He sank his finger inside me. I gulped, tried to fight it. He stroked an explosive rhythm against my flesh. I moaned, tried to fight it. His other arm firmed its grip around my back, and he went about distracting me from my vigilance of the dock.

I tried to fight it until I ended up on the desk in the cabin with his cock buried to the hilt.

His lips lay waste to my focus, kissing and sucking my breasts, as he rocked at an agonizingly slow pace. My hands curled up and around his broad shoulders, my hips straining wantonly toward his.

While I’d regained my strength in the manor, he’d rebuilt his own. It shone in the hard muscles of his chest and abdomen as he flexed into me over and over.

Roguish masculinity radiated from him, especially while in the heat of passion. He embodied primal danger and power and something else. Something that called to the instinctual needs of a woman.

He was a protector, a provider, and an incomparable lover. The way he used his lips and moved his body had been and always would be one of my greatest weaknesses.

“Come on my cock, Bennett.” He snarled the heated words into my mouth.

I responded instantly, trembling and gasping and clinging to his handsome hooded gaze. As he followed me with his own release, the sound of Jade’s windlass groaned into motion.

We froze, sharing a wide-eyed look.

“They’re weighing.” My chest clamped tight as I listened to the sounds of what was undeniably the anchor being hoisted from the sea. “Why are they weighing?”

The door opened, and we turned our heads.

Ashley stood in the gilded glow of dawn’s light, his eyes afire with a sense of autonomy. His posture was properly rigid yet less…stifled. He looked free, independent, and self-governing.

Relief crashed through me in glorious waves of warmth, and Priest’s spent cock gave an answering throb inside me. He caressed my thigh absently, his gaze locked on Ashley. Then he pulled out and drew me up to sit on the desk.

Ashley wore a white satin shirt, open at the collar. No doublet or waistcoat. No lace cuffs or jewel-encrusted buttons. Boots covered his feet. Jackboots. His legs—long and finely thewed—were cased in brown leather breeches, the likes of which I’d never seen him wear.

The sword he carried at his hip wasn’t a cutlass. But it was practical, the kind used for hacking and surviving rather than sport. With his cropped short hair, clean-shaved face, and perfectly erect carriage, he didn’t quite look like a pirate.

His muscled physique was that of a seafaring man, to be certain. But he clad it in fabrics from the most expensive haberdashers and bootmakers.

He looked like a pirate prince.

Elegantly masculine.

Strikingly confident.

Gorgeously male.