Yay, chapter 3. The cliffhanger might be mean...but oh well. I promise the wait won't be long. Read and review!
She inhaled the wet air, the coolness settling inside of her mouth.
It was the present. Nothing before mattered, nothing after mattered.
Only now.
Only this moment.
The breath sank into her lungs and stayed there, burning, frozen.
Water washed down her face, dangling off her jawline before plummeting to the deck of the ship. It settled on her eyelashes, flung high as she watched him, it soaked into her hair, droplets were running down her legs, and waterfalls of warmth cascaded from her fingertips.
She was watching him, and he was watching her, as though they were trying to melt the other with the heat of their gaze.
They were alone.
Her and sin.
Sin and the devil.
The devil and the murderess.
The murderess and the murdered.
The murdered and his murderess.
Predator and prey.
Liar and pirate.
Man and woman.
Him and her.
Her and Jack.
His eyes were jet black now, carving a path over every wet inch of her shivering breath he took made his chest rise...every swallow made his Adam's apple convulse in his neck…
...and fear was strangling her insides...there was no going back now, no turning around, nothing she could do. This was what she wanted, what she needed...penance.
Punishment.
His tongue peeked out to swipe over his lips, and he took a step forward, then another, and she took a step backward, her back hitting the main mast.
This was it.
She found herself nodding, uneven jerks of her head...her hand stretched out to him, the long white columns of her fingers looking like the hand of a skeleton, beckoning someone to their ruin.
But she wasn't there to ruin him.
He was there to ruin her.
A few more steps forward, and then he was standing right in front of her, close enough for her to watch every individual drop of rain traveling down his chest to disappear under his shirt. Close enough to see how long his eyelashes were, how full the curve of his lips were...the golden color of his skin shining with rain…the tangled mass of wet black hair, the darkened color of his red bandana, the glistening trinkets, and the dark fire in his eyes.
Tell him.
But nothing climbed out of her throat, her voice stayed dead in her mouth, and her eyes only stared at him, watching him inch closer until his hard body was pressing her against the mast.
Her heart shook with each impact against her rib cage.
She held her breath as his hand came up to delicately touch her face, sliding a little with the slickness of her skin. That first touch, the roughness of his fingertips...the warmth, it grounded the storm within her, gave her a conductor to pour all of her energy into, and she pushed her cheek into his hand, desperate for him.
This was madness, standing in a downpour only three days after she had rescued a dead man, a dead man that she had murdered in this very spot, the spot that was going to be christened with the loss of her innocence, the fire of their union, and the finality of her deliverance.
It was the sweetest kind of madness.
And it was the price she had to pay.
Within that swirling hysteria of heavy guilt and self-loathing, she also felt the feeble pulse of love.
She loved him.
Needed him more than she needed life.
Even if it cost her her life.
Nothing would ever be the same after this.
With a labored inhale, her lips parted and mouthed his name without a sound, her next attempt muffled by a gentle brush of his lips against hers, a feather-light touch...but it ignited something in her, and she was suddenly burning.
He brushed her lips again, his hot breath mixing with the coolness of her skin, her eyes slipped closed, and she tilted her head a little until his mouth was slanted across hers, the most delicious sensation she had ever felt...the life of him behind those sinful lips, feeding her as though she was starving for him.
His hand came up to cup her face again, and she became unaware of the rain coming down harder, unaware of her breath being stolen, unaware of existence...the caress of his lips on hers was the only thing she could feel.
For a second he pulled away a hair's breadth, and she tried to gasp his name out, but he swallowed her attempt and used the vantage of her open mouth to slip his tongue inside, deepening the kiss...exploring her until she was weak in the knees, until she couldn't think.
With shaking hands, she pushed his coat off, letting it fall to the deck, slid them down the expanse of his wet shirt to battle with his belt buckles, brushing against the hard bulge contained behind them...she faltered, tried to swallow only for her throat to get stuck...until she felt the touch of his hands with hers, deftly undoing the buckles until they slipped free, both belts falling to land on top of his coat.
He unwound the scarf from his waist before she could even try and was pressing her back against the mast with his mouth fastened to hers, making her feel dizzy, the heat from his body chasing away the monsters inside of her.
Then his fingers were under her shirt, sliding along her sides, climbing up the ladder of her ribs, and then curving around her breasts, his thumbs immediately teasing her nipples into hard peaks.
She groaned into his mouth, and unconsciously ground her hips into his.
Something snapped within him, and he fused his body to hers, the muscle of his hips pinning her to the mast, his wet shirt slipping against her, the golden skin of his chest revealed and then hidden, a frustrating wave revealing and then swallowing a beach.
And then she was tilting her hips to feel him, the hard line of his arousal branding her, a glorious heat coming off of him, fiery and burning her, the excitement licking at her, promising a frightening release.
They started to dance, him sliding every rigid thick inch of himself against her quivering core, and her responding at the top of his thrust, pushing back at him herself in hopes to have that sweet contact with her throbbing zenith of pleasure, screaming for more of his touch.
Something was fumbling at her buttons, scrambling to remove the barrier of her breeches...yes, Jack, rescue me. The next second, they were being pushed down her wet hips, her wet legs, catching on her knees for a moment, then landing on the rain-soaked deck with a quiet slap.
His mouth was back on hers with a vengeance, the pads of his fingers making an immediate descent into the wild lands between her legs, seeking out her pearl and finding it, driving her into a symphony of delirious pleasure. His skin was so rough against hers, but so delicious, making mad circles around her slippery flesh.
Then he snatched his hand away and was scrabbling at his own breeches, ripping the ties free only to shove them down without a second thought, denying her nothing more than a glimpse of his glorious body before he was merging them together again...she could no longer differentiate which of them was the devil or the angel, which of them was the hunted or the hunting...she only knew that he was thawing the ice that had encased her soul in his absence.
A savage pounding was threatening to tear her chest open...tell him, before it's too late.
But it was already too late.
For just a moment, she looked into his face, watching the rain fall down it, watching his lips quiver, swollen from their kisses, watching the blazing fire in his eyes...then his lips were melting her again, and he was lifting her, her legs coming around his body with ease, but her nerves were on the verge of collapse.
Everything coalesced to the moment when she felt his swollen tip pressed against her entrance, a flash of a moment that was gone, her only chance for giving him permission passing with a quick jerking motion of her head...then everything split open.
Couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe...dug her fingernails into his back...you're not dying, don't die, but oh, it hurt, a searing torment of invasion...her body felt like it was being impaled on something not meant for it...every muscle was seized, her teeth were digging into her bottom lip, and her eyes were squeezed shut. She stopped hearing the rain, stopped hearing the waves crashing against the hull of the ship...stopped hearing anything but pain.
Then a far-away call of her name, a whisper, strained and scared, lips against her wet neck…
"Lizzie, Lizzie…" he was saying, his hands holding her sides, and she dimly registered how frozen he was, how...still he was being, paralyzed.
The taste of salt washed into her mouth, mixing with the iron taste of blood from her lip...and she let the tears fall, too obliterated to care about them.
His head was shaking, jerking motions that made his chin braids rub against her shoulder...a harsh "why didn't you bloody tell me" from him, half muffled from his lips pressed against her collarbone...then he was shifting, and even through the pain she could feel the loss of him starting.
No.
"No," she croaked. "No, don't go…"
In desperation, she tightening her legs around him and pushed him back to her with hands on his back, hearing his "dammit, you're hurting"...shaking her head…"I don't care," she tried to say through the rain water and tears and blood, please stay.
After a long moment, suspended there like a dream stuck in between wakefulness and sleep, he returned to her, his full length pressed back inside of her once again, and even that small movement made fire explode inside. She cried out against his neck, and he tensed, started whispering nonsensical things, murmurs, into her ear, soothing her. His touch returned on her nub, a gentle massage this time…
...she let her forehead rest on his shoulder, distracted herself with his hair, fingering the ropy dreads and twirling the loose strands around her fingertips, focusing on the delicate pleasure he was feeding her.
Slowly, the discomfort started to fade, turning into a dull pressure, the tremors in her hands reduced to a tingle...she was stretching, being molded around him…
...being made.
Forged.
Walking her fingers down his back, she arrived at the hem of his shirt, and started raising it, skating across the expanse of his back...for a moment he raised his arms enough for her to slide it off and then stepped closer again…
Her wet curls rubbed against his now exposed skin, mingling with his own sparse curls, her thighs caressed the juncture of his hips and legs, and she traced the raised lines of his scars, rising high from his lower back to his shoulder blades…
"I want to see your face," drifted out of her open lips of its own accord, and he pulled back, aligning his eyes with hers…
...the softness in them struck her like a bullet, he was so open, so raw...so beautiful. His hand came up to wipe away the rain water from her face, trail his finger down her cheekbone, just before he tilted his head forward to take her lips in a tender kiss…
A small shift below, and her body was suddenly awake, alive, making the connection that the beautiful face, the soft lips making magic against hers belonged to the same body as the hot hard length filling her below, she did feel so full, taken, claimed.
His thumb pressed a little harder against her pearl, and she inhaled, arching towards him.
"Better?" he whispered, his voice an embrace of vulnerability, so soft, softer than velvet.
Exhaling, she tried clenching the muscles below, flexing them around him, finding that it was a challenge with how much room was being taken up, noting his small hiss and his hand faltering.
"...Yes," she decided, it was better.
Better than better.
Even though the rain poured, the sky, dark, she was feeling the brightest light around her, within her, and she was flying, soaring into something she couldn't name. "Please," she heard him murmur.
But she was in her own world just then, taking her hand off his back to reach down, to feel for herself how he was buried inside of her, and he was, to the hilt.
In a flash of mischief, she circled both hands around to his arse, and gave him the tiniest squeeze, whispering a returned "please" at him.
Her skin broke out in goosebumps when she felt the entire length of him slide against her as he withdrew, and lingered for just a second, before pushing back in, his exhale mingling with her exhale, her back sliding up the mast, and his hand reaching behind her to grip the wood at the moan that spilled out of her lips when he was fully sheathed again.
"Oh god," he moaned back, laying his forehead on hers, and like an insatiable man starved, he withdrew, and thrust again. Her eyes drifted closed, a breath lodged in her throat, and all she could do was whimper at the divine satisfaction of finally having him.
Another thrust, and she pushed on his arse at the very top of it, desperate for more. With his mouth feeding from her, from her soul, like he always did, he started to make love to her.
Every movement of his body, every stroke of his cock drove her higher, and he moved so she could feel him, as though he needed her to know he was there, needed her to be consumed.
The rain came down harder, and he drove her up the mast with a hard thrust, a harsh hot moan torn from his lips, remaining still for a moment, before they both toppled over the point of no return, her cry of "don't stop" crisscrossing with his growled "fuck", and then he was fucking her.
His hips struck hers with every desperate movement, her form shaking with the impact, cries spilling from her lips, growls from his, his mouth kissing across her throat, her jaw, her cheek, before taking her mouth again, a hand gripping her hip.
Something was coming, filling her veins, and she didn't know if it was going to kill her or set her free, or both.