The Captain of All Pleasures Read Online Free PDF

you mean by that?”
    Derek could feel her as she took another deep breath and rose up again. “You’ve got a deep groove between your eyebrows from scowling, but no matching ones around your eyes like you’d get from laughing. You scowl a lot, don’t you? I bet you are right now.”
    Hell, he was. He despised it when people analyzed him. “You don’t know a damn thing about me—”
    â€œClearly, I know you don’t laugh.”
    Enough . He purposely swung her down as if he was dropping her.
    â€œWh-whoa!” she squealed as she fell, but he caught her just before she tumbled to the ground.
    After steadying herself, she pushed her thick, tangled hair out of her face and tilted her head. With a hurt expression, she asked in a genuinely confused voice, “What’d you do that for?”
    He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. The wench had a great mane of hair. He took in the piles of curls tousled from the night, curls that couldn’t quite decide if they wanted to be red or gold. They framed her oddly pretty face and curved along her slender neck. His lips itched to kiss that neck….
    He shook his head at such driveling thoughts. “I’m not sure I want to take you anywhere safe. You have a barbed tongue on you and don’t know the meaning of gratitude. You belong at the Mermaid.”
    Her chin jerked up. “You,” she said in a rising voice, “were there right along with me. Or were you too drunk to remember?”
    â€œLady, you’re on your—” he began, but saw her eyes dart toward the sound of a fight breaking out not twenty yards behind them. Her face fell, and her body shook. For all her bravado, she was truly afraid.
    Before she could run, he grabbed her waist and tossed her over his shoulder once again. Marching toward his ship, he felt a curious satisfaction as he carried her along.
    He didn’t know what it was about the girl. Perhaps it was that no one had ever looked at him the way she had in the Mermaid, like a siren.
    Like she’d die if he didn’t bed her.
    Derek had told himself he wanted to find her simply to settle his curiosity. It mystified him why a young woman, a young woman who obviously sold her body at the Mermaid and consorted with Lassiter, no less, would look at him the way she had that night. First with desire, later with fury.
    Plus, he’d needed to know if he could want her that badly, or if it had been the drink that night.
    It wasn’t the drink. What was the matter with him? She was a sharp tongued, insulting prostitute who dallied with his worst enemy. And she had peculiar features. Overblown ebony eyes, too dark and large for her small, gamine face, contrasted with the pout of her lips. It was as though one artist, vivid and wild, was unleashed to paint her eyes and hair, while another labored over the faultless bow of her lips….
    The wench began working up her pique once again. She must have thought at that point that he posed the greater danger to her, because she began writhing on his back, straining to break his hold. She weighed so little, he easily held her firm.
    Then she twined her fists together and pounded his back. The force of the hit surprised him, but his stride didn’t falter. It simply earned her a light slap on her shapely backside, so plainly outlined in her snug trousers.
    â€œYou! Oooh, you can’t—”
    He rested his hand there. “Clearly, I can,” he said, using her word. She sputtered in outrage, and his lips crooked up. Then it was his turn to be shocked when she called him names that would make his most hardened sailors blush. It wasn’t just the creativity of her curses or the venom dripping from every word that surprised him. He could expect that with her background.
    No, he’d noted before that she didn’t have a dockside English accent, but in her fury, her words became crisper and less like what