Page 48 of The Taste of Light
Cris clasped Pedro's shoulder, his laughter booming on the deck. "Come on, then. I've heard it's Gitano night at the local tavern, and I fancy myself a gypsy. Or two." His green eyes flashed. "It will be just like the old times."
Pedro swallowed theaguardente. The alcohol burned a path from his throat to his stomach. He cleaned his mouth on his sleeve and slammed the crude cup on the table.
The tavern was the reverse of the colorful Aveiro. Filled with sailors from the bustling port city, it was chaotic, pungent, and crowded. Cris had been right. The guitar playing at the corner wasn't the twelve chord Portuguese instrument but the Spanish one, sounding hollow and harsh. Two flamenco dancers performed near the counter, their red and black skirts flying, chins jutting out and arms raised, their incessant castanets clacking inside Pedro's head. An avid crowd had gathered to catch glimpses of naked skin, their mouths gaping and hands clapping in time.
Cris bounced the two barmaids perched on his thighs, and they giggled. Their Castilian accents were as genuine as fool's gold. The other woman licked her lips, her black hair waving around her shoulders, and stared at Pedro boldly. Her Gypsy veils were the softest thing of her appearance.
The whore was precisely the kind he needed. Experienced, jaded, unbreakable.
Cris wiggled his brows. "I thought you came here to enjoy yourself, not empty glasses."
Pedro finished hisaguardenteand stood, pushing Anne from his mind and his chair back with enough force to rattle the table behind. A rough-looking sailor, Dutch by the hay-colored hair and blotched skin, rose, a glower on his face. Pedro stared into gray eyes, baring his teeth. After a brittle nod, the man dropped back onto his chair, and the group returned to gambling. A shame they didn't take offense. Pedro craved a fight even more than a fuck.
He turned to the whore. "Lead the way."
Eyes flashing like copper coins, she rose. Cris snickered, but the lurid words faded over string notes, clinking glasses, and drunk guffaws. The scarred planks covering the floor bowed beneath Pedro's feet. She sashayed inside a room, lighting a taper near the window. The squalid furniture flickered in time with the wick, but he didn't need light to navigate the room's shadows. Semen-stained bed sheets, walls too thin to block sex sounds, liquor spilled on the floor. How many hours of his life had he spent in hells like this? It didn't matter. This was a transaction. His body needed sexual release. The whore sold the service.
No attachments and no ocean-gazed girl wishing for a place inside his skin.
Hips swaying, the Gypsy came near, hands outstretched to his waistband.
"You touch me when I say so."
"You are paying,Fidalgo." She shrugged, and the movement bared her shoulder. "How is it gonna be?"
He should tie her and be done with it.
"Touch my hair." The words spilled from his mouth before he could contain them. The alcohol must have dulled his wits.
String notes filtered through the thin wall, marked by the castanets. She inclined her head and walked around him, her skirts swishing against his legs. Tobacco and stale green wine intoxicated the air. The whore's breaths brushed his nape, and he ground his teeth. When pointed fingernails grazed his neck like steel needles, nausea punched him in the stomach.
He sucked in a breath. "Cease. Lay on the bed."
The whore nodded, her shoulders coming down a notch as if grateful for a request inside her repertoire, and lay on the mattress. Pedro reached for her left wrist to tie it around the iron bedstead, and she grimaced.
"If you leave bruises, it's going to cost you more."
"This is not about pain." He needed control. Some women found dark pleasure in relinquishing it. Would Anne? What was this obsession for her? Why had she planted this seed inside him? The more he hacked at it, the more it grew.
When he finished with the rope, the whore stretched over the bed, kicking up her legs to expose naked thighs. The tawny skin and ample hips should have fired his blood. Instead, he became detached, observing the scene as if suspended from the ceiling. The woman, the threadbare linen, the cracks on the wall, himself in the shadows, the flycatcher swinging, swish, swish.
A guitar screamed outside. Pedro's heart sent blood crashing into his veins, and he shuddered as images pounded him like claps of the castanets—Ana opening herself to him, Ana moaning, Ana's song, Ana, Ana, Ana.
A chilling realization washed over him with the force of a storm.
Pedro needed release, but the whore wouldn't suffice.
Chapter 22
Anneonlyabandonedhercabin when the sun had hit it long enough to cook her inside. She ambled to the drawing room where her breakfast awaited, the tea long cold and the bread stale. She dropped into the chair and twisted the linen napkin.
Footsteps on the gunwale made her face flame. How would she address Pedro? The proper behavior would be to pretend indifference, but she was terrible at pretending. If it weren't for the way he flustered her, she would ask him. A simple question. Why had he left after the kiss? Had she displeased him?
By the time the door opened, she had straightened her posture and arranged her face into a serene expression. Beatriz stepped inside, bringing with her a gust of wind. A few brown curls had escaped her cap to frame her pixie face. "Dante is a brute. Can you believe he left a pineapple in my cabin? What am I supposed to do with a thorny monster?"
Anne sighed. "He wishes to please you. It's a delicacy."
The maid blushed furiously, and then she gazed at the untouched food and clucked her tongue. "Seasickness, Miss Anne? Sometimes it happens after the first few days..."
