He saw her tears. His features darkened. “We’ll get your father back,” he said, his deep voice rumbling through her, his voice as carnal as the rest of him, drawing her into his arms and holding her against his chest, comforting her.

For a moment.

Morgan pulled back, slipping from Drakon’s arms, and took several quick steps away to keep from being tempted to return. He’d been so warm. He’d smelled so good. His hard chest, covered in cashmere, had made her want to burrow closer. She’d felt safe there, secure, and yet it was an illusion.

Drakon wasn’t safe. He was anything but safe for her.

He watched her make her escape. His jaw jutted, his brow lowered, expression brooding. “We’ll get your father back,” he said, repeating his promise from a few moments ago. “And we’ll do it without giving them another dollar.”

She looked up at him, surprised. “How?”

“I know people.”

She blinked at him. Of course he knew people—Drakon knew everyone—but could he really free her father without giving the pirates more money? “Is that possible?”

“There are companies … services … that exist just for this purpose.”

“I’ve looked into those companies. They cost millions, and they won’t help me. They loathe my father. He represents everything they detest—”

“But they’ll work with me.”

“Not when they hear who they are to rescue—”

“I own one of the largest shipping companies in the world. No maritime agency would refuse me.”

Hope rose up within her, but she didn’t trust it, didn’t trust anyone or anything anymore. “But you said … you said you wouldn’t help me. You said since you’d given me the check—”

“I was wrong. I was being petty. But I can’t be petty. You’re my wife—” he saw her start to protest and overrode her “—and as long as you are my wife, it’s my duty to care for you and your family. It is the vow I made, and a vow I will keep.”

“Even though I left you?”

“You left me. I didn’t leave you.”

Pain flickered through her. “You owe me nothing. I know that. You must know that, too.”

“Marriage isn’t about keeping score. Life is uneven and frequently unjust and I did not marry you, anticipating only fun and games. I expected there would be challenges, and there have been, far more than I anticipated, but until we are divorced, you are my wife, and the law is the law, and it is my duty to provide for you, to protect you, and I can see I have failed to do both.”

She closed her eyes, shattered by his honesty, as well as his sense of responsibility. Drakon was a good man, a fair man, and he deserved a good wife, a wife less highly strung and sensitive … a wife who craved him less, a wife who could live and breathe without him at her side….

Morgan wasn’t that woman. Even now she wanted to be back in his arms, to have his mouth on hers, to have him parting her lips, tasting her, filling her, possessing her so completely that the world fell away, leaving just the two of them.