DISCLAIMER: I don't own Black Sails. It is not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry it's been so long since my last update! I usually try to post a chapter every week or so, but this particular chap ended up being more of a challenge than I'd originally anticipated. But the chapter's finally finished now, so I hope you readers enjoy it :) Thanks again to all the wonderful people who've been sticking with this story and taking the time to leave such encouraging comments.
XxX XxX xXx XxX xXx xXx XxX xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx XxX XxX xXx XxX xXx xXx XxX
She stumbled into his tent and straightened quickly, her eyes darting around to find him standing across the space with his back to her. Seemingly unconcerned by her arrival, he continued to rinse his hands and forearms in a small wash basin that sat atop a battered old campaign chest. His shirt and double barreled flintlock pistol lay in a heap on the floor to his left.
The whole room smelled of him; of gun smoke, cigars and something that was subtle and uniquely his own. Her throat constricted. A tight knot curled in the pit of her stomach and her heart raced madly in her chest, left her feeling addled and numb.
"Charles..." She breathed.
It took her a moment to even realize the vocalization had been her own. The name had sprung unbidden from her lips without reason or conscious consent. Now she watched his body tense and still with her utterance. She didn't need to see his face to know he'd recognized the sound of her voice.
His head made a slow, slight turn to the left but he didn't outright look at her, didn't turn around to face her. Only the partial profile of his face was visible over the curve of his shoulder, but she could see the muscle in his jaw clench. She felt the tension in his body almost as if it were her own.
For a moment the world stood still. She didn't breathe, could hear nothing but the beat of her own blood drumming in her ears. He turned around slowly and his eyes met hers. Whatever words she had intended to speak fled with the sight of his eyes.
The haze of the moment shattered with the gruff growl of his voice, low and laced with the promise of death. "I warned you..." He breathed. "You should never have come here..."
Her eyes followed his hand as it drifted down to the dagger on his hip.
Before she could think to respond, he was already rapidly closing the distance between them. He moved with such a savage grace; beautiful and deadly all at once. She'd forgotten how quickly he could shift into motion, how effortless he could make it all seem.
"Charles–" she started, but her words were cut off as his body made contact with hers. The impact was jarring, throwing her slightly off balance and causing her cloak to slip from her shoulders and pool in the sand. He took advantage of her brief instability; one of his hands fisting in her hair and yanking her head back while the other pressed the sharp edge of blade to her throat. His face hovered inches from her own, fury burning in his cobalt eyes.
She didn't move, barely breathed as his head cocked to the side. He studied her countenance as though he would find answers in her visage alone. She swallowed delicately and made an attempt to explain her motives. "I came here knowing you've no reason to trust me, that you would likely kill me before accepting anything I had to offer..."
"And yet here you stand..." There was both a threat and a questioning lilt to the statement.
Steeling her resolve, she resigned herself to what would almost certainly be her death. She closed her eyes against the well of her own ill-processed emotions and spoke gently, barely above a whisper. "I offer my allegiance."
Anger flared through him. The dagger pressed harder against her throat, drawing a trickle of blood. The small, dark red rivulet contrasted starkly against her alabaster skin.
"Your allegiance?" He growled and her eyes snapped open. "Your allegiance is worthless!"
"It is all I have left!" She hissed, allowing a glimmer of her own resentment to surface in response to his affront. "I've information regarding Woodes Rogers. I'm privy to his plans, his advantages and weakness. All of it."
He gave a bitter and acerbic laugh, his following words laced with sardonicism. "And I wonder how you managed to convince him to share as much." From his tone and manner of scrutiny, it was clear Charles was suggesting she'd used more than keen intellect and simple charm to encourage Woodes' confidence.
He was implying she'd fucked him.
Despite the fact that there was truth to that accusation, she found herself vexed and insulted by how quick he'd been to assume she'd used her body as a bargaining chip. She had slept with Rogers, yes, but it hadn't been in an attempt to beguile him. She'd been desperate to convince herself she was more than just a traitorous wretch. She'd wanted to prove to both herself and Woodes that love and loyalty were not foreign concepts to this new version of herself.
She'd been trying to persuade her covetous heart to see reason.
Not that it had helped her any. In spite of all her efforts, her heart was still a cruel and unrepentant traitor to her mind. The mawkish little organ was still hopelessly determined to pine after everything it couldn't have.
It was true that she'd often used sex as a outlet for frustration or to convey emotion she was uncomfortable with voicing, but she'd never traded sex for favor. It was both degrading and infuriating to have Charles accuse her of as much. She'd spent a lifetime striving to achieve through ingenuity, intelligence and tenacity. To use sex in the manner he was suggesting would only have cheapened and diminished her efforts to be seen as more than just the ineffectual female that most expected her to be.
Glaring up at him with anger and defiance, her reason for coming here was temporarily forgotten as she rode out the contumacious fire he'd stoked in her. She'd never been a terribly patient or temperate woman and he'd always seemed to know exactly which of her buttons to press in order to incite a reaction. It was an infuriating talent of his, one she suspected he'd always enjoyed utilizing.
"Tell me I'm wrong." He challenged venomously.
Her eyes narrowed. She wanted to lie, to tell him he was full of shit and that he didn't know a thing about her. But it wasn't true; he knew her too well. Apparently well enough to know that she had indeed slept with Rogers. He'd misinterpreted the context and reasoning for the encounter, but not the fact that it had happened.
He took her silence as the confirmation that it was, and the corner of his mouth twitched up into a knowing sneer. "That's what I thought..."
It would do her no good to deny it, so instead she settled for for a seething "Fuck you, Charles."
His grip in her hair tightened and he jerked her head back further, exposing more of her neck and causing her to stumble backward. Her hands rose instinctively to his forearms to try and catch herself. He followed her steps backward, stepping into her and bringing his thigh to settle between her legs in an attempt to keep their balance. He was so close now that she could feel his breath on her face. Were it not for the blade pressed against her throat and the fury in his eyes, she might have attributed an entirely different context to this encounter.
His jaw twitched, his words slipping through clenched teeth. "I could kill you..."
"You could." She rasped in firm agreement.
"You would deserve it." He snarled.
Her face softened slightly with the truth of his words, with the weight of the guilt she still carried. He wasn't wrong. The indignation that his goading accusation had incited within her faltered slightly. Her purpose in this place began once more bleeding through her pride and the red haze of anger.
A moment earlier she'd been furious. Now he'd all but disarmed her, forced her to recall the worst of her betrayals and the guilt that had followed.
I'd hoped you and I shared a love to make such a thing unthinkable...
His words echoed in her mind and her chest tightened. She stared into the enmity of his eyes and lamented the suffering she'd caused him. She understood rage could be an effective defense mechanism; because she knew it to be preferable to pain, it was often her chosen tactical approach.
And Charles' mindset was no different in this respect, he was just as inclined toward acerbity and brutality as she was. This had never really bothered her because she'd understood the necessity of avoiding outward expressions of weakness; anger was a viable alternative to disclosing vulnerability. Usually his ire had been met equally by her own, followed quickly by fierce altercation or fervent sex, sometimes both. And that method had suited them both just fine, even if it hadn't always been the most healthy or productive.
But this was different, this was more than one of their petty arguments. He'd never looked at her the way he was looking at her now. She'd hurt him in the past, but he'd never afforded her a look so full of misery and violence. She knew too well that that kind of rage could only be borne of heartache. It was a bitterness that threatened to smother and consume, to pollute and disfigure everything that you were. Coupled with grief, that kind of rage had the potential to carve away at you, take piece after piece until there was nothing recognizable left.
She knew because she'd felt it herself; she'd allowed that same acrimonious emotion to dominate her existence after the death of her father.
And it had led to some of the most regrettable decisions of her life.
To know that she herself had been the one to invoke in him such a profound state of anguished lividity left her heartsick and contrite. She did not wish upon Charles such a deplorable fate.
With that thought, she was suddenly struck with the irrational urge to comfort the furious man before her. Of course the notion was ridiculous, given that he now held her fate in his hands. With a flick of his wrist he could extinguish both her life and Nassau's chances to rise above her circumstances. She understood that he would likely reject any attempt of hers to comfort or mollify, but the compulsion to do so was present nonetheless.
Without thought, her fingers rose to gently encircle the wrist of the hand that still held the dagger to her throat.
"I would..." Her tone and expression took on a gentler bearing. Her thumb slid gently back and forth across the back of his hand, as if condoning whatever decision he would ultimately make. She watched something akin to grief and surprise flicker across his features an instant before he schooled his expression into something more neutral.
He still held the dagger to her throat but the pressure had lessened slightly. With an indignant huff, he released his grip on her hair and moved his hand to roughly cup the side of her jaw. She swallowed and watched his eyes drift down to her mouth, her mind involuntarily conjuring up images of a less than pious nature.
He didn't look up from her mouth when he spoke. His voice was somewhat apathetic and somber. "I told you how this would end..." Frowning, he shifted his thumb to trace a line across her bottom lip. "I warned you, there would be no coming back..."
She nodded softly and he lifted his gaze to meet hers. Some indeterminate emotion that he couldn't quite identify was lain bare in her eyes.
Her free hand came up to rest atop the hand that still cupped her jaw. "I know... But I came anyway." She whispered.
He snarled, his lip twitching up with anger and disgust as he pulled his hand free of the covering of hers. Backing her into the nearby table, he gripped her chin and glared down at her. The intimacy of her gesture had given rise to the softer feelings he still harbored for her. It stirred up a yearning within him that was far too familiar, far too facile for comfort. It left him suddenly all too aware of the proximity of their bodies.
It was pathetic.
He was so angry with himself, with her, with everything. Even now, she still maintained a firm grip on the tattered fragments of his soul and there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. He didn't handle powerlessness well, he never had. It was one of the reasons he'd understood Eleanor so well, she was just as unwilling to suffer infirmity as he was. This contemptible lack of dominion over his own psyche was ludicrous, this seemingly inextinguishable flame of affection both baffling and maddening.
It might have been the anguish he felt from her, or perhaps her apparent compliance with the prospect of death; but despite knowing she'd more than earned her fate, he found himself reluctant to administer it. He knew he could, that he was capable of the physical act itself, but somehow that knowledge was not enough to drive his hand.
It was foolish and weak and he hated himself for it. This woman was poison, the very bane of his existence. She had already proven to be his most potent vice, his Achilles heel, and yet still he was compelled to spare her.
He fought against it, struggled to compel himself to finish what she'd started. "You are poison!" He seethed, leaning into her and reapplying the previous pressure of the blade. It wasn't completely clear whether he was trying harder to convince himself or Eleanor of the veracity of the statement.
She wasn't altogether certain how to respond, mostly because it wasn't entirely untrue. It felt as though she'd lain waste to everything she'd touched as of late, and as such she figured the comparison wasn't wholly inaccurate.
So she said nothing, simply watched him seethe and burn above her.
His thigh was pressed between her legs, the weight of his body keeping hers pinned against the table. It was painfully reminiscent of far more enjoyable encounters. Her lower back dug into the edge of the table and she couldn't help but notice the familiar rigidity of his groin against her lower abdomen. It was clear he wasn't entirely unaffected by the close proximity of their interaction.
But he seemed vehemently intent on ignoring that particular aspect of this exchange. And if he wasn't going to acknowledge it, neither would she. There were more important matters to attend to anyhow.
"I know you've no reason to trust me." She stated as calmly as she could manage. They could deal with their personal issues later but for now she needed him to listen, to understand what was at stake. "But I came here tonight because what I offer you is of far greater value than my life... What I offer you could deal the English substantial damage, perhaps even cause them to reevaluate their position here on the island."
He still looked angry, but now there was a glimmer of skeptical interest in his face as well.
He'd believed what she'd said back in the dungeons of the fort; that she'd realized the English would force Nassau through a fatal metamorphosis, strip the island of everything and everyone that had made it such a remarkable place. He imagined that with that realization, had come the knowledge that they would never allow her to hold onto any significant measure of power or self-governance.
If that power and self-governance had been threatened, if she'd finally come to understand all that legitimacy entailed, it would explain her sudden change in heart. It would explain her desire to play informer to the very rebels she'd been trying to crush.
He understood too well that Eleanor was not a woman who could sit quiet or still for very long. Abiding by the restrictions and regulations of others had never been her strong suit. In fact, it had often seemed to him as though she garnered significant satisfaction from acting in direct opposition to what was expected of her; a trait he'd often found as appealing as it was endlessly vexing.
He'd always known she could never be satisfied with a simple or subjugated existence, and he'd loved her for it. He'd tried to make her see the subversion the English would bring to this place; that their notion of legitimacy was one-sided and arbitrary, demanding unquestioning compliance and cohesion without equitable indemnity. He'd tried to show her there was no middle ground, no manner in which both civilization and Nassau could survive. But she'd been desperate to save this place, to salvage some piece of the life she'd spent nearly two decades building. Blinded by ambition and the fictitious notion of a peaceful colonization, she'd begun chasing an unattainable dream.
He hadn't been able to sway her, couldn't make her understand all that bringing the English would entail. And as a result she'd betrayed him, condemned him to die for her sins and aspirations.
But then she'd turned around and freed him, risked both her own freedom and her life to see him loosed. She'd claimed to have done so in an attempt to liberate Nassau from the English plague; a reasoning that would make sense only if she'd finally realized there was no future for her among the civilized, at least not one that extended beyond the exemplification of her muliebrity.
It was a fact he'd been trying to convince her of from the very beginning. The English brought nothing but chains, false promises and hypocrisy.
The most irritating part of knowing all of this was that if he set aside his plethora of emotion towards this woman, an important component presented itself as worth considering; given Eleanor's circumstance and insubordinate nature, there was a good chance she was telling him the truth.
And if she was telling the truth, he'd be an idiot not to try and take advantage of whatever information she had acquired. But even as he recognized the potential benefit of such an alliance, he hesitated.
This woman was like an infection, a sickness running rampant in his very blood. She'd taken so much of him already; if he spared her now, how could he be certain she wouldn't find a way to contaminate what little was left of him?
He couldn't, not really.
But he couldn't risk refusing this information and losing Nassau, either.
It could only have been seconds, but to Eleanor his silence seemed to last an eternity. Licking her dry lips, she tried again to entice his cooperation. "Nassau's edification is little more than an organized extermination of those unwilling to submit to English primacy. Her emancipation is all that matters now." She paused to study his contemplative countenance. "Let me help you..."
His eyes narrowed. "Have you not helped me enough?" He reputed sarcastically.
She frowned, a touch of irritation marring her tone. "Enough, Charles. You know as well as I do that the English outnumber us ten to one. They've finer ships, superior artillery and the financial backing of a king. They hold over you a distinct advantage; what I offer is the chance to gain some advantage of your own. I can give you numbers, stratagems, names and the reason Woodes is in such a rush to take this place." Her expression was one of fierce determination and resolve, passion shone madly in her eyes. "I can give you all of it... With it, you can give them pause, a reason to reevaluate the worth of this place."
Her words held noteworthy appeal and that only served to irk him further. With an irritated growl, he spat. "And whats to stop me from killing you once you've given me all these things?"
She almost flinched. She'd considered that possibility already, finding it reasonably probable but worth the risk. It wasn't an outcome she hoped for, but it was one she could accept if it meant he'd take her words as truths and swear to act upon them.
She breathed deep and met his eyes with steely conviction. "Nothing."
He arched a brow and hissed. "Then you're a fool."
She gave an unconcerned shrug. "It hardly matters now. With my defection, I'm likely a dead woman regardless. Take the information and allow me to assist, or take it and kill me; either way, Nassau still benefits."
He grit his teeth. He always hated it when she was right. Simply to spite her, he was half tempted to deny her the chance to spill her secrets. But he didn't. Instead he huffed and shook his head with reluctant resignation. "I'll offer no guarantee your secrets will spare you." He growled. The blade still hadn't left the curve of her throat despite his supposed willingness to comply.
"I expected no such guarantee." Her mouth lifted into a sad and acidic sort of smile, and his eyes instinctively followed the movement.
As she watched his eyes drift to the curvature of her lips, it occurred to her that this may well be the last time she would be this close to him. The thought pained more than it should have. She wanted him to know she had regrets, that she understood what she had lost and what she'd taken from him in the process. It wasn't something she could give back, it was a thing of immeasurable value, and he had every right to hate her for it.
But displays of such a maudlin nature had never come easily to her. She wasn't one to weep or swoon, or beg. Perhaps she had too much pride, or perhaps she was simply too jaded to believe that such conduct could make any difference. Regardless, she wasn't about to spill her guts and await decimation.
If these truly were their last moments in such contiguity, she didn't want to spend them like this. At this point, there was nothing left for her to lose. Her life was already his, should he choose to take it. But he'd agreed to hear her out, making it unlikely he'd kill her without first learning of the secrets she still held.
So, Fuck it.
Her free hand slid down between them, moving slowly to cup him firmly through the fabric of his trousers. Her movement was somewhat hesitant and cautious, but steady.
As her palm slid over him, his gaze flung back to hers. Something akin to surprise registered on his face a second before his mouth set in a firm, thin line, his eyes narrowing. The hand that had been gripping her chin shot downward to grasp the wrist of her wandering hand.
Her expression was somewhat difficult to read, he wasn't certain if the look in her eyes was a question or a plea.
His frown deepened. This was a tactic she'd used against him in the past. Sex was a multifaceted mechanism for Eleanor. He'd known her use it for pleasure and distraction, or as a simple outlet for frustration; sometimes to avoid having conversations she was uncomfortable with, and other times to convey emotions or sentiment she wouldn't voice.
He knew this better than anyone, and he hadn't usually been bothered by it. He'd generally been quite good at deciphering her catalysts for intimacy and most of them had suited him just fine. Frequently being on the receiving end of her ministrations, he hadn't often been stupid enough to complain.
But things were different now, they were different now.
He would not allow her to cloud his judgment here. He couldn't. There was too much at stake to allow his penchant for her to override all other things. "You'll not fuck your way out of this, Eleanor..." He rasped.
She shook her head softly as not to jostle the dagger still pressed against her throat. "I've no intention of getting out... " His hand was still gripping the wrist of her seeking hand, so her free hand cautiously lowered to join in her deviant quest. Her fingers delicately slid along the underside of his waistband, her eyes shiny and supplicating. When he didn't move the blade in order to stop her other hand, she glanced down to struggle with the front of his trousers. Her voice was barely above a whisper when she spoke again. "My loyalties have found anchor." She licked her lips and swallowed her vacillation. Her eyes shone with the wild emotion of everything she'd left unsaid. "I'll not turn from you again..."
It wasn't an outright apology, but it was damn close. And for Eleanor, that was significant.
He looked pained, as though she'd just condemned him to a life of servitude rather than declared her devotion.
Perhaps she had.
He leaned further into her, resting the scruff of his cheek against hers so that his mouth was almost against her ear. She smelled balmy and damp, a mix of the earth and sea. His jaw tightened and he closed his eyes against the habitual pull that her proximity always brought to his gut. It was too familiar, too easy to lose himself in her. She was his fixation, an addiction, the one inoperable vulnerability in his composition.
She was both toxin and cure.
She was everything.
And he hated her for it; almost as much as he hated himself for still wanting her, for still loving something that would only bring more pain. His feelings for this woman were beyond complicated. Before her, he hadn't even realized that such love and loathing could be so tightly intertwined. It shouldn't have been plausible.
But it was.
And despite what he knew was good for him, he wanted this, wanted it more than he cared to admit.
But this time he would not give her everything. This time he could keep her at a distance, offer her no space to take advantage. He would not allow himself to be consumed so wholly by her again. They would do things his way, or not at all.
He could take what she was offering, and still stand against her.
"I hate you..." He rasped just before his teeth grazed the side of her neck and his hand released her wrist to clench at the base of her skull in her disheveled hair.
He didn't really believe the words even as he said them, but he wanted to. God, did he want to.
His admission stung, but she found she only half believed it. Steadfast, she continued her pursuit; her fingers numbly battling the many clasps on the front of his trousers. "Show me." She panted breathlessly against the side of his throat.
He needed no further encouragement. The knife abandoned her throat and slipped from his hand to anchor in the sand by their feet.
Even if it was true, even if she had finally driven him to hate her, she would not put a stop to this moment. She needed this, needed to feel him moving against her, to revel in the touch of his skin, the bite of his teeth, all of it.
For she might never get this chance again. The thought shouldn't have terrified her, but it did. She nearly laughed at the irony; to realize how much you loved something only after you'd burnt it to ash.
How depressingly fitting.
She gave a quiet cry of victory as she finally managed to loose the front of his trousers. She felt his sharp intake of breath against the side of her neck as she pulled him free and slid her hand along the length of him. He lifted his head and gripped her cheeks roughly in one of his hands as he smashed his mouth down upon hers.
She didn't care if it was rushed and rough or messy or desperate, only that it happened, that she touch and be touched. She arched against him, pulling him closer as one of her hands raked fingernails over his shoulder and down his spine.
Rough hands reached down to carelessly swoop under her skirts so that he could grip her thighs and boost her onto the tabletop. She had to grip his shoulders to keep from falling back as he lifted her. As he set her down, she hastily began popping open the hooks on the front of her corset. She'd only just unclasped the last of them when he shoved her backward, forcing her to lay flat. The corset hung open on either side of her, baring her breasts as she propped herself up on her elbows to give him frustrated and eager look. He only took a second to admire the view before he yanked her thighs toward him, scooting her a few inches over the table.
She fought to help him keep her skirts out of the way as he sought out her center, his calloused fingers slipped between her thighs and found her slick with need. Something resembling a groan left his throat and he didn't waste time priming her, he didn't need to.
In one swift motion, he slammed himself into her. Her back arched, a silent cry leaving her lips. She'd missed this, craved this, that blissful teetering between pleasure and pain. That exquisite pinching fullness that came just before her body could fully stretch to accommodate for his size.
He didn't give her time to adjust, pulling back and slamming back into her with desperate urgency. She propped up slightly in an attempt to watch him slide in and out of her, but the mass of her skirts were too much of a hindrance. Instead she laid back and reached up behind her head to grip the edge of the table, anchoring herself against the jolting slap of their bodies. She fought to keep pace with him, to school her hips in tandem with his.
She bit her lip, stifling a moan as she brought one of her hands down to join the friction between their bodies. She watched new craving lite in his eyes as his gaze followed the movement of her fingers. His grip on her legs tightened, the blunt edge of nails biting into the soft flesh of her thighs as he quickened his pace. There was an almost violent undertone to their coupling and she'd forgotten how good it could be, how wildly uninhibited and deliciously primitive. This kind of ecstasy was fervid and frenzied, unmatched. It was a heat she yearned for, hadn't realized she'd needed until she'd been forced to settle for something less.
It wasn't like this with Woodes, not ever. He'd always handled her as though he thought she might break. It was always predictable, very polite and especially proper, subdued and unimaginative. While not always entirely unpleasant, it wasn't anything toe-curling either.
But this, this was something else entirely. Charles never handled her like she was fragile or weak, neither in life nor in bed. He challenged her to give as well as she got, to push back, never settle. It was something she needed, something she craved.
Her fingers sped their pace as she met his eyes. He watched her begin to come undone, his eyes flicking from her face to her chest, watching her breasts jump and jerk with each of his thrusts.
Her face was flushed, her mouth hanging open in that telltale fashion that spoke of pleasure and exertion. Her fingers were working furiously now, her body quaking with upcoming release. He shifted slightly, lifting one of her legs to deepen his angle. Her body arched, his name leaving her lips on a breathy cry.
He closed his eyes against the sight of her. Ramming his body against hers, he tried not to think about the way she'd said his name. He didn't want to think about the way she looked sprawled across that table half naked and panting his name. Nor about the heady rush of lust and emotion that accompanied the erogeneity of such a sight. This wasn't meant to be about her, it was meant to be about release, plain and simple; about scratching an itch that only she seemed to satisfy.
He fought not to open his eyes as he felt her walls begin to contract and flutter around him. He couldn't watch her come apart. It was something he'd always enjoyed far too much, something that had always tightened both chest and groin. He was afraid to see it now, afraid to lose yet another piece of himself to the guile of this succubus.
But as she arched and twitched against him, her body stiffening and her mouth opening in a silent cry of release, he looked.
God help him, but he looked.
She writhed and throbbed below him and he felt another small piece of himself slip away. He wanted to care, he wanted to be angry about it, but as she clenched around him he lost the ability to think clearly.
He ground his hips into hers with new vigor, chasing after that impending release. Her legs tightened around him, her heels digging into his ass. She propped herself up on her elbows, trying again to get a better view of the union of the bodies. This time the view was slightly better, but still irritatingly inconvenient. She found herself wishing she'd bothered to remove the stupid skirt before they'd started. But it hadn't occurred to her at the time, she'd been fixated on the objectionable obstruction that his trousers presented.
Now she pressed the skirts as flatly against her stomach as she could manage. She watched him move against her, her head lolling back every so often with the onslaught of a particularly well accentuated thrust. As she made yet another breathy feminine sound, he tried not to pay attention to how unabashedly interested she was in the junction between their bodies.
But something so provocative was a difficult thing to ignore.
With his release hastening ever closer, he pressed forward so that he was leaning over her, his hands supported on the table on either side of her. She inclined upward, lifting her chin to capture his mouth with hers as his hips began to lose their cadency and take on a more jerky form of movement.
He was close, and they both knew it.
"Come." She panted breathlessly, rocking her hips and leaning forward to scrape her teeth and tongue along the length of his jaw.
If he could have denied her the demand, he would have. But with her words came that familiar pressure, a tensing of muscles. Heat seared through him and he drove home once more, filling her with fire. She groaned with him, rode out the last of his solidity with a wanton rocking of hips.
He dropped his body atop hers, his forehead resting against her sternum as they shuddered and panted together. She reveled in the familiar weight of him, the heat of his skin and the tickle of his hair against her chest.
They lay like that for another moment, lost in the tranquil aftershock of exceptional sex. Absently she lifted her hand to stroke over his hair, an almost unconscious habit she'd acquired long ago. He stiffened under her touch, and she realized her mistake too late. He abruptly sat up and pulled away from her, standing to yank up his trousers and cram himself back into the front of them.
His movement was steady and controlled, giving no hint as to the turmoil rolling within him.
The tenderness of her gesture had brought reality screaming back into the moment. She should have known better than to try to touch him as though nothing had changed. She'd lost the right to that intimacy when she'd left him standing on the other side of that gate.
But her hand had risen of it's own accord, driven by affection and the afterglow of their joining. It had shattered the spell and cost her precious moments.
She didn't bother sitting up, simply lay there on her back with her knees hanging off the edge of the table, and mentally chided herself. She watched him as he closed the last of the clasps on his trousers.
He didn't turn to face her as he leaned his posterior against the table. Wearily, he scrubbed the heels of his hands over his face before raking his fingers over his scalp, brushing back his unruly hair. Though his countenance was fairly relaxed, she knew him well enough to know there was more bubbling under the surface of that placid facade than he cared to let on.
The silence stretched between them, the air heavy enough to choke upon. She closed her eyes, sensing he was going to speak even before he did .
He didn't turn to face her. He remained leaning against the table, focused on something inanimate on the opposite side of the tent. His hands loosely gripped the edge of the table on either side of him, and she didn't miss the tenseness in his shoulders. His voice was quiet and low when he spoke, almost rueful. "This can never be what it was, Eleanor..."
She'd known that even before she'd come here. His voicing it aloud shouldn't have made any difference, but it did. It stung, reopened a wound she'd convinced herself had scabbed over.
But that pain changed nothing.
She'd still meant what she said, she would not turn from him again. She had no intention of abandoning either him nor Nassau. Whether he wanted her or not, they would take back what was theirs or die trying.
To reduce herself to a pathetic, quivering mass of salt and snot, was not even a remotely viable option. She would not weep or wail or buckle under the weight of her circumstance. She would rise to the occasion as she always had, stand fast against whatever came next.
She steeled her heart, steadied her breathing and willed her eyes to remain dry.
"I know..." Though her voice was quiet and somewhat strained, the words left her lips steady and true, without the detestable quiver of tears.
He straightened and nodded solemnly, ignoring both the ache in his chest and the grief he was almost certain he'd caught in her tone. They had more important business to discuss. "Then tell me about the English."