Chapter 14

J UDE HAD TRAVELED THE seas for the last several years, been with numerous women, tangled and fought with hardened killers. Little was left in the world that could surprise him.

But when Agatha opened her mouth and finally spoke after their love mak—sex, Jude's brain froze.

"Thank you for that experience," she said.

"You're thanking me?" The bewilderment was taking the shape of rocks in his head and they were rattling around so loud that he could hardly hear himself speak, let alone think.

"Yes." She pulled the sheets up to cover her breasts as she lay next to him. A little late for modesty.

Dumbfounded, he had to ask, "Because you wanted the experience?"

"Not just that experience. Many experiences."

What the devil? "You want more experiences? You're telling me this right after w-we—" Why was he stumbling over his words? He was the rake in this situation, she the virgin. It meant nothing to him to speak of such bedsport.

"We slept together," he finished lamely .

"I hardly think we slept." Her cheeks were red, and he could only hope his weren't the same. What the deuce was happening to him?

"Of course not." Grumbling, he gathered his pride from wherever it had scattered about the room, hopped out of bed, and then pulled his breeches on. "Well, good luck with the rest of your experiences ." His blood was boiling, and he didn't mean a word of it. "But I won't stand by and watch you have your pick of the men on my ship."

Buttoning his shirt, he took a chance and peeked at her eyes. They were shooting daggers at him. "No one was asking you to watch."

"What?" He shouted.

"If I was doing anything with another man, I certainly would not be inviting you to watch."

"What?" This time he spluttered. He was the one acting as if her words were burning his virginal ears. Who was this woman? Where had she come from? And what the devil was her plan in boarding his ship? He didn't care because he wasn't about to let her run rampant and bring chaos to his—more or less—smooth sailing.

The sheets fell from her body, exposing her beautiful plump breasts, and while he was sure his tongue was hanging out of his mouth, he just didn't have the strength to pull it back in. But he needed to. He needed to pull himself together before…before…before his head exploded.

"I'm locking you up in this cabin for the duration of this journey. And that's final."

While he spoke, she was dragging herself out of the bed and setting her clothes to rights.

Pointing her finger at him, she glared at him, practically burning a hole between his eyes. "Don't tell me what to do."

"I'm the captain—"

"How many times do you need to say that? Does it help remind you of your worth? I know you're the blasted captain of your ship, but you're not the captain of my life." There had been a slight tremor in her earlier, but now, every inch of her was fixed. Grounded. Stable. He couldn't say the same for her mind, but she was unwavering in her resolve. "I'll do what I want."

"Like hell you will. You're with me, and you're not going anywhere." He didn't unpack those words, that was a problem for a later time. "If I so much as see you step one toe beyond this cabin, you'll be punished."

"Like you just finished punishing me? I think I can take it."

He roared. Literally. Like a lion. Like something he had seen on a rare occasion that had nearly scared the excrement right out of him.

But she didn't back down. Didn't even flinch.

"Pace all you like. Growl like the beast you are, but I am leaving this cabin today. As I said, I'm here for experiences."

That word was like a trigger on a pistol. He could feel the bullet in his chest. His hand involuntarily rubbed over the ache. Then he turned around, left the cabin, and slammed the door.

To hell with her.

And he really tried to believe that for the next several hours while he did what captains did on ships (though if asked, he couldn't remember what he did all day). It could have been five minutes or fifty minutes, but he wasn't distracted at all from his duties as he watched her get lost in observing the vast ocean before her. He hadn't been scatterbrained in the least when she lifted her face to the sun letting it permeate her with its warmth. And he certainly wasn't preoccupied with how she told tales at dinner about an aristocratic woman intentionally making a fool of herself by mixing up the idiom, ape leader. That story had sounded a little too real for him to accept that it wasn't about her, but he didn't ask for confirmation.

When he found himself back in his cabin with her, preparing for the night ahead, he realized he hadn't given the sleeping arrangements any thought all day. Being as busy as he was with his captain duties and all that.

The realization that there was only one bed and they were about to enter it sent a surge of heat through him. Anger. Frustration. Surely that's all it was given how they departed the room earlier.

But if she thought he was going to do the gentlemanly thing and offer to sleep on the floor, she had another thing coming. They had already slept together, so it wasn't like it could get any more intimate than that.

He started unbuttoning his shirt. As he did so, she stared at him with a questioning look. But it wasn't until he shucked his breeches that she let out a gasp.

"What do you think is about to happen?" she demanded.

"I'm going to sleep in my bed. Whatever you decide to do is up to you." It took effort not to imagine tossing her on the bed, but his irritation with her trumped everything else at the moment.

"You're just going to go to sleep?"

"I might read first." Tired, his body sunk into the mattress, and with the laziest tone he could muster, he asked, "Pass me that book on my desk?"

Which, in hindsight, was not his most intelligent request, for in a second the book came hurtling at his head. Spine first.

"What the—"

"I can't believe you," she muttered at him as she began disrobing.

Not sure what was going on, he cracked the book open and began to read. Read? Well, that wasn't even close to the truth because he could not focus on the book long enough to decipher words and their meaning as she removed layer after layer out of his peripheral version. And it was in a moment like this that he wished he had the ability to read her because that would prove far more valuable than being able to read all of the books written in history to date.

When she climbed into bed with him, he was still unsure of what to expect. The contradiction being that she was nearly naked, yet she was grumbling about him. And the look in her eyes, he would swear he was looking down the bore of a canon. At any moment, a projectile might fly out of the muzzle, and he wanted to be prepared for it. His legs tensed. His heart stilled. His lips straightened out to a thin line.

But no such projectile was launched.

She merely turned her back to him, and—assuming she closed her eyes—began to fall asleep.

And he realized that he could safely anticipate no action for tonight. Strangely, he wasn't convinced that that realization calmed him or frustrated him even more.