“Stop what?” I purred, swishing my hand around in the water to distribute the oil. I bit my lower lip, running my tongue along it with much deliberation.
“That! Stop licking your lips! It’s driving me wild. I want to do it.”
I stood up and tugged on the laces of my bodice. “That’s the idea, handsome.” He started toward me. I held up a hand to stop him. “You have to be naked and wet first.”
If there was a land-speed record for disrobing, I’m willing to bet Corbin came close to breaking it. One moment he was standing there dressed in his breeches, shirt, and jerkin; the next there was a lemon-scented splash as he flung himself into the tub. “Done. Now, bring those lips here, wench.”
“That’s Captain Wench to you, me bucko,” I said, shucking my striped knickers, underwear, and bodice until I was clad only in my loose linen shirt. I grabbed a sea sponge and a round ball of soap, kneeling next to the tub. Corbin reached for me again, but I put a hand on his damp chest and held him back. “Hang on, let me look at your wound.”
“It’s almost healed,” he told me as I leaned close to his belly to give the injury a long look. “No blood poisoning, as you were predicting. I think the stitches could come out, as a matter of fact.”
I gently prodded the area around the stitches. I had to admit, he was right—it was almost healed. Bless the game’s accelerated healing. “Yeah, I think you’re right about the stitches. I’ll take them out now.”
He leaned back while I gently snipped the threads with a tiny pocket knife, carefully removing them.
“You’re sure this isn’t just an excuse to ogle my manly chest?”
“Shh. Delicate work here. Your stomach moves when you talk, and I don’t want to accidently poke you by mistake.” He was silent while I picked the last of the threads off, smiling when I folded up the knife and tossed it back onto his desk. “I wish things healed this well and this fast in real life. And for the record, I never predicted blood poisoning. I was just worried about it, but this looks wonderful. It’s not giving you any pain or discomfort?”
He wrapped both arms around me and swung me over the edge of the tub. I shrieked as I landed with a splash on his slippery wet thighs. “Would I be able to do that if it was giving me pain?”
“No, I suppose not, although now my shirt is wet,” I said, looking down at myself. The thin linen was plastered to my skin, leaving every morsel of me clearly visible.
Corbin slid his hands up my stomach to cup my breasts, his thumbs rubbing gentle circles on my hardening nipples. “I wonder if real pirates did this. The original wet T-shirt contest.”
I gasped when he leaned forward and took one of my aching breasts in his mouth, sucking it through the wet material of the shirt. His teeth scraped along my nipple, sending little streaks of molten desire through my veins, leaving me shivering even though my internal temperature seemed to have risen at least a hundred degrees.
“I’m supposed to . . . I’m supposed to . . . oh, my God, Corbin. Do that again!”
He did it again, to my eagerly awaiting second breast, then carefully peeled the wet shirt off me and threw it carelessly toward the bed. I clutched his shoulders as his fingers slid down my spread thighs, the oil in the water adding a friction that made his normally arousing touch something so erotic, I trembled on the verge of an orgasm. “You’re supposed to what, sweetheart?”
“I’m supposed to be bathing you,” I yelped as his fingers turned inward, laying open all my secrets, probing, teasing, tormenting me with little touches and circular sweeps of his thumb that just about had me bursting into song.
“You can have your turn with me in just a—” One long finger sank into me, causing muscles I didn’t know were there to go wild tightening around him. One last sweep of his thumb was all it took, and I was off flying, my body and mind and soul singing a song of happiness and completion . . . and love. My back arched as I shouted out his name, aware of nothing but how much a part of me he was.
“—minute,” he finished. I collapsed on his chest, my heart racing. He chuckled as he nuzzled my neck, nipping at my earlobe. “You’re not going to go to sleep on me, are you?”
I pushed myself back, toyed with the idea of giving him an outraged glare at such a ludicrous idea, but decided a wicked smile was much more fun. I smiled. Wickedly. “Mock me, will you, mortal man? Oh, ye of little faith. Prepare to repent such unjust thoughts.”
“I warn you, it’s going to take some serious work to make me repent,” he said, his hands heading for my breasts. The impudent little hussies thrust themselves in his hands for a moment or two, then I slid back along his legs until my chest was resting on his groin.
“I’m not afraid of a little hard work. I think I’ll start by kissing your owie and making it better,” I said, deliberately moving forward so his penis—standing very much at attention—was caught between my breasts. He sucked in approximately half the roomful of air as I tightened my arms, effectively capturing him in a breasty grip. I flicked my tongue over an area to the left of his wound, not actually touching it, but licking off the lemon oil from the surrounding area.
Corbin’s eyes crossed and his head lolled back, his hands limp on the edge of the tub as I started a little back-and-forth motion that had him sliding along my breastbone. He wasn’t the only one who was affected by the erotic silk of the oil and water—the feel of his slick legs against my sensitive breasts was quickly building a familiar pressure deep inside me.
I swirled my tongue around his belly button, noting that he watched hopefully as I nipped my way over to his hip. The water reached just below his belly button, but he shifted so a good portion of his happy seven inches was above water.
I flicked the tip of it with my tongue. His knuckles turned white on the rim of the tub as I got my hands into the action.
His hips bucked as I licked a serpentine path along the length of his arousal, enjoying both the taste and feel of him as I used the oily water to find a rhythm that had him gasping in sheer delight.
“Now!” he demanded as he dragged me up his chest, spreading my legs so my knees were straddling his hips.
I gave a little wiggle. His oil-slicked length slid along all sorts of my newly discovered sensitive nerve endings. “Do you repent?”
“Yes, yes, dear God, yes! I repent! Of everything!”
I smiled as he pulled my hips forward, my body singing a hallelujah chorus as he pushed his way in. His hands slid up my slick back, one hand on the back of my neck, pulling me forward until his mouth possessed mine. He groaned into my mouth as I started moving on him, slowly at first, but soon the feeling of his body sliding along and in and around mine pushed me to a point where I was moving fast and hard on him.
His eyes turned to liquid silver as an orgasm claimed him. I had just enough presence of mind before my own consumed me to kiss him as he shouted out his love. Without thought, I whispered what was in my heart, collapsing on him, leaving us a tangle of lemon-scented, wet body parts, both of us gasping for air, our hearts racing in a similar rhythm.
We didn’t wait for anyone to drain and carry out the tub before staggering to bed. As I snuggled into Corbin, my limbs boneless and heavy, I double-checked that our activities hadn’t stressed his wound in any way, then kissed his chin and wrapped my arms around him with a happy, tired sigh.
He pulled me even closer, arranged my legs so that one of his was resting between mine, and kissed my ear.
“Amy?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you know what you said? At the end?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Ten seconds passed. “And?”
“Corbin, I’m warm, sleepy, and sated,” I said, pressing a kiss against his neck. “Too warm, sleepy, and sated to deal with anything but rest.”
He was silent for so long I thought he’d gone to sleep. “You said you loved me.”
I bit his shoulder.
“Ow.”
I smiled, but he didn’t see it.
br /> “Amy?”
“Mmm?”
“You’re going to have to face your feelings some time.”
“I know.”
More silence. His breathing slowed and deepened. I relaxed, my breathing matching his.
“I love you, too, sweetheart,” he said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest.
I didn’t say anything to that, but I snuggled into him even more, listening with pleasure to the reassuring steady thud of his heart beneath my ear.
Chapter 22
For your foes are fierce and ruthless,
False, unmerciful, and truthless. . . .
—Ibid, Act II
“You, sir, are a poop.”
“I may be, but you love me. You, madam, love a poop.”
I glared at the man who alternately made my heart soar with joy and left me with an almost overpowering urge to throttle him. “We are not discussing personal things like emotions and who loves whom, although I’d like to point out that you declared your love for me first.”
“Keeping score, are you?” he teased.
“No. But it makes me go all warm and fuzzy that I didn’t have to pry it out of you. Back to the subject at hand—bringing an end to the blockade and providing supplies to my poor, starving townsfolk.”
Corbin leaned back in one of the chairs in Bart’s library, steepled his fingers, and tapped his chin with them. “No one in town looked to me to be particularly poor or starving. And I don’t deny in the least that I was in love with you before you finally decided to reciprocate. I’m a man. I’m superior that way.”
“I didn’t decide to reciprocate; it just happened,” I said, getting up from the big desk and marching over to stand in front of him. “And superior, my butt.”
He leaned sideways to look around at my backside. “Yes, it is, but you’re changing the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject; you are! I’m trying to bring an end to these stupid hostilities, and you keep distracting me with talk about our relationship.”
His eyebrows rose a hair. “I thought women liked to talk about relationships.”
“We do, but not all the time. Now, if you’re through discussing whether I may or may not love you—”
“Oh, you love me,” he said with a self-satisfied smile. I wanted to kiss it right off his face.
“—then perhaps we can move beyond these transparent attempts to distract me and get to the meat of the problem.”
“Your desire to repress your emotions?” he asked.
“Argh!” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air. “I am not repressing anything other than possibly the urge to wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze.”
“I’d rather you wrapped your hands around something else and squeezed,” he said with a wink. “Ever heard the ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’? There’s a line in there I think you’ll like: ‘Squeeze my lemon ’til the juice runs down my leg.’ ”
“Corbin!” I yelled, frustrated near to the breaking point.
“What?” he asked, an innocent look on his face that didn’t fool me in the least. “Don’t like the blues?”
“Argh!” I yelled again. “I don’t know whether to have you thrown off the island and never see you again, or rip off all your clothing and make wild bunny love to you.”
“There’s a fine line between love and hate,” he said placidly, then started laughing when I yelled a third time. “All right, sweetheart, I’ll stop, but you make it so easy for me.”
I glared at him. He held up his hands and promised to be good.
“That has never been in question,” I said, going back around the desk to reclaim my seat. I picked up the pre-sharpened quill and dipped it in the inkwell, trying to write without leaving huge black blotches and smears. “Now, I’m going to write up a statement that says you relinquish all claims on Turtle’s Back, then we can both sign it, and the blockade can end.”
“I’m not going to sign any such thing,” Corbin said pleasantly.
I looked up from the parchment. “You’re not?”
“No.”
“But you said you’d stop the blockade.”
“I said I’d come here and discuss an end to the blockade, yes. I never agreed to forgo my intentions to take Turtle away from Bart.”
“But he’s not here. I am,” I pointed out.
“Yes, you are now, but what if he was to come back? Would you fight him for control of the island?”
The serious mien of Corbin’s face told me he was in deadly earnest about this subject. I decided that the time had come to get a few things straight.
“No, I wouldn’t fight him for control. He left me in charge until he returned. It’s understood I would hand back the reins at such time as he comes back.”
“As I thought.” His fingers drummed on the arm of the chair. “And what about the mine?”
“The emerald mine?” I asked, a dull feeling cramping my stomach. I knew that money was the motivation for almost everyone in the game—the acquisition of it and the spending of it—but I had assumed that Corbin had endless resources as the game’s creator, and thus must be above such mundane things as acquiring wealth.
He nodded.
“Well, I talked to the town leaders about it, and they said it had been closed down a short while ago.”
“And?” he asked, his eyes burning on mine. I frowned, unsure what the intensity of his gaze meant. “What do you intend to do about it?”
“The mayor says that the mine brought prosperity to the island. I thought it would be good if it was reopened. This island has few natural resources and can’t even support the small population that’s here now. It just makes sense to use—after a detailed environmental impact assessment, naturally—the resources available. Within reason, of course. I certainly wouldn’t support any practice that provided the wholesale destruction of valuable resources and commodities.”
“You wouldn’t?” Corbin asked, a steely note in his voice. “Valuable resources such as, oh, say, people?”
“Huh?” The quill had dripped a big black inky blotch on the parchment. I set it down and gave Corbin a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? What people?”
“Try the sixty-five men that Bart sacrificed to his greed,” Corbin answered, his words sending a chill down my arms.
“Sixty-five men?”
“Surely you knew about that? Or has his stranglehold on this island precluded even the mention of the murder of sixty-five members of his crew?”
The chill swept up my arms to my back, making the skin on the back of my neck tighten with horror. “What are you talking about? Bart didn’t murder his crew—you did.”
It was Corbin’s turn to look stunned. “I what?”
“Well . . . murder might be a bit harsh since everyone died in battle, but it was your ships that destroyed them. Pangloss told me all about how you tried to take Turtle’s Back and lured Bart’s men around to the other side of the island where you had set up a trap.”
The look on his face was indescribable, but it made my heart wrench regardless. “You think I killed Bart’s crew? You really believe I’m capable of something like that?”
“It’s not a matter of capable, Corbin. They’re computer people—I knew you knew that, so I figured either you were testing out a function of the game, or you got a little too much into the role of scourge of the Seventh Sea. Are you telling me you didn’t kill Bart’s crew?”
“No, I did not kill them.” His eyes flashed as he jumped out of the chair, pacing the length of the room before turning and marching over to me. He leaned across the desk until his face was an inch from mine. “When Bart discovered that emeralds were the only thing this island produced, he started mining for them without any sort of expert help. And yes, before you ask, we did program in mining experts. They are expensive, though, so a player needs to have a good resource base to use them. But Bart didn’t. He sent team after team into the mines, regardless of their safety, all in the name o
f his desire for wealth. But one day his dreams came crashing down . . . along with the roof of the main shaft in the mine, killing all sixty-five members of his crew that he’d forced to dig emeralds.”
“Oh, my God,” I said, my stomach twisting in a sick ball. “How could that happen? It’s just a game—”
“An extremely complex game with literally hundreds of thousands of variables programmed for almost every eventuality. And since I believed that Bart was a computer player, I didn’t think anything of it at the time other than noting that his character chose to ignore a possible option for great wealth. But now I wonder if Paul hadn’t taken over Bart’s character right from the start. Disregarding the welfare of others seems very much his modus operandi.”
That I could believe.
“There was no battle between us, Amy. No luring, no trap, no honorable death for that matter—just a bunch of innocent people sacrificed to one man’s greed.”
“But . . . but Pangloss said . . . oh, God, he lied to me? He said he was off foraging for food that day.”
Corbin frowned. “The characters can mislead, but only a few can outright lie, and from what I recall of him, he’s not one of them. It’s possible that Bart lied to him about what happened, hiding the truth behind a story of an attack that killed everyone. That would explain the lack of bodies.”
“But . . . people would notice!”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. If he wanted to remain in charge, Bart may well have covered up the origins of his crew’s deaths—the loss of the crew to an attack by a feared pirate would bring the survivors together in a desire for vengeance, rather than setting them at his throat. I didn’t say anything about it because I was curious to see how the scenario would play out.”
I slumped back in my chair, having some trouble readjusting my mental impression of men I’d trusted. “I suppose it makes sense that Bart would hide it. Especially if he really is Paul, and not a computer player. Although I can’t believe that even Paul would be so . . . so . . . heinous as to sacrifice his crew like that.”
“Believe it,” he said grimly, going over to a leaded window to look out at the sea beyond the edge of the cliff. “You seem to have no trouble believing I was capable of doing the same thing.”