Chapter 2!


Each breath, measured, long, and calculated, meant to expel any and all reservations, doubts, fears...all of those demons and devils inside of her, the devil on her shoulder especially...and the angel telling her to run away...run away from the Pearl, away from the sea, away from freedom...away from him.

But if she did, she would lose herself as she now was, she was certain of it, just as she was certain of the peace she felt watching him breathe, looking at his serene face...perhaps it was silly to say, perhaps not…

It was so...different, seeing him like this...a man of mystery, two deep pools of onyx containing secrets and towering walls that she would never be able to climb over...walls of black bricks and hard steel, a gate covered in so many vines and thorns...and a long, long road winding through a forest with ash colored trees, charcoal leaves hanging from them...and it would be raining. Ghosts would be staring at her from behind the trunks, their little red eyes blazing, and his demons, laughing at her from the never-ending sky of smoke…

...she feared she would follow the patchwork lines of the bricks, up and over and up again, all the way until they disappeared in the clouds, lose all hope of ever making it past the gate...were she to try, the vines may strangle her...and if she made it past them by some miracle or grace...the expanse alone of his labyrinthine forest would deter her from going any further.

...if she were to be that person that would run away from him now.

But she was not that person.

The person standing in her boots, glued to his cabin floor, would marvel at the many bricks and lines of the wall, wonder what sort of thoughts they guarded...would willingly prick her fingers on the vine thorns, spend hours finding shapes in the twisting smoke in the sky, run around and around the trees, stop and admire the stones on the road, challenge the ghosts to try and scare her, and smile at the demons...all of it would be beautiful and endearing to her...a book that she had been forbidden to read...a place that she had been banned from visiting...so alluring, so intoxicating.

She was not a person to be afraid of Jack Sparrow. She feared nothing about him, not his walls, not his layers, not his core, not the front he put up...no, it was herself that she feared...the way she thought about him, the way she...always thought about him…

He was a man of mystery, but he was more than that to her...he was a puzzle box, a riddle with a million different answers, he was the sea, he was something that shined brighter to her than the sun, stars, and moon...but his light was so bright it blinded her to anything and everything else, so the rest of the world was black and she could only see him, his dark eyes, and that damned knowing smile that peeled away at her until only her innermost self was left shivering in its wake.

But now, like this in front of her...briefly, she imagined coming upon a cave, carefully navigating its passageways and corridors, only to find a beast, a dragon...large and grand, its eyes shuttered and puffs of smoke coming out of its nostrils, sleeping...dormant.

Jack, the great pirate captain, a sleeping dragon, a calmed hurricane...it was a treasure that she was not about to squander…and she could imagine what he would say to her if he knew she was standing there…"Go on love, you're curious, no harm in it."

"Not afraid now, are you darling?"

If he knew, he would love her struggle...of course he would, since he was most of the reason for the struggle in the first place.

She was not going to run.

Even though she absolutely ought to. She ought to head straight for the door and forget that she ever came in here, forget what she'd seen, forget it all.

She ought to do a lot of things...but she didn't want to.

She wanted to stay.

Her heart running for her, pounding against her ribcage, each beat sending a chaotic energy throughout the rest of her body, as though the very atmosphere was alive with her excitement at giving in.

Go.

One foot, settling down carefully in front of her, followed by the other foot, a delicate walk, timing her footsteps with her breath, rise, inhale, fall, exhale...until she found herself at the edge of the bed.

The blanket, a deep wine red, black etched into it where it was wrinkled...velvet, she discovered. A luxurious soft velvet. The sheets, the color of white chocolate...making his skin look that much more sinful.

Where to begin her journey?

It should be a simple thing, admiring a human body...there was only so much to look at...but Jack, he was an entire mural of curiosities.

Long and slender, a wonder all on their own...whether they were wrapped around the Pearl's wheel, caressing the neck of a rum bottle, setting her skin on fire in her dreams, or tapping against his lips in contemplation...currently his fingers were splayed against the bed sheets, still...and his rings were absent, she noted, leaving them bare for her gaze. He had elegant hands, and she longed to hold one, to perhaps feel everywhere they had been, everything they had done...just in their roughness, in the weathered skin…

Then, the canvas of his sailor's arm...the lean muscle accentuated in the deep candlelight...the urge to reach up and trace his sparrow tattoo was strong, run the tip of her finger up and around the wing...briefly she imagined getting a small sparrow of her own somewhere, and showing it to him...

His broad shoulders...many times she had imagined wrapping her hands around them as he moved above her, clinging to them...or laying her head on one and falling asleep...but seeing them, it made the images crisp, strong, right on the surface, as though they were recent memories rather than fantasies.

The two bullet holes on his chest...when he had showed them to her on the island...the anger and frustration swirling in his eyes at her audacity to question him...she cursed whomever had shot him...the chance that he could have been taken away from her was too real...and still too possible. They looked angry...the wounds. Maybe they too disliked that they had missed their chance to kill him, just like the bastard that had inflicted them.

Below them...an object of particular curiosity for her...his nipples. Were they sensitive? Did men like to have them touched? Would he like to have his touched? They were...smaller than hers, she noted, and more pebbly.

Feeling a strange tightening in her own stomach as she stared at his...a perfectly tanned plane of flat muscle, ridges of shadow and illuminated flesh, the golden color of his skin a stunning contrast to the blanket that hid the most tantalizing secret of his masculinity.

Torturously, her eyes tiptoed down the thin line of black hair that led south from his navel, centimeter by centimeter she followed it until it disappeared from her view. She stared at the slight bulge in the cloth, unable to stop the heated blush from staining her cheeks…

He was so beautiful...so...forbidden.

A pirate, a man born to light up her world with darkness, allure, his black eyes and mischievous smile, yet, he could also dim the lights to a soft glow, a tenderness that she could see sitting under the surface of his banter and sharp tongue.

The hair stood up on the back of her neck when it occurred to her where she was, and what she was doing, and whom she was doing it to...ogling the Captain of the Black Pearl, laying naked in his bed...he could only be pretending to be asleep, and her heart accelerated and excitement washed through her skin in waves.

But he wasn't pretending. Not yet. He looked so peaceful, away from the world, in his own land of freedom from the tight confines of reality.

Desperately, she wished to climb into his dreams and share them with him, look at his horizons, and feel the spray of the ocean as it hit their skin. Surely, that is what he dreamed about...the ocean.

What else might a great pirate Captain dream about? Festivities, victory...her.

No, certainly not.

She dreamed about him, but she didn't dare think that he might see her face in his dreams.

All the time, she dreamed about him. A torture all on it's own.

The thought had just fled her mind when a flicker of movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye...then his hand was appearing at the edge of the blanket, curling around it, lifting it up a little.

A breath caught in her throat, imprisoned there by her absolute attention on that blanket and his hand, and what lay just next to...God.

Then something else...a soft noise, a soft whisper, had her tracing her gaze back up his body to his lips...they were moving, making...it was a...name

"...Lizzie…"

….No.

Jack...don't do this to me. Don't let me sit here watching you like this, and start saying my name you damn pirate…

But he was. He was whispering her name like a prayer, a sound stolen from his dream...he was dreaming about her.

When she caught movement again, she didn't dare look, didn't dare glance down...but the rustle of fabric, the fluttering of her heart and the snakes and butterflies assaulting her stomach took control of her eyes just then, forcing them away from his finely carved lips, back down past his nipples, back down his flat stomach, just as his hand lifted the blanket away, the candlelight rippling across the cloth like small golden stars…

She stared.

And stared.

Stared until her eyes burned.

Staring so intensely that she forgot to breath, felt the air fighting to be released from her lungs with no victory in sight, felt the goosebumps as they prickled her skin, staring like a woman absolutely done for.

Only the wetness between her legs reminded her that she was a living human being, because at that moment, her body was threatening to separate from her soul.

And her soul was consumed by the sight in front of her.

Forever, just like the man had ingrained his way into her heart, this image was now burned onto her soul.

She willed time to stop, willed the Earth to stop, if only to preserve this precious moment for a little longer, afraid that something was going to snatch her away from him.

But nothing was going to take her, not when she felt like she had melded with the other half of herself...it was clear as day that this was where she was meant to be.

With him.