Her Pirate to Love: A Sam Steele Romance (13 page)

The heat only
got worse after the midday meal. Steele, like all the others, save Aidan, had shed his shirt, sash, and weapons. Anything that could be taken off was and still it wasn’t enough. His chest gleamed with sweat. The thick humidity ensured even the minimal breeze offered no relief.

He’d let Grace come on deck for a time but he’d worried the heat would be too much for her and had sent her back shortly afterward. It was slightly cooler in his cabin but he imagined by now the air would be stale as a month-old biscuit. Still, he selfishly preferred her below. When she’d been on deck he’d made all the men keep their shirts on and they’d been none too happy about it. Besides, when she was out of sight, she was slightly less on his mind. After listening to her breathe all night long, combined with the odd little snuffle noises he inexplicably found endearing, he needed her to be far more out of his mind than she was.

“Captain?”

He shook his head to clear it and looked at Aidan. “What?”

“You haven’t gone below in hours.” He reminded him.

“I will soon,” Steele promised.

Earlier, when he’d noticed his crew’s movements growing listless, he’d ordered them to take turns getting out of the sun. “You’ll be no good to me if you all end up sick from too much heat.” He’d commented.

It was a fact he’d learned the hard way the first time he’d set sail. He remembered the shivers, feeling hot one moment and as though he wouldn’t ever get warm again the next. He’d had a blooming headache and what little he’d had appetite for had refused to stay down. Since then, he’d always ensured the same never happened to him or his crew.

Steele wiped a trail of perspiration from his temple. “Have you gone?”

“I just came back. You didn’t notice when I came to get Carracks?”

A quick glance at the hook confirmed the bird was, indeed, gone. “No, I didn’t. But I suppose I should’ve noticed the lack of noise.”

Aidan dropped a hand onto Steele’s shoulder. “I’ve got the helm, Captain. Jacques has been with Grace for a time. He can come up and sweat along with the rest of us.”

Steele nodded. He’d order up another round of grog for everyone. With having looted Roche’s ship, and arriving in Santo Domingo within days, they could afford to be more generous than usual with supplies.

The galley was damp but at least it was out of the blessed sun. Steele helped himself to a cup of grog and sat heavily at the table.

He allowed himself ten minutes of silence and peace. His eyes and mouth felt as though they’d been washed in sand. While at first the galley had felt cooler, it didn’t take long for it, too, to become uncomfortably hot. Everything felt heavy, even raising himself off the chair seemed to take more effort, as though he suddenly weighed more.

“Damn heat,” he grumbled and poured more grog.

He debated for a moment between drinking it or pouring it over his head, but his dry throat won the war. Then, unsure how much Grace had had to drink, Steel poured her a mug as well. Just crossing the small distance between the hatches his skin felt as though it was being singed.

“Captain?” Aidan called.

“I’m taking this to Grace and I’ll send Jacques up. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“But—”

Irritable already, Steele just waved off his first mate. Whatever Aidan wanted could wait.

The cabin was every bit as stifling as the deck. Even the dust seemed too lethargic to bother to move. She was at the table, Carrack’s cage before her. Jacques had his head on the table, sleeping. So much for being a guard, if someone could walk in without Jacques waking. But then, he figured if Grace were to say anything the man would be awake in an instant. It was a skill all pirates had acquired in order to survive.

A fact proven when Steele stepped off the last rung and Carracks once again whistled. Jacques’ head snapped up and the pistol resting next to his head was suddenly in his hand and pointed at Steele.

“It’s only me,” he said.

Squawk.
“Only me. Only me.”

With no threat present, Jacques set the weapon back onto the table, rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Grace, however, remained still as stone. Her gaze had swung around at his entrance and it had yet to waver. Her face was flushed from the heat and her eyes seemed especially wide. Her mouth was parted as though she wanted to speak but couldn’t formulate the words.

Jacques stood and stretched. The sound of bones creaking was loud in the silence.

“You’re after relieving me, then?” he asked. At his captain’s nod, Jacques ambled stiffly to the ladder. “Thought we were all to keep our shirts on around her,” he muttered as he headed up on deck.

Steele glanced down, sighed and shook his head. So that was what Aidan had tried to tell him. He set the grog onto the table, veered left and pulled a shirt from his trunk. The cotton stuck to his damp skin, but it wasn’t what added to the already simmering heat. Grace’s attention remained fixed on him as he struggled to don the garment. For a brief moment he saw her tongue through her parted lips. His chest tightened as he watched her watch him. Part of him wanted to hurry up and get the damn shirt on, but another part wondered what would happen if he reversed the motion and took it off again.

The desire that had tormented him all night came rushing back. Steele turned his back, tugged the collar in place, ensuring the pendant was once again beneath the fabric, then decided it best all around if he didn’t tuck in his shirt. It would better mask…things.

He could understand his response to her fixation on his nakedness, but, surely, his wasn’t the first bare chest she’d laid eyes on. And why did the truth make him want to snarl? It shouldn’t matter if she’d seen a hundred naked men before, as he had no intention of acting on his desires. She deserved better than a tussle in his bed and he had no intention of offering more.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he turned around. “It’s so blasted hot and I’d forgotten I’d taken my shirt off.”

The flush had yet to fade from her face, but her fascination with his chest was clearly over as she was looking everywhere but at it. “I don’t blame you. If I could, I’d be taking me shirt off as well.”

Her mouth formed a wide circle before she clapped both palms over it. If he’d thought her eyes wide before, it was nothing to what they were now. And he was damn glad his shirt covered him. The thought of Grace without anything covering her ample cleavage had his penis straining against his pants.

Steele hurried to a chair and dropped into it.

“I didn’t mean—I don’t want—”

He held up his hand. “I know what you meant.” And yet he couldn’t help feeling disappointed he wouldn’t be seeing her naked breasts.

“Oh. Good.”

Silence then weighed as heavily as the heat. Since Catherine’s death, Steele hadn’t been a man of conversation and he had no idea what to say now. Besides, his mind was stubbornly stuck on the idea of Grace’s naked breasts. They avoided looking at each other but as their glances shifted from one object around the cabin to the other, inevitably their eyes met.

Minutes stretched. Steele shifted in his chair. Grace tapped her fingers on the table. Soon, he was wishing the blasted bird would say something. Anything.

Her skin shone with so fine a sheen it could have been dew. Small wisps of hair at the nape of her neck clung to her damp skin. He envisioned lifting those strands and kissing her heated skin. When she lifted the thick braid from her shoulders, unknowingly raising her breasts at the same time, he couldn’t help himself. He stared hungrily at the creamy flesh spilling over the ties of his borrowed shirt. Steele had a feeling he could drink a cask of grog and his throat would remain dry and achy.

Grace lowered her arms, sighed. She grabbed a book she must have taken off his shelf and began to fan herself with it. Hell. He didn’t know if she was getting any relief but he sure as blazes wasn’t. Her movements caused her breasts to jiggle and Steele’s vision filled with images. Images of her riding him, his hands full of silken flesh as their bodies came together.

Goddamn, he needed to reign in his thoughts or soon even the table wouldn’t be able to hide his desire. But she was making it impossible. As he stared at her, a bead of perspiration slid down her neck and slipped into the valley between her breasts. It must have tickled as Grace, with one of her hands still waving the book before her face, dipped the other inside the shirt. Watching her touch her breasts, even as innocently as to wipe away sweat, had Steele forgetting to breathe. His groin hardened until it was almost painful.

But it wasn’t until she raised her eyes to his, her hand still on her bosom that Steele snapped.

He shoved back from the table. “There’s something I need to see to.”

She whipped her hand from the shirt but the damage was done. He was burning and hard and, damn it, he just needed to get out of there.

“Can I be going as well?”

Steele stopped dead, fought the impulse to bang his head against the support post at the base of the ladder. The point had been to get away from her.

“’Tis hot down here. Sure and ’tis no cooler above but a wind, any wind, has to be better than this stifling heat.”

He couldn’t deny her or her words. But having her on deck, doing what she’d just done? Hell, he’d have a mutiny for sure.

“You can come up, Grace, under one condition.”

Steele rubbed a hand down his beard then across the back of his neck. His hand came away drenched.

“That thing you just did. You can’t do it in front of the men.”

Her hand immediately went to her bosom but then remembering, she dropped it. Her cheeks glowed pink. Damn it, why couldn’t he have rescued a troll?

“I didn’t mean—”

Steele sighed, closed his eyes. “I know.”

She didn’t mean to tease or be seductive. She didn’t set out to be alluring and desirable. Apparently those traits just came naturally to her and it was up to him not to respond.

Sure, he thought as he led the way up the ladder. There was about as much chance of that happening as the Caribbean Sea suddenly turning to ice.

*

“It’s hotter than
the pits of hell out here, Captain,” Smoky grumbled.

“I know it, but put your shirt on anyway.” To prove his point, Steele grabbed his crewman’s garment from the cannon he’d dropped it on and tossed it at him.

Steele wasn’t any happier about having a shirt on either. It stuck to his chest, his back. If he could, he’d rub against the mast to crush the itch gnawing dead center of his back. His hair stuck to his neck and temples. The blazing sun felt like it was cooking the skin beneath his beard. Heat rose off the deck in shimmering waves. With the breeze nothing more than nature’s hot exhale, relief was nowhere to be found.

“If you kept her below, this wouldn’t be necessary.”

“She’s not a prisoner, Smoky.”

“She could be,” he muttered though he yanked his shirt over his head.

Yes, and wouldn’t it be easier for them all
. He ducked below and around rigging lines tossing back the shirts his men had haphazardly discarded on the deck and over the guns. Considering the red skin already singeing most of their shoulders, he took their complaints lightly. Come morning, they’d thank him for not having worse burns.

After much grumbling, cussing, and snarling, the crew donned their garments. All but Aidan who, no matter the temperature, never went without a shirt.

It didn’t take much time at all to circle the deck but, by the time Steele made it back to the quarterdeck, he could have wrung a gallon of fluid from his shirt. Taking the helm back from Aidan, Steele kept his arms high on the wheel simply to keep them from rubbing at his sides and adding yet another layer of heat. He couldn’t stand to have anything near and if something didn’t change soon he wouldn’t be able to stand his own stench much longer. He was starting to think he’d done Isaac a favor by—

“Hell, why didn’t I think of it before?” The heat must have cooked his brain.

He pulled out his looking glass, adjusted for his eye. Off the starboard side, miles ahead if the speck of brown was any indication, lay just what he and his crew needed. Sometimes a spit of land wasn’t punishment; sometimes it was an oasis.

Unfortunately, knowing what he was going to do once there, Steele knew for him, it was going to be both.

E
xcitement saturated the
air. It rang with cheers, songs, and playful squabbles as sailors shoved for their turn down the ladder. From her vantage point on the quarterdeck, Grace leaned against the gunwale, chuckling as men leapt into the water from various positions on the rungs. Before Aidan had gone over, he’d explained that since Steele’s sloop had a shallow draft, it could anchor in shallower waters. Jumping from the top of the gunwale could get someone killed.

From where she stood the greenish-blue water didn’t appear more than ankle deep. There wasn’t a rock to be seen in it either, nothing but a sandy bottom and a gentle current. However, since the men’s legs were circling to keep them afloat, she knew it was deeper than it seemed.