(Ahem! Attención, por favor. This chapter is the reason why this story is rated R. So, if you don't like it don't read it. Although, I'm pretty sure you will all read it [You have waited for 18 chapters, after all.])
Chapter: To Succumb
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Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings.
-- Girl With a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
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The Black Pearl floated, soundless and still, on the glassy surface of the sea. Sailors considered nights like this, when the moon was not out and the water was black and seeming to be fathomless in measure, to be unlucky. No wind in a black night is never a good thing, they say, so the crew flitted from room to room with a sense of urgency and superstition. The captain was nowhere to be seen.
A flickering of lamplight could be seen from within the captain's quarters, however. A flash and dim of amber light, bathing the two lovers, like mobilized Greek statues, in gold.
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Glistening skin, murmured words – Sophia was intoxicated by it all.
She traced her fingertips across Jack's chest and along the faint dividing lines of muscle that flexed when he moved. His kisses were sharp and pleasing and urgent, and spurred her to tremble with the desire that she had suppressed for so long.
Sophia simply let go, buried all thoughts in the back of her mind besides those concerning this man. She didn't think of the work she would have to complete tomorrow, or of Port Royal, a home that she was not sure she wanted to return to. She didn't think of the husband who had never caused her to tremble like she was now, to desire.
Jack was working at the buttons of her blouse, kissing the newly exposed skin as he went, down the valley between her breasts and then past her navel, stopping only at the waist of her trousers. The little sounds she was making were killing him, stretching his control like the dried seaweed he found on the beach as a child, ready to crack and crumble at the slightest touch. She was indefinitely beautiful in the lamplight as Jack slipped her shirt from her shoulders, and then cupped one palm under each breast, testing and experimenting with her body as only a well-seasoned man could, the frequency of her moans and quivers guiding him to her most sensitive points.
Rapture was the first word that came to mind when Sophia thought of how Jack made love, always attentive and ready to do as she pleased. She never once closed her eyes, never faltered, even as he ran his calloused palms across her breasts and down the sides of her waist. Even when he touched her inside, his fingers and tongue inducing spasms of muscle and nerves all throughout her body. Sweet rapture.
And when he left the cleft between her legs and kissed her, she could taste herself on his lips, and then he truly owned her, owned her body and owned her taste. That kiss sucked her doubts and tension away, leaving her soulless and empty-shelled, but then he touched her breast or belly or thigh again and she was filled.
He moaned when she reached down and felt him, drawing a fingertip down his length, and she grew brazen with her success. She could see him convulse and his chest and arms grow rigid and could hear him breathing in small, short bursts of air through his nose. What wonderful power she had.
After that, she was content simply to lie in a haze of desire and pleasure while he teased her to the point of a climax. Yet she still held off; she wanted release while he was inside her.
When he sank into her, she felt a wonderful stretch and tightness and ache of muscles unused for months that made her head spin. And then he began to move, to torment her innermost depths. Sophia did not remember much after that, only the rising and building of ecstasy to heights she had never known, the rippling of her inner muscles and explosion of adrenaline and pleasure upon her devastating release, the flood of him inside her as her coming induced his.
Jack stayed poised over her several long moments after his climax, his body arched and motionless with his elbows supporting him on either side of her head, and watched her face as she experienced the after-effects of their coupling. She was beautiful in the most disastrous of ways. Jack had delighted in releasing her voluminous curls and running his hand down their length during their lovemaking, and the black locks now lay strewn across the bedding beneath them. She was gazing softly back at him and Jack knew that she'd never closed her eyes. Very gently he leaned down to kiss her, a chaste kiss but still full of emotion and the knowledge that he could bring her to the edge once more just as easily as he could steer his ship, and then withdrew, reclining out beside her and gathering her close to his chest.
Sophia was functioning in a dream. Her legs and belly felt as if they were made of jelly, loose and warm and fulfilled. She was happy, despite being away from home (where was home?) and isolated from civilization. She was content and tired and almost obscenely satisfied.
Sophia tilted her head from its resting place on Jack's shoulder to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. "Thank you, Jack," she whispered.
He was already asleep.
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Sophia woke sometime during the night. The tiny window on the opposite wall was black, and the lamp had burned low so that just a tiny flame flickered within its glass cage.
Her perspiration and heat had evaporated, rendering her cold and shivering. Carefully, she reached down to draw a blanket around herself and the man that had his arm draped across her belly. He was lying on his stomach, his face turned towards her. Silently, Sophia examined his body.
He was lean and bronzed, not overly muscled like some of the men that worked on the ship but still obviously capable of holding his own. Flat muscles were visible along his back and chest from, Sophia assumed, clambering about on a ship, and his arms were strong and sinewy from climbing the riggings of his beloved Pearl. Sophia ran a fingertip down his spine and delighted in the slight grunt that sounded from his throat in response.
Sophia settled down to sleep again but then he was awake, rolling onto his side and grinning knowingly at her, his eyes twinkling in the dim light. Gently, he reached up to brush a strand of hair from her eyes. She looked soft and white against the coarseness of his bedclothes, like a china doll he had once seen in a street stall in Singapore.
"Wha' woke you?" His voice was gravelly from sleep.
"I was cold."
Slyly, he crept on top of her, covering her body with his heat. "Ah. Well, I should do somethin' about tha' , no?"
Sophia giggled like a schoolgirl. His weight on her felt wonderful, comforting and sexual all at once. But a thought crossed her mind, and she frowned.
"Wait, Jack. Let me, please?"
"Could any man refuse such a request as tha'?" Jack asked rhetorically, before obligingly rolling off of her with an increasingly devious grin.
Sophia rose to straddle his hips, leaning down to press a quiet kiss to his lips, her hair falling in a curtain around their heads as she caressed his lips at a leisurely gait before working her way downward. She simply experimented, tasting the salty skin of his shoulder, testing the texture of one nipple and then the other with her tongue, fingering the soft springiness of the few black hairs across his chest.
Then she went lower and took him into her mouth. She could hear a groan from Jack but it seemed distance, for now she only focused on the task at hand. She was creative, having never performed such an act before, and used her impulses to guide her. She was amazed at how her body responded to his arousal; she nearly as stimulated as he was.
Before she could bring him to a climax she felt a pair of hands on either side of her head that jerked her upwards. Jack's eyes were dark and stormy, his jaw clenched with tightly knit control.
"My turn now, love."
Jack was less careful with her this time, setting a faster rhythm and thrusting deeper, his touches rougher and his kisses harder, and Sophia loved every minute of it, every gasping, trembling, pounding minute.
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Sophia woke and stretched like a great cat, groaning with pleasure as she felt her spine stretch and creak. It was only after she opened her eyes that she realized that the bed was empty. Jack had left.
She glanced out the little window and saw the sun shining brightly through the grimy glass, and guessed that it was nearly noon. She wished that she could stay naked in this bed for an eternity, and little cherubs with leafs covering their crotches would serve her grapes, wine and cheese and Jack would come back and they could make love for days on end. But, alas, she had work to do.
Sophia delighted in the pleasurable ache between her legs as she stood. How wonderful it was to be a woman and to have been cherished and attended to in the bed by a man who knew how to do so. She felt as if, now, on this morning, she was the epitome of femininity, shapely and desirable and satiated.
She slipped on her clothes (she had quite a hard time finding her pants – they were behind the bed), and padded, albeit stiffly, out into the sun.
Life on the Pearl was as it always had been, active and bright and energized. Sophia looked upwards, and noticed that the sails were full. A breeze was flowing again, and she could feel it in her hair, which she had not bothered to tie back, and across her skin, still salty from last night's (and this morning's, she thought mischievously) activities.
Jack was stationed, as usual, at the helm, and Sophia moved casually towards him, weaving her way through the crew as she went. Sophia allowed her fingertips to whisper across his shoulders before she came to stand beside him. She could see a smile tug at the corner of his mouth, but he still faced towards the sea.
"You slept late, Sophie."
"I had good reason."
Sophia smothered her mirth as she sensed a hint of pure masculine pride as those words left her mouth. "Aye, 'suppose you did," he commented, smirking smugly.
Sophia suppressed a denouncing comment in response to his cockiness, and instead planted herself in front of him to press her lips to his with an unexpected amount of zeal. This left Jack briefly speechless and gave her time to greet him formally. "Good morning, Jack."
Jack deemed this to not require a reply and remained silent, his arm snaking around her waist and pulling her against his side, before his hand rose to her neck too finger the softness of her skin. Sophia, too, was mute for several moments before finally speaking.
"So, Captain, are we going to stop anywhere soon? I'm becoming terribly tired of this ship." She spoke as if in jest, but she was being truthful. The sea and the confinement of the ship's small rooms were starting to wear her down.
Jack grinned, glancing sideways but then reverting his gaze to the horizon lest he become distracted by the way her cloud of hair was floating about her face. "As a matter o' fact, we'll be comin' up on Port Ayude in several days."
Sophia was quiet, and Jack was about to repeat himself, sure that she had not heard, when she spoke.
"My uncle lives in Port Ayude."
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Barnum was quiet while Laura and Almanzo stood beside the buggy when Pa's song was finished. Then Laura held up her face in the faint moonlight. "You may kiss me good night," she said, and after their first kiss she went into the house while Almanzo drove away.
-- These Happy Golden Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder
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A/N: I hope you're all happy, 'cause I wrote this all in one night and stayed up half of said night to do so. I decided to make up all my horrendously late updates with one super short update, and I know all you guys were really waiting for this.
I'm certainly happy with it, and I hope no one's overly disgusted with me. I tried to make it not too descriptive but still get the feeling across that this is some pretty damn hot sex. Hehe, I'm funny sometimes, especially at two in the morning after I've had a lot of coffee.
By the way, from now on there will be a quote from one of my favorite books at the beginning and end of each chapter. Girl With a Pearl Earring is excellent and probably one of my favorite books of all time, and I don't really like the Laura Ingalls books anymore, but I used to read them a lot when I was a kid so they bring back memories. I thought that that little intercept was appropriate.
THANKS REVIEWERS!!!
