She waited a moment, and then shouted, “Are you sleeping?”
He grunted, and responded finally, “Not anymore. What the devil do you want now, Jessie?”
“I need a pillow,” she said petulantly.
“I have only one.”
“Might I use it, then?”
“God’s teeth, woman! I am using it!”
Jessie gritted her teeth.
“But you may share it,” he conceded irritably.
“Share it? With you? Thank you, but nay. Is there another cabin I might make use of, then?”
“Nay.”
“Another bed?”
“Jess.”
“Another cot? Another world?” she mumbled beneath her breath.
Some choked sound escaped him, as though he would laugh but refused to allow himself the concession. When he spoke again, his whisper sounded for all its caressing softness an irate command.
“Go to sleep, Jessamine. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
Indeed, Christian amended silently, a long voyage, for it was going to prove wholly impossible to share the same cabin with her while keeping his sanity.
It was impossible to sleep with her scent filling his nostrils, arousing his senses. Yet there was truly no place else he would have her go.
Certainly not with that damnable cousin of hers—and there was no place else.
“I do so loathe you!” she informed him with great feeling.
“And the sentiment is mutual,” he returned dispassionately. “Now, be a wise little wench and go to sleep. Or I swear, you’ll come to regret it.”
“You don’t understand,” she cried softly. “I cannot sleep in the same room with you! ’Tis unseemly... and... and?—”
“To bloody hell with what’s proper, Jess! ’Tis a man’s ship,” he apprised her, his voice strained. “There is no other place foryou to sleep but here... in my cabin—where you will be safe,” he added almost reluctantly, for he wasn’t truly certain she was safe with him either.
“Why couldn’t you have thought of thatbeforeyou abducted me?”
He sighed. “As I’ve already told you, there was no time to consider. Look at it from my view. I believed two men lay dying, and I knew not where to turn for help... Being that one of them was your beloved cousin... I rather hoped you might feel somewhat inclined to aid them. Perhaps I was wrong?”
There was a long moment of silence, and then she admitted finally, her voice quivering faintly, “You were not.”
The pitiful sound of it did not escape him, and Christian’s sigh slashed through the darkness. “If ’tis your virtue you fear for,” he relented, “then you should leave off the worrying,mon amour. I’ve absolutely no wish to touch you at all,” he lied, his lip curling with self-contempt at the blatant falsehood. Even now, he stood ready. Yet, even despite that fact, he played the noble for her, ever the righteous gentleman. He cursed her fiercely beneath his breath, for making him want to be something he was not.
“Even so,” he interjected, “I swear that if you do not let me be, Jessie, I’ll assume you wish to divert me, and I might find that I do, indeed, desire a certain diversion, after all—if you take my meaning?”
He heard her sharp intake of breath, and the helpless whimper that escaped her, and he felt her pain, and despised himself for his weakness to her.
Neither of them spoke.
After a long moment, Christian grudgingly tossed her his pillow.
