She told herself this in no uncertain terms. But within her, mistrust of her own thoughts wound its way about her heart. She smoothed her palm across his flat, hard belly damp with sweat. He seemed to hold his breath, then release it gradually. Viola felt life beneath his skin, the thrum of fiber and flesh, and her heart fluttered.

She swallowed around the prickly sensation in her throat, steeling her voice. “You should leave, you know.”

“I should.” A pause. “Are you ordering me out of this cabin or off the ship?”

The shutter creaked in a finger of hot, tropical air, the nighttime calls of Kabrit bwa thick in the trees reaching out into the harbor, mingling with the gentle lap of water.

“I am winning,” she whispered. “You are falling in love with me.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“But I am winning. And when I do, I will have your new boat and you will go back to wherever you came from and leave me alone.”

He pulled from under her and reversed their positions so swiftly she stared wide-eyed up at him, no time to mask her surprise from the moonlight. His hands surrounded her face; big hands, strong. He spoke looking into her eyes.

“Get this through your hard head now, Viola Carlyle. I will not leave without you.”

Her heart lodged in her throat. “You will be obliged to.”

“I will take you home whether you wish it or not.”

“You will lose, Seton. You are losing already.”

He regarded her for a long moment. Then he did the entirely unexpected. He bent and kissed her, a warm, wonderful kiss intended to please, as though the wager were reversed and he was trying to make her fall in love with him. And it did please.

He drew away, gazed at her for another moment, then released her and lay back.

“Now go to sleep, harpy.”

“Don’t give me orders.”

He chuckled quietly.

He did not hold her now. But he did not leave.

Chapter 15

“Blast!”

The drawing-knife clattered to the dock. Jin snatched his hand from the small boat’s gudgeon and slid off its overturned hull. Blood welled from his palm, a long, thin line corner to corner. “Blast.” But it served him right for allowing a sleepless night.

Allowing.

Little Billy sent him a curious glance from the yawl’s bow.

“Take care, Cap’n. She’s a sharp ’un.”

Jin passed his good hand over his face, then gripped his neck, staring at the crimson on the other as it gathered in the indent, barely feeling the pain. Late-morning sun shone sultry upon the wharf and water slapping at the sides of the vessel before them. Weeks earlier, just as now, he had looked up at the April Storm and made a terrible mistake imagining he could easily corral a woman like Viola Carlyle. She was not a female to go placidly. Even her lovemaking shouted defiance.

The night’s heavy heat had dissipated upon a northerly wind. Caps of white tipped the swells far beyond the docks and the breeze grabbed at furled sails, jingling lines. If this wind held through the week, they would set a good pace toward England.

One more day. He believed her honest if not entirely sane. However reluctantly, she would leave this when he told her she must-when he told her what he must to secure his goal of returning a lady home. A lady he’d had no business making love to.

A carroty head appeared at his elbow.

“Best patch that up, sir.” The cabin boy glanced down at the droplets of blood staining the dock.

“Thank you, Gui. I shall.”

The lad’s face lacked its typical animation. Sailors had straggled back to the ship all morning, tails between their legs. Chastened dogs that had displeased their master.

The back of Jin’s neck was hot. Men should not be reduced to this. Damn it, they were on furlough, yet each had apologized to him for allowing the arsonists to escape. The spell she held over them was bewitchment. Now they all worked at minor tasks as though they were priming the April Storm for sea rather than simply moving her to anchor in the harbor. While Jin stood with his feet braced wide on the planking of the dock, and bled.

He swiped off his neck cloth and bound it about his hand.

“Sure’s a nasty scrape,” Gui piped.

“Cap’n ain’t normally clumsy,” Billy supplied with his usual good humor. “Reckon he didn’t get no sleep last night, what with the excitement and all.” He broke a toothy grin. “Never catch a wink myself after a battle.”

Jin gripped his fist around the linen. He should not have succumbed to her. Not to a strong-willed armful of heat and determination. But also a woman with a wounded heart, and he had taken advantage of that.

Not his finest hour.

She had imagined he pitied her. He tugged the cloth tight, giving himself pain now and gritting his teeth against it. No pity involved, not toward that hellion harpy. Only the need to erase the hurt and confusion from her wide violet eyes. And lust. Barrels of it, not slaked even now. Her mouth, her hands, her strong shapely legs… The very thought of her primed his body. And her voice, her rich, soft cries of pleasure…

He swallowed and blinked hard.

“Cap’n? You all right there?”

“Fix that rudder into the gudgeon,” he barked.

He wished he were merely bewitched. But this was something more, much more that he did not wish to consider-could not consider. A man whose wrists bore scars from iron shackles was no match for a lady who by her blood and birth belonged in London ballrooms, however far she had fallen from that state. He would see her restored to that life, and see his debt repaid. Nothing-not her stubbornness nor his desire-would stand in the way of that.

He bent to their task anew, but blood saturated the cravat and his hand slipped again. “Damn and blast.”

“You don’t want to cuss like that.” The voice behind him was smooth as satin.

She wore sailor’s clothing again, her usual heavy coat and broad hat, not the tattered gown he had hastily removed to touch the skin beneath. Yet in his impatience to be inside her again he had never removed her undergarment, and now his imagination beset him like a callow lad. His hands knew that she would be beautiful to the eye.

Her lips curved into the barest smile.

“Billy, Gui,” he said, “go now.”

The boys obeyed.

He rewrapped the linen about his palm. “How did your appointment pass?”

“That’s a great deal of blood. You should see to that.”

“What did the harbormaster say?”

“I have oil and bandages in my-”

“Blast it, woman, answer me.”

“I don’t take orders. And I’ll do nothing until you allow me to dress that properly.” She glanced at the drawing-knife. “Did you cut it on that old thing? It could fester in an instant. You will lose your hand.” His hand that even now wished to trace the slope of her cheek lit by the sun, to explore again the body that had been his to touch in the dark.

He returned to his work. “Then I shall have a hook installed in its place to frighten off pestering females.”

She set her fists on her sweet hips, the breeze catching up her tresses and fluttering them about her face and shoulders.

“You’re in a wretched mood.” She chuckled. “Didn’t you sleep?”

“Your snoring wakened me.” He sounded waspish. Not his finest self by far, but she brought out the worst in him. And the lust-driven Bedlamite. Her eyes bespoke tangled bedclothes and limbs, and her lips… Jin’s vision fogged again imagining those lips wrapped around his-

“I don’t snore.”

“You do,” he snapped, unraveled. “What? Has no other man ever mustered the courage to tell Violet la Vile that she snores like a drunken dockworker?” He released the line and moved toward the gangway.

“No other man has ever been present while I’m sleeping.”

He halted. “I don’t believe it.”

“Cur.”

“Ever?”

Her nostrils flared.

Jin’s pulse skittered, cold and metallic like the panic he’d felt the night before when for a moment he believed he had taken her maidenhead. He tamped it down.

“Of course not.” He forced a derisive laugh. “That would be like a lord allowing his valet to watch him sleep, wouldn’t it? Mustn’t allow the minions to see you vulnerable. Or rather, acolytes.” Or a former slave whose first master had called him an animal because of the violence he’d seen in him-the nature that could not be tamed.

“You are a prize boor,” she grumbled.

He strode up the gangplank, away from her, his head spinning. But the insane desire pressed at him to return to her and tell her the truth-that he had never felt a woman’s touch like hers-that it had never proven difficult to leave a woman’s bed until hers.

She had allowed him to see her sleep.

When he’d awoken before dawn he watched her shallow breathing, her full lips and the tilt of her chin, her lovely features peaceful, soft in slumber. But she was not his to hold, and without taking again that which he wished from her, he had torn himself away.

Now her footsteps followed him.

“You must come with me to the harbormaster’s office. I told him I could be trusted to provide the money in time, but he didn’t believe me. Only your name got his attention. It seems your reputation precedes you. Not a poor reputation in English ports, apparently.”

He pivoted. “Why is it that I once more find myself obliged to remind you that I hold a commission from the Royal Navy?”

She stepped close, nearly as close as that first day when he was a prisoner aboard her ship, nearly as close as the night before. She swept her dark gaze over him.

“I’ll admit it’s difficult to believe. That a man like you would agree so easily to be bound seems improbable.” A question lit her eyes; its meaning seemed more than the words she spoke. Jin’s heart pounded. This could not be. He was not intended for her, not even to satisfy a temporary desire. She was intended for more.