“Mucking out the stalls, Captain? She’s a lady.”
“There are no bloody ladies on this ship, and it’s a job. Her job for the man she replaced.”
“Get the boy to do it,” Gideon had said. “Put her in the galley instead.”
The galley was a better place for her, true. A kinder place. Rhystan knew he was being harsh, but he couldn’t be weak. Not after what she’d done. “Shoveling shit is what she deserves.”
To his everlasting surprise, however, she’d borne the foul task without complaint. Grinning even, when she returned to see to his duties reeking to high heaven of filth and dung and tracking God-knew-what into his cabin. His scowl deepened. If it were up to him, she’d be sequestered in his quarters from sunup to sundown. Or off the sodding ship altogether. Between his marauding cock and his unraveling temper, his patience was at a new low.
Her presence rubbed him raw, mostly because it reminded him of things he needed to keep buried. Like speculating on whether the honeyed taste of her would still be the same. Or wondering if she was still ticklish on the sides of her ribs. That night in his cabin, it had taken every ounce of discipline not to drag her into the bath with him, and all the time he’d watched her, he’d felt like an interloping voyeur.
At first, when he’d come out of the privy, he’d observed her internal debate with amusement, waiting for the perfect moment to announce himself and offer her the bath, but then in seconds, she’d stripped. The power of speech left him, followed quickly by the power of coherent thought. He—a seasoned man of the world—had been knocked senseless by a mere slip of a girl.
Their handful of stolen kisses and furtive explorations in their youth had not prepared him for the sight of her unclothed—all that glorious, honey-hued skin and a pair of perfect dusky-tipped breasts, not to mention the mouthwatering swells of her buttocks and those never-ending slender legs that he instantly wanted wrapped around him.
He’d been hypnotized.
And hard as forged Damascus steel.
As the minutes went by, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to move, not when every delicious feminine curve had been on display. He’d stood there in silence, jaw agape, guilt and desire warring inside him, and had wolfed down the sight of her. In his stupor, he’d realized two things. One, Princess Sarani was no longer a girl. And two, his body’s reaction to her was much the same as it’d been five years ago.
Even now, as she sat on the foredeck, her ratty clothing did little to diffuse the memory of the damp, dewy skin hidden beneath it, and his body swelled. Rhystan adjusted the crowded crotch of his trousers discreetly, ignoring Gideon’s smirk as he followed Rhystan’s line of sight to where Sarani sat. The man’s thick black eyebrows rose, but Rhystan pretended not to notice. Hell if he’d acknowledge acting like an oversexed greenhorn to his bloody quartermaster.
Sarani leaned in to hear something Red was saying and burst out laughing. The unaffected sound made his heart leap and his groin tighten further. Rhystan scrubbed a hand through his hair, yanking at the roots, and blew a frustrated breath through his teeth. He didn’t have to look at the blasted man beside him to see that he was grinning from ear to ear.
“Why don’t you just put yourself out of your misery?” Gideon asked. “If you want her that badly.”
Rhystan shot him a glare. “I don’t.”
“Lie to yourself all you please, but the sexual tension between the two of you could propel this ship to the Americas and back again. Admit it, you want her.”
“Why would I want a lying, conniving, silver-tongued, devious—” He broke off at the warning look in Gideon’s eyes, but not before the object of his diatribe had joined them on the quarterdeck, carrying a tray with his midmorning pot of tea.
“Princess,” Gideon murmured, though Rhystan had the sneaking suspicion he used the deliberate royal address to grind him instead of being proper. The quartermaster didn’t give a lick about courtly etiquette or anyone’s noble rank. It chafed at Rhystan’s rapidly souring mood.
“Please, it’s just Sara,” she said, flushing and setting the tray down on the ledge next to the wheel. She masked the flicker of injury in her eyes with bluster when her stare met Rhystan’s. “Don’t you get tired of talking about yourself, Captain? Honestly, anyone would think you hate yourself, the way you carry on.”
“I wasn’t talking about me.”
Her chin jutted up. “I’d hate to hear who was your unfortunate target. Though if that was directed at me, having Red spitting in your tea all these weeks will have been worth it.”
Gideon guffawed, and Rhystan blinked. Was the chit jesting? Then again, he wouldn’t put it past her. He had been awful lately. He frowned at the tea on the tray as though the trace of the boatswain’s saliva would make itself known, and she smirked. “You should see your face.”
“Don’t you have ropes to mend?”
“Finished. I was heading to the fo’cs’le.”
Rhystan’s lips twitched. She even sounded like the rest of the crew now. She sauntered off the way she’d come, but not before his gaze snagged on the threadbare stretch of fabric hugging her taut behind as she climbed down the steps.
In a flash, he was hurled back in time into a memory of a much younger girl draped in a tunic and a near-transparent sari—a length of deftly draped and pleated cotton—climbing up the banks of the river one sweltering afternoon to collapse beside him on the grassy slope. The wet fabric had clung to her legs after her lengthy swim, hiding nothing.
As a gentleman, he’d averted his gaze from the slim outline of her legs and the gentle flare of her hips, though his lower body had already been at excruciating attention. He’d practically thrown his discarded coat over his lap to hide his raging erection.
When she’d entreated him to read a paragraph from his book to her, he had, though his arousal had not waned in the least as she gripped his sweaty palm in hers. Hand in hand, they’d stared at the clouds, him reciting the words and her listening in thoughtful silence, interrupting only when she had an opinion on the author’s narrative.
Which was often with those particular volumes.
“Thackeray is a condescending cynic.” She’d huffed in outrage, quoting him, “‘To be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman’? He doesn’t seem to hold females in much esteem, does he?”
Rhystan had laughed. “His narrative is tongue in cheek. And he does have some worthier gems, like ‘Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.’”
“Revenge is rather a waste of emotion and effort.”
“Who said that?”
She’d shot him a plucky grin. “I did.”