Unfinished Business

Summary: After Jack returns from the Locker, he's torn as to whether he'd rather kiss or kill Elizabeth. Either way, they have unfinished business.

Pairing: Jack and Elizabeth. Forever! Ahem…

Disclaimer: Don't own it, make no money, and so on.

Setting: During AWE

A/N: Here you are, my dears, the first of four parts of the aforementioned 10,000 word monster. :) Enjoy!

PART I

Late at night, deep into the last watch, a certain calm fell over the Pearl, though not exactly a silence. The men were mostly quiet, murmuring to each other now and then. The great ship moaned like a beast of the sea as she slid through the dark waters, waves lapping against the hull. There was the groan of the lines, the myriad of ropes and blocks protesting their duties, the flap of canvas answering the whispering wind.

Elizabeth's thoughts drowned all other ambient noise, chanting without rest inside her skull.

All in all, Elizabeth's thoughts were too loud in her own head this time of night.

She stood by the gunwale near the bowsprit, looking out over the dark waters. She would not sleep in her hammock, in the stuffy humidity below. If she were to be miserable, she at least preferred to do so with a salted breeze upon her face.

Elizabeth speculated the cause of said misery was holed up in his cabin, probably nursing a bottle of rum. By the dark circles beneath his eyes, she surmised Captain Jack Sparrow did not sleep well either, after returning from Davy Jones' locker. There would be another battle soon. Everyone could feel it. This could be their last quiet night aboard the Pearl, yet Elizabeth found the peace hard to savor.

There had been too much peace, for her tastes.

Jack had not said so much as two words to her, since his rescue. He avoided looking at her, avoided sharing her presence as though she were a plague. Her last childish notion that everything would be alright, that this gaping wound inside would heal itself if they could just find Jack and bring him back, had shriveled and died. She didn't know what it left her. She hardly knew who she was anymore.

Everything had changed.

With a heavy sigh Elizabeth seated herself upon the gunwale, relishing the thrill in the precarious position. The safe path no longer brought her pleasure. In all things now, she sought the edge.

It was some time before a shadow caught Elizabeth's attention, hovering just out the corner of her eye. She turned to find Jack leaning against the foremast, quiet as the ghost he now resembled, his tall form looming without a sound. In spite of herself she gasped, her grip upon the gunwale tightening. Her right hand flew to touch where the hilt of her sword would have been, had she been armed.

By the hard look in his eyes, Elizabeth thought perhaps it was quite foolish to be going about the Pearl without her sword and pistol. They were in her hammock below, too far away to be of any help to her now.

Elizabeth waited, hoped, prayed for a flash of gold in a mouth splitting in a smile. A playful admonishment. Careful luv. It's a long way down.

But only silence stretched on between them, the handsome captain's features swathed in shadow. Suddenly quite annoyed, Elizabeth straightened. "Well. If it isn't Captain Sparrow. Come to pitch me overboard and finally be done with it?"

She might have detected the slightest twitch of a smile at the corner of Jack's mouth, but in the end she wrote it off to a mirage borne of her own childish hopes.

The shadow made a show of tipping his tricorn hat, before returning it to an unusually straight position atop his raven-locked head. "Milady Murderess, good evenin'. Do ye fancy it's a good night for a dip?"

A part of Elizabeth itched to slide down from her perch, but she decided it would look too much like a retreat. Stubbornly, she stayed put.

The silence stretched long between them. Silences with Jack had never bothered Elizabeth before. Before, such quiet had been companionable. Now…it was positively pregnant, and for the life of her she couldn't say with what. Hatred? Disappointment? Fear? All of the above, perhaps, and what a merry medley it made.

Upon finally facing this chit of a girl who had proved his undoing, Jack felt the most unsettling pressure in his chest, a needling pain just above his heart. He was rather known for his excessive verbosity, yet now it seemed to take the most Herculean effort to open his mouth.

She's just a girl, mate, he told himself, and a voice inside quickly responded, a girl who killed you.

Yet she didn't look like a girl anymore. There was a weight in her caramel colored eyes that for some reason twisted the knife in his breast even more.

He'd been betrayed by friends before, and women too, and yet it had never hurt quite like this.

Finally he managed to break the silence, taking a small step closer. "I had a different thought, though there's always time for your idea later. I thought, perchance, ye might like the chance to apologize." For killing me hung unsaid in the air.

Immediately Elizabeth's eyes narrowed, her nostrils flaring.

Perhaps the thought had occurred to her. Oh, and wouldn't he love it, if she came crawling to him on bended knee? Well, it wasn't solely pride that held her tongue hostage.

"I might entertain the idea, if you were to do the same."

Jack visibly bristled, his shadowy form straightening before her.

"M'sorry, were you eaten by a kraken and sent to the locker?"

"Very nearly, thanks to you," Elizabeth huffed. "You deceived us all, to your own ends. You made a deal with the devil and expected us to pay the bill with our lives."

"Not exactly," he protested. "I did come back…for all the good it did me."

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes for the reminder, remembering the sick feeling that gripped her upon seeing the pirate captain rowing away from the Pearl that horrible day. She lifted her chin defiantly, bearing Jack's pointed dark gaze. He studied her for what felt like an eternity.

The girl had changed since last they'd met. All softness melted away; all innocence quashed. She'd become a warrior, Jack realized, in the fight to get him back. He didn't know exactly where she'd gone or what she'd seen. No second hand story can ever really convey the experience of a journey like that. He found himself a little sad to find her like this. And a little proud. And still so very…annoyed.

She'd beaten him at his own game.

He'd taught her well.

Yet, he couldn't be content. Fool that he was, Captain Sparrow still felt a little entitled to his pound of flesh.

Warming up to this wicked game once more, the game they always played when they were together, Jack neared closer, his boot heels clicking slowly upon the deck. "So, if there's t'be no apologizing, I suppose that leaves the other." Elizabeth gasped as he stepped into the space between her legs, his strong hands stroking the length of her long thighs. And just as quickly he gripped behind her knees, tipping her balance just slightly backward.

With the reflexes of a cat she wrapped her long legs around his waist, and it was the only thing keeping her from tumbling back into the abyss of dark water below.

The feeling of her legs wrapped about his waist caused an unexpected heat to unfurl in Jack's belly, the ice cold of his anger tempered by the flame of desire, and nigh involuntarily he pulled her closer. As he always had, he masked his desire for Elizabeth with something that was sure to infuriate her.

Wide eyed, she looked to Jack, to find the most irritating smirk turning up the corner of his mouth. Indeed, it was the first smile she'd seen upon his handsome visage since his return, but it was not a nice one.

"Careful, Miss Swann. You'll catch your death out here."

Her heart thundered so hard in her chest she felt certain Jack could hear it. Her hands rested upon the plane of his chest, muscle that was hard and unforgiving beneath her hands. She knew she couldn't fight his superior strength like this. Sadder yet, she found she didn't want to.

She was tired of fighting.

She'd fought so much in the past year, and the battles were not done. Yet she had a feeling Jones or Beckett would not prove to be her most difficult foes. Her greatest adversary stood in front of her, his hands upon her thighs in the most infuriatingly familiar way.

"Go on, then," she dared him. "Send us both to hell. Perhaps it's the road we've been headed down together all along."

She tightened her hold upon him, quite aware of the impropriety of their position, and she hardly cared anymore. There was a cruel irony in being tangled up with him this way, his narrow hips fitted snugly between her thighs. She wanted him. He wanted to kill her, it seemed, but she simply wanted to be in his arms. This was hardly the reunion she'd hoped for.

And so it was much to her surprise when his arm slipped about her waist beneath her coat, pulling her just a hair away from the brink of destruction. His hand scalded her skin, and engulfed the curve of her hip in his palm.

He spoke softly against her ear, his breath maddeningly hot upon her skin. "'Fraid I was headed down that road long before you met me, Elizabeth."

Lizzy, she thought. Please, call me Lizzy again. Just once.

"Does this mean you won't do away with me after all?" she dared ask, suddenly exhilarated to have him so near. Of their own accord her hands wandered across his chest, seeking the warmth of his skin beneath the lapels of his coat.

"Maybe not yet." His lips trailed her jawline, descending to her neck. "We have unfinished business, you and I." Elizabeth's hand convulsed upon the fabric of his shirt as he placed a single kiss upon her pulse, her strong legs pulling him closer of their own volition.

Deep in his chest, the pirate groaned, and he was glad she could not see the momentary expression of raw desire upon his face.

"And what business might that be?" She hardly recognized her own voice, so low and throaty it almost hurt to speak.

Jack cupped the side of her face in his hand, drawing back just enough to regard her mouth, those bee-stung lips that had proved his downfall that fateful day. "Last we met, we left off right here," he said above her mouth, his dark eyes fixed to that appendage he so coveted. He inhaled a breath as though to say something more, but the captain paused. Lost in thought, lost in time.

Before Elizabeth could speak he suddenly closed the space between their mouths, taking her with a punishing kiss that threatened to topple them overboard all over again. He kissed her as though he meant to eat her, devour her flesh and lick the bones clean. Elizabeth melted against him, unable to raise the slightest protest or even think one single clear thought, with his lips upon hers once more.

When at last her body could no longer go on without a breath of air she broke free, gasping hard for a mouthful of cool night air. "Jack." She meant it as a question, but his name sounded like a prayer upon her lips, and she thanked God no one was there to hear it but him.

She arched against him as he kissed her throat, her hair spilling out behind her, her hat tipping off into the abyss of the dark waters below. At the moment she paid it no heed. There was only Jack. Jack touching her, growling against her skin, claiming her with his mouth, and no longer ignoring her. "Did ye think of me while I was gone?" he asked, claiming her mouth before she could answer.

"Perhaps a little," she answered evasively between kisses, the sharp note in her voice masking the despair she felt inside, upon remembering the hours and days and months of her guilt and wandering speculation. There were nights in her hammock when she thought she might simply die of wanting and guilt, that horrible black feeling in her belly and heart, and Will sleeping in his hammock not but a yard away.

Jack narrowed his eyes for the uncertain response. She would be difficult, even now. A smile he could not quell tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"What did you think about? A little?" he pressed.

As Jack's hand slipped beneath her shirt, his calloused fingers dragging across her tender skin, she could only answer with a soft moan. Impertinent beast she thought to herself as he loosened the wrappings about her breasts, slipping his hand inside. You wretched rogue. Strangely, there was no venom in these words, only spoken in her mind. There was joy, and relief, and yet somewhere in the back of her mind she knew none of it meant he had forgiven her.

When his fingers closed upon her nipple, surprisingly gentle, all coherent thought subsided in her mind, giving way to the frissons of pleasure that jetted through her core. Only Jack, she mused once some semblance of sanity returned. Only Jack could make her feel this way.

Jack knew he should stop.

She has a fiancé, he tried to remind himself. A fiancé who is alarmingly proficient with pointy objects. A fiancé who is SLEEPING below your feet, you dolt!

Yet he could not bring himself to listen to his own good advice. It was an all too familiar predicament of his. There was a question he desperately needed answered, a question he'd been asking this girl without a word since the moment they met.

Never mind this was the most alive he'd felt since coming back from the Locker, Elizabeth's lithe young body tied up with his. Not to mention that while in the Locker thoughts of her had plagued his imagination, danced tauntingly before his eyes and between his ears and…hell with it.

Nearly working of their own accord, Jack's fingers tugged at the laces of her breeches, loosening them enough to dip his hand inside. He combed through downy curls to find her molten center, already dripping wet. He stroked her expertly with one finger, like a maestro plucking the first note upon his instrument. She gasped but did not fight it, and he knew with a medley of relief and vindication that for at least this fleeting moment, she belonged to him at last.

"Perhaps ye thought about where that kiss could have led, if ye hadn't ruined it by killing me?" he suggested, nipping at the skin of her neck. Elizabeth clutched at him, utterly dizzy with disbelief and desire, biting her lip to quell the wanton sounds that fought to escape her mouth as his fingers explored her most sensitive flesh.

"I…" It was all she could manage, with Jack's hands upon her in this way, his lips claiming every inch of her mouth and neck and chest.

She had thought about that subject, exhaustively, yet her imagination had never ever brought her anywhere near this. This mad, insistent desire that left her body trembling with need, her heart threatening to pound out of her chest. She thought of the pleasant little thrill she used to feel when Will kissed her, compared to this ravening howling thing Jack awoke within her. This thing only Jack could call, and she had a feeling, only he could banish back to her depths again.

"Nothin' t'say for yourself? Well that's a first." He laughed against her skin, a low growl of a chuckle that raised the gooseflesh upon her spine. It was a laugh that reminded her, no matter how strange and silly this man seemed at times, he was a predator of the water, just as surely as a shark or giant squid.

Pirate.

The tip of one finger dipped inside her, a sensation so new and alien for Elizabeth that her spine stiffened, a gasp torn from her throat. And Jack's eyebrows raised high as he encountered the spongy barrier just inside her, the physical proof that despite the darkness in this woman's eyes, she in fact still remained a maiden. Surely thought the whelp would have taken care of that by now Jack thought, unable to comprehend how Will could prove such a bastion of self-control. He pressed against it out of curiosity, truly not experienced on the subject of virgins, a rarely encountered creature in his world, and won a hiss of pain from the woman in his arms.

Immediately Jack withdrew.

This woman had killed him, and he found he still didn't really want to hurt her. Now wasn't that ironic?

He went back to stroking her in that maddening way, and Elizabeth soon melted against him once more. Jack relished the feeling of her hands clinging to him, her head nestled in the bend of his neck, her body strung tight as a bow string. This was what he liked. Craved. Needed. To prove to her…what exactly? What had he been wanting to prove all along?

"Tell me the truth, Elizabeth," he rasped against her ear.

"About what?" she managed, barely able to find her voice above the mad clamor of pleasure he elicited in her body.

"You missed me?"

She groaned, a sound caught halfway between annoyance and need. She shook her head against his chest, and Jack smiled wide enough for gold to show, though only because she couldn't see it. This was too much fun. Reducing the proud, haughty, oh so refined governor's daughter to this wanton goddess of heathen passion in his arms.

He brought her to what he knew was her brink, that shining edge of madness and ultimate gratification, a fine sheen of sweat broken out upon her brow.

And then he slowed, barely touching her, denying her release. A plaintive little growl escaped her, the mewling of a frustrated lion cub.

"What was that? I couldn't quite make it out?"

She clenched her fist in the cloth of his shirt, tilting her head back to face him. Yet before she could speak he kissed her, a bruising, punishing kiss that bowed her spine, his hand tangled in her hair. He began once more to give her what she needed, sure fast strokes against that special place between her legs.

This was the most maddening sensation she'd ever experienced, Elizabeth reasoned, and of course it would be Jack to cause it. She could hardly stand what he was doing to her, yet she could not fathom telling him to stop. Again she neared what she knew must be the end, the goal, the prize. "I missed you," she found herself admitting breathily against the column of his neck. "I missed you so much."

Just as she thought with a few more strokes she would finally be set free, Jack paused.

There was his answer. The knowledge he craved with such tenacious veracity. And a shred of sanity returned with this question finally addressed, and thoughts of why this was all a very bad idea, and if in fact he did make Elizabeth come upon the gunwale of his ship there would be no stopping himself from doing another stupid thing, like taking her virginity upon the most convenient nearby barrel, or maybe he would have the decency to take her back to his cabin at least, but it would all be for naught because if Davy Jones and Beckett didn't manage to kill him (again!) young William certainly would.

"That's all I needed to know," Jack whispered, and Elizabeth watched in stupefied disbelief as he disentangled himself from her, leaving her cold and empty as he withdrew a few steps. And with a final dark look she could not fathom the meaning of, he retreated across the deck, disappearing in the direction of his cabin across the ship.

Shaking, Elizabeth gasped, a hand flying to her throat as though to physically staunch the sob of frustration she felt building inside.

How dare he?!

She slumped against the gunwale, taking a deep breath of salty air. She looked at her state of dishevelment, her breeches loose about her hips, the buttons at her throat undone, her wrappings a lumpy mess beneath her shirt, her hat gone, and she couldn't imagine the state of her hair after the way Jack had…oh!

She looked as undone on the outside as she'd felt on the inside for...for as long as she'd known him, she realized.

Disbelief quickly gave way to fury coiling red hot in her gut. That rotten blackguard! He would not cast her aside so easily! She would not give him the last word!