He leaned over the side of the boat and grabbed her, Mr. French on the other side, and in a splashing rush they hauled her aboard. She shed water, gaining her bearings, but Jin did not release his grasp. Pulling the rope from her mouth she swung the object tied to its end around from her back, leaving trails of green slime across her face, neck and the white shirt plastered to her body. Her visibly cold body.

He wrapped her in his coat.

“What ya got thar, Cap’n?”

“A treasure, of course, Ayo.”

Viola grinned at the sailor, waiting for the storm to break at her side. Seton’s hand gripped her arm like a vise. He dragged her to a bench, released her, and her sailors set oars to water. She was glad for their haste, and for his coat. The sea was unforgiving today. She was accustomed to lengthy dives, but she’d been under this time longer than she should. Her teeth made little clicking sounds in her muzzled head.

He didn’t speak or look at her. Settling the small box she’d retrieved from the bottom of the merchant ship on her lap, she flickered a glance at him. A muscle worked in his jaw. She closed her eyes.

In a moment, it seemed, they were at her ship and she was climbing, sodden and cold, to the deck. Behind her Seton gave orders for the men to transfer the merchantman’s stores of water to the April Storm. She moved toward the stairway. He followed but said nothing until they’d moved beyond the sailors clustered about the main deck. She put her foot on the first step and finally he spoke, but in an even, steady voice.

“Pettigrew once told you of that box, I presume.”

She swung down the steps, clutching her hard-won prize tighter. She’d lost her dagger when the final nail binding the box to the hull popped abruptly and the hilt slipped out of her numb hand.

“Obviously.”

“Its contents must be very valuable.” He followed her aft toward her cabin, but his calm tone did not deceive her. “I know something of such prizes. Innocuous containers with valuable contents. I know how one might take foolish chances in order to retrieve such an object.” An edge cut his voice now.

“It was not so foolish. I have stayed below for longer.”

“Sam mentioned that.” He was right behind her. He reached forward and pushed the door of her cabin open, surrounding her for an instant. She ducked out from beneath his arm and moved to the washstand. He entered behind her. “Nevertheless, it was unwise, taking that chance.”

“Not much of a chance.” She swiped a cloth across her cheeks and brow, smelling the thick brine of the sea. “I knew what I was looking for and retrieved it quickly. My men know-”

He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around.

“I am not one of your men and I did not know that you are likely to hurl yourself into a rough sea.” His crystal eyes glittered in the pale light, fingertips digging into her flesh.

She shrugged out of his hold, her skin hot where he’d touched her.

“You sound like a hen-wife, Seton. Go nag someone else.”

His gaze, intense and hard, scanned her face. But there was something else in the blue, something seeking. Quite abruptly her knees weakened.

Her knees weakened?

She clutched the washstand. “Go away.”

“Goddamn it.” His voice was low. “You behave as though possessed sometimes.”

“Possessed by the rapidly increasing regret that I signed you on?”

“What is in the box, Viola?”

Viola. Only Viola. Not Miss Carlyle. Not Captain.

The air petered out of her lungs. Perhaps she was insane. At the very least, a fool. The mere sound of only her given name upon his lips, that simple familiarity, turned the remainder of her joints liquid. No man had called her by her real name in fifteen years. Not even her father.

“A letter.”

“What letter?”

“If I knew that, would I have swum under the belly of a ship in a freezing ocean to get it?”

“Viola.”

“A letter to his wife and children.” She shrugged. “Nothing, really. He’d told me he always nailed a box to the underside of his ship whenever he was making ready to set off on a journey. That way if brigands took his boat and threw him overboard someone might someday find the letter and send it to his family. As a final good-bye of sorts.”

His chest jerked in a sharp inhalation but he said nothing.

“I told him that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.” She waved it off, but her motion was unnatural. “What pirates would send a letter to the wife of the man they killed? And there was every chance it might end up at the bottom of the sea, in any case, or just rot away no matter how finely soldered the box. But he said that if there was even one small chance it might reach…” Her voice faltered beneath his regard and she was shaking now, soaked to the bone. “I mean to say, it didn’t seem very logical for him to…”

His lips parted as though he might speak, but still he did not.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she snapped.

“You risked your life to retrieve a dead man’s last letter to his family?”

“I already told you there was no risk in-”

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close, knocking a gasp from her. He bent his head, his breath filtering over her chilled skin. She fought not to close her eyes, not to wish for what she was wishing.

“Going to bite my nose again like a ten-year-old, Seton?” Her voice quavered.

“No.”

At that moment Viola discovered that the perfect mouth felt even more perfect than it looked. He kissed her, and quite abruptly the question of whether she would allow it became instead how long she could make it last.

It was not a short or simple kiss. Not from the moment it began. They met, fully, and they held, immobile. Far too long. Far too close. Far too intimate. Far too much like he might have been wanting to kiss her as much as she had been wanting to kiss him and now if they were to move or part even slightly the reality of it might scamper away. As though he were imprinting the feel of her upon him. Aidan had never kissed her like this. Aidan kissed her like he could step away at any moment, like kissing her was something he bestowed upon her as a favor and he might cease easily enough.

This was different. This was possession. It was relief and certainty at once. It was a need to be close and remain so for as long as possible without breathing. To underscore the impossible intimacy of it, his hand scooped behind her head and held her still, attached to his mouth, where she was quite willing to remain in any case and he needn’t bother trapping her. But so help her God she liked being trapped. He was heat and strength and she needn’t ever breathe again if he would not release her.

He did finally, but only to drag in air as she did, then cover her mouth again with his.

Now it became clear that this was not only a man who could dazzle a girl into suffocation. He was also a man with an impressive knowledge of what sort of kiss turned a woman to pure desire. In an instant, unsettling intimacy gave way to drugging sensuality.

He tasted her, it seemed, his attention first on her lower lip and the tender inside edge of it, then the upper edge, and she got hot everywhere. She opened her lips and let him have her. Tilting her head back, he played with her hunger, unbearably, caressing slowly until she was leaning up into him for more. She pressed onto her tiptoes. With the tip of his tongue he traced her lips, urging them apart with the lightest caress. Her body flushed with pleasure.

Like some sort of desperate cat, she whimpered.

His fingers sank into her hair and his tongue slid alongside hers, testing. The ache spread, throbbing as he kissed her with this intimacy beyond intimacy, dipping into her so she could feel him inside her and making her tremble. She grabbed his wrist, the taut sinews of a man, his strength holding her and she wanted to feel him holding her all over. Her skin sought it. His hand slid down her neck, and Viola’s blood turned to fire.

He lifted his mouth. For a moment he hovered there, both of them breathing fast.

“There.” His voice was low. “That shut up that mouth for a minute.”

“More than a minute.” She swallowed around the anchor apparently lodged in her throat. “Surely.” His hand was hot heaven on her neck. He seemed very large. She had always been short, but for the first time in her life she felt delicate too. Like a lady.

But a lady would not ache to dart her tongue out and lick his lips, even if she could summon the courage, which Viola could not despite the perfection of that damp mouth so close to hers.

It curved up at one side. His hands fell away from her, he lifted his head, and Viola stood wet and warmed only by his coat as he crossed the small cabin and went out, shutting the door behind him.

She leaned back, her knees gave way against a chair, and she sank onto her behind. She ought to be furious. She ought to have scratched out his eyes. Instead she had allowed him to kiss her without the slightest bit of resistance.

But she had not kissed a man in a very long time. Of course she hadn’t resisted.

The next time, she would.

There would not be another kiss. It had been a mistake. Jin’s brain knew it even if his perpetually aroused body did not. She tasted sweet and hot and like a woman who needed kissing. Like a woman who needed a great deal more than kissing.

But he should not have done it. The plan of winning her agreement to return to England through seduction was not realistic. He could not control her desire if he could not first control his own-which he now knew he could not do while touching her hair and face and body. Wet and bedraggled from her swim, and rushing to justify her foolish behavior in stuttering fits, she had set her dark liquid gaze upon him and he felt her desire in his gut. In his chest. He’d had to kiss her. He only managed to leave it at a kiss by reminding himself that despite all appearances to the contrary she was a lady.

He was not a gentleman. He was the bastard son of a woman who had cared for him so little that she allowed him to be sold into slavery. He was a man who had done evil deeds in cold blood that had nothing of honor about them. He was not a man to be enjoying the touch of a woman of aristocratic blood, no matter how she denied her birthright or how eagerly she responded to him. And he was the man who was taking her home to England whether she wished it or not.

But neither was he a man of regret. He simply would not allow himself to make the mistake of coming too close to her again.

To that end, he steered clear of her. She obliged. It was remarkable how on a modest-sized ship they managed to successfully avoid each other. It would not be possible on his own considerably smaller vessel when they sailed east. But he would deal with that when the time came.

They skirted Barbados, catching sight only of an American naval frigate, then losing it in the rain that began falling heavily, and Jin counted each day closer to port. The downpour lasted twenty hours, soaking the sheets and canvas and all aboard while the wind remained high, driving them west. The men barely grumbled, trained to constant good humor by their mistress. Like dogs. Even Matouba climbed down from the crow’s nest drenched yet with a smile for his captain as he lumbered below.

But rain was not storm, and Jin must be content with their progress.

The night before they were to make port, the rain let up entirely, clearing on a swift northerly wind. He took the chart to the bow and settled on the forecastle to study it at his leisure. But he knew these islands already, their inlets and beaches and mountains. He had spent most of his youth sailing between them, picking up work where he could, stealing it where he could not.

Sixteen hours and they would be in port. Two days after that the fortnight would be over, and he would return Viola Carlyle to the home in which she belonged. To her family.

Her footsteps sounded on the deck behind him, approaching. She moved with a confidence her men did not possess, and he knew her by her tread and the scent of spiced flowers coming before her on the wind. He knew her satin voice and the flavor of her mouth and the texture of her skin at the delicate curve of her throat. He knew her stubborn determination and the reluctant flicker of uncertainty in her violet eyes. He knew her more than he wished to.

He turned his head, met her unshrinking gaze, and feared that two days and sixteen hours might prove an eternity.

Chapter 10

Avoiding him had not served the purpose she hoped. He was as gorgeous as he had been four days earlier when in her cabin he kissed her into a rag doll. The slant of the setting sun rendered his face and hands dark and set him before a curtain of cobalt fading to lavender. It was not a sight conducive to steady nerves.