Ice-cold fear shivered down my spine, and I spun, bumping into the occupied chairs at a nearby table.

“Forgive me,” I muttered and turned away from the glares, searching the throngs for the owner of that voice.

My pulse slammed through my veins as I examined every face, pushing through the crowds, listening for him, and losing my mind.

I must have conjured him out of paranoia. He couldn’t have found me. How would he even know I was in Jamaica?

A gust of realization stole from my lungs.

Every pirate alive would’ve learned about Charles Vane’s capture, and the pirate I hated most knew exactly what Charles meant to me.

Nausea like I’d never felt at sea surged through my body. Urgency moved my legs. I flattened a hand against my stomach and shoved my way toward the exit.

Then I saw him.

In the dark corner of the tavern sprawled the king of libertines. His face angled away, but I knew that forked tongue. It had stroked every inch of my skin under a veil of lies, breathing promises that had coiled around my heart and crushed me bit by broken bit.

Priest Farrell.

Notoriously known as the Feral Priest, his moniker was whispered with more fear and reverence than of those who’d ruled the high seas with my father.

I couldn’t see his expression, but that profile was etched permanently in memory. Straight nose, strong jaw, and a dark sweep of lashes over captivating gray eyes that could drill into the deepest, most private places of a woman’s being.

He wore a shadow of stubble on his face and the sides of his head. Strings of beads, thin braids, and long twisted locks wove through the silken mane of brown hair on top, all of which scraped back into a handsome queue.

His given name, Priest, wasn’t what it implied. Surrounded by lewdly dressed women, he was as ungodly and rakish as the doxies who draped their breasts about his shoulders.

With a single look, he could make a proper, God-fearing lady wet between her thighs. His unchristian temper was negligible once a woman set her gaze upon him. There was no man alive who could compete with the well-thewed musculature of his physique or the perfectly sculpted masculinity that shaped his features. He radiated godlike beauty, and he knew it.

When I’d fallen for him, it had happened hard and fast. I’d been as weak then as I was now. It physically hurt to be this close to him.

With my breath stuck in my throat, I backed into the crowd until the press of bodies engulfed my view. Fear ruled my heart rate, and self-preservation kept me moving.

Countless men sought to capture me, but Priest’s pursuit was personal.

He’d been hunting me for two years.