Page 25 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
Mathias had turned his attention onto her, and she thought that sparkle in his gaze took on a different hue as he did. He was still smiling, but she could not be sure if he was flirting or taunting. Did he feel smug about having reduced her to a ravished maiden? Or did he, perhaps, feel what she felt?
You are going to let me do that again.
Oh, God.
"You did good work with the kitchen," he said to her, a gentleness in his voice that surprised both women. "I should have thanked you earlier. Allow me to do so now. It is a marked improvement on the ship's functions."
She blinked at him, waiting a moment to ensure there was no punchline awaiting the end of this statement before responding. "You are very welcome," she said. "And I am sorry that my deck scheduling disrupted things rather than helping."
Isabelle looked between the two of them. "Is that what you wanted to talk to her about earlier? Mathias, really. Do not lecture your passengers."
"Oh, he didn't—"
"I did. You must excuse me if I...if I pushed you too hard, Miss Ferris. I get rather precious about my ship."
For a moment she forgot to breathe. The entendre was so thinly veiled that she was certain Isabelle would see directly through it. He had pushed her all right, up against the wall.
"I think, Captain," she demurred, enjoying the way his posture seemed to change when she addressed him that way, "that it is rather difficult to push me farther than I wish to go."
His smile faltered, surprise very clearly in his expression for anyone to see. His tawny eyebrows rose, and that friendly veneer seemed to turn into something more like a smirk, a shared awareness of what was truly being said.
Jade lowered her eyes to her dinner and lifted her soup spoon, her heart racing in a manic battle cadence just beneath the surface.
"Believe what you will," said Mathias, after indulging in a bite from his own plate, "but I have known that about you from the moment we met."
Jade could not suppress a little chuckle at that, darting her eyes up at him briefly as the memory of that ridiculous list she’d written flashed between them.
He grinned, throwing himself back in the chair with a slap to his knee. “There it is!” he said happily. “Finally. A smile.”
CHAPTER11
Land.
There was no mistaking it. Marseille hovered just on the horizon, taunting him. The trouble was getting to it.
After a day and a half in stale, stagnant,deadair, Mathias was tempted to send a man in a rowboat all that way. They usually sent out a messenger boat much closer to shore, but at this rate, they'd never reach shore anyway. The ambience on the ship had become just as stuffy as this static weather, with everyone so ready for the next leg of their journey that they had grown tired of where they were today.
It had been two days since he'd gotten that little titter out of Jade Ferris, since he'd seen her properly smile (with herteeth!). Since then, he had attempted a few jests at mealtime, but had otherwise been unsuccessful in a repeat performance. She was likely impatient too, just like the rest of the crew, waiting for whatever it was she had to collect in Marseille.
She hadn't been ignoring him, though, and that was an improvement on her usual taciturn way of business. She had cast him a few sidelong glances, a few questioning gazes whose meanings were only known between the two of them.
He told himself he was playing the usual game with her, building on anticipation, making her wait for the next time he would corner her and sample that sweet little mouth, but the truth was that he didn't trust himself to stop at kissing her.
It made no sense to him. He had always had his pick of women. Beautiful women wanted Mathias in their beds as much as any lusty man might want the same, and while he had certainly indulged a few times in this interest, he had never felt feverish about it, desperate to possess another person's body the way he wanted to with Miss Ferris.
What was it about her? Was it that hair? She had tied it back this morning in apparent protest of his inattention, which stirred something in him dark and dangerous. Was it just her strangeness, that cache of quiet secrets and small rebellions she kept locked up behind those big, green eyes? Her quiet sort of rebelliousness, her meddling in his ship's operations?
Was it the way she called himCaptain?
He cleared his throat, blinking rapidly and turning his face to the sun before his body could give him away. He shouldn't be dwelling on Jade Ferris. He should be planning for mooring.
She had apparently given his swabbers quite the talking-to following the incident with the grime. Rather thanstaying out of ship's businesslike she'd damned well been told to, she had instead adapted her scheduling method to prepare for sudden absences, surprise weather, and apparently managed to make sure that each man got his share of leisure besides.
He wanted to strangle her almost as much as he wanted to bed her. Mathias was ever amused, ready to see how the world around him chose to behave, and he liked it that way, thank you very much. Mathias did not indulge in such fits of emotion. He did not suffer torment under anger or desire or frustration.
You do now, said a little voice in his mind.
Damn that girl!
