The Hawk smiled deeply and patted the now empty spot on the bed beside him. “Care to join me?”
“Never.”
“Ah, Lady Cameron, but you lie!” he taunted her, his silver gaze wide. “I can make you want me, you know.”
Skye lifted her brows with imperious disdain. “No, you cannot, Captain Hawk. I do not come where refuse has lain.”
“Refuse?”
“Trash, rank trash.”
“Do you refer to the girl—or to me. Wait, wait, don’t answer that. She must be rank trash, since I am merely sea slime.”
Skye carefully ignored him, remaining very straight, her eyes smoldering. “I have come on business—”
“Wait,” he interrupted her sharply, his gaze narrowing upon her. He sat up further, winding his arms around his legs as he watched her. “We have not finished with this first business yet.”
“Aye, sir, but we have finished!” she insisted softly.
“I remember the very day that you left me, madame. The warmth and the woman. Where has she gone? Where is the warmth.”
“Iced over, I’m afraid, Captain. Now if you would just—”
“You would not lie where refuse had been,” he repeated pensively. “So you will not crawl in beside me because another has warmed my bed, is that it?”
“Time is of the essence here!” Skye said irritably. “All right, no, you stupid, stinking, stupid knave, I would not so dirty myself. Are you satisfied? May we get on with it?”
He shook his head, his eyes insistent upon hers. “You didn’t mention your husband, madame. Isn’t marital life bliss? I had thought to hear you cry that you could not betray him—not that you would not play where another lass had tarried.”
She inhaled sharply, hating him with her whole heart. He had thought of words that should have come to her lips, should have been wafted there on wings from her very soul.
She stayed stiff and still and silent, praying that she showed no emotion. “My reasons, Captain Hawk, do not matter. Let’s let it remain sufficient that it shall not come to pass.”
“Skye, Skye,” he continued mildly, casting off his sheets to rise from the bed stark naked. Skye tightened her jaw and turned about, determined not to see him. He was taunting her, he wanted reaction, and so help her, she would not give it to him.
She had to react; she had no choice. He came around behind her, catching the hood from her head and pulling it back to display the length of her hair. “You’re forgetting, Lady—Cameron, that I am a pirate. And we all know what pirate’s do to their women!”
Skye emitted a sharp sound of displeasure, stepping quickly away from him. Fear crept along her spine. She spun around, desperately wondering how to elude him. She moved to the left and he smiled slowly, his hands upon his hips, everything about him bold and brash. Like a cat with prey he stalked and played with her. “Bastard!” she hissed.
“Sea slime!” he corrected.
She turned about again and he followed her. He no longer played. He caught hold of her arm and sent her flying to the bed, then sprawling down upon it. She cried out, flailing at him wildly. He ignored her flying fists and feet, leaping roughly astride her and pinning her there.
His eyes were alive with silver sparks. “Alas, I am a pirate. And you, my love, are in my power once again. And now that I have you here…ah, I retaste every sweet morsel of all that ever lay between us.”
“Quit this and get up!” Skye insisted with bravado.
“I am a pirate, madame! Forceful and brutal. I can wrench you into my arms—”
“You have already done that!”
“I repeat! I can wrench you into my arms and force you beneath me. Brutally, terribly, I can ravage and rape you. Isn’t that what one expects of a pirate?”
Her eyes went very wide as she desperately tried to read his mind and his reason. His naked body was a blaze of fire against her, burning through her cloak and gown, corset and bone and petticoats. She didn’t want to tremble beneath him, but she was afraid. She didn’t think that she had ever seen him this fierce, this taut. This demanding, seeking something of her. She swallowed tightly, looking up at the living steel of his eyes, feeling the force of his muscle and flesh against her, the wrought-iron pressure of his fingers lacing around her wrists.
He did mean to rape her, she thought. He was not the man she had known at all. He meant to have her, and brutally.
Just as she told Roc that it had been…
