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They leave in their wake their sword belts and pistols, James’ neckerchief, Elizabeth’s jacket. At the edge of the captain’s berth they pause long enough to shuck off Elizabeth’s outermost skirts—and the pockets tied beneath them, which clatter to the ground with the weight of the shot, powder, and knives stored within. Startled, James rears back from their kiss and nearly bucks his chin into her nose.
“Oh, those,” Elizabeth sighs, in the weary tone of a farmer whose chickens have run amok. She reluctantly pulls away to pat her sides.
“There are more, then,” James notes, not quite a question.
“A few. I would say you should search for them yourself, but—” She touches her bruised lips. “We are in a rush, I think.”
It is an understatement: his thoughts are muddled with the impatience of his desire, a feeling as strange to him as it is intoxicating, and he is distantly aware of the pressure of time both within and without his body. He works to push his fervor aside in favor of sense.
“Yes,” he says, after a beat, and she rewards him with a knowing slash of a smile.
James takes the opportunity to remove the knife strapped to the back of the band of his trousers—and, finding it suddenly quite warm in the cabin, to open his collar, as well. Elizabeth balances on one foot, a hand on his shoulder, to remove the slim knives kept in her stockings, which he expects—but he cannot help but stare as she pulls a dagger from the busk point of her stays.
“That secret, you get for free,” she says, lightly.
“I will guard it with my heart,” he says, gravely.
Elizabeth smiles and sets the dagger safely aside. Hooking her waist James draws her close again. As she turns, her knees catch the edge of the bunk and she tumbles back with a soft gasp, grasping at his shirt to pull him down with her. James catches himself on his palms above her, then shifts his weight so he is properly straddling her.
He freezes. “Your knee,” he says suddenly. “Did you—?”
The slash to her kneecap has been taking her weight these last few days, but James pushes her skirts up out of the way to check all the same. The wound is still well-wrapped, not bleeding through its dressing, and—
Elizabeth laughs. If she is in pain, it certainly does not show: she is flushed and breathless below him and all but glows with mirth. “What a gentleman you are! I don't know how I could have ever forgotten. I am fine, James, just fine. You will know if I’m not.”
She reaches up and past his shoulder to pull the ribbon in his hair free, then trails her fingers down his neck and chest, hooking them in the low divot of his collar. Her touch burns fire down his skin, searing away his residual worries.
“There you are,” Elizabeth purrs. “Come here.”
James crushes her back to the bed with a kiss; she cups her free hand around his neck, setting the other against his chest. His wound there twinges, stinging, but even the pain is sweet, swept up in the chorus of elation that roars through him. He pushes her skirts out, out of the way at last, hands gliding up her thighs to find her slick and waiting. He sets a thumb at the apex and slips one finger within—then two, at the answering twitch of her hips.
Elizabeth breaks their kiss with a gasp. “James,” she rasps, “come here.”
He pauses in his ministrations. She taps an impatient finger behind his ear, eyes intent and seeking.
“You mean—”
“I do.”
He straightens, leaning back on his heels. Elizabeth undoes the fall of his trousers and untucks his shirt, taking him in hand. It takes only a few tender (if hasty) strokes to prepare him fully, and that heat floods over him, blinding him; he lets out a shaky, whimpering breath.
Then—“Wait.”
Elizabeth lets her head fall back to the bed with a groan. “James.”
“What is it they say about patience and virtue?”
“What about this situation would you say is either patient or virtuous?” she retorts.
James spares the time to snort. Moving quickly, he snatches up a pillow from the end of the bunk, lifts her hips, and tucks it under her.
“Better?” he asks.
Elizabeth narrows her eyes at him, shifting experimentally. “It is. Damn you, it is better. What a gentleman you are,” she repeats, this time dryly, though the corners of her lips betray her amusement.
“I live to serve.”
At last he presses into her, slowly at first, then with a thrust, to the hilt. Elizabeth fists a hand in his shirt and rolls her hips into it, into him, and they move together. She drags him down to kiss him.
He sets a rhythm that she meets and encourages—quicker and harder than he may prefer, but one that sings up his spine. Their kisses stop meeting and dissolve into pants, bodies and minds put to better occupation, though Elizabeth does bite his lip to keep him near. She slips a hand between them, reaching to feel where they join.
She tenses and arches against him, reaching her release, and James follows not long after. He continues his strokes until all pleasure has been wrung from this engagement, slowly and steady on trembling arms, then collapses into an undignified heap. They lie there sweaty and lax with pleasure for a long moment, the only movement to be found in their heavy breathing and the swaying of the hull in the water.
“Well,” Elizabeth says.
“Well.”
“That was—”
“Yes.”
She laughs weakly. “What was it you said? Not as young as we used to be, indeed. Yet here we are, like children who have minutes and not hours.”
“I confess, I would like to take my time, this time,” James says. He kisses her neck, her shoulder, her chest, and drifts lower.
She rumbles approval. Her hands absently run down his back, along his ribs. “Mm. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I am much more inclined to be patient.” She plucks at the back vent of his shirt. “And now we can get these out of the way, as well.”
James sits back and withdraws carefully. “With pleasure,” he murmurs, to her satisfied smile.
It is a relief to shed his trousers and sweat-damp shirt. Elizabeth is still in many more layers (“Somehow,” she notes, wry. “How you managed around them, I will never know.”) and welcomes the help to be free of them, as well. She shifts on the bed so he can sit beside her and work through the lacing at her back.
He undoes her plait before the stays. As he combs through her tresses with his fingers, the closeness of her suddenly sweeps over him, despite the change in their positions: the sun off her clothes, the salt and sweat on her skin, the lightest brush of her floral perfume and the sharp rosemary oil in her hair.
The light grows long, the afternoon waning, their dangerous engagement dawning on the horizon. Yet he lingers, taking his time, pulling her hair out of the way and trailing kisses down the satin-soft of her neck.
Elizabeth rolls her head to the opposite side, granting him better access. “You always know just what to do,” she sighs. “That is what I love about you; one of many things, anyway.”
James pauses. He had been so indirect with that sentiment earlier; maybe he should have saved himself the trouble and instead said it casually, as she just has.
At his silence, she turns her head so he can see her knowing smile in profile. He drops a kiss to her shoulder and carries on. He will merely have to show her the depth of his feelings, if she has not guessed at the fathoms herself.