Kerry Allen's Love Emporium

Dedicated to the vivacious and curvaceous @WookiesGirl,
whose catchphrase “fanfuckingtastic” was *this close*
to becoming Malcolm’s favorite new vocabulary word in this episode. 

She placed the knife on the desk, tip pointing at the unoccupied chair across from her. MacDougall had come and gone, delivering his second unenlightening report about the enemy ship. He had left of his own accord, not run out by the arrival of a second visitor.

The pirate was late. How quickly the fickle rogue lost interest.

She propped her feet on the desk, tipped her chair back on two legs, and smiled at the ceiling. Female distress caused most men discomfort, to which they responded by either taking measures to remove the source of distress or running for the nearest exit. Marrs removing himself would have accomplished both, but she hardly expected such a stubborn man to retreat. Under other circumstances, an escalation of dismay would have been in order, but she stopped short of wringing out a few tears because he understood her well enough that such dramatics would render the act unbelievable.

She understood a thing or two about him, as well. Hostility, threats, and physical violence entertained him rather than serving as a deterrent. Such men thrived on conflict. Victory signified the death of that which drove them, left them hollow, and pushed them toward the next challenge before they withered from boredom.

Letting the buffoon think he’d broken her had been difficult. Not laughing when he flipped from bullying to coddling her had been more so. Deny him a fight, and he became placid as an old hound with a full belly, albeit a better conversationalist.

With a little prodding from her, he had talked the night away. His voice was pleasant, his features animated, his hands expressive. He proved to be well versed in art, music, literature, history, and politics and was a far more seasoned traveler than she, or so he claimed. His insistence he had set foot on every continent—even the icy one at the bottom of the globe—earned her skepticism, but he was, if nothing else, a gifted storyteller. For the first time in memory, she didn’t have to feign interest in a man’s incessant rambling.

It was almost a pity he’d found the experience too dull to repeat.

Reese being the sort to whom winning was everything, her disappointment was a small and fleeting thing.

“I’m pleased to see your spirits have been restored.”

She stiffened with shock. The chair wobbled, threatening to spill her on the floor—which could not have been less dignified than the way she flailed about to regain her balance. Feet flat on the floor, fingers clenching the edge of the desk, and heart in her throat, she gaped at Marrs, who stood just inside the door.

The closed door.

“You became quite tedious during our last encounter, Miss Hershey.”

“How boorish of you to say so.” Her voice came out hoarse. She heard it, he heard it, and the mantle of victory was ripped her unworthy shoulders with enough force to make her head spin. “How did you get in, by squeezing through the keyhole?”

“No, I entered in the customary fashion. You must have been temporarily deafened by the self-congratulatory cheers taking place inside your head.” He crossed the room in that light-footed way at odds with his size. “Did you really believe I would give you up so easily?”

Her knuckles ached from their strangling grip on the desk, which made an unsatisfying surrogate for his throat. The smug son of a bitch had been toying with her all along. “The method has been successful in the past.”

“Then your audience wasn’t paying very close attention to the performance.” His obsidian gaze never strayed from her, as it hadn’t the previous night, even while he bore the burden of conversation. “You can’t help but overpower such a bland character with your far more vibrant personality, but I applaud you for taking on such an ambitious role.”

She was at a loss for what to do next, unfamiliar territory for her, and she despised him for sending her there. She bared her teeth and forced between them, “You’re too kind.”

He favored her with a look she felt on her skin. “And you’re breathtaking when incandescent with rage.”

She leapt to her feet and stalked away from him. Only when she reached up to rake her hair from her eyes did she realize the knife had found its way into her hand. Perfect, and what did that murderous impulse intend her to do? If she slaughtered him like the swine he was, his filthy subordinates would sink her ship. What was left, slitting her own throat?

She considered threatening to do so for all of one second. The callous brute would call her bluff, reducing her choice of action to backing down or killing herself, neither of which she had any intention of doing.

A plan might do more harm than good. Lack of one freed her to do anything. He couldn’t very well predict her next move when she herself couldn’t guess what it would be.

She faced him, composure wrapped tightly about her once more.

He gave her a minuscule nod, as if approving her alteration in mood. “If you’ve decided against whittling me down to a matchstick with that blade, I have a gift for you.”

She returned to the desk, twirling the knife between her fingers. The last gift she’d received was an ostentatious necklace of diamonds and sapphires, which she tossed in a lake. The real gift had been watching the rebuffed suitor trying to retrieve it. “If I toss it overboard, will you dive for it?”

“Gods, no, but I will toss every member of your crew after it to try his hand.”

She braced her hip against the edge of the desk and stabbed the knife into the wood. “That is exceedingly unromantic of you, Mister Marrs.”

“I’ll toss mine in, too. Nothing is as romantic as needless death, at least according to scholars of literature and history, and it couldn’t be more needless than attempting to salvage this.”

He produced from behind his back, of all things, a bouquet of flowers.

As a child of five, Reese witnessed a similar trick by a street performer. He yelled and chased her away after she pointed out he’d pulled them from his sleeve and there was nothing magical about it.

Something about these flowers—either the splash of color in the drab room or the absurdity of their appearing on a ship floating in the Atlantic—surprised a smile to her lips where the previous charlatan had failed. “How did you come by those?”

His answer was slow to come and carried an odd tone. “They sprout on deck in the radiance of your beauty.”

She waved her hand. “Oh, please, I cannot accept all the credit for this miracle when they are fertilized by the manure that continuously spews from your mouth.”

“Then say we created them together, the fruit of our respective finer qualities.” He placed the flowers on the desk, the cut ends of the stems curving outward to form a base that needed no other support.

She rounded the corner and bent to inhale their fragrance. Her face mere inches above them, she realized they weren’t real flowers at all but intricately formed colored paper—stems twisted tight, leaves pressed with veins, petals smooth and curled at the edges. Someone had invested hours of labor in the making of the bouquet, far more than the effort of snipping a handful of blooms from a garden. This was the work of a craftsman. “Amazing.”

“Why, thank you.”

It wasn’t his voice so much as the fact that it came from well above her head that brought her back to her senses like a slap. She took stock of her position, which was bent over a desk with her face at the level of and inches away from his… belt.

What a gullible little fish she was, not once considering the possibility her known enemy might be baiting her.

The knife beckoned. She might not be able to use it on him, but she could chop his phony gift into confetti.

She straightened her spine, refusing to amuse him with a demonstration of pique or to flee from that spot as if he merited her fear. “I was referring to your ability to find someone from whom to steal this.”

He affected a wounded expression. “I’ll have you know, I made that myself.”

“You should have made a shovel. The aforementioned manure is getting deep in here.”

He stifled his grin before it fully developed, a habit of his she chose to attribute to an unsightly rack of rotted teeth hidden behind the fake gleaming-white ones installed at the front. “Very well, I made one before accepting my artistic limitations and leaving the task to more capable hands.”

“Convey my thanks to the owner of the hands, along with my confidence he could have a much better career than working for you.”

“Being part of my crew has its rewards.”

“Such as?”

“Join me and see for yourself.”

Given that she was doing her damnedest to avoid serving him for one night, making it a full-time occupation held little appeal. “I don’t consider what you’ve offered me a benefit. However, if that’s how you reward your entire crew, it says much for your stamina.”

He took a step closer. “Do you exhibit the same inability to restrain all your passions, or is anger the only one stronger than your determination?”

A minimum of twelve inches remained between them, but she felt smothered, as if he were pressed full against her. Her right foot inched backward, but it, at least, was no match for her determination. She stood her ground. “As anger is the only one you’re capable of rousing, I suppose you’ll never know.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you.” He plucked a single petal from a flower and rubbed it between his fingers. It curved over the pad of his thumb, undamaged. “You’ve thanked the one who put the most work into this. What do I get for my contribution?”

“Alleged contribution. I know better than to believe anything you say unless I see it with my own eyes.”

“It’s there. Look closer. You should recognize it on sight.”

Wiser following her previous lapse in judgment, she picked up the bouquet for inspection. She tried to be gentle, but the floor was soon dusted with petals, as easily bruised as their real counterparts. Finding nothing unusual, she lifted it to look at the underside. One stem had been used to bind the others together. The clump of paper dangling on the end of it…

She returned the bouquet to the desk. “The barn cats often catch, maul, swallow, and vomit things that look like that at my feet.”

He caught her hand before it returned safely to her side. “Surely they earn a scratch behind the ears or a belly rub for attempting to impress you.”

Not even envisioning Marrs with pointed, flea-bitten ears and a furry belly bloated with rodent could make the suggestion to pet him remotely amusing. “They’re practically feral and inclined to bite any hand extended toward them.”

“As am I.” He raised her knuckles to his lips. “I would make an exception for such a pretty hand, however.”

Her hand had been slobbered on before, and each time she was left mystified that the gesture was intended to endear the drooling admirer to her.

The pirate’s hand was warm and dry, not clammy with sweat. His hold on her fingers was not the desperate variety that might snap her bones if she attempted to extricate herself. In fact, if not for his thumb resting against her fingernails, it might seem as if she were the one holding onto him.

He did not slobber. A warm tingle danced up her arm at the brush of his lips.

Oh. That’s what all the fuss is about.

Why did the stupid man have to be a pirate? If he were an ordinary gold-digging bastard pursuing her at home, he’d be by far the most appealing gold-digging bastard in the lot. They could have reached an arrangement—a generous allowance in exchange for a reasonably discreet performance as a husband. No one would doubt she’d fallen for his looks and charm. They would still talk, but they would talk about something other than her poor mother and her disgrace of a father.

Pity she detested him with every fiber of her being, save for the susceptible ones connected to her knuckles.

She snatched her hand from his grasp and wiped the back of it on her shirt. “It was worth a try, pirate, but I’m afraid your tokens of false esteem fail to make impending rape any less loathsome a fate.”

* * *

Obstinate woman. If Malcolm were one-tenth the villain she liked to portray him, he’d have had her on the bed, the desk, the floor, on top of the cupboard, and up against the wall at their first meeting—after beating her unconsciousness, burning her home to the ground, and hiring an assassin to kill the family dog. He knew so-called gentlemen with titles and land and prestige oozing out their ears who had done worse to women for far less disrespect than she’d shown him.

Not that he could claim to qualify for sainthood, by any means, but since her wings and halo were nearly as tattered and dingy as his, the little liar was hardly in a position to pass judgment.

Last night, she had expertly kept him talking about meaningless trivia while contributing little to the conversation herself. He knew the tactic so well, he had planned to use it on her. The illusion of control put her at ease, however, so he allowed her to believe it was hers.

When she feigned polite interest in his origins, he deflected it. There wasn’t much in his background he wished to share, and little he could say without dating himself in a manner she would deem false. He deflected by turning those queries back at her, and she likewise deflected by changing the subject entirely.

People, especially the female ones, loved talking about nothing so much as themselves. When that was not the case, it was seldom merely a matter of modesty. People hid pain and shame. Pretended that if no one knew, the past never happened. Donned armor of cold aggression and snide humor and prayed no one sensed the wounds beneath.

He’d tested her armor with a few solid blows. It was sturdy stuff, not something one would choose to carry day after day unless terrified of sustaining further damage.

Or perhaps he was romanticizing a woman who sincerely found him objectionable in every way and wanted him to have nothing of her she wasn’t contractually obligated to provide.

His need for her to be like him trumped that likelihood, while also exposing a facet in his character she might just find objectionable. What sort of selfish bastard wanted a woman to suffer pain and betrayal and loss only so he could have someone who understood?

Why his failure to charm this particular woman was unacceptable, he couldn’t say, but if there were a dozen others available, he would ignore them in his pursuit of this one. He craved her blood, her body, her secrets, and nothing less would satisfy him.

They had a bargain. Her pride would not allow her to renege upon it. One more night, and her blood and body would be his.

Greedy monster that he was, it wasn’t enough. He was willing to bargain for the last piece. “I have a better gift for you.”

A sneer warped the perfectly crafted bow of her lips. “You have noth—”

“Time.”

One word stopped her argument cold, as he’d thought it might. Reese Hershey obsessed over time as other women did diamonds. “For every truth you reveal about yourself, I will give you an additional five minutes.”

“Five minutes free of your company, five minutes less of your… stamina, or five minutes to poke at you with my knife?” She flicked the hilt of the weapon with her finger, and the steel hummed its readiness.

She wanted her shipment of beans delivered somewhere other than the ocean floor, so she wouldn’t kill him, but he had little doubt she knew a great many pieces she could lop off and still return him to his ship alive. “With the exception of doing me bodily harm, you can spend them however you see fit.”

She circled to the opposite side of the desk, the fingers of one hand skipping across its surface, never more than a few inches from the knife embedded in the wood. “Make it thirty.”

“Fifteen.” He’d been willing to go up to thirty if she opened higher, but damned if he’d agree to her first bid without countering. “If you lie, I’ll take thirty… to use however I see fit.”

Her eyes narrowed with displeasure at the stipulation. “How will you determine if I’m lying?”

“When people lie, they’re slow to answer and avert their eyes while they invent answers. Their tone of voice and pulse rate raise. They touch their faces, either subtly hiding behind their hands or petting themselves to ease the anxiety deception causes them.” It would be madness to arm her with a list of behaviors to avoid if he weren’t certain she already knew them at least as well as he did. “But don’t be so modest, Miss Hershey. You hardly need coaching in the art of deceit, proficient con artist that you are.”

The haughty lift of her chin would have done an outraged duchess proud. “I beg your pardon.”

“So you should. I’ve been an agreeable audience for your performance to this point. More than agreeable,” he corrected, “considering you shot me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Are you whining about that again? I must have hardly grazed the skin, yet you go on about it as if you were mortally wounded.”

He sat in the chair, yanked off his boot, and plunked his foot on the desk. “It was a damn sight more than a flesh wound.”

She grimaced at the sole of his foot and the scar that proved her bullet had penetrated through. She extended a finger to touch the damaged tissue, but she pulled back before making contact and glared at him without a trace of remorse. “That is not a two-day-old gunshot. You haven’t a fresh mark on you.”

He’d forgotten for a moment his accelerated healing wouldn’t exactly engender her sympathy. He jammed his foot back into its boot. “Good thing I’m not betting my life away with my lies. Will you?”

She stood with her hands on her hips, the pose stretching her overlarge shirt across her breasts in a way that made it far more flattering. She’d done away with the bodice that hugged her shape, no need to streamline her silhouette to create an unobstructed draw of a sword she wasn’t wearing. Also absent were her pistols and the telltale loops around her fingers that summoned forth the nasty surprises hidden up her sleeves.

She looked more approachable stripped of her arsenal, but he elected not to test that impression. She no doubt had other nasty surprises in reserve for just such an occasion, conflicting with his desire to keep what blood remained in his veins precisely where it was.

Her sea-colored eyes were murky with her own distrust. “There are no conditions other than those you’ve stated?”

“None. The rules are straightforward. If you can remember how to be honest, you could win hours.”

He counted on the temptation of canceling every minute she owed him being too great to resist. He counted also on the familiar rhythm of lies being too deeply ingrained for her to escape completely.

He never played a game he didn’t intend to win.

She spun the other chair around and straddled it. “I’ll play.”

He recognized the wooden back of the chair as a shield and wondered whether she was conscious of the feeble barricade she’d erected or if she simply thought the mannish posture off-putting. Some other time, he would advise her that a woman with her knees spread wide was generally the opposite of off-putting—preferably some time his view wasn’t obstructed by a desk. “Tell me about your mother.”

“Dead.” She plucked the knife from the desk and scratched a mark on the surface, keeping score.

Lack of motherly influence explained a lot, beginning with her disregard for furnishings. “I’m sorry.”

He meant it. His mother’s idea of nurturing had been to teach her sons to steal, but to her credit, he’d not once gone to bed hungry in his human life. He still missed her from time to time.

Reese shrugged. “I was small. I barely remember her face.” She carved two more marks.

“Wait just a damn minute!”

She flipped the tip of the blade toward him. “No, you wait forty-five. You’re paying per unit of truth, not per exhaustive discussion of a subject. You set the terms yourself, Mister Marrs.”

Bloody hell. She would send him back in time using that strategy—if she could maintain it. “Siblings?”

“None. I would have liked a brother to adventure with.” Scratch, scratch.

His accursed greed may very well have led him to forfeit the bulk of what he wanted from her just to satisfy his curiosity, and she didn’t even have the courtesy to be a fascinating historian. “Father?”

The line of questioning had been anything but tangential. She had to have anticipated where it would lead next, yet even forewarned, she failed to keep her reaction from her face. Her tension showed in the tightening of the skin around her eyes, the slight flare of her nostrils—subtle signals, but more than she’d transmitted for the trauma of losing her mother. Here, the wound was raw.

Here, honesty would test her.

Her face relaxed. “I have one.” Scratch.

“How illuminating.” He leaned forward and folded his arms on the desk. “Does he abuse you?”

“No.”

His hand shot forward and twisted the knife from her grip when she moved to make her next mark. “I think not.”

Her mouth dropped open as he made two marks of his own. “I did not lie!”

“Your disinclination to needlessly elaborate and further increase your advantage suggests a greater problem in your relationship than can be accounted for by the generational divide.”

Her wide-eyed stare remained riveted on his score, coveting the time it represented. “The only alternative in your sick mind is abuse?”

He was a vampire. If he fed once in a while, stayed out of the sun, and kept his head attached to his neck, he would live damn near forever. What use did he have for more time? He could afford to squander some. “Give me the real explanation, and I’ll return the half hour to you.”

She tore her gaze from the scarred desktop. Disinterest settled upon her features like a mask. “Keep them.”

“I’ll continue to pry.”

“You can’t accuse me of lying if I say nothing.”

Like a puzzle box with no apparent solution, she frustrated him at every turn, but he would not admit defeat. He knew he could open her up if he could find the right button to push. “You must not want to be rid of me as badly as I thought.”

“I’m surprised, given your conceit and conviction I’m a compulsive liar, you haven’t convinced yourself my revulsion is a ruse and I’m merely being coy.”

In his experience, declarations of love were to be greeted with skepticism. Hatred, by contrast, generally proved reliable. “I don’t doubt the sincerity of your dislike. It’s the extent and reason for it I dispute.”

“If being a manipulative, thieving, rapist pirate isn’t adequate reason to loathe a man, I don’t know what is.”

“You’d get along just fine with such a scoundrel if you could keep him pinned beneath your thumb. What you can’t tolerate is having him get the better of you and being unable to reestablish control.”

A thin smile flitted across her lips. “You’re more insightful than I gave you credit for. However, I assure you, the extent of my displeasure for that reason alone could be no greater.”

“But that conflict is laughably easy to resolve.”

Bravado kept her in her seat as he came around the desk, but she shot to her feet when he reached for her hand.

Next time, she’d move faster.

She closed her fist against his examination. He couldn’t tell her fortune from the visible portion of her palm, but he read something of her past. Roughened skin spoke of more strenuous chores than pouring tea, and fine white lines chronicled the trials that preceded mastery of blades.

Beautiful women seldom possessed hands accustomed to labor and violence. She’d have no shortage of besotted men promising her a life of ease. Was independence so important to her that she would battle her way through the world before relinquishing any part of it?

Freedom was one thing he had no interest in taking from her, so she need not fight him on that count. “I have no objection to being under your thumb. You may put it on me anywhere you like.”

“As physical contact with you creates within me a pressing need to vomit, I think it prudent to refrain.”

If a lie was repeated often enough, most listeners would eventually accept it as truth. As he’d noted earlier, most listeners weren’t paying attention. Her words couldn’t be trusted, so he focused on what she communicated by other means. “I’ve noticed you can’t take your eyes off me.”

“I wouldn’t take my eyes off a snake within striking distance, either, but not because I want to touch it.”

“Ah, but the fanged end of the viper would hold your unwavering regard, not its pants.”

Caught wandering-eyed, she flushed pink with embarrassment, a reaction not even the most talented prevaricator could curtail. “If it posed a threat other than biting, I certainly would monitor the whereabouts of its other parts.”

“And when I did this earlier”—he raised her hand to his lips—”you swayed toward me as if you could no longer resist your attraction to me.”

“I did no such thing.”

He smiled against her knuckles. “You’re doing it again.”

She glanced down, discerned the diminished distance between their bodies, and reared back. “I lost my balance for a moment, nothing more.”

“I prefer you off balance.” He stepped forward.

She retreated.

He followed, trapping her against the wall. She had either undergone a growth spurt in the preceding seconds or gone up on her toes to minimize her height disadvantage, ever on the defensive. It was past time she learned some things didn’t deserve to be fought.

He clasped her other hand, as well—less an intimacy, more a precaution to keep her from gouging out his eyes if he left her loose—and held them at her sides. “I’m going to spend some of my winnings now.”

She flinched as if struck when he brushed his mouth across her forehead, sucked in an unsteady breath when he tested the silken texture of her cheek against his, and when his lips hovered above hers, suspended a breath away from a kiss, she ground the toe of her boot into his bullet-bedeviled instep.

“That is exceedingly unromantic of you, Miss Hershey.”

She glowered at him, leery of his unexpected tenderness. “You’re wasting time. Get it over with.”

Heartened by her lack of spitting, biting, and head-butting, he remained right where he was. “While I’m flattered by your eagerness, half an hour will barely get us started. There will be plenty of time to ‘get it over with’ during the night you promised me.”

“Shortened by an hour and a half,” she sharply reminded him.

As if he would soon forget being so careless. “Aye. Consider this my small consolation for gambling that time away.” Prepared to patiently tease his way through her resistance, he lowered his head to claim a kiss.

She opened her mouth and thrust her tongue past his lips as if ravenous for the taste of him.

He appreciated her enthusiasm but trusted her slightly less than he would one of her feral cats. He dragged her arms over her head and caught both wrists against the wall with one of his hands. The woman who had been ready to commit murder to avenge violation of a bean didn’t so much as twitch a muscle in protest at the restraint. Rather, she arched her back and rubbed her breasts against his chest.

Preoccupied with delusions of his own honor, he had blindly misjudged her. The powerful respected power. She didn’t want surrender coaxed from her. She wanted it taken by someone stronger so she needn’t be mortified by her defeat.

His free hand slipped under her shirt, gliding up her hip until he encountered bare flesh. Beneath hot, supple skin, muscles quivered at the stroke of his fingers.

She wrenched her head to the side, gasping for breath. His lips followed her jaw, trailed down her neck, and settled over the pulse surging at the base. He pressed his tongue against it and anticipated the flavor bursting in his mouth.

Her throat vibrated with a moan. “Tomorrow.”

His hand crept up her ribs, causing her pulse to quicken. “What about it?”

“Tomorrow, I’ll give you everything you want.”

His teeth scraped her skin. “Why wait?”

“The agreement was one night, no more. Do you want what’s left of this one to be it?”

He lifted his head and took in her swollen lips, rosy cheeks, and slumbrous eyes. He had regretted wasting breathtaking on her fury once he saw her smile—the one that shone with genuine, spontaneous delight, as opposed to the dozens of fakes that preceded it—because that truly siphoned the air from his lungs. He regretted it doubly now. The word did not accurately describe what the sight of her like this did to him, but it sounded far more complimentary than Your beauty seizes me by the throat and strangles me until I am lightheaded.

She knew her weapons too well to wield one unknowingly. “I can’t help but think you have treachery in mind.”

“Good.” She shifted so that his thumb grazed the lower curve of her breast. “If you weren’t a little bit uneasy, you’d be bored… and boring.”

She understood him, after all, perhaps better than he understood himself. By denying him what he wanted, she’d given him what he hadn’t realized he needed.

A hunt.

Clever prey.

Submission.

She extended her neck and took a playful nip at his chin. “My ninety minutes should get rid of you through dawn. You can spend the day imagining how I’ll hold your interest for an entire night now that I’ve let you win.”

The hours would be endless and filled with discomfort if he dwelled on that thought. “I’d rather be surprised. Don’t move.” He reluctantly removed his hands from her and backed away.

She kept her hands above her head. “Am I so terrifying, or do you simply like the view?”

There was some comfort in having her empty hands in plain view, a quite different appeal in seeing that lean body stretched out, unguarded, and compliant.

“The position seems to dramatically improve your disposition.” He reached the door, opened it, and suggested in parting, “You can spend the day imagining how I’ll keep you in it for an entire night.”

Part 5: A Bloodsucker Born Every Minute

Enjoying this story? Consider supporting the author with a donation through the “10 Minutes to Write” button. Every dollar contributed buys 10 minutes of writing time.