It was hard enough to find a few hours' sleep when your past tortured you, or when you were trying to scheme up new ways to try everything under the sun, but it was nigh to impossible to sleep when a woman slept only feet from you, making womanly little noises in her sleep.
Scowling at the ceiling, Jack tried to block out the occasional catchy sigh or small moan that came from Amelia's cot. Gritting his teeth, he raised his hands to his head, clutching double handfuls of the thick masses of his hair. If he didn't, he was going to end up touching her. Or himself.
Things had been back to what passed as normal between them for several days, her sniping at him every few moments and him making obscene comments every chance he was given. But he didn't miss the looks she gave him now and then when she thought he wasn't looking, the long studying looks that made him feel like a youth with no self-control. He hadn't much control to begin with, and she was chipping away what little remained.
Taking long, even breaths and trying to calculate the soonest the ship could come into a friendly port, Jack thought of escapades of the past. Not a one of them had involved a sharp-tongued, outspoken woman with more brains than breasts. But he'd always said he'd try anything once.
As though on cue, another nearly inaudible whimper escaped her lips and Jack cursed. She wanted to sleep below in the wardrooms, by God, she could. It would save him many sleepless, sweaty nights.
His arousal turned cold, however, when the quiet, small noises turned into something grittier, like the cries of a trapped animal. What had surely started as a pleasant dream had undoubtedly taken a nasty turn, and Jack propped himself up on one elbow to watch her, his dark eyebrows drawn together. She lay perfectly still, hands clenched into fists, her eyes no longer restfully closed but rather squeezed shut, moisture gathered in the corners of them. "No," she said quite clearly, tossing her head and facing away from him.
They'd done it before, but not so persistently. It was a game with them, something to laughed at, but it held true fear for the girl. "Come on, lovey, darling, you'll like it. Mummy likes it, see?"
Taletha grasped the greasy bottle in her talon-like fingers, wetting her lips like an eager dog before she drank. Philip, a gangling adolescent, sat on the floor, his beefy hand gripping the nape of his sister's neck. "It's only a bit of All Nations, weakling."
And the words that scared Amelia most of all started falling like rocks from her mother's lips. "Don't you want to be like Mother, darling 'Melia? Don't you want to be like us?"
"Stop now, love. I think ye've seen enough of this particular show, haven't you?" Not a hand at her neck, after all, but one stroking over her forehead, over the hair she'd once been so proud of.
"Surely there's better things in the world to be dreamin' about than whatever's doin' this to ye, love. If you were as trig a lass as you'd like to think, ye'd be dreamin' about me, instead."
Her hand shot up to cover his, adding weight to the warmth on her brow. She kept her eyes shut, afraid if she opened them she'd cry. "Jack," she said, his name a statement rather than an inquiry.
"That's 'Captain' to you, stowaway." He sat back on the floor beside her cot, sliding his hand from under hers and resting his elbows on his knees. He was relieved she was awake, but reluctant to keep his hands on her when her eyes were open. He could flash the gentleman all he liked, but he certainly wasn't one. "Before you start in on me, I already know. Bad luck to wake the sleeping. 'Course, my last transgression of such a sort was easily remedied by a drink. Fancy one yourself, love?"
Her eyes snapped open and she sat up, edging backward as though he'd offered her a live snake. "No," she said shaking her head. "No drink."
A sore point, he noted. "No offense intended, love, at least not this time around," he said, watching her with interest. He'd never actually been next to a woman when she'd awakened. There wasn't time for sleeping when you were paying a woman by the hour, and heaven knew Jack had a hard enough time keeping matters within his time limit as it was.
"They tried to make me drink, starting when I was twelve or thirteen," she said, shaking her head. "That's what—that's what you woke me from." He nodded, and surprisingly said nothing. Amelia let go a bitter laugh, more cynical than cheerful by far. "'Tis just the way of my life that the first friend—the only friend—I've made in my miserable, lamentable existence is a man. And not only a man, but a pirate to boot." Now that he'd receded back to his bed, back to his side of the room, the pinching fingers on the back of her neck wandered, phantom and cold, squeezing with the weight of years. Finding her eyes drawn to the long-fingered hand Jack had negligently let dangle over the side of the bed, Amelia bit her lip.
Is this how people go mad at sea? she wondered, feeling a thin sheen of sweat pop over her forehead. They just want something irrational until they go mad for wanting it?
Jack looked at the ceiling, reluctant to look at her. She'd finally worn the gown he'd bestowed upon her, but since she'd eaten next to nothing, it was too big on her by far, the bodice gaping where it shouldn't gape and affording him views of things best left unviewed. "What can I say, love?" he said, fighting to sound nonchalant. "I've just a way with women."
There were a few moments of silence, and then Captain Jack Sparrow, scourge of the Caribbean, nearly swallowed his tongue.
The shrew, the freckled, intelligent, haunted, beautiful shrew, had grabbed his hand and twined her fingers into it.
"What is it you're doing, love?" He sat up a bit, watching as she ducked her head and brushed his fingers over the back of her neck, eyes on his the entire time.
"It makes me forget," she said insistently. She didn't know what else to say, but there were a wealth of other things that had made her move toward him, all of them completely unspeakable. Women in books might be free with their desires, but women in real life were not. Real women weren't supposed to feel like they were going to catch fire from the inside when a man looked at them. Real women weren't supposed to spend long minutes of longer days thinking about the calloused hands of a lawless man.
Real women weren't supposed to yearn for what was surely the Devil himself.
"And I owe you," she added quietly, taking her hand from his and letting her eyes drift shut when he left it there, gently kneading the tense muscles in the back of her neck.
He'd long ago stopped keeping track of the different counts for which he was surely being sent to Hell when he died, but Jack mentally tallied another reason for eternal damnation as he sat up to reach her with his other hand. Exerting his few remaining shreds of self-control, he rested his hands heavily on her shoulders. "Ye don't owe me, Amelia." Oh, but how he wished she did.
Hurt, rejected, she opened her eyes, the honey of them hot with insistence, the want simmering in her thickening her voice to the low class she'd been born to. "Oh, then, is it that ye're tryin' to say ye doesn't want it from me, Jack Sparrow? You with yer beer-garden jaw you were, tryin' to get me into a warm bed with ye, and were willin' to pay for it, as well, and pay prettily."
He grinned then, the fierce mad grin of a man who's lost his last hold on himself, a wild grin she'd seen more than once on his countenance. His hands tightened on her shoulders and he jerked enough to have her head falling back, his lips once again at her throat as they had been before.
"It's unwise to push a pirate, milady," he said thickly, just before lowering his lips to the pulse throbbing in her neck, nipping quickly with teeth before bringing his lips to hers.
It did more than make her forget, it swept away most of the capacity for thought left in Amelia. Save for bumbling attempts made by her brother's cronies, she'd never been kissed before, never had a man so close. Not knowing what to do with her hands, she fisted them at her sides as he slid his tongue inside her mouth, a great deal gentler than she ever would have expected of him. Uncertain of herself, she began to mimic the movements of his mouth.
She was kissing him back. Jack liked to think he was prepared for anything, and had proven it more than once. What he couldn't talk his way out of, he could fight his way out of, and failing that, he was smarter than everyone gave him credit for. But she'd kissed him back, and in doing so, knocked his brain back several steps. He eased back from her, eyes wide and wild, licking his lips like a prowling cat.
Where, exactly, did want end and need begin?
Careful not to pinch or bruise, mindful of the things she'd been through, the things she still relived all too often Jack tugged her arms until she sat on his bed. If she could have spoken clearly, she might have told him she didn't have a choice. A person couldn't stand or kneel on knees gone to water.
She sat stock upright in the bed, hands still clenched into fists, mind racing. She wanted to touch him, the tanned skin showing between the gap in his ever-present, filthy white shirt, wanted to slide her hands over the chest she'd seen nearly a week ago. But she'd told him she wasn't common, and she didn't want him to think she was.
"Scared, then, love?" he asked, glancing at her stiff posture.
She shook her head in negation. "No." Her voice hadn't lost its surety, but rang true to his ears. "'Tis only I don't know what to do."
He grinned again at the prospect of a challenge, of someone to teach. It seemed, no matter what she thought, the missy didn't know everything after all.
"I've a simple place for you to start," he said, leaning forward to taste the spot below her ear. "I know you've a powerful curiosity, love, so put it to use and touch me."
