As his first visit had suggested, Nassau was a lot like the other trading towns settlers had built in the parcels of lands the local nations had granted. Perhaps a few more taverns and brothels than Port Royal or maybe it was that these were open about their trades rather than hiding behind more respectable façades.

In his wanderings, an earring in a shop window caught his eye. The earring’s front was shaped like a dagger hilt and decorated with twinkling black gems. The back had been crafted to look like a blade. When worn, it would look as though a tiny dagger had been plunged through the earlobe.

I’ll cut out your tongue with your own dagger.

He chuckled. How could he walk past that? No, just like he couldn’t resist her, he couldn’t resist this. It would suit her beautifully, the silver shining bright against her dark hair. Within minutes, he emerged from the shop, the dagger earring in his breast pocket.

As the day wore on, the sun beat down more and more mercilessly making him grateful for Vee’s tricorn hat shielding his eyes. And when an astonishingly buxom woman leant from a window, beckoning him closer, he was also thankful for it as a tool to duck behind.

For the past couple of years, ever since he’d lost control and hurt Billy, he’d strived to avoid giving in to any emotion. He’d shouldered the constant fear it would unleash all his feelings in one terrible tidal wave. Now he’d well and truly caved beneath the weight of his terrible, wonderful attraction to Vee and yet …

He glanced back at the professional, and she raised an eyebrow at him, smiling. With blond hair and pale pinkish skin, she was indeed pretty, but his body gave no response. Not even the slightest thrum of temptation.

A happy huff burst from his mouth, and he carried on his way.

He’d let his gentler, hungrier emotions for Vee show. He’d even acted upon them, and yet they hadn’t consumed him with unbridled lust or opened the door for other, darker feelings to destroy him.

That woman held no allure for him whatsoever for one simple reason.

She wasn’t Vee.

Which was glorious. But also awful.

A temporary arrangement.

Gaze on the floor, his mouth twisted. Maybe that was what she’d realised, too, when she’d reacted to the timber merchant’s teasing. They couldn’t be a couple because soon enough they’d be on separate ships, perhaps even on opposite sides of the ocean depending on where his next assignment sent him. Although he’d cut a swathe through the pirates of Arawaké over the past couple of years, they marauded the waters beyond this scattering of tropical islands, and he could be sent anywhere in the world to hunt them.