Chapter 27: Show Me What I'm Looking For


And if I were a king
If I had everything
If I had you then I could give you your dreams
If I were giant-sized, on top of it all
Then tell me what in the world would I go on for
If I had it all?

I could take anything
If I had no greed to bring
Only the poison that's tainting the clean
Oh, then nothing.

-If I Had It Allby Dave Matthews Band-


"Jack?"

She tried again to pull his attention back, trying not to laugh at the way he stared from her to the soil under their boots, and then right back a half dozen times.

"Jack, what is it?"

"Huh?"

Here she giggled a little and pulled on his coat, "Tell me. Now."

His eyes shifted down to focus on hers as they lit up, "Read th' last line o' that riddle to me."

"Why?"

"Trust me. Do it."

Eva followed the order and held out the paper, quietly reading to him.

"For the hex cannot be broken of the wealth, until the last child of the first blacks has had their say."

"Wot' child?" He teased back.

Rolling her eyes she repeated, "The last, Jack. Why?"

He stood up quickly and began stumbling around the dead grasses, stomping his boots to test the actual perimeter of the single wood plank she found. He looked foolish to her from where she sat in the dirt, but when he continuously began to hit other wooden grounding with the heel of his boots, she became curious herself and rose, doing the same.

"How big is it?"

Eva smiled with a grunt as she forced her boot down a few feet from Jack.

"Big," was his profoundly, simple answer.

"It can't be a tomb this shallow in the ground."

"Don' be so certain."

He found the last of the planks then, settling on the area from a second side. Jack was determined it was at least twenty feet across and the same the opposite direction, all hidden under a fine layer of soil and grass.

"Why would Grace want to be buried so close to--?"

A crackling, aged break of the wood surface they both walked upon startled him with Eva's screech following. His face flew back as his feet did to find her boot twisted between two of the planks where they had severed even under her light weight.

"Eva," he ran to her side as she tried to pull her foot back out. "Easy. Ye don' want to lose the thing, do you?"

His mockery as he leaned over her, gently easing her ankle from out of the jammed boot, made her only chide back.

"Will I get to have a peg then?"

Jack shook his head as her tiny foot came loose from the boot, resting in his hand.

"Just, hold onto th' foot for now, love."

Eva laughed and grasped onto his arms as he helped her to stand, then yanked her boot free from the planks and replaced it to her foot. Together they walked back across the area to the where he imagined the center was, and when Jack knelt down and began scraping at the dirt and grass to reveal more wood, Eva crawled down beside him and copied the action. Dill even returned to them from further into the fog, barking and scratching against the grass as if he were digging a hole, helping them.

"So this mutt o' yours does more than bark, eh?"

"Yes," she replied, tossing a handful of dirt at him playfully, "And his name isn't mutt."

"I know that," Jack smiled and wiped the soil off the bridge of his nose where it showered him. "'Is name is Dill. An' he made good company when I didn't ave' you t' talk to."

Eva slowed her movement through the soil for a single moment and looked across into Jack's eyes. She realized then, even though he'd already said he loved her and that he wasn't going to let anything happen to her ever again, that she never wanted to be anywhere else in the world, unless she was with him. That was the moment, on the day, that Eva decided she would never give Jack up.

Never ever, she thought with a tiny smile as she went back to pulling the grasses from the wood.

This went on for a steady half hour at least, until enough soil was brushed away and enough of the planks revealed for Eva to first notice a scratched indentation in the wood. She ran her fingers over it lightly, feeling the words that were etched upon it and gasped.

"Jack come here, look!"

He crawled a few feet to where she was brushing furiously, leaning in closely to the ground.

"Wot' is it?"

"Words -- there are words scratched here."

His hands moved simultaneously with hers, both of them laughing with jilted excitement all of a sudden, and finally clearing the area enough to see the aged and faded inscription of its entirety. Slowly, she began reading it.

"May your pockets be--" Jack cleaned the spot better for her and she concluded, "…heavy…and your heart be…" a bit of grass covered the last word and she tugged it away as he finished.

"Light."

They stopped and turned their eyes to one another, confused.

"Is that it?"

Eva shrugged and tried to study the words in their full intention for a moment, before pausing with a back thought, something she kept hidden deep within her mind and memories, and she shot a wide glance up to him again quickly.

Jack looked at her funny, "Wot'?"

"It's a blessing."

"Well yeah, if we can get t' the damned treasure it will be a blessing Eva."

"No, no." She shook her head wildly at him, thinking difficulty about the words again. "This, the writing, it's an old Irish blessing. My father used to tell it to me when I was a child."

With shifting eyes, Jack watched Eva stand and begin to pace back and forth across the planks, searching out an answer to what she was talking about. With her head in her hands as she walked, he could hear slight mumbles of things, but nothing coherent. Not until she instantly halted, feet from him, looking off into another direction and began to whisper something.

"May the Irish hills caress you," Eva turned around to face him from a distance and smiled, remembering it all so well, and finishing. "May you know nothing but happiness…And may good luck pursue you from this day forward."

She concluded the simple proverbial hymn with a wide grin, hands clasped together excitedly at having solved the puzzle, and eyes shining down towards Jack's. And he was thrown aback with a brilliant haze of joy just from watching her, from seeing how from nowhere in particular, everything about this land flooded into her.

The moment was a passing one though, when only a brief second later there was a knocking rumble of the ground underneath of them. Eva struggled to keep her balance on the wavering planks as she heard them cracking from all different directions.

"Eva!"

Jack jumped up from the dirt and threw himself toward her when he saw the wood directly beneath her boots shifting. He latched his arm around her waist and pulled her up, running across the rattling planks for the foggy grass line again. Eva screamed with the movement only once, before Jack felt the ground under his feet completely disappear with a loud crash of dust and heat, and he flew forward in a leap.

Together, after what seemed like an eternity of flying, they fell tangled in the wet grass. Jack shielded Eva under him from the rising dust and splinters of wood in the air. And Eva clung to him, shocking herself and him both, when she began to laugh as the breeze cleared across the now fallen ground beside them. Jack looked down at her curiously, her dark hair flowing through the damp grass and her eyes sparkling like emeralds.

He coughed and blinked, "I always knew ye were a morbid little thing. Th' possibility o' death truly humors you."

She raised her hands in surrender and kept giggling, "Masochist. Remember?"

"Right," he rolled his eyes with a chuckle and turned over from her in the grass, "How could I forget?"

At the same time then, on crawling, careful hands and stomachs, Jack and Eva inched towards where the ground had broken and fallen downward into richer soil and stone. It was as if half the world had caved in under their feet. It was as if Eva had completely changed the course of this place by knowing more than she ever thought possible.

She leaned over the side of the gaping, twenty foot hole, with wide eyes and a dropped, choking jaw. Jack hovered over top of her, looking in past her head at the same view, and feeling his gut churn with a boil of shock.

"My God…"

Eva laughed under him, eyeing what must have been a half mile deep cache glittering from side to side within the stony trench. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, gold plated everything had been settled so comfortably under the ground. And now, was a dazzling aurora of existence in the first sunlight to poke through the grey clouds overhead.

"Think that's what we were looking for, Jack?"

A contented sigh of laughter came from deep in his throat as he hugged her tightly under him, still looking over the edge of the treasure sink hole.

"Love, if that's not it…" he kissed the top of her head, breathing hard and excitedly. "Then m' more than prepared t' be greedy an' search beyond this 'little' hoard you've found."

Eva tilted her head back to where his was settled in the crook of her neck, over her shoulder.

"We found it together. It's ours."

Jack smiled and pressed his mouth hard to hers, rolling her over in the moist grass to cradle her body under his and take complete possession of her lips and tongue. She wrapped her arms around his neck and back, clinging as tightly as she could with her legs hooked onto his, boots tangled a mile away. Their tongues dueled for space and command, but together they eventually laughed and pulled away, smiling down and up at one another.

"It's all ours," Eva beamed with outstretched, angel-like arms in the grass.

Jack ran his hands along her arms, bending his body down to hers again and murmuring against her lips, "An' you're all mine."


Galway Bay – Blarney Mulligan's Tavern


"A toast t' Miss O'Malley's wee little protégé…" a slurring, half stumbling Irish man of four feet and two-hundred or so pounds, held up his tankard in the air above where Eva sat perched in Jack's lap, laughing. "…Fer if she didn't 'ave a paddy with a blessin' in 'is pocket fer er', we would ave' never found that godforsaken breast o' jewels…"

Jack nuzzled Eva's neck with wispy kisses hidden in her curls as she tried to focus on the humoring company surrounding them throughout the tavern floor.

The man shouted, "T' darlin' Evangeline, a Marley after our own black 'earts," and with him, at least a hundred arms were raised with drink in a hollering toast. She laughed wildly and held onto Jack's neck as he stood up with her draped in his arms and lifted her high for the audience to see.

"'Fraid she's all mine t'night, gents!"

"And every night after that too, I hope," she whispered in his ear where he could hear over the crowd.

Jack caught her mouth in swarming kiss as he walked her to a safer, clearer area at the bar and settled her down on the stool, "Indefinitely."

"Good."

She spun around to face the company of wenches and barmaids serving drinks behind the counter, as he stood leaning directly behind her, his arms hooked around her waist in claim and his chin resting on her shoulder, breathing in her hair from time to time.

They were greeted by every individual man in the pub; dirty, old, poor or well to do traders. Most of them couldn't come to a conclusion about when Jack had been there last, or to Galway for that matter, but they remembered him, they adored him, and with Eva as their new blood line heroine and family, they loved her ever the more and same.

Gibbs and the crew eventually met up with them in the town and were staged all about in the tavern, enjoying their smooth skinned company and righteous Irish lager as defiantely as the locals. Joshamee had chosen three men to watch after the hoard on the opposing island through the night, and spent the rest of the evening assuring Jack he picked only most daft of them for obvious reasons.

"Those blokes'll never figure out ow' t' get th' jewels out o' that hole, Cap'n. Fear naught."

And he really didn't, he was too concerned with celebrating the final success of finding it to worry about a couple of his lesser crewmen falling in to retrieve a ruby or two. Particular women would travel by the bar and leaving swiping hands or curious winks in Jack's path, and although he turned to give them proper attention for all of a second, his focus was always brought right back to Eva's eyes, the grandest treasure he could find.

After only hours of conversing, drinking, and flirting with the oldest and wisest of the men in town, did Jack step in and press his lips to Eva's ear with a gentle coercion.

"There's a room calling out for ye upstairs, Miss Marley."

She curled her neck where his hot breath tickled and she giggled in the candlelight of the bar's corner.

"A room with a bed I presume?"

Jack spun her around on the wooden stool to wrap her legs around the backs of his as she smiled teasingly.

"We don' have t' use the bed. There's th' wall…th' floor…windowsill could be--"

Eva cut him off from rambling with her lips firm on his and hers arms circling his neck, as she lowered herself from the stool to stand and pulled his mouth down to stay glued to hers. A huddle of close friends and crew cheered them on rowdily, drunkenly, until Eva released Jack to grab his hand instead, rushing through the hollering company to where she saw a half hidden old stairwell in the back of the tavern.

"See! She can't hesitate t' ave' her way with me, mates!"

A few close men howled out and whistled with their drinks raised as Eva tugged Jack up the creaking steps. There was only a whisper of ruckus from below when they made it into the narrow hallway of the second floor. A dripping candle or two lit their way, but Jack couldn't wait half as long as he thought he'd be able to, and when there was wall space enough, he pulled harshly on Eva's arm and pinned her to it under him.

"Too good for a room--"

His mouth hushed hers the same as hers had done to him. His hands were everywhere, all over her within seconds, tearing and snatching at her manly fashion of dirtied breeches and tunic. Buttons were his enemies and the strings of her pants couldn't untie fast enough, and certainly not before Eva wiggled free of him and headed for the door at the end of the hall again. She snuck in and grabbed his shirt to pull him inside with her.

"Fine. We'll keep it a private show then."

"Yes," she replied tauntingly, with her fingers snug in the waist of his pants, "They'll just have to listen."

"Oh will they nah…"

"A huh."

She moved Jack towards the bed and then shoved him down to the squeaky old mattress in the dark.

He managed to get comfortable and lean on his elbows, watching her dance around in the faint, low burning candlelight left, twisting with a tipsy sort of laugh and finishing off the job he had started on her clothes. She was a vision of enchantment, as always, but never so vividly as on that night, in the midst of long awaited, piratical success.

Eva pulled her dirt covered tunic and undershirt away and tossed it to the corner, leaving her supple breasts to glow sweetly before him.

Jack sat on the edge of the bed, staring wildly.

"It's not fair," he whispered as she worked on the ties of her brown pants, kicking off her boots, "Half th' world is left ugly in th' night, an' you've stolen all the beauty for yerself."

Eva looked at him oddly as she pushed down her breeches and stood swaying nude. With a curled finger and glinting rings, he grinned and beckoned her to him.

"Come 'ere my little thief."

She tiptoed to him, taking a stance between his spread legs as he commanded a soft hold of her bare hips. Jack pulled Eva to his body, letting his mouth dance across her smooth stomach with heated kisses from the dark curls he could see wistfully below, then moved to her navel and even higher as he rose to stand, meeting the valley of her breasts, her neck, with his lapping pecks, and finally, after too long again, her lips.

His kiss was rough, necessary, but calming all at once.

Eva's hands were lost beneath his shirt, ripping it away with his coat in the same swift movement. He shook his head and wrapped a strong arm about her tiny waist, lifting her and then dropping her easily into the sinking middle of the bed. He hovered with only his breeches on, but tightly ground into her moist center as she blindly untied them to release what she could feel.

"A gift for me, Jack?"

She teased, as she reached inside of his pants to hunt out the solid, swollen ache of him. And she knew she had, just by the grunt he lowered into her ear and the buck he made out of habit in her squeezing hand.

"Play nicely t'night, lass."

"Now why would I ever play with you unfairly?"

Jack moved to hover over top of her again, looking her square in the eye as she smirked devilishly.

"No ship knots, gypsy."

She shook her head, assuring him.

"No herbal pies."

First she giggled, but then agreed to the term.

"An' no biting in otherwise…concealed locations."

She pouted at this, and he raised a brow for promise, which she did.

"Fine. But that doesn't mean I can't harm you elsewhere."

Eva snapped her teeth up at him and shoved until he fell to the mattress at her side. With a prance, she jolted across the room in the direction of the singular candle, and then carried it right back to the bed. Jack though, quickly snapped into action with defense hands.

"Oh no. No." One finger raised at her did nothing and she rolled her eyes, pushing him back down to the bed, "Eva don't ye even think 'bout it."

"Relax. I already found the marks another wench left you with."

His brow was twisted as she came low to him on the bed again, hovering the tin candle holder over his stomach. With her free hand, she began tracing the taut skin of a preexisting burn scar on his lower right hip. Jack sighed with the touch, where her warm hands made the memories of that flame, from that one tormented woman long before her, reignite again.

"I won't do that to you," she whispered and leaned down to kiss the spot.

"Did ye find that in another of your nightly travels o' me skin while I slept?"

A smile curled on her lips as she lowered the candle even more to his skin.

"You hardly talk about your past. So I had to figure things out for myself."

"Well darlin' I don't--" before he could speak again, there was a drizzle of wax far along his stomach and chest that made him gasp out, struggling under her hooking body, "Wretched devil..."

"Is he going to save you from me?"

She teased him for a single moment before placing the candle on the bedside table and returning to completely cover his body with hers. There were wisps of her cool breath blowing where the wax was burning, making the hairs on his arms rise and his frightened manhood all the same beneath her legs.

"No," he finally sighed under her breathy touches, "I don't want t' be saved from ye."

"You might regret that."

"I don't regret anything 'bout you."

Jack wrapped his arms around Eva, turning her over yet again, for the final time that night.

With the change of position he gained, her legs firmly tied around his back, her pleading cunt throbbing against the firmness he yanked from his linen pants, he had every bit of her under his spell. All it took was one swipe of his lips against hers again, one single, calculated thrust deep between the folds of her moistened form, and he had both her and the whole world finally.

Everything about her made him feel closer to the center of the burning universe, where things were risky and uncertain and tempting. And yet in reverse, every bit of Eva always made him feel as safe, as protected and as cradled in beauty as any one person could possibly feel. With every quick drive inside of her, he experienced jolts of energy between both of her sides, the good and the bad, the rebellion and the concentration, the fear and the love.

Eva cried out his name wistfully as the bed creaked with their unified movement in the pitch black room. The feeling of dried wax rubbing against her stomach and breasts, as he made strides upon her, brought a glowing smile to her quivering lips and she reached out for his mouth. Jack delivered, kissing her deeply, before holding her bottom lip in a biting hostage with another thick thrust.

"Jack I--"

"I know," he crooned tiredly in her ear when he left her mouth to suckle on her ear, "God trust me love, I know…"

He forced his hips down and hers rose up higher to meet. He felt the walls of her around him shaking like mad. Her thighs wrapped at his sides trembled with sweating agility. The peaks of her breasts against his boiling chest left his mouth gaping with every tender push or pull of his body from hers.

"I can't -- I--"

"Yes," he grunted anxiously, "Yes ye can."

A panting mew escaped from her when the very tip of Jack's hidden energy source, cinched her most soaring of places, the one that every time he touched it, made every muscle in her body twitch. He brushed back the sticky curls that laid on her forehead and cheeks, kissing her zealously from nose to the top of her head, pushing against her still but cradling her for protection.

"I want all of ye, Eva…YES--Ah!" He forced himself down upon the spot wildly, leaving a last whisper on her mouth, "Let go, my little bird. Be free…"

A satisfied grin came to his face when he hovered, thrusting more and watching her gaze snap shut with a glaze of ecstasy in her voice as she screamed out. Eva shuddered in his hands, like a melted star that got too close to the sun, falling limp but still sparkling from the dew of passion. Jack kept his pace strong, deliberate, finding his own ready and harmonious release seconds after her. He filled her with all of him, groaning, with her name sweet on his lips.

"Evangeline…"

"Jack…" she replied the same, breathless and holding onto his strong arms.

"Evangeline."

"Jack," she mocked him again, choking on the fiery air around them.

He fell in a heap atop her, trembling like she was, heaving like she was, and still incapable of keeping his shaking lips from her soaked, jasmine skin. He kissed the only part of her he could reach in tire, her outstretched arm on the mattress, leaving circles of wet claim from her shoulder to wrist, never missing a step along the path.

"You taste like sin," he chided shakily.

Eva wiggled her fingers of the hand he clung to, just brushing the bristly hairs on his cheek.

"You feel like it."

He chuckled under his breath and pulled her weakly, closer to him. When her face landed on the bed just beside his, he raised his heavy head and draped it over hers with a tangle of weave and trinkets, rubbing her smooth olive cheeks with the roughness she admired so, making her laugh out crazily.

"An' ye better get used t' it, dearest."

From under the hide of his long dreads, she poked her eyes out and tipsily said, "I already am."