It could’ve been avoided. I should have told him when I woke on the beach or in the lagoon or while we were still on his ship. There’d been hundreds of opportunities, and I’d put it off like a coward. I was wretched.

His eyes shifted to mine, and what I saw there wasn’t resentment or hatred. His gaze moved over my face, warm with understanding. He looked at my shirt, the jade stone at my throat, and returned to my eyes.

I knew in my gut that he was thinking about the conversation we’d had when I was clad in another man’s shirt.

“Do you still love him?”

“Who?”

“The man who wore this shirt.”

“Yes. I still love him, but I’m working on rectifying that.”

“He betrayed you…He bedded another.”

“Bedded and loved.”

I gave him a discreet nod, silently telling him that Priest was indeed the man who’d betrayed me, the one I still loved.

He turned his attention to Priest, and they exchanged a look I couldn’t read at this angle. Maybe not at any angle.

Where was the animosity? The possessive, primitive chest pounding? This was certainly not the time for that, but what passed between them was something akin to an alliance.

Ashley’s hands jerked beneath me, the motion of his wrists confusing. One arm slid upward. The other remained stretched toward our legs. Did he…?

Good God, he’d removed his restraints. My heart panted. Not only that, he held something in the hand that fisted between my breasts. The weight of Priest’s body kept us pressed together, and flattened along the center of my torso lay the broad, curved shape of steel.

Thunder drove through my veins and crashed in my ears. Priest had given Ashley a blade. It must have happened when he’d untied his breeches. He kept knives beneath his loose shirt and all those belts. It would’ve been feasible to slip one out and pass it between my legs.

That was why he wanted Ashley’s hands there.

Priest continued the pretense of violating my body, stirring a crescendo of huzzahs and applause amongst the unruly onlookers.

With his voice smothered by the noise, he met Ashley’s alert gaze. “Just like our ruse with Arabella.”

I stopped breathing. Arabella? Ashley’s sister?

Ashley’s eyes glittered with comprehension. Good for him because I didn’t understand any of this. God’s teeth, Priest knew Arabella?

My mind spun. He and Ashley shared a history and a plan I wasn’t privy to.

“Give him your hands,” Priest breathed at my ear and pushed off my body with a pained roar.

My heart beat in rapid-fire as I shoved my wrists toward the knife Ashley held between us. No one noticed, for all eyes tracked Priest’s strange grunting and stumbling beside the bed.