17

When I was a youngster I sail'd with the rest
On a Liverpool packet bound out to the west
We anchored a day in the harbour o' Cork
Then put out for the sea for the port o' New York.

Elizabeth awoke gently to the warmth of sunlight on her face and the lapping tide's constant sounds. She blinked in the Caribbean brightness, and suddenly realised where she was.

She was huddled into Jack's prostrate body, his shoulder under her head, her arm and leg swung lightly across his chest and hips.

His free hand - the one that wasn't wrapped around her - still clutched resolutely onto the neck of his bottle of nothing. All the rum was gone.

She glanced over her shoulder at her own, lying in the sand behind her, also empty.

It was then that she began to realise that she had the beginnings of an awful, awful headache.

They must have been incredibly merry last ni -

Last night.

Oh, God!

She sat up, very suddenly, and put a hand to her heart as she gasped in horror.

Then her eyes shot to Jack's trousers, still with a few buttons left undone.

She didn't. She couldn't have.

But she had. She remembered it all too clearly.

How willing she had been to compensate him for her stubborn virtue.

How he had allowed her to kiss him one last time, before putting his head back in the sand and falling straight to sleep, shattered, and very very drunk.

She could hardly believe that she was still here. She half-expected the clouds to open up, and a condemning voice of thunder to thrust itself accusingly at her, with threats of eternal damnation.

She couldn't believe it. She actually couldn't believe that she had it in her.

Jack had been right.

She couldn't be anything other than a pirate at heart, if she had allowed such atrocious things to happen between them, on such short acquaintance, in such improper circumstances.

But she trusted him. He was a hero, an unlikely one, but still. Her hero.

If he told her to take a running jump off a cliff... she was so gullible. Despicably so.

But then, it didn't disgust her. It should have repulsed her, the thought of all that stuff, out of wedlock, on a beach in the middle of nowhere, with a wanted criminal no less - a scruffy, morally misguided nobody.

Instead, the thought uplifted her. She had known real freedom, to go to whatever extremes she had felt like on a whim, on the mad impulse of a silly story about a dream. To feel craved, lusted after, in an honest, rugged way, without all of those prim-and-proper intervals that could only be described as the Middle Man of erotic wooing. A polite delay.

And she had come out on top in all aspects.

She was a virgin. A cold, hard fact, one that made her feel secure enough to excuse herself.

Nobody would ever know. But she had beaten them. She had swindled them all.

With a man she had admired since she was just ten. A man she had never imagined would be so attractive as well as wicked.

He began to stir, making faintly disgruntled noises, and she lowered herself to the ground again, placing her chin on his chest to watch him waking up.

She was acting like a lover.

Which she wasn't.

He was the most angelic thing she had ever seen, when he frowned slightly in his sleep, and then slowly blinked his eyes open, gazing up at the ethereal azure sky.

Then he glanced down at her, obviously in as rough a condition as she was, from the length of time he took to focus properly.

"Alright." he said bluntly.

"Hello." she replied, trying not to smile at him.

She wondered if he remembered.

He reached down to secure his trousers, and it was obvious that he did.

"You did have some wonderful techniques." he smirked vaguely at her as he tried to sit up, making her move away.

She winced. It was bad enough without him bringing it up so harshly. Now she really felt like a low strumpet.

Well, if that was what he thought she was, he was going to find out how mistaken he was.

She sat up properly and turned her back on him, pretending to look out at the ocean.

It was going to have to be all ignorance and cold shoulders, if it was the only way to preserve herself now.

"We have to set up the signal as soon as possible." she said blankly.

His fingers curled softly around her upper arms, and his mouth found the most sensitive, pleasure-inducing spot on her shoulder blade. His kiss was so tender.

"Whatever you say, luv."

His voice had an underlying tone of apology. As though he were talking to - well - more than just a one-night encounter.

She couldn't help it. His fingers held her softly, like some precious thing.

He must understand her, or he wouldn't be treating her like this.

Surely?

"Jack -"

"Aye." one arm discreetly wound around her shoulders, thumb caressing her throat. His chest pressed against her back.

It was quite an intimidating gesture, and for a moment she tilted her head back, feeling like a kind of hostage.

The last time he'd been anywhere near this position, he'd been holding a chain round her neck with a pistol pointed at her head.

She tried to deny the fact that it thrilled her.

"Last night, if you remember... it never happened. Alright?"

"If that's what you want."

He made to take his hand away and leave her to her own space, but she grabbed his wrist, and slowly brought his fingers to her mouth, kissing them one by one.

"That's what I want." she murmured, actions clearly opposing her words.

"Oh." his tone suddenly had a cynical, aggressive edge to it, and he pulled his hand away from her with some force, "I see how it is. Ye'd never admit to consorting with a pirate. And yet here ye are."

"Shut up." she turned to grab the back of his neck and pulled herself in to plant a honey-sweet kiss on his lips. His moustache tickled her slightly.

He broke away, however, and stood up without offering her his hand. He had the strangest expression of aloof disgruntledness, almost vicious, and definitely hiding something else.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, indignant at his disrespectful attitude.

"I think the question that the both of us should be focusing upon here is what the bloody hell are you doing?" he retorted as she rose to her feet.

He was looking her dead in the eye, and his spiteful countenance showed him for the rogue he really was. "I agree that I am well below ye, young missy. I tried me way with the honest life and it didn't work out, I am never going to be a gentleman. But if yer gonna fling yerself at me like that an' not admit it to a soul afterwards, ye can go keelhaul, for all I care. I despise a dishonest woman."

"Jack, this isn't about what bloody social circles you move in!" she argued with exasperation at his injured ego, "The fact remains that I have - engaged in improper behaviour - with somebody I am not only not married to; I am not even courting."

"Well, what do ye call this?" he raised his voice tempestuously, "I wine an' dine ye, I gives ye entertainment, I woo ye to a point of -" he broke off, and sighed. "I took a coconut to the head for ye, Lizzie. I don't do that for any ol' hussy."

She giggled despite herself.

She felt very warmly for him, very suddenly.

He had openly admitted that he considered her as a real person. He respected her.

He wanted to impress her.

And though he was obviously blagging about their courting - pirates didn't court, did they? - the fact that he'd lied about it in itself was sweet.

"I know. And I'm very grateful. But I'm still a wretched whore and I really have to keep this a secret, Jack, so please, don't abandon me like you are. The island's lonely enough."

She knew he'd hearken to those words.

He crossed the space between them and took both her hands gently.

"Ye could never be a whore, luv. Yer too stuck up. Yer just... too ruddy gorgeous to be a prude." he grinned in his mischevious, charming way, and she put her arms around his neck acceptingly.

She felt so awfully guilty.

She was prolonging something that was in no way going to work... and couldn't even be prolonged for much longer, now.

"Right. Firewood. Go." she instructed, putting on her bravest face.