one's for the_dala with apologies for her summer not turning out quite as planned. And for penknife of course!
The other stories in the series are here: Swan in Flight, Outlaws and Inlaws, Four Days of Advent, Cradle Tales, Dream Tides, The Ferryman's Bride and Gods and Heroes.
Elizabeth had been fourteen when the hurricane had clipped Port Royal. It was her third year on the island, and she remembered vividly the downed trees, the branches whipping at the windows in the blinding rain. She remembered too the whispered conferences that were so at odds with her father’s words.
“It will all be well, Elizabeth,” he had said, motioning her hurriedly aside. “The house is very stoutly built.”
Yet she heard the conversations in lowered voices. Would not it be better for Elizabeth and the female servants to take shelter in Fort Charles, behind stone walls? It would be better indeed, were the sea not already up over the road, and the way there impassible. The waves crashed through the low point. He had waited until too late.
She remembered the misery after the storm. Though her father had tried to keep the worst of it from her, she had seen the limp white thing washed up on broken trees. “It’s a lamb,” her father had said, as he gathered her about, and she had pretended to believe him, because it meant so much to him to believe she had not seen. It was a child.
And then he had left her to go see to the business of the town. He was the governor.
Now it was she who was the Pirate King. And the storm that bore down upon Shipwreck Island should hardly be better than that one so many years ago.
“See,” Teague said to her as they stood in his quarters, far up in the core, the windows already lashed by rain. “See how the glass is dropping?”
The steep pressure gradient meant nothing good.
Elizabeth nodded. She paced over to the windows. Through the dim streaks she could see the bustle in the harbor below. One of the fishing boats was unstopping masts in preparation for hauling her entirely out of the water. The men struggled in the rising wind.
Teague came and stood beside her, his warmth a comforting presence at her back.
“That’s well enough for the fishing boats,” she said. “But the larger ships can’t haul out.”
“True enough.” Teague took a long draw from his pipe. It smelled caramelly. She wondered what he was smoking today. “John Corbin’s got Nellie’s Avenger in drydock, but the rest will just have to ride it out at the docks.”
“On the leeward side?”
Teague nodded. “All the larger ones are over there. Feliz put up a fuss, but after you told him if he wanted Natividad beached in the front room of the Lonesome Tortoise he was going about it the right way, he moved her on over. She’s lashed fore and aft behind Calpurnia, that water hoy that Galliard took from the dockyard in Nevis.”
“The only problem with the leeward side is that if it takes us head on and we get the eye….”
“The second half will be worse’n the first.” Teague chewed on the stem of his pipe in a thoughtful fashion. “Not so much to do about that. The clouds look like it might pass a bit south, but you know as well as I how that can change.”
She certainly didn’t know as well as Teague, but it was diplomatic of him to say so. She understood enough of rule to know that he was building her confidence as a ruler, not undermining her. Not pushing her to dangerous overconfidence, but training her as carefully as any young gentleman. He was a good bit kinder, but it was much the same as she’d had from Barbossa, once he decided she didn’t fit his complex rubric of femininity. Since she wasn’t snatch, she must be crew.
“We’d best get everyone out of the upper hulks on the windward side, then,” she said. “You know some of those windows are going to go.”
“And like some of the hulls as well. The old Mary Elizabeth’s seen better days,” Teague said. “But some as won’t go.”
“Let’s breach a cask or two down in the lower hall and the Hall of the Brethren,” she said. “And some music, once night falls. They might not come down for a hurricane, but they’d come down for a party.”
Teague snorted. “Aye, and Feliz has unloaded his entire cargo into the hall. No reluctance to do that, it seems. Rice and raw cotton. Stuff that would be ruined by water, sure.”
“Mattie and Susannah have some big pots on for the men coming off boarding the lower windows, so I’ll see to the casks.” Elizabeth turned to leave. She took one last glance out at the rain. There were no black sails half reefed, making their way through the harbor entrance. And if there were, they would probably belong to Hector Barbossa, anyhow. Not that she didn’t hope Barbossa weren’t out in this either.
“Miss him, do ye?” Teague asked, taking the pipe from his mouth.
“Who?” Elizabeth asked unconvincingly.
“My Jackie,” Teague said. He took the tobacco pouch out of his pocket and untied the strings around it. “He’s been looking after himself for years now. No need to go worrying about him.”
“I wasn’t,” she said. And refrained from saying “neither were you.”
It wasn’t midnight yet, but it seemed much later. Though the Hall of the Brethren was in an inner section of the cove, and the rain did not beat against it, there was no mistaking the low thrumming of the waves against the island. The vibrations spread through each hull and timber, too low to hear, waves crashing against docks and sand and rock. Against the lower hulks and buildings too, Elizabeth thought. The Lonesome Tortoise, the first tavern a sailor came to down by the docks, probably had water three feet deep in the front room. Which might have something to do with why Dollie, the proprietor, had glumly breached a couple of casks at Elizabeth’s request. Better than having them float away.
It wasn’t midnight yet, but already it was getting quiet. Too many people stood to lose livelihood if not life for there to be much good cheer, rum or not. Among the casks and boxes and bales, half of the inhabitants of Shipwreck Cove were settling down with blankets and pallets, making nests in corners for all the world like the colony of the rats most men named them.
Elizabeth settled into a corner with Flipper, who was already blessedly asleep, worn out by Zara’s enthusiastic play earlier in the evening. Zara was five, and seemed to see Flip as her own personal live doll, ideal for dressing and dragging about. She supposed in a convoluted way that Zara was Flip’s aunt, but it seemed much to have her babysit him, given her own single digit age.
The noise in the hall was gradually dying away. There were only the low sounds of people talking quietly, the distant roar of the sea, and the quiet notes from across the hall, where Teague was tuning his guitar softly.
Elizabeth lay down, shoving her pillow around more comfortably, Flipper curled like a bean behind her.
He, at least, seemed totally unaffected by the storm.
She had nearly fallen asleep when she heard a movement on the other side of the bales of cotton, as though someone were stepping carefully over sleeping people to reach her nest. Someone with bad news, she thought, sitting up. It was impossible to see more than a silhouette in the dark. But it was a familiar silhouette, and the reek of patchouli and sweat was unmistakable.
“Jack?”
He flopped down crosslegged on the blanket beside her, one long wet braid snaking across his face. Even in the half dark she could see that he was grinning. “Hello, me darlin’.”
Elizabeth had had ample time in the last five months to think of everything she planned to say the next time their paths crossed, beginning with indifference to his reappearance, progressing through annoyance that he once again darkened her door, to cutting remarks on his irresponsibility and tendency to appear and disappear more like a tomcat than a man. All of them went entirely out of her head.
“Just got in, in the teeth of it,” he said.
“You’re absolutely incorrigible,” she said, and the next moment her arms were around his neck, against his soaking shirt, and his lips were seeking hers.
He was chuckling softly.
“I hate you, Jack Sparrow,” she said, and kissed him. If he was going to kiss her, she’d get the first lick in and show him what a kiss was!
Warm. Sensual. A dance of tongues and lips, sensitive and delicate, heated as though something just beneath the surface were about to burst into flames. Her arms were around him, running wildly over his scarred back under the wet linen. His arms were around her, clutching her, her hair falling across his face. Body to body, face to face, sitting like lovers, their hips together, their bodies entwining. She pushed him back and screwed up her face in what might have been a feral smile, landing against his chest.
“Oof,” said Jack.
“Sorry,” she said, taking her elbow out of his solar plexus.
He mumbled something like “S’aw’rit,” but it was hard to understand with her mouth back on his again. He tasted like seawater. And his kiss was as greedy as hers.
“Y’delik bein atop,” he said into her mouth, nibbling at the corner of her lips, as though to make sure he explored every corner.
“What?” Elizabeth lifted her head from his.
“I said, you do like being on top. It was an observation, love.”
“Wretched creature,” she said, and twisted her fingers in the front of his shirt. His eyes were very dark, but she could see the faint glitter of gold teeth in the dim light. He was grinning again. “Oh, fuck you,” she said.
“Anytime you like, dearie,” he said. “Might want to let me get my breeches down first though. You can even be on top.”
“I hate you,” she said, and kissed him again.
“Missed you too, love,” he said, when he came up for air. Somehow her shirt was raised, and his hands were tracing star charts on her back.
“Where in the world did you come from?” she asked, rolling to the side and settling beside him.
“Got in just ahead of the storm, savvy? Ahead of the worst of it, at least. Seas were getting pretty choppy.” He put his arm round her shoulders, fingers twining idly in her hair. “Wouldn’t like to stay out much longer with such a small pinnace.”
“A what?”
“Pinnace, ye dirty minded girl. Gig. Ship’s boat.” Jack’s beaded beard brushed against her cheek. “Nothin’ wrong with the size of me pinnace.”
She couldn’t resist. “How big is it?”
“About 25 feet.” Jack was grinning as widely as she was. “Takes four wenches in a row to handle it.”
“Four.”
“Really. It’s a lovely thing, actually. I stole it from Captain Groves.”
Elizabeth collapsed giggling. “You stole it from Captain Groves.”
“Aye, that I did. He may have lost his heart to James Norrington, but….”
“He’s lost his pinnace to you,” Elizabeth finished for him. When she was again capable of speech she asked, “So you’ve a 25 foot pinnace?”
“Six and a quarter, actually, but it gets the job done and I’ve never had any complaints.” Jack was also finding it hard to talk while laughing with Elizabeth on his chest.
“You measured it?” Elizabeth boggled.
“Course I did. Don’t everyone?”
Elizabeth buried her face in his chest, her shoulders heaving.
“Little Jack’s a perfectly respectable size,” Jack said indignantly. “It’s not the size of the ship. It’s the motion of the ocean.”
“You named it?”
“Don’t everyone?”
“Women don’t,” Elizabeth said. “Women don’t go around naming…personal bits of their anatomy. It’s not as though my breasts have names.”
“They might,” Jack said equitably. “Don’t know what Flip calls them. This one might be Leaky and the other Lumpy.”
Elizabeth jerked her shirt down, so the big wet splotch wasn’t so obvious. “That’s awful, Jack. And it is not lumpy.”
Jack put his face against it. “Might be. Kind of like a feather pillow.” He nibbled at her left nipple, mouthing it until it stood hard against his lips.
Elizabeth let out a wracking sigh, then winced.
“Bit tender?” Jack asked, raising his head.
“A bit.” She slid her hand between his lips and her breast. “I’m still nursing Flipper…James.”
“Well, then.” He settled against her again, his face against her shoulder this time. “And how is Flip? That enormous child over there can’t be Flip.”
“He grew, Jack. If you see him take off, catch him.”
“He can’t walk?”
“No, but he can crawl at quite a clip. He’s eight months old, Jack.”
“Ah.” There was silence for a long moment. His hands never stopped moving on her back. “Didn’t mean to be gone so long.”
“I’m sure you never do,” she said, but there was no heat in it. She had never expected Jack to stay. Wasn’t he the picture of the man who wouldn’t stay?
“Never meant to come back at all,” he said quietly.
“Why did you, then?” She had no need to ask why he might stay away.
Jack grinned at her. “Any port in a storm?”
“With your stolen pinnace.”
“With my poor neglected pinnace that I place at the service of my Pirate King,” he said.
Elizabeth pursed her lips and considered. “I suppose your Pirate King can think of something to do with you.”
“I could be Maîtresse en Titre,” Jack suggested contemplatively.
“Don’t you have to be a woman to be Maîtresse en Titre?”
“Don’t you have to be a man to be the Pirate King?” Jack nuzzled her. “Touché, me love.”
“I suppose you could be Maîtresse en Titre, then,” she said. “Consort. Something like that.”
“Bonny whore?”
“Not that,” she said. Elizabeth ran her fingers through his wet hair. “Jack.”
He caught them and kissed the tips. “Suppose not.”
“I do love you,” she said, trying to pick her words carefully. “It’s just that I love Will too.”
“If that’s all,” he said. She couldn’t see his face.
“I can’t just forget about him,” she said.
“It’s hardly your nature to forget, is it?” he asked.
“No,” she said. She freed her hand, stroked it along his cheek. “But I can’t forget you either.”
“No one who’s had Jack ever forgets,” he said.
“I expect they don’t,” she agreed.
Jack smiled, oddly mirthlessly. “That they don’t, darlin’. May hate the ground I walk on, but never forget me.”
“I won’t hate you,” she said. She was missing something, some pain, but she could not find the wound, though her hands roved over him.
“Should hope not. Hard as you are on men you love, I’d hate to see what would happen to a man you hated.”
“I can’t think of any who are alive,” she said, thinking of Beckett, who had murdered her father, of her pleasure in watching the Pearl and the Dutchman’s guns turn his ship into splinters.
“My point, love.”
She put her lips to his throat. There was a time to ask if he had forgiven her, if he ever would. But this was not it. “So did you find the Black Pearl? I’m assuming not.”
“Oh, I found her. I simply haven’t reacquired her yet.”
She could feel the pulse at his throat. She did not, with Will. His heart did not beat in his chest. “So where is she?”
“Port Royal.”
Elizabeth raised her head. “What’s the Pearl doing in Port Royal? I thought Hector was taking her to Florida?”
“Hector was taking her to Florida.” Jack made wavy motions in the air with one hand, the one that wasn’t pinned behind her. “Hector took her to Florida, where he went ashore hunting for the Fountain of Youth. However, as I had the charts, he found it a bit thick going. So while he was wandering about the Everglades, Ragetti, Pintel and company decided that perhaps they didn’t need old Hector after all, and should make Pintel captain.”
“Oh dear.” Elizabeth suppressed a smile.
“The only problem herewith is that none of the lot know how to navigate. So they just wandered around a bit, following the coast south and arguing about where they were.” Jack paused for a breath. “They’d probably have all died of lack of water, had they not happened upon the Royal Navy. Captain Groves took the Pearl without firing a shot.”
Elizabeth winced.
“Cotton and Marty went over in a boat on the other side, while Groves was boarding, and rowed themselves over to the Keys. Which is where I found the three of them, Cotton, Marty and Parrot, when I headed that way with Gibbs. Anyhow, to make a lengthy story short, or at least as short as I can make it, Groves has a rare appreciation for the Black Pearl’s turn of speed, and he decided to read her in as a prize. So there she sits in Port Royal, gettin’ a new coat of paint and a bit of repair.”
“And the crew?” Elizabeth found herself hoping it wasn’t hanging. Tiresome as they could be, she’d developed a fondness for Ragetti and Pintel.
Well, Groves has lost his taste for hanging, it seems, so there they sit in the jail in Fort Charles. And well may they sit.”
“Jack, surely you’re going to rescue them?” Elizabeth propped herself up on one elbow.
“Rescue them?” Jack expostulated. “The buggers have mutinied against me twice now!”
“You can’t just leave them in jail.”
“Watch me! They left me.”
“They went to World’s End for you.”
Jack sighed. “That they did. You want to rescue them so much, you come rescue them.”
“When you go to steal the Pearl,” Elizabeth guessed.
“Couldn’t steal her just now. Groves had her up in drydock, repairing that slow leak astern. Had boards off. Thought I’d let him finish cleaning her up before I stole her. Besides, couldn’t make off with her with a big hole in her stern, and not with only four men to crew her. Takes six at least, and Parrot don’t count.”
Elizabeth curled tighter against him. He was beginning to dry, warm beside her. She’d almost forgotten how much she missed this, his physical presence and his long strange stories. “So now you’re going to ask me to help you steal thePearl back, put together a crew here, and ask the Pirate King to provision you.”
“Thought I might charm the Pirate King into it,” he said.
“You might,” she said, smiling. “It might be possible to come to some kind of accord.”
“I’ll let you have the pinnace?” he asked hopefully.
Elizabeth ran her hand down the outside of his leg. “Won’t you be needing it?”
“I might at that,” he said, and kissed her again.
It was some indefinite amount of time before she was aware of much of anything else. They had waited, waited so very long….
“Elizabeth?” said a voice loudly at the entrance to her nest.
Teague. Elizabeth dragged her head away from Jack, his hand still inside her breeches. “Yes?”
Teague had stopped dead in the entrance, looking down at them. The pale scars on Jack’s bare back gleamed in the half light. “When did you get in, Jackie?”
“He got here just a little while ago,” Elizabeth said, wondering which of several possible causes was the origin of Jack’s long moan. Jack rolled to the side, looping his arm around her shoulders, in a gesture that was distinctly proprietary. “You needed me for something?”
“It can wait,” Teague said, and she thought he sounded amused rather than angry. “Welcome back, boy.” He raised a hand and walked away.
Jack sighed.
“I want a door,” Elizabeth said.
“Door?”
“That thing you close so that people don’t walk in on you. That thing you close so people know you want privacy.”
Jack curved an arm around her shoulder. “People will know that.”
“How?” She rubbed her forehead against his chin. She was actually getting used to that silly beard.
“From your ecstatic moans. OH Jack! OH Jaaaaack!”
“Stop it!” He was moaning incredibly loudly, and there were enough people….
“OH Jack! OH Jack OH!”
“Cut it out!” She clamped a hand over his mouth, but he licked her palm, so she rolled on top of him, straddling him. “I mean it!”
“Oh, that will get me to stop moaning,” Jack observed rather breathlessly, as she ground down against something quite intriguingly hard.
She looked down into his eyes, and the expression there was knowing. He’d always had the measure of her. “Stay,” she said, and knew that she meant it as everything she didn’t say.
“I expect I will,” he said.
PG-13, Jack/Elizabeth, background Elizabeth/Will.
This one's for the_dala with apologies for her summer not turning out quite as planned. And for penknife of course!
The other stories in the series are here: Swan in Flight, Outlaws and Inlaws, Four Days of Advent, Cradle Tales, Dream Tides, The Ferryman's Bride and Gods and Heroes.
Elizabeth had been fourteen when the hurricane had clipped Port Royal. It was her third year on the island, and she remembered vividly the downed trees, the branches whipping at the windows in the blinding rain. She remembered too the whispered conferences that were so at odds with her father’s words.
“It will all be well, Elizabeth,” he had said, motioning her hurriedly aside. “The house is very stoutly built.”
Yet she heard the conversations in lowered voices. Would not it be better for Elizabeth and the female servants to take shelter in Fort Charles, behind stone walls? It would be better indeed, were the sea not already up over the road, and the way there impassible. The waves crashed through the low point. He had waited until too late.
She remembered the misery after the storm. Though her father had tried to keep the worst of it from her, she had seen the limp white thing washed up on broken trees. “It’s a lamb,” her father had said, as he gathered her about, and she had pretended to believe him, because it meant so much to him to believe she had not seen. It was a child.
And then he had left her to go see to the business of the town. He was the governor.
Now it was she who was the Pirate King. And the storm that bore down upon Shipwreck Island should hardly be better than that one so many years ago.
“See,” Teague said to her as they stood in his quarters, far up in the core, the windows already lashed by rain. “See how the glass is dropping?”
The steep pressure gradient meant nothing good.
Elizabeth nodded. She paced over to the windows. Through the dim streaks she could see the bustle in the harbor below. One of the fishing boats was unstopping masts in preparation for hauling her entirely out of the water. The men struggled in the rising wind.
Teague came and stood beside her, his warmth a comforting presence at her back.
“That’s well enough for the fishing boats,” she said. “But the larger ships can’t haul out.”
“True enough.” Teague took a long draw from his pipe. It smelled caramelly. She wondered what he was smoking today. “John Corbin’s got Nellie’s Avenger in drydock, but the rest will just have to ride it out at the docks.”
“On the leeward side?”
Teague nodded. “All the larger ones are over there. Feliz put up a fuss, but after you told him if he wanted Natividad beached in the front room of the Lonesome Tortoise he was going about it the right way, he moved her on over. She’s lashed fore and aft behind Calpurnia, that water hoy that Galliard took from the dockyard in Nevis.”
“The only problem with the leeward side is that if it takes us head on and we get the eye….”
“The second half will be worse’n the first.” Teague chewed on the stem of his pipe in a thoughtful fashion. “Not so much to do about that. The clouds look like it might pass a bit south, but you know as well as I how that can change.”
She certainly didn’t know as well as Teague, but it was diplomatic of him to say so. She understood enough of rule to know that he was building her confidence as a ruler, not undermining her. Not pushing her to dangerous overconfidence, but training her as carefully as any young gentleman. He was a good bit kinder, but it was much the same as she’d had from Barbossa, once he decided she didn’t fit his complex rubric of femininity. Since she wasn’t snatch, she must be crew.
“We’d best get everyone out of the upper hulks on the windward side, then,” she said. “You know some of those windows are going to go.”
“And like some of the hulls as well. The old Mary Elizabeth’s seen better days,” Teague said. “But some as won’t go.”
“Let’s breach a cask or two down in the lower hall and the Hall of the Brethren,” she said. “And some music, once night falls. They might not come down for a hurricane, but they’d come down for a party.”
Teague snorted. “Aye, and Feliz has unloaded his entire cargo into the hall. No reluctance to do that, it seems. Rice and raw cotton. Stuff that would be ruined by water, sure.”
“Mattie and Susannah have some big pots on for the men coming off boarding the lower windows, so I’ll see to the casks.” Elizabeth turned to leave. She took one last glance out at the rain. There were no black sails half reefed, making their way through the harbor entrance. And if there were, they would probably belong to Hector Barbossa, anyhow. Not that she didn’t hope Barbossa weren’t out in this either.
“Miss him, do ye?” Teague asked, taking the pipe from his mouth.
“Who?” Elizabeth asked unconvincingly.
“My Jackie,” Teague said. He took the tobacco pouch out of his pocket and untied the strings around it. “He’s been looking after himself for years now. No need to go worrying about him.”
“I wasn’t,” she said. And refrained from saying “neither were you.”
It wasn’t midnight yet, but it seemed much later. Though the Hall of the Brethren was in an inner section of the cove, and the rain did not beat against it, there was no mistaking the low thrumming of the waves against the island. The vibrations spread through each hull and timber, too low to hear, waves crashing against docks and sand and rock. Against the lower hulks and buildings too, Elizabeth thought. The Lonesome Tortoise, the first tavern a sailor came to down by the docks, probably had water three feet deep in the front room. Which might have something to do with why Dollie, the proprietor, had glumly breached a couple of casks at Elizabeth’s request. Better than having them float away.
It wasn’t midnight yet, but already it was getting quiet. Too many people stood to lose livelihood if not life for there to be much good cheer, rum or not. Among the casks and boxes and bales, half of the inhabitants of Shipwreck Cove were settling down with blankets and pallets, making nests in corners for all the world like the colony of the rats most men named them.
Elizabeth settled into a corner with Flipper, who was already blessedly asleep, worn out by Zara’s enthusiastic play earlier in the evening. Zara was five, and seemed to see Flip as her own personal live doll, ideal for dressing and dragging about. She supposed in a convoluted way that Zara was Flip’s aunt, but it seemed much to have her babysit him, given her own single digit age.
The noise in the hall was gradually dying away. There were only the low sounds of people talking quietly, the distant roar of the sea, and the quiet notes from across the hall, where Teague was tuning his guitar softly.
Elizabeth lay down, shoving her pillow around more comfortably, Flipper curled like a bean behind her.
He, at least, seemed totally unaffected by the storm.
She had nearly fallen asleep when she heard a movement on the other side of the bales of cotton, as though someone were stepping carefully over sleeping people to reach her nest. Someone with bad news, she thought, sitting up. It was impossible to see more than a silhouette in the dark. But it was a familiar silhouette, and the reek of patchouli and sweat was unmistakable.
“Jack?”
He flopped down crosslegged on the blanket beside her, one long wet braid snaking across his face. Even in the half dark she could see that he was grinning. “Hello, me darlin’.”
Elizabeth had had ample time in the last five months to think of everything she planned to say the next time their paths crossed, beginning with indifference to his reappearance, progressing through annoyance that he once again darkened her door, to cutting remarks on his irresponsibility and tendency to appear and disappear more like a tomcat than a man. All of them went entirely out of her head.
“Just got in, in the teeth of it,” he said.
“You’re absolutely incorrigible,” she said, and the next moment her arms were around his neck, against his soaking shirt, and his lips were seeking hers.
He was chuckling softly.
“I hate you, Jack Sparrow,” she said, and kissed him. If he was going to kiss her, she’d get the first lick in and show him what a kiss was!
Warm. Sensual. A dance of tongues and lips, sensitive and delicate, heated as though something just beneath the surface were about to burst into flames. Her arms were around him, running wildly over his scarred back under the wet linen. His arms were around her, clutching her, her hair falling across his face. Body to body, face to face, sitting like lovers, their hips together, their bodies entwining. She pushed him back and screwed up her face in what might have been a feral smile, landing against his chest.
“Oof,” said Jack.
“Sorry,” she said, taking her elbow out of his solar plexus.
He mumbled something like “S’aw’rit,” but it was hard to understand with her mouth back on his again. He tasted like seawater. And his kiss was as greedy as hers.
“Y’delik bein atop,” he said into her mouth, nibbling at the corner of her lips, as though to make sure he explored every corner.
“What?” Elizabeth lifted her head from his.
“I said, you do like being on top. It was an observation, love.”
“Wretched creature,” she said, and twisted her fingers in the front of his shirt. His eyes were very dark, but she could see the faint glitter of gold teeth in the dim light. He was grinning again. “Oh, fuck you,” she said.
“Anytime you like, dearie,” he said. “Might want to let me get my breeches down first though. You can even be on top.”
“I hate you,” she said, and kissed him again.
“Missed you too, love,” he said, when he came up for air. Somehow her shirt was raised, and his hands were tracing star charts on her back.
“Where in the world did you come from?” she asked, rolling to the side and settling beside him.
“Got in just ahead of the storm, savvy? Ahead of the worst of it, at least. Seas were getting pretty choppy.” He put his arm round her shoulders, fingers twining idly in her hair. “Wouldn’t like to stay out much longer with such a small pinnace.”
“A what?”
“Pinnace, ye dirty minded girl. Gig. Ship’s boat.” Jack’s beaded beard brushed against her cheek. “Nothin’ wrong with the size of me pinnace.”
She couldn’t resist. “How big is it?”
“About 25 feet.” Jack was grinning as widely as she was. “Takes four wenches in a row to handle it.”
“Four.”
“Really. It’s a lovely thing, actually. I stole it from Captain Groves.”
Elizabeth collapsed giggling. “You stole it from Captain Groves.”
“Aye, that I did. He may have lost his heart to James Norrington, but….”
“He’s lost his pinnace to you,” Elizabeth finished for him. When she was again capable of speech she asked, “So you’ve a 25 foot pinnace?”
“Six and a quarter, actually, but it gets the job done and I’ve never had any complaints.” Jack was also finding it hard to talk while laughing with Elizabeth on his chest.
“You measured it?” Elizabeth boggled.
“Course I did. Don’t everyone?”
Elizabeth buried her face in his chest, her shoulders heaving.
“Little Jack’s a perfectly respectable size,” Jack said indignantly. “It’s not the size of the ship. It’s the motion of the ocean.”
“You named it?”
“Don’t everyone?”
“Women don’t,” Elizabeth said. “Women don’t go around naming…personal bits of their anatomy. It’s not as though my breasts have names.”
“They might,” Jack said equitably. “Don’t know what Flip calls them. This one might be Leaky and the other Lumpy.”
Elizabeth jerked her shirt down, so the big wet splotch wasn’t so obvious. “That’s awful, Jack. And it is not lumpy.”
Jack put his face against it. “Might be. Kind of like a feather pillow.” He nibbled at her left nipple, mouthing it until it stood hard against his lips.
Elizabeth let out a wracking sigh, then winced.
“Bit tender?” Jack asked, raising his head.
“A bit.” She slid her hand between his lips and her breast. “I’m still nursing Flipper…James.”
“Well, then.” He settled against her again, his face against her shoulder this time. “And how is Flip? That enormous child over there can’t be Flip.”
“He grew, Jack. If you see him take off, catch him.”
“He can’t walk?”
“No, but he can crawl at quite a clip. He’s eight months old, Jack.”
“Ah.” There was silence for a long moment. His hands never stopped moving on her back. “Didn’t mean to be gone so long.”
“I’m sure you never do,” she said, but there was no heat in it. She had never expected Jack to stay. Wasn’t he the picture of the man who wouldn’t stay?
“Never meant to come back at all,” he said quietly.
“Why did you, then?” She had no need to ask why he might stay away.
Jack grinned at her. “Any port in a storm?”
“With your stolen pinnace.”
“With my poor neglected pinnace that I place at the service of my Pirate King,” he said.
Elizabeth pursed her lips and considered. “I suppose your Pirate King can think of something to do with you.”
“I could be Maîtresse en Titre,” Jack suggested contemplatively.
“Don’t you have to be a woman to be Maîtresse en Titre?”
“Don’t you have to be a man to be the Pirate King?” Jack nuzzled her. “Touché, me love.”
“I suppose you could be Maîtresse en Titre, then,” she said. “Consort. Something like that.”
“Bonny whore?”
“Not that,” she said. Elizabeth ran her fingers through his wet hair. “Jack.”
He caught them and kissed the tips. “Suppose not.”
“I do love you,” she said, trying to pick her words carefully. “It’s just that I love Will too.”
“If that’s all,” he said. She couldn’t see his face.
“I can’t just forget about him,” she said.
“It’s hardly your nature to forget, is it?” he asked.
“No,” she said. She freed her hand, stroked it along his cheek. “But I can’t forget you either.”
“No one who’s had Jack ever forgets,” he said.
“I expect they don’t,” she agreed.
Jack smiled, oddly mirthlessly. “That they don’t, darlin’. May hate the ground I walk on, but never forget me.”
“I won’t hate you,” she said. She was missing something, some pain, but she could not find the wound, though her hands roved over him.
“Should hope not. Hard as you are on men you love, I’d hate to see what would happen to a man you hated.”
“I can’t think of any who are alive,” she said, thinking of Beckett, who had murdered her father, of her pleasure in watching the Pearl and the Dutchman’s guns turn his ship into splinters.
“My point, love.”
She put her lips to his throat. There was a time to ask if he had forgiven her, if he ever would. But this was not it. “So did you find the Black Pearl? I’m assuming not.”
“Oh, I found her. I simply haven’t reacquired her yet.”
She could feel the pulse at his throat. She did not, with Will. His heart did not beat in his chest. “So where is she?”
“Port Royal.”
Elizabeth raised her head. “What’s the Pearl doing in Port Royal? I thought Hector was taking her to Florida?”
“Hector was taking her to Florida.” Jack made wavy motions in the air with one hand, the one that wasn’t pinned behind her. “Hector took her to Florida, where he went ashore hunting for the Fountain of Youth. However, as I had the charts, he found it a bit thick going. So while he was wandering about the Everglades, Ragetti, Pintel and company decided that perhaps they didn’t need old Hector after all, and should make Pintel captain.”
“Oh dear.” Elizabeth suppressed a smile.
“The only problem herewith is that none of the lot know how to navigate. So they just wandered around a bit, following the coast south and arguing about where they were.” Jack paused for a breath. “They’d probably have all died of lack of water, had they not happened upon the Royal Navy. Captain Groves took the Pearl without firing a shot.”
Elizabeth winced.
“Cotton and Marty went over in a boat on the other side, while Groves was boarding, and rowed themselves over to the Keys. Which is where I found the three of them, Cotton, Marty and Parrot, when I headed that way with Gibbs. Anyhow, to make a lengthy story short, or at least as short as I can make it, Groves has a rare appreciation for the Black Pearl’s turn of speed, and he decided to read her in as a prize. So there she sits in Port Royal, gettin’ a new coat of paint and a bit of repair.”
“And the crew?” Elizabeth found herself hoping it wasn’t hanging. Tiresome as they could be, she’d developed a fondness for Ragetti and Pintel.
Well, Groves has lost his taste for hanging, it seems, so there they sit in the jail in Fort Charles. And well may they sit.”
“Jack, surely you’re going to rescue them?” Elizabeth propped herself up on one elbow.
“Rescue them?” Jack expostulated. “The buggers have mutinied against me twice now!”
“You can’t just leave them in jail.”
“Watch me! They left me.”
“They went to World’s End for you.”
Jack sighed. “That they did. You want to rescue them so much, you come rescue them.”
“When you go to steal the Pearl,” Elizabeth guessed.
“Couldn’t steal her just now. Groves had her up in drydock, repairing that slow leak astern. Had boards off. Thought I’d let him finish cleaning her up before I stole her. Besides, couldn’t make off with her with a big hole in her stern, and not with only four men to crew her. Takes six at least, and Parrot don’t count.”
Elizabeth curled tighter against him. He was beginning to dry, warm beside her. She’d almost forgotten how much she missed this, his physical presence and his long strange stories. “So now you’re going to ask me to help you steal thePearl back, put together a crew here, and ask the Pirate King to provision you.”
“Thought I might charm the Pirate King into it,” he said.
“You might,” she said, smiling. “It might be possible to come to some kind of accord.”
“I’ll let you have the pinnace?” he asked hopefully.
Elizabeth ran her hand down the outside of his leg. “Won’t you be needing it?”
“I might at that,” he said, and kissed her again.
It was some indefinite amount of time before she was aware of much of anything else. They had waited, waited so very long….
“Elizabeth?” said a voice loudly at the entrance to her nest.
Teague. Elizabeth dragged her head away from Jack, his hand still inside her breeches. “Yes?”
Teague had stopped dead in the entrance, looking down at them. The pale scars on Jack’s bare back gleamed in the half light. “When did you get in, Jackie?”
“He got here just a little while ago,” Elizabeth said, wondering which of several possible causes was the origin of Jack’s long moan. Jack rolled to the side, looping his arm around her shoulders, in a gesture that was distinctly proprietary. “You needed me for something?”
“It can wait,” Teague said, and she thought he sounded amused rather than angry. “Welcome back, boy.” He raised a hand and walked away.
Jack sighed.
“I want a door,” Elizabeth said.
“Door?”
“That thing you close so that people don’t walk in on you. That thing you close so people know you want privacy.”
Jack curved an arm around her shoulder. “People will know that.”
“How?” She rubbed her forehead against his chin. She was actually getting used to that silly beard.
“From your ecstatic moans. OH Jack! OH Jaaaaack!”
“Stop it!” He was moaning incredibly loudly, and there were enough people….
“OH Jack! OH Jack OH!”
“Cut it out!” She clamped a hand over his mouth, but he licked her palm, so she rolled on top of him, straddling him. “I mean it!”
“Oh, that will get me to stop moaning,” Jack observed rather breathlessly, as she ground down against something quite intriguingly hard.
She looked down into his eyes, and the expression there was knowing. He’d always had the measure of her. “Stay,” she said, and knew that she meant it as everything she didn’t say.
“I expect I will,” he said.