Evening

Suzanna opened her eyes to find the cabin bathed in the light of late afternoon, when the sun glowed a brilliant coral just before sinking into the sea. Jack was leaning back on one elbow again, watching her. He looked like a god to her, gloriously naked and bathed in the golden light. Oh God, she thought. It’s embarrassing to even think that. But it’s true. He literally takes my breath away.

“How long have you been awake?” she managed.

“Not long. I’ve just been enjoying the view.”

“Yes, I can see that,” she responded, pointedly moving her eyes to his response to her.

He grinned. “What can I say, luv? You have this effect on me.”

“I feel really... sticky,” Suzanna offered, and the look on her face was part embarrassment and part reveling in the sensuality of it.

Jack read her well and knew which he wanted to encourage.

“Mmmm...” he purred and ran his finger between her legs and up to her breasts, painting both aureoles and nipples with their essence, then leaning over further to lick them both and kiss her soundly. “Let’s see if we can’t make you even stickier.” He cut off her cry of protest with another kiss and then let go of her mouth to suck and lick at her ear, remembering how she had responded earlier. Again before she could protest he kissed her but her stomach accomplished what her mouth could not, grumbling loudly. They both laughed.

“All right, madam, I see I am overruled and must cede—temporarily mind you,” he looked at her with a don’t-think-for-a-minute-we’re-done-here stare, “to the demands of a different hunger.” He reluctantly climbed off her and pulled her up to sit next to him.

“Sorry to be inconvenient,” she offered with comic sarcasm, “but what with hastening off to rescue you and then the subsequent...,” she groped for a word, “...celebration, I seem to have missed breakfast and lunch.” She managed to wrap a sheet around her so she could sit and think for a moment. It was very hard to think with both she and Jack naked.

“Actually, I’m fair famished meself, you just...distracted me. And no inconvenience at all, luv. I think we might just manage something.” With that he unlocked the cabin door, still naked much to Suzanna’s scandal, but closed the door again almost immediately. He returned from this suspicious outing carrying a tray with a pitcher of warm water, some cold capon, bread, and two golden apples. “I think this will just do us nicely.”

Suzanna’s eyes widened, both in hunger and disbelief. “You cocky son of a bitch! You were so sure of yourself you arranged for this ahead of time. I don’t believe you.”

There was enough anger in her voice that Jack sensed that this was not the time for a smart-ass remark unless he wanted the rest of his day to go quickly to hell. And he had planned for quite a heavenly day so it was time for a little strategic truth telling. He’d noticed that she listened better when he touched her, so he put the tray down and pulled her to him. His hands slid around her back and up to her shoulders, holding her tightly enough that she couldn’t pull away.

“Listen, darling, you can be mad at me for a lot of things. I’m sure you’ve got a long list already in that book of yours of 100 reasons why I’m infuriating and you’d like to wallop me. You’re in good company, come to that. I’ll probably give you 100 more before the week is out, and you’ll be in your rights. But I won’t apologize for wanting you or being able to see clear enough, especially after you put your own neck in the noose for me this morning, what you wanted as well.” He held her even tighter, and seeing her eyes soften, risked a gentle, teasing kiss. “Now is that settled? Can we eat?”

Suzanna nodded silently and smiled at him, and he gave into the impulse to tease her further, whispering in her ear, “Besides, I knew what you were missing....” She could feel that cocky grin on his face as he bit her earlobe and let her go.

“God, you’re impossible,” she groaned, casting her eyes about the room for something to put on while she ate.

“Here, I’ll trade,” Jack offered, holding out his shirt and taking the sheet from her, wrapping it around his waist. “Here we are. Very South Seas, I look now,” he commented, swirling left and right for her to appreciate. And appreciate she did. She breathed in Jack’s smell as she wrapped his shirt around her, buttoning a few more buttons than Jack usually did. She took the water with her into the privy to wash up and came back to the table.

Hobbs’ Knobs, she looked fantastic in that shirt, Jack thought. That should be all she ever wears, with her hair all wild like that, and he reached out to slide his hand up her thigh to her hip. Before he could get further, she brandished a chicken leg at him to fend him off, with quite excellent form, come to think of it, and he put up both hands dramatically as if facing the sharpest cutlass.

“Remember not to come between this woman and food when she’s hungry,” he said to himself out loud.

“Impossible,” Suzanna murmured between bites.

He let her eat for a while and helped himself while he was at it. “Actually quite possible, as I’d have thought you noticed by now. Probable really, all things considered. In fact, more than probable, as I’ve no intention of letting you leave this room before tomorrow morning at the earliest.”

Living dangerously, Suzanna pulled her leg up exposing all of her thigh and leaned forward slightly, intending to continue their teasing. “Oh really, Captain? And just what…” She never got to finish that sentence. Jack moved like lightening and had her flat on her back on the bed with his mouth on her throat before she knew what happened. Oh right, she thought. Pirate.

********************

Now that Jack had at least introduced himself to the parts of her body he’d been obsessing about for weeks, it was time to explore some of the subtler longitudes. He started with her neck and shoulders. He loved this sweep of a place. All her elegance, her strength, her easy laugh, that hair—they all showed up right here. Her shoulders were just broad enough to be graceful and her collarbone prominent and perpetually begging to be kissed and nibbled at. Ummm, even better than almonds, he thought, and saltier at this point too. He covered her in kisses, nuzzles, nips, and bites. When he saw her at the jail in that dress this morning, even as she was negotiating for his release, half his mind kept returning to this. And how anxious he was to peel that dress off her.

He resisted her breasts for the moment, taking her hand in his and kissing at the point where wrist and arm met, much as he had that night when he’d first met her in the doorway. Suzanna obviously remembered it too, because she gave him a look that was both reminiscence and longing. His mustache and beard tickled the sensitive skin as his lips brushed along the underside of her arm, at her elbow, and at the junction of arm and body, and Suzanna couldn’t suppress a giggle. Jack burrowed here, nose nestling and teasing.

“Jack…ugh! I must smell like a pirate by now.” But he looked extremely content, continuing his journey just a few inches south, placing kisses in the curve next to her breast and then licking in a line underneath them.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that disparagement, although so long as I’m the only pirate you smell like, that’s alright. Actually, ye smell like a woman who’s been well loved...” then moving swiftly down to lick just at the top of her soft curls, earning a gasp, “and who’s ready for more.”

Words flew out of her head as Jack’s long, slow licks got her attention very focused. Her breath got very short, but then he was gone again, and she opened her eyes to find him pulling up pillows. She looked confused till he took hold of her hips and rolled her over on top of them.

He didn’t move for a minute, just curled his hands lightly around her hipbones, and Suzanna heard an audible sigh as he looked at her.

“There’s so much I’ve been wanting to see, and you don’t disappoint, luv. God, you’ve got a gorgeous arse.” His hands were moving now, kneading and coaxing and then sliding up the length of her back to her hair and back down again, over and over. It all felt intoxicating, but she still craved more.

“Jack!” she choked in anguish, half plea, half demand. He couldn’t resist that catch in her voice, and he moved to make things right. Suzanna felt stretched as tightly as she’d ever been and she didn’t know whether to cry or scream or what to do. Jack’s weight shifted forward as he worked his hand between her and the pillow, and then everything happened at once. Fingers finally where she needed them, he thrust into her and bit the back of her neck hard. The scream that ripped from her throat was as primal as anything Jack had ever heard, and all the control he’d had until now disappeared. There was no waiting for her to recover this time; he was relentless. Suzanna pushed up on her hands to gain purchase to thrust back against him, and she never stopped screaming until finally Jack’s voice was added to her own.

********************

“Jack, I think we’re going to have to get out and about this morning or cause a scandal.” Jack stared at her for a long moment, began with a chuckle, and was soon laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. He had a very wild look on his face.

“What?!” she asked, somewhat bewildered.

“I was just trying to think what you’d have to do on the Black Pearl to cause a scandal, and I’ve got some lovely images running through my mind I’m considerin’ for the future.” He looked truly lost in a fog of lascivious imaginings before she brought him back with a swat of her pillow.

“No, I don’t think you spending a day and night in my cabin is quite going to do it, luv. Now if you hadn’t ended up in my bed, that would have been a scandal I’d never have lived down.”

Suzanna glared at him, not particularly wanting to be reminded at the moment just how many women had been here before her.

“However there is one fair point. William and Elizabeth will probably be wanting some reassurance I’ve not played Othello to your Desdemona, seeing as I woo you with my tales of adventures. Now there’s a sad tale...”

Suzanna winced and looked rather appalled. “Who knows what they’ll have been imagining after us being in here all that time.” She sat up suddenly, and Jack dragged himself up to lean against her.

Jack grinned and shook his head slightly, setting beads and trinkets in motion as he wrapped his arm around her neck. He found himself both amused and amazed that she could be so sophisticated and sharp in all things but miss the obvious in this. “I don’t think there’ll be much imagining involved, luv. Neither you nor I are exactly what I’d call ‘silent runners.’ I imagine there’s no one on this ship doesn’t know exactly what we was doin’, how many times we did it, and how well we was enjoyin it.”

When all else failed, she tried to fall back on her sense of humor. “Well in that case, tell me is there any particular protocol one is to follow for throwing oneself overboard into…what do you call it, Davy Jones’s locker?”

Jack grinned again, both at her embarrassment and the humor she used to cover it up. That was a strategy he was familiar with. On his part, Jack was more than enjoying the fact that they had to have heard her screaming his name at the top of her lungs last night.... He was Captain Jack Sparrow for a reason, after all.

“Well, we could run out a plank for ye to walk, if you’d like,” he suggested, the arm around her neck tightening as his hand reached further down to tease her nipple. “But then that lets out on us doing anymore singing tonight for you to be embarrassed about tomorrow.” Suzanna pantomimed a look of much despair and let herself fall back on the bed as if she had been shot.

“So does that mean you’ll be getting dressed now then, or did you want me to join you down there?”

“I’m up.”

********************

Just before they left the cabin, a hesitant Suzanna dared ask a question that was pressing on her mind.

“Jack, I know there’ve been a lot of women, more than you can count, I’m sure.” Jack winced a bit. He’d rather hoped she wouldn’t be going this particular direction, and Suzanna desperately hoped she didn’t sound like some idiotic schoolgirl. “I can’t complain really, because I’m getting all the benefits of...all your years of study.” That earned her a grin, and she relaxed a little. “I’m just wondering if you think the crew’s going to look at me like some tart now, and if I’ve just undone all the work I’ve done to get them to like and take me seriously.”

“Well, there’s a few parts to that answer, luv. I’ve watched you talking to them and how your face lights up when they tell you about their lives, no matter what it is they’re saying. You treat them with respect. They love that you listen to them and take them seriously. There’s not a one of ’em hasn’t succumbed to those charms to some extent, and a few, I think, might have a run at me if they thought I was hurting ya. I’d kill ‘em of course, but still.

She had to smile a little at the fact he could joke about it like that and be serious at the same time.

”Also, I’m not in the habit of bringing women on board the Pearl. That’s always happened elsewhere, so it’s no one’s business but my own, and you’re not part of any...parade.”

Jack couldn’t help but see something was going on. Never since he’d met her had he seen her look even a little smaller than her larger-than-life personality, but it was in her eyes right now. He knew what she’d given him and he gave her back a gift of the truth. He took one hand in his, kissed her mouth, and leaned into her ear, planting kisses between words. “And I swear, luv...” kiss, “never before...” kiss, “quite like that...” kiss, “for me either.” With a last soft kiss at the hollow of her throat, he pulled her out the door. Only vaguely aware of her feet moving, Suzanna thought that if it was a lie, it was the nicest one she’d ever heard.