(no subject)
“Still engaged?” she asked. “I’m engaged to Will, you know that. I even got the altar.” Her mind returned to that day when the rain and Thomas Cutler Beckett both seemed determined to steal her wedding day.
“Then you have two fiancés, Miss Swann”, he said with a mock frown, “How scandalous.” She wanted to smack him.
Part of him regretted going so far out on a limb. What if she looked right at him and told him she didn’t want him and it was a joke that he still loved her? But she didn’t. Instead, she got up and walked over to the nearest palm tree, trying to knock down coconuts.
He watched her struggle for a while, enjoying the sight of her on her tippy toes, stretching for the heavens. She cursed softly and he laughed as the coconuts stayed just out of her reach.
“Are you going to sit there and laugh at me, or are you going to help?” she asked hotly.
He stood up and bowed to her again. “Your wish is my command”, he said, joining her by the palms.
He effortlessly reached up and grabbed a coconut, giving it a twist, and it came away in his hand. She made a sound of irritation in the back of her throat. He took another coconut and set them on the sand. Picking up a sharp conch shell, he pounded the “eye” of each coconut until it opened, splashing juice on his fingers. He handed one to her.
“All you had to do was ask”, he said with that smirk, that smirk. If he wasn’t careful, she just might wipe that smirk right off his face.
She got up and walked away from him.
She wound up walking around the entire island as it wasn’t very large. When she came back, the sun was just beginning to set.
He had apparently gathered some driftwood and created a small lean-to for them to hide under during the hottest part of the day. A large fire also blazed.
“Shouldn’t we look for food?” she asked.
“You can live weeks without food, days without water, but the weather can kill in hours. This was most important”, he said, sitting down and dripping with sweat.
She laughed then.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“I was thinking of the last time I was on desert island with a man”, she said.
He frowned. He never did find out exactly what had happened on that island before he arrived with the Dauntless to rescue her and Jack.
“Jack would say he couldn’t go a minute without rum”, she said with a smile. “He blamed you for the lack rum runners, that you had put them out of business.”
“I hate to say it, but he’s probably right”, James said, sitting down and leaning back against the haphazard structure he had built.
“Of course that was before you developed a taste for it yourself”, she said and glared at him.
He winced. “You have a sharp tongue, Captain Swann, but that’s certainly rich coming from me, I kow.”
“I think maybe we’re more alike than I ever wanted to admit, James”, she said, leaning back as well.
The sun slowly slipped from the sky.
“That’s where you’re wrong, we’re nothing alike”, he said. “I do my duty. You follow your heart.”
“My heart has led me to some strange places”, she said. “But the one constant is that you are always there. Are you sure you’re not following your heart?”
He seemed thoughtful for a moment and then she had rewarded with one of those rare smiles of his that reached his eyes.
“Perhaps I am”, he said. He turned all the way around to face her then. She got a little nervous.
“When did I become the boring old man to you?” he asked.
“James, you were never…” she began.
“When? So long as we’re being honest”, he said. “When you were 12, I was endlessly fascinating. When you were 14, I was your adventure guide. When you were 15, I was your best friend. And when you were 16, you saved the first and last dance for me. When did I lose your favor?”
“You never lost it, James, and if you could have seen yourself climbing to the Crow’s Nest last night, the last thing you would ever call yourself is an old man. But you disappeared from my life not long after my debut on my 16th birthday.”
“Did it never occur to you why that might be?” he asked. “That you had suddenly changed from a little girl to be amused to a woman to be loved. I worked hard during those years to try to be worthy of you, to be good enough in your father’s estimation. I l…” He stopped short.
She sighed. “And I’ve always known it. But you wanted me to be something I’m not. When I get to Shipwreck Cove, I’m getting my ship back, and then I’m facing Beckett down myself.”
“Of course Captain Swann would never let a man fight her battles for her”, he said, raising one of those thick, dark eyebrows that spoke a language of its own.
“Never”, she said.
“Not even her husband?” he asked.
“You never understood me”, she spat.
He was on his feet. “I never understood you?”
“James, you wanted a wife whose deepest thought was whether she should sew or stitch today. A hostess to entertain important men who came to visit. You never saw me for who I am”, she said.
“Do you really think I would have asked Elizabeth Swann to marry me if that’s all I wanted in a wife?” he asked.
“You never would have allowed me to be me”, she said.
He thought about the validity of that for a moment. “It’s true, I wanted to put you in that big house on the hill and take care of you. But I knew you were not a simpering nitwit. You know me, Elizabeth, do you think I could have stood such a creature for a day, much less a lifetime?”
Elizabeth pictured his small bachelor residence. “That house is not big”, she said.
“What, that little place where I stayed between missions? No, I had a house built for you.”
She was shocked. “When?”
“Over the years, as my salary rose. I wanted you to be as comfortable as you were in the Governor’s Mansion”, he said.
“You built a house for us before you asked me?” she asked.
“I had no reason to believe you would refuse”, he said, anger coloring his tone. “Call me crazy”, he said bitterly, “But still I think you would have looked damn good in that house. But what difference does it make. You never loved me.”
She coughed. “Of course I loved you, I always loved you. But I knew you wouldn’t accept me for me.”
He turned around swiftly and pinned her with his eyes. She couldn’t move under the glare.
“Did you say you loved me?” he asked.
“Yes, how could I not? I’ve loved you since I was 12.”
Before she could blink, he had shoved her up against a palm tree, hard, her head knocking backward into the trunk. The wood scratched her shoulders through the thin material of her shirt.
He kissed her then. Yes, she thought, Admiral Norrington certainly had his quarry in his sights, and now he would not rest until he was in full possession of it. When he broke the kiss to look at her, she smiled. To think her stuffy Admiral was the same man who was so masterful in this moment, she couldn’t breathe. To be honest with herself, it had always been him.
“Admiral, you haven’t lost your touch”, she said. “I’m a pirate. I suppose I should be afraid.”
“Very afraid”, he said, putting one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees. In the flash of a moment, she was off her feet and in his arms being carried toward the fire. He lay her gently down in the sand.
“If you mean to refuse me again, Elizabeth, it must be now. You have this one moment to say no”, he said, his voice shaky with years of pent up lust and frustration.
She answered him by kissing him, truly kissing him, and he remembered how much he admired her full lips.
From that moment on, they were nothing but mouths and hands. He tore off her shirt and shed her of her breeches. God, he hated those clothes. But now he had found the woman beneath.
Their lips parted only to speak the truest and most tender words to each other. “I love you, I love you, God how I love you”, he whispered against her ear.
She pulled off his shirt, as eager to close to him as he was to be close to her. His hands went to his breeches and he divested himself of them quickly, then placed her quivering hand on his manhood.
He had often thought of what their wedding night would be like. A true maid, he would have to take her gently, preparing her slowly with tender words and kisses, with apt fingers, with great patience.
But he was beyond that now. He sought out her womanhood immediately and thrust two fingers deep inside. He came away sopping. No preparation was necessary. She cried out and he smothered her cries with kisses. He kissed her cheek, her ear, her neck, and then returned to her lips.
“Don’t tell me “no”, Elizabeth”, he said, “Don’t tell me “no”.”
“I want you, James”, she answered, and “I want all of you.”
His heart and his body sang for joy at the same time. He plunged inside her without the grace he had meant to show. She cried out and bit into his shoulder, but clung to him.
“Promise me you’ll never leave me again, promise me!” she cried out.
“No, no one will ever take you from me again”, he hissed, driving deeper and deeper.
She was filled with wonder and awe. This was what she had been missing, and the moment he was inside her, she knew this was the man she had been missing.
She ground herself against him, lost and confused in her first experience of lust so extreme. He watched her. She was a wild thing, his Governor’s Daughter, nothing like he expected, lost in wild abandon as her first orgasm ripped through her. Never had he seen a more beautiful woman.
He pulled her back down to earth. His fingers tenderly touched her womanhood, but she was too excited. Even the slightest touch sent her muscles jumping again in pure delight. As she crested and came again and again, he allowed himself to take his own release.
He saw her in her party dress at her debut, smiling at him as if she knew a secret. He saw her walking the parapets in a pure white gown, and remembered how he had sent her home after the sun had revealed her form beneath it. He saw her when he proposed on the parapets, moments before she fainted. He saw her now. As he lost the battle of self control inside her, he couldn’t help but say to himself, She’s mine, at last, she’s truly mine.
They slept and woke to make love again all night long, and as the sun rose on the horizon, neither of them were thinking about being stranded on a desert island. They had everything they needed right here.
Reluctantly, he moved from her side and dressed, and she followed his lead.
“We need some coconut milk. And crab. I plan to make you breakfast”, he said. She ruffled his hair. He looked delicious in the morning.
James grabbed coconuts from trees, while Elizabeth chased crabs with a stick, not catching a thing.
“They can see you coming”, James said. He was smiling. In fact, he didn’t plan to stop smiling ever again.
Elizabeth looked up and watched across the horizon. Suddenly the form of a ship grew larger in the distance.
“We’re rescued!” she cried to James, pointing to the ship.
He shared her joy, but as the ship grew closer and closer, his joy turned into a leaden ball in his stomach.
It was clearly the Pearl. Barbossa and Will stood on deck, waving their arms and they launched a small wooden lifeboat to pick up the pair of them.
“Elizabeth, Elizabeth!” Will cried from the deck. “God, I’m so happy to see you!”
James nearly fell to the ground with the force of it. This was the moment. This was the moment he lost her all over again.