"God knows the last thing I need now is a woman to think about." He smiled and kissed her. "I'd probably be wise to pitch you out to sea this minute, while I still have enough sense to do it. But I don't think I will."
"I wouldn't let you anyway. I'm not going to let you so much as move. You can just stay precisely where you are." She gripped him tighter and pulled his lips down to hers. "If anything, I should have done with you, here and now."
"Then come on. We'll go outside together." He lifted her through the open stern window, onto the quartergallery. The skies were an open flood.
She looked at him and reached to gently caress his scarred cheek. "What was that you were doing—at the first? I never knew men did such things." Her hand traveled across his chest, downward. "Do . . . do women ever do that too?"
He laughed. "It's not entirely unheard of in this day and age."
"Then you must show me how. I'll wager no Puritan wife does it."
"I didn't know you were a Puritan. You certainly don't make love like one."
"I'm not. I want to be as far from them as I can be." Her lips began to move down his chest.
"Then come away with me." He smoothed her wet hair. "To Jamaica."
"Jamaica?" She looked up at him in dismay. "My God, what are you saying? The Spaniards . . ."