Fic: "Enslaved" (J/E - NC-17 - 2/4)
May. 31st, 2011 07:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dwgmHere's the next chapter (again, note the rating), and the first chapter was here, in case you missed it.
He was wrong about it being all over.
By the time they sat down to supper, which Aziz brought in on a gold tray, Elizabeth’s exhaustion was growing evident, and when she began nodding off over her faloodeh, Jack got her up, helped her to undress, and tucked her into the bed. He took the couch, himself, and lay awake in the faint moonlight for a long time before finally dozing off, only to be roused some time later – a few hours, by the way the moon was setting -- by soft cries and a thrashing of covers.
He was up and stumbling over to her immediately, still half asleep. Her face was a pale mask of distress, and she’d thrown the covers mostly off. As she cried out again, he sat down beside her, grabbing her wrists.
“Lizzie, wake up, it’s only a dream.”
For a moment she struggled frantically, until his words penetrated, and she opened her eyes with a sobbing gasp.
“Jack!” She bit her lip, breathing hard.
“It’s only a dream, love,” he said again, releasing her, bending down to brush the tangled hair away from her cheek.
But now she clutched at him, with desperate fingers, then hands, telling him in a ragged whisper, “It’s not! I… Jack, I can’t… it’s… oh, help me!”
That training. And perhaps some lingering effect of the drug. But the nature of her distress was becoming shockingly obvious to him as she took his hand, guiding it to a taut breast, barely veiled in silk, moving her hips and opening her legs so that her single garment rode up, revealing her sex, plucked bare and smooth as a girl’s, the slit glistening and a little swollen.
A gentleman would try to bring her to her senses, to soothe her in ways that did not run the risk of regret. But Jack wasn’t a gentleman.
In future, looking back that night, he wondered that he had been able to give her the lengthy and intense satisfaction she needed and demanded. She had no patience at first, and he obliged her, bringing her off quickly with an experienced touch, and then again as they coupled that first time, as intense an encounter as he’d ever had in his life. But there was more after that, a great deal more, and by the time the sliver of moon dipped behind the horizon and they lay drained and drifting off in each other’s arms, Jack knew there had never been another like her and never would be. Never another that understood so clearly the ways in which the heart of darkness could turn to blinding light.
*
The bed smelled deliciously of sex, but Elizabeth was not in it when Jack woke to the new day.
She was standing by the window, dressed in the garments they’d given her in the House of Pearls, looking out at the garden, turned away from Jack.
He got up, naked, and padded across the carpet and cold tile to stand close behind her. “You all right?” he asked, his voice low.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She turned to him, her eyes miserable. “I’m sorry. I… I don’t know what to say.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her. She didn’t resist, and after a moment she trembled and was kissing him back, returning his embrace. The kiss ended, but not the embrace, and he told her, “Don’t be sorry, for I can’t be, and that’s the truth of it.”
She absorbed this, but said, as he had known she would, “What about Will?”
“We’ll see him in another few years, won’t we?”
She frowned. “Did he say that?”
“He did. There’s nothing to worry about, not in that direction. But let me get some clothes on and I’ll tell you the whole over some breakfast.”
Her eyes followed him as he dressed, but she only nodded and clasped her hands when he excused himself to go out for a few minutes.
Aziz had been waiting in the room’s antechamber, and he jumped up eagerly when Jack appeared, looking concerned.
“Is she well? I heard cries in the night.”
“She’s well enough, and she’ll be better by and by. Can you fetch us some breakfast?”
“It has been waiting this half hour, I’ll go get the tray.”
“Excellent,” Jack said. “But listen, lad: we go now to fetch her worship’s crew, they’re on an estate a few leagues inland, working as slaves.”
“Tai Huang, enslaved?” Aziz exclaimed, quite horrified.
“Aye. Hard to imagine, ain’t it? You’ll come with us?”
“Of course!”
“Good,” said Jack, with a smile at his eagerness. “You’re a right one, and so I shall tell your uncle when we get back. Now we’ll need a few things, including some good horses.”
“I am at your command,” the boy said with a bow.
A short time later Aziz was off with a list of essentials and a fair-sized purse, and Jack was sitting down to breakfast with his liege and lover.
“No picking at your food,” he told her. “We’ve a long journey and a risky adventure ahead. Eat up now, there’s a good lass.”
Some of the gravity left her expression and she said, “Yes, Jack,” and took up a piece of warm fresh flatbread. As she spread it with butter, she said, “Tell me about Will. He sent you to find me?”
“Aye. You know, I daresay Calypso will grant him humanity again on his one day, but I have to tell you, he’s as uncanny now as Jones ever was – in a more wholesome sort of way, of course.”
She nodded. “I felt something of that the day after the battle. When we were on the island together. Not that it wasn’t a delight. It was. Almost supernaturally so. He told me… my life was my own, that he knew the world wouldn’t stop turning. But it does for him, doesn’t it?”
“Aye, from what I’ve gathered. Time’s different on the Dutchman. Minutes like hours was more my experience, but I believe his is more fluid, if you understand me.”
“Yes. Were you there long?”
Jack glanced up at her. “Long enough. That supernatural delight of yours? I got a taste of that as well.”
She stared. “With Will? He… and you? ”
“Aye. Surprised me, too. But perhaps when one becomes immortal the game changes. Took me aback, though, I can tell you. So to speak.” He grinned at his unintentional wit, but she only looked confused, and rather upset – such an innocent, even after everything she’d been through. But he brushed that aside, for the moment. “Anyway, he somehow left me on Ammand’s ship with instructions to rescue you… and take care of you, too. In all ways. See you both in a few years was what he told me. What do you think of that, love?”
She’d put the bread down. “I… I have always loved him. And more than ever now.” Jack’s heart sank, until she went on: “Because he gave me you, Jack. He gave us each other.”
Jack smiled, puffed up and humbled, all at once. “And you’re good with it?”
A pretty color came into her cheeks, but she said, quite solemnly, “You know I am – if Calypso is. It frightens me to think I may have risked Will’s one day in my weakness. How can we be sure?”
Jack considered. “Maybe we can’t. Though Will seemed quite certain of it. And from what you say, your body was never bound to him, it was more an exchange of hearts. Speaking of which, where is his these days?”
“Buried at Shipwreck Island. Did you think it had gone down with my Empress?”
“I did wonder,” Jack admitted, relieved. “Poor old Empress. That must’ve been a blow, as bad as you being captured. But that’s how Will knew what had happened, of course.”
“Yes. I thought of that, but I had no idea he would coerce you into rescuing me again. When I saw that it was you…” Her voice trailed off, and Jack suspected that nightmarish memory was edging its way back into her head.
“The past is past, love,” he said, firmly, “and it won’t help Tai Huang and the others to let it poison the present. Might endanger them and us, if you get my drift. Now, no more talk. Eat your breakfast like a good girl, for we’ve a long ride ahead, ten miles out to an oasis this afternoon, and then the rest tomorrow morning.”
“And then what?” she asked, taking a bite of cheese.
“I’m a jewel merchant, traveling with my young servant and my treasured concubine – that’s you. The old vizier had a weakness for jewelry and fine gems back when I knew him.”
“And we’re going to wager our lives that the son has the same weakness?”
“That’s the idea. Are you game?”
Elizabeth sniffed. “I’m insulted you feel the need to ask.”
He bowed. “Apologies, your nibs, I was forgetting myself.”
She said, with facetious hauteur, “Apology accepted. Henceforth, see that you remember, Jack Sparrow.”
“It’s captain, you cheeky lass. I mean… as you wish, my liege.”
*
Shortly after midday they were off, and as their small retinue rode away from Landara and out into the desert, Elizabeth’s heart grew lighter while Jack’s seemed to sink as they drew away from the coast, in spite of their urgent task. Jack didn’t like riding, though it was evident he could manage well enough, particularly on as fine a horse as Aziz had found him, a little Barbary mare that had both a sweet gait and winning ways. Elizabeth and Aziz were both well mounted, too, and there were a couple of armed escorts to complete their retinue, tough men that were old associates of Ammand’s. Elizabeth had shed her House of Pearls garb in exchange for an elegant riding costume of blue silk, comfortable and far more functional and beautiful than English riding dress. She was also armed with a scimitar, and for the first time since the wreck of her Empress, Elizabeth felt calm and in command of herself, able to focus on the goal at hand.
She felt better, as well, physically (though there was a not-unpleasant soreness between her legs), and about the events of the previous night. Her talk with Jack, before and during breakfast, had done her a great deal of good. In fact she was inclined to consider herself most fortunate indeed. There was something to be said for her experience in the House of Pearls, nightmarish as it had seemed, if such training was of benefit to one’s love.
Love and lover: she had never thought that Jack really wanted her in those ways, for all his teasing, and that even had he done so when they’d first been thrown together, she’d destroyed all chance of it by forcing him to face the Kraken.
It seemed she’d been wrong about that.
She tried not to dwell on the details of their encounter in the moonlit night, for she felt both uncomfortably shy, thinking of the way she’d behaved and the things they’d done, and at the same time was aroused by these thoughts. She occasionally felt Jack’s gaze upon her as they rode along, and was thankful for the veil across the lower half of her face that hid the heightened color warming her cheeks. The few times she dared return his scrutiny, she blushed hotter, her heart swelling at the sight of his roguish, crooked smile, and at the warmth in his eyes.
Last night would only be the first of many such encounters, she decided. He wanted her. He wanted her. And she’d always loved him. The mere fact that he had admitted he cared for her set her heart flying. She felt she could accomplish anything, now, everything, if he was there beside her.
And dear Will watching over them from afar.
A fortunate woman, indeed.
Her very mood set her mount capering, and she laughed aloud, for the first time in weeks.
*
They arrived at the oasis near sunset. There were nomads in residence, a half dozen families who traveled together, and these people greeted the visitors with great good cheer and offers of hospitality. It seemed there would be a feast that night, there was meat already roasting over a fire, and there would be music and dancers to entertain them, too, in the luxurious tent belonging to the nomads’ chieftain.
It was a memorable evening. Elizabeth could understand little of the language, but Jack did, and even spoke it, quite proficiently, and didn’t hesitate to translate for her. By the time they were sitting down to the feast, Elizabeth was quite comfortable, and enjoyed herself very much for the next couple of hours, with one exotic dish after another presented for their delectation, while the music complimented the tone, and the dancers – young women whose grace was only exceeded by their sensuality – piqued and prodded one’s humors.
It was still fairly early when she and Jack retired to the tent Aziz had set up for them, a little way from those of the nomads. Elizabeth had pleaded weariness, which wasn’t untrue, but that was certainly not the whole of it.
Jack seemed aware, and drew her into his arms as soon as the tent flap plunged them into shadow.
“More?” he whispered against her lips, and kissed her.
She trembled at the way her need swelled, like an aching tide, and threw one arm about his neck, while the other hand sought treasure below. She smiled beneath his kiss at the small choking noise he made when she reached her goal, and when she could she said, “Yes. More, and more, and—“
But her words were cut off by another kiss, one that served to muffle the cries of delight and desire that she could not suppress as he began his own explorations.
On to Chapter Three: The House of Shade
He was wrong about it being all over.
By the time they sat down to supper, which Aziz brought in on a gold tray, Elizabeth’s exhaustion was growing evident, and when she began nodding off over her faloodeh, Jack got her up, helped her to undress, and tucked her into the bed. He took the couch, himself, and lay awake in the faint moonlight for a long time before finally dozing off, only to be roused some time later – a few hours, by the way the moon was setting -- by soft cries and a thrashing of covers.
He was up and stumbling over to her immediately, still half asleep. Her face was a pale mask of distress, and she’d thrown the covers mostly off. As she cried out again, he sat down beside her, grabbing her wrists.
“Lizzie, wake up, it’s only a dream.”
For a moment she struggled frantically, until his words penetrated, and she opened her eyes with a sobbing gasp.
“Jack!” She bit her lip, breathing hard.
“It’s only a dream, love,” he said again, releasing her, bending down to brush the tangled hair away from her cheek.
But now she clutched at him, with desperate fingers, then hands, telling him in a ragged whisper, “It’s not! I… Jack, I can’t… it’s… oh, help me!”
That training. And perhaps some lingering effect of the drug. But the nature of her distress was becoming shockingly obvious to him as she took his hand, guiding it to a taut breast, barely veiled in silk, moving her hips and opening her legs so that her single garment rode up, revealing her sex, plucked bare and smooth as a girl’s, the slit glistening and a little swollen.
A gentleman would try to bring her to her senses, to soothe her in ways that did not run the risk of regret. But Jack wasn’t a gentleman.
In future, looking back that night, he wondered that he had been able to give her the lengthy and intense satisfaction she needed and demanded. She had no patience at first, and he obliged her, bringing her off quickly with an experienced touch, and then again as they coupled that first time, as intense an encounter as he’d ever had in his life. But there was more after that, a great deal more, and by the time the sliver of moon dipped behind the horizon and they lay drained and drifting off in each other’s arms, Jack knew there had never been another like her and never would be. Never another that understood so clearly the ways in which the heart of darkness could turn to blinding light.
*
The bed smelled deliciously of sex, but Elizabeth was not in it when Jack woke to the new day.
She was standing by the window, dressed in the garments they’d given her in the House of Pearls, looking out at the garden, turned away from Jack.
He got up, naked, and padded across the carpet and cold tile to stand close behind her. “You all right?” he asked, his voice low.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She turned to him, her eyes miserable. “I’m sorry. I… I don’t know what to say.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her. She didn’t resist, and after a moment she trembled and was kissing him back, returning his embrace. The kiss ended, but not the embrace, and he told her, “Don’t be sorry, for I can’t be, and that’s the truth of it.”
She absorbed this, but said, as he had known she would, “What about Will?”
“We’ll see him in another few years, won’t we?”
She frowned. “Did he say that?”
“He did. There’s nothing to worry about, not in that direction. But let me get some clothes on and I’ll tell you the whole over some breakfast.”
Her eyes followed him as he dressed, but she only nodded and clasped her hands when he excused himself to go out for a few minutes.
Aziz had been waiting in the room’s antechamber, and he jumped up eagerly when Jack appeared, looking concerned.
“Is she well? I heard cries in the night.”
“She’s well enough, and she’ll be better by and by. Can you fetch us some breakfast?”
“It has been waiting this half hour, I’ll go get the tray.”
“Excellent,” Jack said. “But listen, lad: we go now to fetch her worship’s crew, they’re on an estate a few leagues inland, working as slaves.”
“Tai Huang, enslaved?” Aziz exclaimed, quite horrified.
“Aye. Hard to imagine, ain’t it? You’ll come with us?”
“Of course!”
“Good,” said Jack, with a smile at his eagerness. “You’re a right one, and so I shall tell your uncle when we get back. Now we’ll need a few things, including some good horses.”
“I am at your command,” the boy said with a bow.
A short time later Aziz was off with a list of essentials and a fair-sized purse, and Jack was sitting down to breakfast with his liege and lover.
“No picking at your food,” he told her. “We’ve a long journey and a risky adventure ahead. Eat up now, there’s a good lass.”
Some of the gravity left her expression and she said, “Yes, Jack,” and took up a piece of warm fresh flatbread. As she spread it with butter, she said, “Tell me about Will. He sent you to find me?”
“Aye. You know, I daresay Calypso will grant him humanity again on his one day, but I have to tell you, he’s as uncanny now as Jones ever was – in a more wholesome sort of way, of course.”
She nodded. “I felt something of that the day after the battle. When we were on the island together. Not that it wasn’t a delight. It was. Almost supernaturally so. He told me… my life was my own, that he knew the world wouldn’t stop turning. But it does for him, doesn’t it?”
“Aye, from what I’ve gathered. Time’s different on the Dutchman. Minutes like hours was more my experience, but I believe his is more fluid, if you understand me.”
“Yes. Were you there long?”
Jack glanced up at her. “Long enough. That supernatural delight of yours? I got a taste of that as well.”
She stared. “With Will? He… and you? ”
“Aye. Surprised me, too. But perhaps when one becomes immortal the game changes. Took me aback, though, I can tell you. So to speak.” He grinned at his unintentional wit, but she only looked confused, and rather upset – such an innocent, even after everything she’d been through. But he brushed that aside, for the moment. “Anyway, he somehow left me on Ammand’s ship with instructions to rescue you… and take care of you, too. In all ways. See you both in a few years was what he told me. What do you think of that, love?”
She’d put the bread down. “I… I have always loved him. And more than ever now.” Jack’s heart sank, until she went on: “Because he gave me you, Jack. He gave us each other.”
Jack smiled, puffed up and humbled, all at once. “And you’re good with it?”
A pretty color came into her cheeks, but she said, quite solemnly, “You know I am – if Calypso is. It frightens me to think I may have risked Will’s one day in my weakness. How can we be sure?”
Jack considered. “Maybe we can’t. Though Will seemed quite certain of it. And from what you say, your body was never bound to him, it was more an exchange of hearts. Speaking of which, where is his these days?”
“Buried at Shipwreck Island. Did you think it had gone down with my Empress?”
“I did wonder,” Jack admitted, relieved. “Poor old Empress. That must’ve been a blow, as bad as you being captured. But that’s how Will knew what had happened, of course.”
“Yes. I thought of that, but I had no idea he would coerce you into rescuing me again. When I saw that it was you…” Her voice trailed off, and Jack suspected that nightmarish memory was edging its way back into her head.
“The past is past, love,” he said, firmly, “and it won’t help Tai Huang and the others to let it poison the present. Might endanger them and us, if you get my drift. Now, no more talk. Eat your breakfast like a good girl, for we’ve a long ride ahead, ten miles out to an oasis this afternoon, and then the rest tomorrow morning.”
“And then what?” she asked, taking a bite of cheese.
“I’m a jewel merchant, traveling with my young servant and my treasured concubine – that’s you. The old vizier had a weakness for jewelry and fine gems back when I knew him.”
“And we’re going to wager our lives that the son has the same weakness?”
“That’s the idea. Are you game?”
Elizabeth sniffed. “I’m insulted you feel the need to ask.”
He bowed. “Apologies, your nibs, I was forgetting myself.”
She said, with facetious hauteur, “Apology accepted. Henceforth, see that you remember, Jack Sparrow.”
“It’s captain, you cheeky lass. I mean… as you wish, my liege.”
*
Shortly after midday they were off, and as their small retinue rode away from Landara and out into the desert, Elizabeth’s heart grew lighter while Jack’s seemed to sink as they drew away from the coast, in spite of their urgent task. Jack didn’t like riding, though it was evident he could manage well enough, particularly on as fine a horse as Aziz had found him, a little Barbary mare that had both a sweet gait and winning ways. Elizabeth and Aziz were both well mounted, too, and there were a couple of armed escorts to complete their retinue, tough men that were old associates of Ammand’s. Elizabeth had shed her House of Pearls garb in exchange for an elegant riding costume of blue silk, comfortable and far more functional and beautiful than English riding dress. She was also armed with a scimitar, and for the first time since the wreck of her Empress, Elizabeth felt calm and in command of herself, able to focus on the goal at hand.
She felt better, as well, physically (though there was a not-unpleasant soreness between her legs), and about the events of the previous night. Her talk with Jack, before and during breakfast, had done her a great deal of good. In fact she was inclined to consider herself most fortunate indeed. There was something to be said for her experience in the House of Pearls, nightmarish as it had seemed, if such training was of benefit to one’s love.
Love and lover: she had never thought that Jack really wanted her in those ways, for all his teasing, and that even had he done so when they’d first been thrown together, she’d destroyed all chance of it by forcing him to face the Kraken.
It seemed she’d been wrong about that.
She tried not to dwell on the details of their encounter in the moonlit night, for she felt both uncomfortably shy, thinking of the way she’d behaved and the things they’d done, and at the same time was aroused by these thoughts. She occasionally felt Jack’s gaze upon her as they rode along, and was thankful for the veil across the lower half of her face that hid the heightened color warming her cheeks. The few times she dared return his scrutiny, she blushed hotter, her heart swelling at the sight of his roguish, crooked smile, and at the warmth in his eyes.
Last night would only be the first of many such encounters, she decided. He wanted her. He wanted her. And she’d always loved him. The mere fact that he had admitted he cared for her set her heart flying. She felt she could accomplish anything, now, everything, if he was there beside her.
And dear Will watching over them from afar.
A fortunate woman, indeed.
Her very mood set her mount capering, and she laughed aloud, for the first time in weeks.
*
They arrived at the oasis near sunset. There were nomads in residence, a half dozen families who traveled together, and these people greeted the visitors with great good cheer and offers of hospitality. It seemed there would be a feast that night, there was meat already roasting over a fire, and there would be music and dancers to entertain them, too, in the luxurious tent belonging to the nomads’ chieftain.
It was a memorable evening. Elizabeth could understand little of the language, but Jack did, and even spoke it, quite proficiently, and didn’t hesitate to translate for her. By the time they were sitting down to the feast, Elizabeth was quite comfortable, and enjoyed herself very much for the next couple of hours, with one exotic dish after another presented for their delectation, while the music complimented the tone, and the dancers – young women whose grace was only exceeded by their sensuality – piqued and prodded one’s humors.
It was still fairly early when she and Jack retired to the tent Aziz had set up for them, a little way from those of the nomads. Elizabeth had pleaded weariness, which wasn’t untrue, but that was certainly not the whole of it.
Jack seemed aware, and drew her into his arms as soon as the tent flap plunged them into shadow.
“More?” he whispered against her lips, and kissed her.
She trembled at the way her need swelled, like an aching tide, and threw one arm about his neck, while the other hand sought treasure below. She smiled beneath his kiss at the small choking noise he made when she reached her goal, and when she could she said, “Yes. More, and more, and—“
But her words were cut off by another kiss, one that served to muffle the cries of delight and desire that she could not suppress as he began his own explorations.
On to Chapter Three: The House of Shade
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 04:14 pm (UTC)To quote Elizabeth: "More, and more, and -" Please?
Oh, and I forgot: The linguist in me was wondering which language Jack is fluent in. Arabic or Amazigh (Berber)? (really liked that, btw)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 06:59 am (UTC)Very glad you enjoyed the hotness, there is more to come, along with the adventure. Thank you very much for commenting!!
no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 05:50 pm (UTC)Elizabeth sniffed. “I’m insulted you feel the need to ask.”
He bowed. “Apologies, your nibs, I was forgetting myself.”
She said, with facetious hauteur, “Apology accepted. Henceforth, see that you remember, Jack Sparrow.”
“It’s captain, you cheeky lass. I mean… as you wish, my liege.”
What a marvelous exchange! I love it. It's also interesting to watch Elizabeth basically put herself in Jack's hands, while retaining her spirit.
And you manage quite neatly to be sexy without being terribly specific. Keeps the tension up even though the characters have released it. ;)
It seems to me that being the captain of the Flying Dutchman would necessarily change you. I like the detail you give here of Will's other-worldliness.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 06:56 pm (UTC)Jack and Elizabeth's banter in this chapter is spot on and adorable. Can't wait for tomorrow!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 07:17 am (UTC)Me too. I don't think one can leave Will out of the equation -- which is one of the wonderful things about the first three movies, that initially wary camaraderie that grows into true friendship and even love.
So happy you're enjoying the story! More tomorrow morning. Thank you very much for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 07:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 02:16 am (UTC)Having a magnaminous husband certainly helps smooth the sands, so to speak. They had better hope there is lots of forgiveness. Saying and doing are often two different things. Those are some serious drugs!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 07:26 am (UTC)That's what I've always heard, and read, for many many years -- did I tell you how nuts about horses I was as a kid, though I've barely ever ridden? A bit more of the pretty horses to come, as well as more smut, lol! Thank you very much for reading and commenting! I'm glad you're enjoyng it!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 07:12 am (UTC)One can only imagine, because the adventure (and attendant smut) moves on tomorrow morning. *g* So glad you're enjoying the story! Thank you very much for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 05:07 am (UTC)-Laurel
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 02:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-12 02:10 pm (UTC)(*Ahem* Now that I've got that out of my system, the detail...)
But now she clutched at him, with desperate fingers, then hands, telling him in a ragged whisper, “It’s not! I… Jack, I can’t… it’s… oh, help me!”...
A gentleman would try to bring her to her senses, to soothe her in ways that did not run the risk of regret. But Jack wasn’t a gentleman.
Can I just say what delightful shivers this bit gave me? This is exactly what I meant in my previous statement about your Jack being a good man, but not TOO good! And that's what's so endlessly fascinating about the character: that mix of "good man" and "selfish pirate." Yes, Jack might have instead opted to do the noble, gentlemanly thing by not taking advantage of Elizabeth's need, but if the lady's begging for it, why not seize the opportune moment, and satisfy not only her desires, but his own as well? (In my book, noble men who always do the right thing are SO boring! Thankfully, that's never a risk with Jack!) ;-)
And I notice this is a recurring thread in your NC17 J/E fics (and one that works amazingly well, at least for me) -- Elizabeth being in need, sexually, and turning to Jack for "relief", with her invariably being the one to initiate the contact.
And her being embarrassed by her behaviour "the morning after" is SO true to Elizabeth's character, and her need to be in control:
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She turned to him, her eyes miserable. “I’m sorry. I… I don’t know what to say.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her. She didn’t resist, and after a moment she trembled and was kissing him back, returning his embrace. The kiss ended, but not the embrace, and he told her, “Don’t be sorry, for I can’t be, and that’s the truth of it.”
Primo stuff!
And may I add how exquisitely beautiful this passage is:
...by the time the sliver of moon dipped behind the horizon and they lay drained and drifting off in each other’s arms, Jack knew there had never been another like her and never would be. Never another that understood so clearly the ways in which the heart of darkness could turn to blinding light.
*Sigh*
Love and lover: she had never thought that Jack really wanted her in those ways, for all his teasing...
Perhaps that was a sign of her innocence and her limited experience with men, or of her own capacity for self-delusion, but as far as I'm concerned, Jack never made a secret of the fact that he "wanted her in those ways..." (in fact, quite the opposite -- he was fairly obvious about it! Never mind the fact that she deliberately used that weakness -- his desire for her -- to her advantage, not only when she kissed him and chained him to the Pearl's mast in DMC, but also when she lured him to passed-out drunkenness on rum-runner's island, cosying up to him with flattering words, and sidestepping his advances). She had to have SOME inkling, even back then, of what he wanted from her...
(BTW, this is NOT a criticism of your writing, just an observation regarding Elizabeth's character.) ;-)
And the ride to the oasis, just a wealth of good content here: Elizabeth's "soreness", her mingled embarrassment and desire at her musings about the night before, her determination to have many more such "encounters", her blushes and exchanged glances with Jack, her soaring heart... simply wonderful!
And I just love, love, love this part:
“More?” he whispered against her lips, and kissed her.
She trembled at the way her need swelled, like an aching tide, and threw one arm about his neck, while the other hand sought treasure below. She smiled beneath his kiss at the small choking noise he made when she reached her goal, and when she could she said, “Yes. More, and more, and—“
Ah! Once more, Elizabeth taking the initiative! You go, girl! :-)
Fantastic chapter, perfectly rendered J/E, beautifully written (as are all your fics! Simply masterful!). Love that you decided to go this route for Big Bang! Such abundant treasures here, makes me crave more! ;-)
-- Cat
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 05:21 am (UTC)She had Jack's measure from the start of course, knew he "wanted" her. But on any sort of permanent basis? But their conversation over breakfast, and his care and tenderness have shown her she might have been wrong in her assumptions, or he's changed. Maybe they both have.
Thank you again for reading and commenting. I'm so glad you liked it!