Читать книгу Devour Me - Lydia Parks - Страница 8

“We’re breaking up, Captain!” The first lieutenant’s words reached Benjamin as little more than a whisper over the force of the wind.

Men screamed as the Spencer, rolling hard, sent them overboard.

“All hands abandon ship!” Benjamin righted a midshipman, Jeffery Veech, by the scruff of his neck. “Abandon ship!”

“Sir, the prisoners,” Jeffery yelled, holding a lantern high and clutching Benjamin’s sleeve. In spite of the driving rain, lantern light twinkled in the boy’s blue eyes and off the silver crucifix at his neck.

“I’ll get them, lad. Away with you!” He gave the boy a shove in the direction of the first lieutenant’s voice, and the young man and his lantern disappeared into the storm.

Fighting to maintain footing, Benjamin found the ladder and stumbled below into thickening darkness.

“Mercy! Release us!” the prisoners called from the bowels of the ship.

Rock splintered wood at a deafening volume with each wave, and the ship rolled harder to port.

Grappling with timbers he couldn’t see and wading through knee-deep water, he followed the cries until he’d located the hold and the latch held in place by a wooden pin. The pin had swollen tight.

“Have mercy on us!”

“Black-hearted villains,” Benjamin muttered, struggling with the pin. “I should let you drown.”

“Please,” one of the pirates wailed. “Take pity!”

The pin finally slid free and the door swung open. The prisoners charged through the doorway, sending Benjamin staggering back into a crate, which took exception to his head.

The hull heaved under a monster swell and he tumbled head over heels, smashing into immovable objects and splintered timbers, and splashing into cold, salty water. Sputtering, he managed to get to his feet, and tried to wipe the stinging water from his eyes. It didn’t matter; he couldn’t see anything.

Working from memory, he staggered and tripped back to the ladder where he climbed out hand over hand until he felt the Atlantic spray. Cold wind whipped him around, stealing air from his lungs.

“Abandon ship,” he yelled, not knowing if anyone was even left to hear. “Abandon—”

The cold, black wall of water that struck him full force lifted him completely from the deck and tossed him into the air like a loose main sail. He landed not on a wooden surface, but submerged in death’s seawater bath, sinking.

He noticed first the relative quiet. Water churned, but he heard no wind. And he saw nothing at all. Only blackness. His body ached from the battering, and then everything began to numb.

Everything but his lungs. They burned with need as he held his breath and his heart hammered against his ribs.

There was no way out, no way up or down.

Hell yawned around him as he opened his mouth to breathe.

For a moment, there was light. Something bright blue, like sun shining through packed snow. And then it was gone.

Benjamin gasped as air drove the water from his lungs in a gush. He retched and gulped again. Air, sweet and pure.

And then pain.

Pain burned through from his head to his toes and he realized he’d been battered beyond repair. The sea had not swallowed him but bashed him against rocks somewhere and spit him back out only to die on dry land.

He should have gone down with the Spencer.

And where were his men?

He opened his eyes to a night as dark as any he’d ever seen. Oddly enough, he’d landed under shelter of some kind, out of the rain. He felt mist in the air, and heard the thunder of great waves crashing against the shore, but the ground around him was dry.

He tried to roll to his side. Searing pain like a red-hot iron pierced his chest and drew a cry from his throat that he could not suppress. He remained still and waited for the pain to ease, but it didn’t.

“Damn you, Satan,” he said through gritted teeth. “Take me now.”

Suddenly, a figure appeared above him.

An angel? He wouldn’t have expected such an escort into the afterlife. Not that he’d done such horrible things as to warrant eternal damnation, but he’d never been one to follow the ways of the Good Book.

She must be an angel. Against the night, she was as white as new snow with golden hair that hung well past her shoulders. Her eyes glowed in the darkness like quicksilver, and she wore a white robe.

He wanted to ask her name, but he couldn’t find his voice. Perhaps he wasn’t supposed to speak.

She leaned close, her lips parted slightly, and his pain began to fade. Her silver eyes studied his face as if looking for redemption.

If only he could reach for her, his angel. He would gladly forfeit his life to wrap her in his arms.

A blaring horn startled Benjamin from the past.

He whirled around and watched a rusted blue and brown van swerve to barely miss a vehicle pulling out of the Tangled Net’s parking lot. The driver of the car gestured with his middle finger, and then sped away. The van slowed and turned at the next corner.

Benjamin glanced back at the angry sea where the bones of his crew had long ago dissolved. Good men, most of them. He still felt the loss of them like an ancient break that hadn’t knitted well.

Why had Cassandra appeared in his thoughts tonight? How long had it been since he’d seen her last? Five years? Ten?

Perhaps more.

He hadn’t thought much about her lately, which probably meant she was due to turn up. She had a way of appearing to stir up his existence just when things were pleasantly quiet. He always spent a year or two longing for her after she left.

And she would leave, just as she always had before. Ironic that he was the one who waited on the shore like a sailor’s wife.

With a sigh, Benjamin drew his cloak around him against the rain and started up the road toward his house.

“Come on, dammit.” Star pumped the accelerator twice and turned the key. The old van cranked and cranked, but didn’t catch.

“You flooded it,” Jack said.

“No shit.” She turned the key again, and the engine cranked slower.

And then it stopped.

“Oh, this is great,” Kyle said from the back. “Just fucking great.”

“Shut up,” Star said.

“We’re on a road in the middle of fucking nowhere, the battery’s dead, and it’s raining so hard I can’t see out the window.” Kyle’s voice rose in pitch. “Just fucking great!”

“I’m starved,” Wendy said. “We should have stopped at that bar.”

Star glanced at the woman in the rearview mirror. How could she think about food at a time like this?

Without the van’s knocking engine, the storm sounded even more savage. An especially nasty gust of wind sucked out the piece of cardboard covering a missing back window, and the vehicle suddenly filled with swirling wet air.

Kyle shoved Wendy aside and scrambled around, looking for something to cover the hole. All he found was a dirty towel. Holding it in place, he frowned over his shoulder. “Now what? We can’t sleep in this shit can.”

“Maybe there’s a motel back near that bar,” Jack said.

Star cupped her eyes to the driver’s side window trying to see something past the pounding rain, but could make out nothing in the darkness. “I don’t really want to walk around in this crap unless we’re sure.” She wished for the hundredth time they had a cell phone that worked.

Her pulse pounded as she looked into the night, half expecting a car to pull up at any moment. She could have sworn they’d been followed since they left Atlanta, but figured it was just paranoia. Still, she felt like a sitting duck in a van that wouldn’t start.

“Look,” Jack said. “Some guy just walked by.”

Star looked in the direction Jack pointed and thought she saw a shadow disappearing into the storm, but she couldn’t be certain. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

If they were being followed, it wouldn’t be by someone on foot.

“Maybe he’s got a phone we can use,” she said.

“Maybe.” Jack opened the van door and a gust of cold, wet wind whipped his blond hair across his face.

After the van door slammed, Star watched Jack fade from sight.

“Shit.” She took a deep breath, opened the driver’s side door, and dashed out. Cold sucked her breath away, and wind-driven rain stung her face.

She caught up with Jack where he stood at a gate nearly hidden by overgrown hedges.

“Jesus Christ!” Wendy ran up and grabbed Jack’s arm to use him as a shield against the weather. “This must be a hurricane.”

“Hardly.” Star squinted against the darkness, trying to make out the silhouette of the house before them. It looked like a mansion, but she couldn’t really tell where the building ended and the trees began. She saw no sign of life. “He went in here?”

“He must have.” Jack opened the gate and started up the walk.

“What are you going to do?” Star called after him.

“Ring the doorbell,” he said over his shoulder.

Wendy kept her grip on Jack’s arm, and Kyle hurried after them.

Star glanced back toward the van parked across the street, which she could barely see now. If they were in the middle of a neighborhood, the houses must be spaced really far apart. And there certainly wasn’t any traffic on the road.

“What the hell,” she muttered, pulling the gate closed behind her, and hurrying up the walk, head down against the rain.

They huddled together on the front stoop, barely sheltered, and Jack pulled a knob beside the door. A bell rang. Not an electric doorbell, but a real bell.

“This place must be a hundred years old,” Jack said. He pulled the knob again.

They heard nothing from inside except the bell, but the storm would have drowned out most noise. Still, no one opened the door or turned on a light.

“Maybe he went farther down the street,” Star said. She scrunched her shoulders against the cold water dribbling down her back and wrapped herself in her arms.

“He couldn’t have.” Jack yanked the bell twice more, then pounded on the door with his fist. “Hey! Open up!”

The door creaked slowly open under the force of Jack’s knock.

“It’s unlocked?” Wendy said.

A particularly nasty gust urged the four of them through the doorway.

The only thing Star could see for sure in a sudden flash of lightning was a tile floor, glistening with water. “Where are the lights?”

“Here.” Jack must have flipped a switch because light suddenly filled the room, sparkling from overhead.

Star looked up at a chandelier dripping with gold-tipped crystals as she pushed wet hair back from her face.

At a sudden yelp, she spun around and found a monstrous man, dressed in black, pinning Kyle against the wall by his throat. Kyle’s feet flailed a foot off the ground.

“What are you doing in my house?” The man’s voice rolled across them louder than thunder, vibrating through Star’s bones. She swallowed hard.

“We didn’t mean any harm,” Jack said. He started toward Kyle, but stopped when the man glared at him.

Star stepped forward. “Hey, you didn’t answer the door. Don’t get all bent out of shape. We’re just looking for a phone.”

The man turned sideways to fix her in a menacing stare. “Why?”

“We broke down.” She motioned over her shoulder with her thumb. “We want to call a motel, that’s all.”

The man had long black hair, blown wild by the storm, and fierce black eyes to match, and he glared at her from under heavy brows. A cloak draped across his massive shoulders hung past his knees, below which black boots glistened with water.

Kyle clawed at the stranger’s hand and made gurgling noises.

“You’re hurting him,” Star said.

The man glanced at his captive and eased him down the wall until his toes touched the floor, then released him.

Kyle stumbled away and fell. He sat staring up at the stranger, coughing, and rubbing his throat.

“Can we use your phone?” Star asked.

“No.” As if suddenly deciding they weren’t much of a threat, he turned his back on them to close the front door, then swung the cloak from his shoulders and hung it on hook. “I have no telephone.”

“No phone?” Wendy asked.

He looked her over from head to toe. “No. And it would do you no good. There’s no lodging in Black Cove.”

“Well, crap,” Star muttered.

He turned his black-eyed gaze on her.

She found herself standing as straight as possible to compensate for the foot difference in their heights. The man was no less intimidating without the cloak. His wet, black shirt clung to him, hinting at massive muscles to fit his tremendous frame. He’d make one hell of a bouncer.

He seemed to be waiting for some explanation.

“One of the windows in the van’s missing and everything’s wet. Not the ideal place to crash.”

He looked from her to the others, one at a time, and then returned his attention to her. His gaze drilled into her head, and her chest tightened, but she knew her discomfort didn’t show. She’d perfected looking frosty.

He stepped closer, towering over them all. “Who are you?”

The other three answered in unison. “Jack.” “Wendy.” “Kyle.”

Star felt the others backing away, but she held her ground. She hadn’t let a man use his size to intimidate her since she was twelve. She could take a hit, and give as good as she got. She curled her hands into fists at her side.

“Star Reid.”

“Star? What kind of name is that?”

“It’s my name.” Angry heat rose in her cheeks, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“What are you doing here?”

“Passing through,” Jack said.

He stared at them for a long moment, then, muttering, he strode past them into the middle of a large living room filled with antique furniture spread across a dark oval rug. On the far wall, a giant painting, at least a dozen feet wide and nearly as high, portrayed an old-time sailing ship on a wild sea passing in front of a rock cliff. The sky above the cliff was deep blue and green with a hint of red, like a sunset at the edge of a storm. Every detail was so perfect, Star wouldn’t have been surprised if the ship had started rocking.

Oddly, when the stranger stood in front of the painting, he looked as if he belonged in it.

“You may stay here for the night, as long as you keep to this floor. There are guest quarters at the end of the hall, and I believe you’ll find what you need. I will be occupied until tomorrow night, and by then, I assume you will be gone.”

“Wow. Thanks,” Wendy said, using her bubbly voice.

The man turned to leave.

“What’s your name?” Star asked.

He spun around, glowering.

She barely resisted flinching.

“Pardon me,” he finally said, “Captain Benjamin Bartlett.” He gave a slight bow, then marched across the room to a staircase and climbed it at a trot. His heavy footsteps thudded across the ceiling until they disappeared.

Star turned to find her traveling companions eyeing each other.

Kyle rose from the ground, still rubbing his throat. “Son of bitch,” he whispered. “What was that?”

Jack whistled softly. “This place looks like a freakin’ museum or something.”

Lighting flashed and thunder rattled the windows.

Wendy laughed. “Can you believe this? What a place to break down!”

“I wonder what the rest of the house looks like,” Jack said.

Star found herself drawn back to the painting and walked to the middle of the room to study it. She could almost taste salt in the air and hear the thunder of the surf against rocks. Men on the deck of the ship wore white shirts and bent over ropes. One man standing on a small piece of raised deck wore a dark coat, a strange pointed hat, and had long black hair. He must be the captain.

“Come on,” Wendy said, tugging on her sleeve.

Dragging herself from the scene, Star turned and followed the group past a wide staircase and down a hall that led to a kitchen.

For such a big house, the kitchen wasn’t much. Not that it was small; it was bigger than her last apartment in Atlanta. But she’d expected more.

“Jesus,” Kyle said. “This refrigerator’s older than my grandmother.” He yanked the handle and the door creaked open. “And it’s empty.”

With her stomach growling, Star got into the swing of things and started opening cabinets. Inside them, she found a variety of what must be expensive china and antique pewter, all of it dusty. Captain Benjamin Bartlett didn’t appear to have many formal dinners.

“Hey, over here.” Wendy held open the door to a pantry.

“Not exactly overstocked.” Star examined cans of soup that could have been left over from World War II.

“At least it’s food.” Wendy tore open a box of breakfast bars and passed them around. In a matter of minutes, the four of them had polished off the box.

“What else is in there?” Kyle pushed Wendy aside. She elbowed him playfully.

With her immediate hunger satisfied, Star wandered back down the hall. What kind of man lived in such a strange place?

Captain Benjamin Bartlett. His name bounced around in her head, spoken in his deep, commanding voice.

Jack slapped her ass as he passed her. “Let’s check out the rooms. I want to get out of these wet clothes. And a hot shower doesn’t sound too bad, either.”

Star followed, agreeing with his assessment of a hot shower.

Benjamin stood in the tower at the casement windows facing west, searching the woods through the rain.

He thought about his unexpected guests. He’d considered tossing the troupe out. He should have. They were obviously vagabonds, and most likely thieves. But something about them, especially the smaller female, intrigued him. She’d stood up to him when the others backed down.

She reminded him of Jeffery Veech, his midshipman from long ago. Both were slight, both had startling blue eyes, and both were surprisingly fearless. She, however, was unmistakably female.

Star. Who named a child Star?

A fresh downpour blew in, blocking off his view from the tower and rattling the panes on all sides. Deciding the night called for a pipe by the fire, he started down the tower stairs.

But he didn’t stop at his study. For whatever reason, he was drawn to the first floor, curious about how his guests fared. He still had another hour before dawn. Perhaps, if they were awake, he’d pass the time conversing with them. He rarely spoke with anyone these days besides Abby and, occasionally, Cassandra. He’d found his brief conversation with them somewhat confusing, and that bothered him. Cassandra constantly warned him about losing touch with the present.

Moving through the front hall, he doused lights left on and followed sounds of mortals to one of the guest rooms. He raised his hand to knock, but froze. Through the half-open door, he could see his visitors, and remained unnoticed because of their activity, no doubt.

The tall blonde, Wendy, lay on the canopied bed completely nude, stretched out between the two men, both also nude. With her back to the door, she kissed the fair-haired man, Jack. The redhead, Kyle, watched as he held his swelling phallus in his fist.

“What the hell are you doing?” Kyle asked over the top of his two bedmates.

Star rose across the room. “Hey, I don’t know shit about these things.” She motioned over her shoulder to the fireplace where crackling and dancing light indicated a small fire.

She wore a tight black shirt and pale blue underwear. Benjamin admired the slender sturdiness of her bare legs as she walked around the bed and stood with her back to the door. Her skin was darker than he’d realized, the color of smooth cherry wood, sanded and oiled. And her shoulder-length hair had dried to almost the same color.

Kyle put his hand on her thigh and drew her to him. “Come on, Star, we got some catching up to do.”

She drew her shirt off over her head and tossed it to the floor. Her right shoulder blade sported a tattoo of a blue star. Muscular shoulders narrowed to a slim waist and then widened only slightly to her hips. She stepped out of her underwear to expose smooth, round buttocks to Benjamin’s appreciative view.

He eased back into the shadows.

Besides being fearless, she was more attractive than he’d realized. His body reacted to the sight of her in spite of his recent activities at the Tangled Net.

“Don’t get all bent out of shape,” she said, climbing onto the bed to straddle the man’s legs. “We’ll get there.”

Kyle’s cock rose from between Star’s thighs and she gripped it in one hand. Holding her arm steady against her leg, she rose slowly and eased back down.

Her partner’s head went back and his chest rose. “Shit, that’s good.”

As she continued the slow, deliberate rhythm, the couple behind her moved so that Jack rose up above Wendy on straight arms. Once he’d mounted his partner, Jack leaned over and kissed Star.

The intimacy of this strange encounter drew Benjamin in. He heard the wet sound of mouth on mouth, and almost felt the warmth of Star’s thighs hugging Kyle’s hips. When she guided his stiff cock into the depths of her cunt, Benjamin barely bit back a groan.

Star arched her back as she slid down the full length of Kyle’s cock.

Rolling back around to the empty, dark hallway, Benjamin closed his eyes and released his being, letting his senses float into the room and across the bed like an invisible fog.

The scent of sex coiled through him, inviting him in. Star’s body heated as she rode Kyle’s hardening phallus, drawing the young man to the edge of control. Kyle’s fingers dented the flesh on her hips. Beside her, muscles in Jack’s shoulders and back roped as he pounded harder, pushing Wendy up against the headboard.

Raw, animal need charged the air with energy that Benjamin sipped like fine brandy.

Wendy grunted her release as Jack pushed her to a climax with a half dozen long, hard strokes, then he withdrew and rose to his knees, facing the remaining action. He stroked his glistening cock in one hand.

Star continued her steady rhythm. The heady scent of her juices made Benjamin’s mouth water, and the beat of her heart tingled against his incisors. He wanted to taste her, the one thing he couldn’t do from this distance.

Kyle arched his back. “Oh, fuck, I’m coming.” He gripped Star harder, pushing and pulling in time with his own need, until he stilled.

Jack crawled around between Kyle’s spread legs, grabbed Star’s waist, and drew her up to him. “I knew you’d need help,” he said to Kyle, laughing.

Star fell forward with her hands spread on Kyle’s heaving chest and watched over her shoulder as Jack entered her from behind. Once buried, he leaned forward and wrapped an arm around her waist. With his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, he started a slow, easy motion, withdrawing to only half his length. Kyle fondled Star’s breasts.

Star’s soft sounds of pleasure grew louder as the trio continued, Jack thrusting harder and drawing her up tighter, and Kyle pinching and twisting her beaded tits. Star’s skin began to glisten in the firelight, and muscles tightened in her arms and legs.

“Oh…shit,” Jack breathed, suddenly fucking her harder and then burying his cock in a final thrust.

Star grunted softly.

The couple remained joined for a moment, and then Jack collapsed onto his back.

Star crawled off the bed, raking her hair from her face as she walked to the fireplace.

Pulling back into his body, Benjamin opened his eyes and frowned into the darkness. Star had not reached a climax.

He barely fought the urge to run in and choke both men, the incompetent bastards, and had no idea why such anger welled up inside him. He had no reason to care about any of these mortals, no matter how much any of them reminded him of the past.

The scent and sight of Star’s aroused, glistening body stayed with him as he silently climbed the stairs to his room.

Star enjoyed the warmth of the fire. She stabbed the largest log with the poker and watched sparks dance up the chimney. She’d never lived anywhere that had a fireplace, but vaguely remembered camping with one of her foster families once and enjoying the fire.

The desire in her body cooled as she stared at blue and yellow flames crawling up the smaller log. She wondered if Wendy ever faked orgasms. They certainly seemed real enough.

It wasn’t that Star had no sex drive. She’d been masturbating since she was fifteen. All she had to do was picture Brad Pitt and she was off and running. It was just that no man had ever brought her to a climax. But they didn’t seem to notice.

Maybe they didn’t care.

It was time for her to strike out on her own. She could hitch a ride into Boston and find work somewhere; there wasn’t much she hadn’t done before to earn a living, short of selling drugs and prostitution. Boston was far enough away from Atlanta to be safe from Jones. She didn’t need to go all the way to Maine just because the others wanted to. It wasn’t like any of them had ever been there. Kyle idolized Stephen King. That was the only reason for their destination. Jack and Kyle were okay, but she had no desire to spend the rest of her life with either of them, and even Wendy’s friendship wasn’t enough to keep her with the group.

“Hey.” Wendy sat on the floor next to Star, raising her palms to the fire’s warmth.

A snore from behind them suggested at least one of the guys was already asleep. Probably both.

“This is a crazy place, isn’t it?”

Star raised her gaze to where shadows slid across the high ceiling like cobwebs in a breeze. “Yeah.”

“And the old man, what the hell is he?”

“He’s not that old,” Star said. Staring into the fire, she could picture the spark in Benjamin’s dark eyes as he spoke. He was commanding, and kind of sexy in a weird sort of way. “He’s probably in his late thirties.”

“You got a thing for him?”

Star glanced at Wendy. “Are you nuts?”

Wendy chuckled. “Good. For a second there, you had me worried. Kyle figures the guy has millions in antiques in this place, and probably some cash stashed somewhere. If we can get the van running while he’s not around, we could really make out. Maybe we’d even have enough to buy a place in Maine.”

Star stiffened. “You think he’d just let us walk out of here with his stuff without calling the cops?”

Wendy shrugged. “Kyle thinks he must have something to hide, since he didn’t throw us out.”

Drawing one knee up and resting her chin on it, Star returned her attention to the crackling flames. For some reason, the idea of stealing from Captain Benjamin Bartlett didn’t sit well with her. It wasn’t that she had such high moral standards; she’d stolen food before when she was hungry, and smokes and booze when she couldn’t afford them. It was just that the man trusted them in his home, even though they were total strangers. When had anyone ever really trusted her?

Maybe he did have something to hide.

But who didn’t?