“I think I’m going to kill you,” James said between heavy breaths, trying to land a punch that would see Darius out cold. “And I think I’ll enjoy it.”
Vice-like arms gripped him from behind and it was impossible to break away, to make good on his words and rid the world of one more pirate.
Darius tested his jaw, mouth open wide while he considered James. “Take them both below and lock the door. I will decide their fate on the morrow.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You said you would ransom James back to his family! My father will kill you for this!” Daniella screeched as she was hauled unceremoniously down the dark corridor.
“You shouldn’t believe a word I say, Little Lamb. I made my living out of lying and I never said anything about a cost on your head, only his.”
“Bastard,” she yelled, trying her hardest to be free of the grips the sailors had on her arms. “When I’m free, I’m going to come back and kill you as I should have done all those years ago. What were you trying to accomplish with all of that?” Daniella asked and she and James were pushed into the cabin, so far beyond furious she saw only red and nothing else.
“You certainly were frightened.”
“You’re a madman. What happened to you?”
“Life happened to me. When it is kill or be killed, I will be the one left standing.”
A familiar motto to them all. “Don’t be so sure about that,” she spat. “Now get out. I tire of your games.”
He shrugged again and she took hold of the edge of the door and tried to slam it in his smug face. His laughter echoed as he walked away and the door was latched once again from the outside.
Leaning her head against the timbers, she prayed for strength, for peace, for quiet. She didn’t pray for freedom. She was doomed.
Because they were headed in the direction of Scotland, she’d been so sure he was returning her to her father as he’d said, but now she wondered. The maniacal gleam in his eyes as he’d held her against the rail was like nothing she’d ever seen in the man she’d known. The years may have treated his appearance well enough but they’d also cracked his sanity.
A curse from behind her reminded her James had just fought to indeed protect her. He was looking through the foggy glass of the window. He rolled his head on his neck and moved from foot to foot.
“Thank you,” she said, her hand on his shoulder in the hopes she could show him that she was indeed grateful. Who knew if Darius had actually planned to toss her into the ocean or not?
“What? No ‘I can look after myself’?”
She stood beside him and lost herself in the whitecaps. “I wasn’t prepared.”
When he moved to stand at her back, his warmth permeating every inch of her chilled body, she leaned into him with a sigh.
“I won’t let him hurt you, Daniella. Not while there is breath left in my body.”
“I know that and I appreciate it. But you also have to think about Amelia and your mother. If we both die here, you’ll never get to be the hero and save them.”
“This was never about being a hero,” he said, his low tone rumbling through her. “I just want them back. I have been so distracted with your presence and so single-minded in my intent, it has made me ignorant to other aspects. It made me blind to the flaws in the plan.”
“How so?” she asked, turning to face him, her back against the cool glass.
“When I began to watch you as your coachman, I saw only a spoiled girl crying out for attention.”
She swallowed. The gravity of his words, the conviction there, along with the meaning in his expression, all gave her goose bumps. “What do you see now?”
He put his hand against her jaw, his little finger caressing the skin below her ear. “I see you. All of you. The pirate, the privateer, the woman. You aren’t as strong as you want the world to believe you are.”
“Yes I am,” she whispered, the fluttering in her stomach like the wings of a hundred gulls.
“Let me protect you, Daniella. Let me show you, you don’t have to always be so strong.” He raised his other hand to her cheek, the heat and kindness almost searing.
“You won’t be my weakness,” she said.
“Yet you are already mine.”
Her eyes opened wide at his murmured admission but then he touched his lips to hers. Secretly she’d been hoping to kiss him again, to feel his body pressed to hers, to lose herself to him. To escape reality, if only for a little while.
His mouth was gentle to begin with as he traced the seam of her lips until she was forced to open to him.
She had to remember to breathe when he deepened the kiss, his lips moving, his tongue roaming. He held her head still between his hands as he plundered and explored. Too soon he came up for air, his chest rising and falling with the exertion, the veins standing out on his arms as his muscles tensed from his wrists to shoulders. She ran her hands up and down those arms, feeling the springy hair beneath the pads of her fingers, revelling in the marble beneath the skin.
“Don’t stop,” she begged, uncaring of how it made her look.
“I can’t do this to you, Daniella. I’m a mess.”
“I don’t care about that.”
If he was serious about saying no to her, then he would have moved away; he wouldn’t still stand with only a hairsbreadth between their bodies. From that now-familiar ticking in his jaw, she would say he only just retained control.
He placed his hands on her hips but to draw her near or push her away? “I won’t be what slides you into ruin.”
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I already told you my innocence is long gone. And London society assumes that
