It happens spontaneously, or not quite. After two weeks of brooding, stewing, going stir crazy within the confines of the ship, the tension reaches breaking point. James finds Lorna below deck in the boatswain's quarters, closes the door, and they fuck.
He's as brutal as she'd expected, but not careless, minding her injured arm that he doesn't aggravate it further. His own wounds—a web of stitches and clotted blood knitting together a patchwork of flesh—he pays no heed. The whip marks on his back are by now healed, opening again only under the clawing of her nails, but the deeper gashes on his thighs break their scabbing under his punishing pace. He bleeds and doesn't seem to care.
Their fucking is primal, but sincere. The only sounds to leave each of them are the ragged breaths and guttural grunts that James Delaney seems to consider communication, and Lorna Bow with her actress's sensibilities can imbue with some meaning. James doesn't look at her. For all his violence, there's almost a politeness to the way he keeps his head bowed, hiding what might be shame if he were the type of person to feel such a thing. When she reaches for his face, the barest whisper of tenderness in their savagery, he flinches away, and beneath the heat pooling in her belly she feels the torquing, twisting writhe of bitterness.
James screws his eyes tight shut with anguish-pleasure-pain and she knows he's picturing someone else, another body rocking and sliding against his. A body that's delicate and slender with olive skin and raven hair, but one whose black eyes he still wouldn't dare meet for fear of seeing their tragedy.
He finishes quick and dirty mere minutes after her, but to her surprise, doesn't get up to leave. Instead, in a way that brings her a new thrill all its own, he lowers himself, slowly, deliberately to rest his head upon her breast.
The both of them are still snatching harsh, quickened breaths, and his head lifts with the heaving of her chest. Lorna's heart is pounding, and she knows he hears it—maybe seeks it as he curves his body to embrace her. She can feel his heart. It's drumming somewhere against the soft flesh below her ribs, and it almost surprises her that it can race the way it does. Even the Devil's heart knows excitement.
The minutes pass. Their breathing slows. In the darkness of the cabin, still rocking with the pitching of the waves below, Lorna lets the echo of the jealous beast in her belly reach her lips.
"I'm not your sister, James."
"Nor are you my mother." He barks his response harshly, but there's no change in the tenderness with which he embraces her. "Don't flatter yourself with how well you play the part. It's a fantasy I let you indulge as long as I have use for it."
"And what of the fantasy I let you indulge?" That's when she feels him bristle, his body tensing against her. "Zilpha is dead. Listening to my heart and pretending it's hers won't bring her back."
"Then what would you have me do?"
Lorna feels the weight of the implied threat in the words. It's a dangerous thing to get close to James Delaney. A dangerous thing to touch him. To fuck him. To love him. He could lay her open and spill her insides like a secret; sink his teeth into her heart and drink until he's consumed her completely.
But he won't. Despite his devil's face, she sees his heart.
"Let me in." The fingertips of her right hand card through his hair, featherlight, tender, and as if in surprise he lifts his head. At last he looks at her, those grey eyes like steel, the flash of a knife in the dark. And shining. She wonders if he'll cry again.
"If I do, be careful where you tread." His voice is a growl.
Perhaps Zilpha would have heeded the warning. She isn't Zilpha.
"James…" Lorna cups his face, drags a gentle thumb over his cheek and he leans into her touch. He'd cried once before, in front of her. She suspects she's the only witness to James Delaney's tears in ten years.
When they kiss, his lips are soft. His beard tickles her chin and smells of tobacco. He tastes sweeter than she'd imagined.
After only a few heartbeats, they part. Once more, James closes his eyes, but this time she believes there's no spectre of his sister dancing behind his eyelids. He feels only her.
"She sings to me," he whispers, and it feels like a confession.
"Then I will sing louder."
Tenderly, Lorna lowers his head once again and cradles him against her breast. Like a mother. Or a lover. Perhaps she can be both.
"Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree tops," Lorna sings, dulcet tones honed by her years in the theatre, but there's no-one here to witness the performance. She allows her voice to tremble. "When the wind blows, the cradle will rock…"
Like a babe, James Delaney sleeps.
A/N: I actually took a while deciding on the lullabye to use, but in the end Rockabye Baby turned out to be one of the few that definitely existed in 1814, and was actually inspired by an English colonist watching the way Native American mothers rocked their babies in cradles from branches, so it seemed fitting.