Unforgivable

*Waves to Freelke* Here you go, hun! Hope you and all my other lovely reviewers like it!! (BTW Freelke - when I get sick of your fantastic compliments about my fic I'll be sure to let you know. Just don't hold your breath, okay?!?!)

He was watching her again.

Dark, hooded eyes roved hungrily over her body, slender brown hands curled into fists as though to stop himself from reaching out. His torment was palpable. And entirely self-imposed.

Elizabeth did nothing to ease his frustration. No matter how hard he tried to elude her she sought him out, taunted him with a look, teased him with whispered reminders of what he was missing.

Jack defence was typical. He ran away.

He took over the night watch, not trusting himself to be alone with her in the cabin. When she followed him to the helm Gibbs was called to join them, a bewildered and unwitting chaperone. When she followed him to the cabin he took his charts and maps on deck, cursing as the wind threatened to steal them away. He took solace in rum, protection in the presence of others.

But still he couldn’t stop himself from watching her.

His stubbornness infuriated her. His absence left a hollow ache.

She felt bereft without his frequent, casual caresses, cold without the heat of his wicked mouth and the touch of those quick clever hands. And, most of all, she missed the comfort of his body curled into hers when passion was spent and the world contracted to the two of them and nothing else.

Three days. It felt more like three years. And she wanted him. At night she moved restlessly in a bed that seemed much too large and told herself that this was madness, she would seek him out and cede to him, announce him victor of their game and beg him to take her.

But in daylight her irritation would reassert itself and she trailed him, tempted him and taunted him in every way she knew, determined that he would be the one to break.

Leaning back against the rail, eyes closed, lips softly parted, her body was a silent invitation.

He was watching her again.

After a moment she turned to him, a slow, seductive smile on her lips.

Her eyes slid open – and Cotton met her gaze with an expression of alarm.

“Oh!” She jerked back, horrified. “Oh! I’m sorry, I thought…I mean I wasn’t…I didn’t know…”

The old sailor winked, then pointed behind her and she turned in time to see Jack disappearing into his cabin.

She didn’t hurry. To the best of her knowledge he’d had neither the opportunity nor privacy required to relieve his frustrations again since she’d walked in on him. Remembering the breathy gasp of her name on his lips and the naked pleasure on his face as he climaxed made her stomach clench with lust.

The smouldering desire in his eyes and his sneaky departure told her he had a pressing need to be alone. Well, she thought, keeping her pace deliberately slow, give him chance to – to get started, so to speak. If she timed her entrance well he would be powerless to resist….

At the door she paused, forced herself to wait, anticipation of his surrender making her heart race. Then slowly, quietly, she crept into the cabin.

His back was turned, his head bent and his hands exactly where she knew they would be.

“Jack?”

He flinched and swung round to face her.

“What is it ‘Lizabeth? M’busy.”

“So I see.” Slowly her eyes travelled down his body, taking in the loosened ties of his breeches, the shape of him straining the material below.

Jack followed her gaze, slid hastily sideways and sat his desk.

“Got work to do,” he frowned. “G’way.”

Elizabeth smirked.

“Let me stay,” she cooed. “I won’t disturb you. Perhaps I could help.”

“NO! Er…no, thank you. M’fine. Don’t need help. Just quiet.”

“I can be quiet.”

“Then be quiet somewhere else. Please.”

She watched him rifle through the charts on his desk, pick up a pen and lay it down again.

“You still here?” he growled irritably.

“Evidently.” She paused, enjoying his discomfiture. “Is there something wrong, Jack? You seem a little…restless.”

He shifted uneasily on the chair. “M’fine. Will you please go away?”

“Don’t be so unfriendly! I’m sure there must be something I can help you with…”

Sauntering round the desk to stand behind him, she slid her hands over his shoulders.

“You seem so…tense, Captain. Why would that be, I wonder?”

Jack muttered under his breath and tried to shrug her off. She tightened her grip.

“What was that, Captain? I’m surprised at you, using such language in the presence of a lady! And for what reason, exactly, do you want to throw me in the brig?”

“Bloody buggering hell!” he roared, and flung himself forward so that his head hit the desk with a resounding thump.

Elizabeth watched with amusement as his hands came up to grab fistfuls of his own hair.

“Please,” he hissed, “Leave. Depart. Absent yerself from me cabin. GO AWAY!”

But she hoisted herself onto the desk and gave the tangled mop of dreads a comforting pat.

“How can I leave you when you’re so obviously distressed? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Groaning, Jack straightened up and glared at her.

“The object of me distress is sittin’ on me bloody desk. If said object were to remove itself from me cabin as per me previous requests, me distress would no longer be distressin’ me. Now go away!”

“No.” Slowly she pushed herself off the desk and strolled towards the bunk. “I do believe I’ll lie down for a while. Feeling a little….fatigued. You don’t mind, do you?”

The muttered curse told her he minded very much, and she gave a satisfied smirk.

With much sighing and soft, breathy moans she settled herself in the most alluring pose she could think of.

She watched his back stiffen, and his hand crept into his lap.

“What are you doing?”

“Quiet!” he snapped, and the hand reappeared to snatch up his bottle of rum.

Silence stretched out, tension thickening with every passing second. He bent over his charts, fighting the urge to look at her. She stared at his back, willing him to meet her eyes.

“Goodness it’s warm in here,” she observed finally.

“Usually is. S’the Caribbean.”

He heard the mattress creak as she moved.

“Ahh…that’s better.”

His head shot round. “What are you….Oh Christ!”

She smiled seductively, her discarded shirt dangling from her fingers, her bared breasts creamily pale and hopelessly tempting.

He tried to look away. Found he couldn’t.

Mesmerised, he watched her bring one hand up to cup the weight of each breast in turn, whimpered softly as her fingers stroked and caressed with calculated indifference.

“I’m up here, Captain Sparrow,” came an amused voice, and he dragged his eyes back to her face. “Is there something wrong?”

“No!” he squeaked, and shifted round in the chair to get a better view.

She licked her lips, fascinated by the way his hand drifted to his bulging crotch and pressed down, hard, as if he were trying to force his body into submission.

She swallowed, suddenly very aware of her own thudding heartbeat.

“Are – are you sure?”

“Mmm.”

His fingers flexed, straightened. He ran his palm slowly down, back up again. Curled his hand into a fist and turned it so that his rings pressed against the rigid length of him. Stroked down, then up again.

Elizabeth stared.

“Stop doing that, ‘Lizabeth” he whispered throatily.

“Stop…what?” Her voice was equally faint.

“That. What yer doin’…there. Don’t do that.”

Glancing down, she realised her own hand was clamped firmly between her legs, unconsciously trying to soothe the maddeningly sweet ache there.

“Oh…that. Sorry. But you were doing…that. And it made me want to do this.”

“M’not doin’ anythi…Ah. Right.”

Jack lifted his hand away from his groin and scowled at it accusingly.

When he met her eyes again his expression was pleading.

“’Lizzie…please. Yer not being fair. Ye know I can’t…”

“Hah! Can, but won’t! Big difference. And who said I had to be fair? You already cheated once, remember?”

“Weren’t cheating, luv, it were….” He paused, thinking. “…It were an – an essential necessity of a – er – medicinal nature.. An explorative and carefully executed examination of the painful injury incurred to me person.”

“Really, Jack? And was it strictly necessary for your examination to be quite so….thorough? Did you really need to rub quite so hard?”

“Had to make sure everythin’ was still in working order, didn’t I darlin’?”

“Which it very evidently was!”

He allowed himself a smug grin.

“So do tell, Captain Sparrow – what IS the point of this – this self-denial?”

“I…er…Well, I…”

“….Other your stubborn and extremely childish desire to prove me wrong?”

“Ah hah!” he shouted gleefully, “’Tis YOU who’s displaying those said qualities yer proportioning to meself. Tis yer own stubborn childishness that has landed us in this predicament. If’n’ye hadn’t tempted me, if ye hadn’t forced me hand, so to speak…we wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d be rolling ye under me on that bunk and partakin’ of the most pleasurable of pleasures.”

Elizabeth gawped at him and shook her head in disbelief.

“Your method of reasoning astounds me, Captain Sparrow! Really. You are denying us both what we want because I merely stated the truth about your inability to resist indulging yourself in my body for longer than a few hours. And it is I who is stubborn?”

“M’not stubborn,” he muttered crossly. “An’ I’ve resisted ye successfully for three days already.”

“Huh! You run away screaming every time I come near, more like!”

“Do not!” he sniffed. “Don’t scream, anyway.”

“Whimper, then. And you want me. Badly. I see it in your eyes every time you look at me.”

His face softened. “Course I want ye, Lizzie. I always want ye. Always will. Never said I didn’t. S’not about that. ‘Tis about proving I could do without yer. If I had to.”

“But you don’t have to!”

“Not now, no.” Jack looked at the floor, suddenly unwilling to meet her gaze. “But me luck…well it has a habit o’running out on me. Right here an’ now is the happiest I’ve been in me life, Lizzie. And much as I’m enjoyin’ it, it scares me too. Cos a part of me is waitin’…waitin’ for it all to come crashing down round me ears. Waitin’ fer the day ye’ll be taken from me. Or tire o’me. Decide ye want a better man.”

He stared resolutely at his feet, refusing to look up even when he heard her move towards him. Then she was kneeling in front of him, catching one of his hands in both of her own.

“Oh Jack! Oh my love…”

He heard the tremor in her voice, glanced up sharply to see her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“NEVER, Jack. Do you hear me? NEVER. How can I wish for a better man than the one I see in front of me?”

She reached up to touch his face, trailing her finger across the high curve of his cheekbone and down the line of his jaw.


“I LOVE you, Jack. Do you understand what that means? You are mine and I am yours. Forever. I gave you more than just my body that day in the hold.” Her eyes gleamed with fervour, with determination to drive away his doubts. “You ARE the better man, Jack. You are the best man I know and I intend to live out the rest of my days by your side. Loving you – fighting with you – bearing your children.”

Jack gazed back, his quick tongue stilled for once.

He’d not intended to say what he had. The confession had slipped unbidden from his lips, a secret fear he’d never meant to share – especially not with her. From the moment he’d opened his heart to her there had been this darkness threatening his new-found joy, the terrifying realisation that loving her so deeply left him exposed and vulnerable.

Her faith in him gave him strength – but it also made him weak.

“I know ye feel that now, Lizzie,” he said quietly. “But yer so young. Forever is a long time. What if I let you down? Disappoint you? I’m not the man ye dreamed of, luv, when ye were a little girl dreamin’ about a husband. I do me best but me best is often not good enough.”

“No.” Elizabeth frowned. “You’re not the man I dreamed of….you’re much better. Much more better” she amended, and was rewarded with a tiny grin. “I know you, Jack. I know the bad things as well as the good, just as you know all the good and bad in me. I murdered you for heaven’s sake! The worst thing I have ever done. And you forgave me for it. More proof of the man you really are.”

He stared down at their joined hands, his hair falling forward to hide his expression from her.

“Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“If you are so sure I will leave you – why would you want to get me with child? Why talk about our future as though it were real if you don’t truly believe it will happen?”

Jack heaved a sigh. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “I get carried away wiv meself…forget what a scallywag I am and convince meself m’invincible.” He shrugged. “Or mebbe it’s a way to bind ye to me forever…to keep ye by me side, whether ye want to be there or not.”

“But I do want to be there!” She pushed aside dreads and braids until she could see his face, tilted his chin upwards with gentle pressure and forced him to look at her.

“Have faith in me, Captain Sparrow. I am here because I want to be, because I love you, and because no other women but me shall have the honour and privilege of bearing your children.”

A slow smile crept across his face.

“Honour and privilege, eh? I like the sound of that. We’ll have at least six of ‘em…enough to crew the Pearl. Mebbe nine or ten, just to be on the safe side.”

His eyes glazed over, envisioning his future progeny swarming over the deck of the Pearl.

“Let’s start with one first!” she gasped, imagining herself surrounded by hordes of miniature, dreadlocked, would-be pirates.

“Aye. One at a time…that’s the way we’ll play it. One a year...should be about right. I’m good wiv it.”

She opened her mouth to protest, then caught the gleam of mischief in his dark eyes and laughed instead.

“You are terrible man, Jack Sparrow!”

He pouted. “Thought ye said I were a good man?”

“A terribly...good man” she whispered, leaning in to emphasise her words in the heat of his mouth.

His arms slid round her shoulders, pulling her close, and he lifted her onto his lap without breaking the kiss.

Elizabeth snuggled into him contentedly. She inhaled his wonderfully familiar smell and savoured the unique texture of his hair against her bare breasts, silky soft and rough, her heart overflowing with love for this complicated, beautiful, man.

When the need for air finally forced them to break apart she rested her head on his shoulder and gave in to the simple pleasure of being held.

Jack remained uncharacteristically still for several minutes, lost in thought. Then his restless fingers began to dance along her spine, rubbing gentle circles across her soft skin. Her own hand crept inside his shirt, and she turned her head to caress his exposed flesh with her lips as well.

“Careful, luv,” he muttered. “Wager still stands, ye know…”

“Of course it does,” she mumbled soothingly, and continued kissing his neck to distract him from the fact that she was busy unfastening his shirt.


“S’enough, now…stop it…” he protested weakly, then groaned as her mouth found his nipple.

“Lizzie…yer not being fair…”

“Shhh!” She sought his mouth again to silence his complaints.

For several heartbeats he remained unresponsive. But she was so warm and inviting, half-naked in his arms, and she was doing that thing with her tongue that she knew made him weak at the knees, and….

‘Oh bugger!’ he thought, and flexed his arms to crush her against him, returning her kiss with desperate hunger. Then abruptly he pushed her away. She tried to cling on, horrified by the prospect of being rejected now – but his hands were at her waist, tearing at her breeches, and she moaned in relief.

Elizabeth stepped away from his fumbling attempts and unfastened them herself, her eyes never leaving his. Her hands were trembling and clumsy but she managed it at last, pushing them down and off in one swift movement.

He caught her by the waist and pulled her towards him, kissing a hot, wet trail from the flat plane of her belly up to her breasts. Then he breathed her name in a voice that brought a fresh surge of heat, and she lowered herself onto his lap, straddling his thighs.

One arm curled around his neck, beneath the mass of hair, her mouth descended on his once more and she slid her other hand between their bodies, seeking to free the part of him that throbbed impatiently against her belly.

Jack made a noise that could have been denial or encouragement – but then her fingers were inside his breeches, closing around him, pulling him free, and his surrender was absolute.

“God, Lizzie, now…need inside ye…now…” he moaned, and grabbed her hips to raise her up, holding her over him to guide him home.

He thrust his hips upwards as she sank down on him and the sensation of being inside her, of being filled by him, left them both breathless and dazed. Jack pulled her tight against him, needing to bury every inch of himself inside her. She felt the roughness of linen scrape her groin and the knowledge that he wanted her so desperately he could not bear to waste time undressing sent a flood of warmth to bathe him where they joined.

Ebony eyes locked with hers, and he pulled back, thrust forward, pulled back again. Elizabeth moaned her pleasure and relief. Then she saw his expression change, a distracted grimace of pleasure that was very familiar.

“No...no…oh no….oh god…oh Lizzie…can’t…can’t hold it…can’t…wait…can’t… stop it…I’m…oh no…I’m going…I’m going to…”

Every anguished protest was accompanied by a frantic thrust of his hips, faster and faster.

Suddenly his face contorted in ecstasy as waves of indescribable pleasure jolted him rigid. His entire world centred on the place where they joined, to the part of him that throbbed and pulsed inside her.

A deep grunt was forced from his throat with every streak of heat that shot from his body and into hers, his release filling her and overflowing to dribble hot and wet between her thighs.

When it was over he slumped against her, trembling and exhausted. He felt dizzy, drained - and - when coherent thought returned – guilty.

“M’so sorry, luv,” he panted into her hair. “Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop meself. Wanted ye so bad. Just bein’ inside yer again...so good, darlin’. Too bloody good!”

She remained still and silent in his arms.

“Lizzie?”

No reply.

“C’mon ‘Lizabeth!” he groaned. “Don’t be like this. Weren’t something I could help. And y’know full well I’ll make it up to ye...”

“Too right you will, Jack Sparrow,” she responded at last, and the coolness of her tone made him wince.

Taking a deep breath, he garnered his courage and dared to lift his head.

“Lizzie, I…”

She was smiling. No, she was beaming, grinning from ear to ear as if she’d just laid claim to the richest bounty on the seas.

“You know what this means, don’t you Jack?”

He gulped nervously. “What?”

“I won, Captain! I won our wager fair and square!” She could barely contain her delight. “I am victor of this little game…and I will claim my reward. You owe me.”

Jack opened his mouth, closed it again – and made the only response that seemed appropriate.


“Oh bugger!”