“No one, Master.” He had given her strict instructions to touch no man but to wait for him. Had he forgotten? Sometimes he did, and then she would be punished for laziness. “I await your every desire.”

“Fucking right you do.” His mouth curled around the cigar as he puffed. “You came out here to think about your mother.”

She started to reach for her throat before she controlled the impulse. “No, Master. I was waiting for you to return.”

“I can smell your tears, you lying bitch.”

Werren’s gaze went to the cigar; he’d used one just like it to torture her after one of the men had gone missing. “Yes, Master, I lied. I was thinking of her.”

“Then we should pay a visit to her hovel.”

No argument would sway him, so Werren closed her eyes. When she opened them, the present had become the past, and she and Dutch stood in the tiny, one-room cottage of her childhood. Every detail was absolutely correct, from the crude cross fashioned of twigs and twine hanging over the door to the squat shape of the blackened three-legged pot standing over the cold, dark hearth.

“It baffles me, to see this dung heap from which you sprang.” Dutch strode around the room. “Did the duke tup her here, on the rushes, or did he call her up to the main house?”

“I can’t say, Master.” Werren picked up one of her few playthings, a torn linen napkin that had been mended and knotted into the shape of a hare. The material had been so fine she would sleep with it tucked against her cheek. “I imagine after I was born he stopped using her.”

“No, he used her here, in the dirt and the filth.” Dutch caught her arm, jerking her over to the rough-hewn table where she and her mother had taken their meals of bread and kitchen scraps. “It’s where all you greedy trollops belong.” He shoved her down face-first onto the pitted, scarred wood and held her there by the nape of her neck. “Isn’t it, Duchess?”

“Yes, Master.”

He crouched down to whisper beside her ear, “Admit it. You watched them going at it. That’s why you crave it so much.”

“Yes.” Werren had no memory of seeing Magda with anyone except the undertaker, who had only touched her to search her nightclothes for valuables before removing her corpse from the cottage. “I did watch them.”

“What are you waiting for? Hoist your skirts.”

Werren reached down and slowly pulled up the voluminous material, baring her buttocks, thighs, and stockings.

Dutch kicked her feet apart with his foot and reached down to release the front of his trousers. “Been thinking about it, haven’t you?”

“All night, Master.” It was the truth. She’d been dreading this moment for hours. Not for the rough, painful ram of his entry into her body, nor the grunting sound of his pleasure as he pushed in to his root. It was the awful warmth that spread from his hand like a fever, burning down her throat and pooling in her breasts, sucking at her will until it swallowed it whole.

She had never once wanted him, but he forced her to feel whatever he desired. For now it was longing and need; in another moment it might be revulsion and agony.

Dutch’s power streamed through Werren, lifting her hips, undulating in time with his thrusts, and moving her hand down between her thighs. One of his favorite ways of humiliating her was to bring her to the very edge before spewing himself inside her and then pulling back his possession of her senses, leaving her without relief.

“You were listening to me and the Italians,” Dutch accused, pumping into her harder. “Do you know there is another like me, this Lucan of Alenfar? He is searching for my emeralds, too. What do you think of that?”

Werren had to pant her reply. “Do you wish me to go to him, and find out what he knows?”

“You could never get past his guards.” Dutch leaned close. “As if you’d risk your neck for me?”

“I would do anything for you.” It sickened her to say such things, but he expected it. “My ladies and I have no way to make a place for ourselves in the world. Without you to care for us, we would die.”

Dutch grunted, shuddering and jerking as he had his pleasure.

Werren remained where she was until her master withdrew from her body and shoved her away. Then slowly she stood, rearranging her skirts and ignoring the wetness between her thighs. “Thank you, Master.”

Chapter 7

Jamys felt the approaching dawn, and looked down at the girl sleeping in his arms. Chris had barely stirred, but the color had gradually returned to her face, and the tenor of her breathing told him that she was in a deep sleep that would last for several more hours.

Spending much of the last three years training or retiring alone to his tower chambers had sometimes made Jamys wonder if he was fit to share his life with so fragile a creature. He’d meant only to guard his heart, but instead he had retreated from every reminder of the happiness that might someday be his. As much as he cared for his father and stepmother, the effortless manner with which they displayed their love had been a constant, grinding reminder of how alone he was. How many times had he turned away from seeing Thierry weaving a strand of his stepmother’s dark hair through his fingers, or Jema sidling against his father, as content as a sleepy cat?

Now he realized it had been more envy than despair. He’d wanted what Thierry and Jema shared for himself, with his own woman, his own wife. Only one would do, and yet would not do, for his dream was Christian, and Christian was mortal. She could no more share his eternal life than a butterfly could mate with a spider.

Some of the Kyn took human women to wife and loved them as fiercely as they would a Kyn sygkenis, but Jamys couldn’t even assume Christian would want to be his. The hopelessness of not knowing what she might desire had gnawed at him constantly. Would she prefer a mortal husband, one who could give her children and grow old with her? What if the thought of giving herself and her heart to a Kyn male repelled her?

He was no hulking, muscle-bound warrior; even with the physical changes training had wrought, he’d never look older or more commanding. Without the reward for finding the gems, he wasn’t even sure what he could offer Christian, and feared what he might subject her to instead. What if the darkness inside him, with which he had lived since his mother’s betrayal, prevented him from ever giving her what she needed?

Now she lay beside him, her soft breaths caressing his skin, her small hand resting against his chest, and he had never felt so right with the world. She fit him as beautifully and naturally as if she had been born a part of his body; like some phantom limb he had lost long ago and forgotten until now.

The scent of her skin and the pulse of her blood beneath it distracted him from his nobler thoughts, and drew his hand to the buttons of her blouse. The garment looked too restricting for comfort, or so he told himself as he released the pearly button over her collarbones. Her thin skin felt as smooth and warm as a brushed kiss against his fingertips, and he slipped free a second button, and then a third. A few inches of silver chain glittered, and he used it to gently tug the old cross free of her garments.

The cross was older than she; older than any he had ever seen in the possession of a mortal. The silver used to fashion it had been hammered, not cast, and the maker’s hand had coaxed hair-thin strands into impossibly complicated Celtic knots. In the center of the cross a small cabochon of milky quartz glowed, serene as moonlight save for a single dark green flaw at its heart. The pendant gleamed from the care she had taken to clean and polish it, so it was obviously precious to her, but she wore it hidden beneath her garments, as if it were something secret or shameful.

As Jamys released the pendant, Christian shifted beneath his hand, her blouse falling open another inch to reveal the inner curves of her breasts, flushed now like her throat with a delicate pink.

Jamys rolled onto his back, curling his hands into fists as he stared up at the dark ceiling. Behind his lips his fangs pulsed as they stretched full-length into his mouth, as hot and hard as the shaft swelling beneath the front of his trousers. He could think of nothing but sinking into Christian, his fangs piercing the softness of her throat, his shaft forging deep into the wet heat between her thighs.

The shadows deepened inside him as they attempted to lure him from the strain of resistance. His darkness told him how he could be inside her before she opened her eyes; how simple it would be to bespell her even as he fucked her. Blood and sex always made him stronger; it would be nothing to compel her to give herself to him, to stay with him, to sleep through the day with him. When again the night came, he could wake with her in his arms, warm and eager and willing to see to his every pleasure. This way, he would never hurt her. . . .

Jamys closed his eyes, trying to shut out the images flashing behind them, and once more saw his mother’s exquisite face, her lovely mouth curved in a rare, genuine smile. She didn’t speak, but he knew what she would say: After all you have suffered, my poor darling boy, you would deny yourself your heart’s desire? If you are careful, you can probably make her last for years. . . .

Imagining Angelica’s approval scalded Jamys, burning away at the lust racking him until nothing remained but ashes of self-disgust. He turned to draw the coverlet over Christian before he rose and went into the front room. He wanted to go down to the lists and challenge the first warrior who looked askance at him, and beat him into the dirt, but that would solve nothing.

Jamys wanted to ask her whether she still had feelings for him, or if he had been completely mistaken in his suspicions. But his fear of her answer was far greater than his desire to know.

He had only one chance to win her, and that was to become a man Christian could admire as well as love. He would do that by finding the gems, delivering them to Richard, and securing rule of Ireland.

Once he retrieved his laptop from his traveling case and set it up on the desk, he switched it on and accessed the Internet. His initial search for information on the Golden Horde produced more than eight million references, most of which had nothing to do with seventeenth-century pirates. He recalled the scant information from the high lord’s summons, and refined the search to include the keywords Jamaica, emeralds, and lost treasures. That narrowed the results to one hundred thousand, among which he found the Web site of Professor Charles Gifford, a salvage specialist turned piracy historian who had spent much of his career searching the waters between Jamaica and Florida for the wreck of the Golden Horde. The site, decorated as it was by images of skulls and old coins, offered a surprising amount of information about seventeenth-century piracy around the Caribbean, including an entire section on the island of Jamaica.