Apprentice To The Sorcerer

Once on shore, cook took over the arranging of vats and pans. Nearly everyone on the island, which I figured now to be close to five hundred, were milling about near cook’s big fires. Jack still poured over his blueprints, but he had a distracted air. Little wonder. People not privy to Jack’s need for concentration kept walking up to thank him for citizenship on the island.

“Mokulu,” I said quietly. “Have you been to the cave at the summit to the east?”

“We took last of supplies out of it today,” he said. “Why?”

“Would you be willing to take some things from the ship there, for me?” I asked.

“Let Sabado guess,” Mokulu said, smiling. “You want blanket, pillow, candles, and de like.”

“Good enough,” I answered. “Except I need a boiled sea sponge too. Will you?”

“Of course I do.” Mokulu put his hand on my shoulder. “You know I take long time myself to turn dis idea over in head? I at war with own mind for weeks over dis. I know dis work out, so do you.”

In full view of everyone I gave Mokulu a one-armed hug, being careful of my shoulder. He briefly returned it, then went back to the boat. I busied myself with the various physical complaints of random people. By now everyone knew Peter, Mokulu and I were all of medical turn. But I watched Jack out of the corner of my eye while I treated people.

Jack looked tired. He greeted people with courtesy, as always, but made no effort at small talk. Only occasionally did he smile, and his eyes did not match his lips. I very much wanted to see him sparkling with self-indulgent mischief again. He fluttered my womb when he wrapped his words and smiles around me.

As if he knew I looked at him, Jack glanced in my direction. A small but very real grin parted his lips, brief though it seemed. His eyes reluctantly dragged back to the man in front of him.

All these people clamoring for his attention, yet I received the emotion they demanded.

My heart beat twice as fast every time he looked anywhere near my direction. I had to work slowly to keep my hands under control. Mokulu came back, avoiding everyone, carrying a large sack with everything I needed in it. Whistling, he took up a forked stick we used to catch crabs with and headed off down the beach.

I finished seeing people just about the same time cook pronounced the food ready with a bell. I sat by myself and ate nervously, forcing quail and vegetables down my throat. I felt too anxious to eat but I knew I would need the energy it provided. If Jack accepted me tonight I’d no doubt get quite a lot of exercise.

A vision of trying to hold onto Jack’s writhing, tanned, hard-packed body rose up in my imagination. I’d seen enough to suspect he’d fuck me like an animal, his muscles bulging and sweat rolling off of him. He wouldn’t hold back.

I dropped my quail into the sand. Scorby ate it in an instant. It seemed to prove my point. Scorby couldn’t ignore meat dropping into her lap; her instincts bade her to eat whenever she could. Likewise, Jack’s instincts would make him snap up a willing woman in a heartbeat.

My carrots slid into the sand too.

I had almost entirely given up on eating when Jack plopped down beside me. Scorby came to my other side. Both of them seemed to sniff me.

“Tired?” I asked.

Jack slid a smile at me sideways. “I’m thinking about sneaking off,” he confessed, a little of his twinkle returning. “You wouldn’t want to go with me, would you?”

“It depends on where you are going,” I replied, returning his smile. “I wanted to ask you if you would do something for me.”

Jack’s smile never faltered even though I saw the deep lines of fatigue near his eyes. “What is it?”

“I want to go back to the cave and I don’t want to go alone.” It wasn’t a lie. I merely omitted information.

“Of course,” he said. “Wanting another bath?”

I fabricated my best lie, ever. Digging into my bag, I pulled out some of Tia’s notes I’d been using, along with the Sanskrit ones Jack had found for me. Unrolling them, I pointed to a diagram of a man’s back. “There are pressure points,” I said. “You are to be my experiment, if you’ll agree to it.” I hoped my improvisational skills and my lying tongue worked in concert today. Jack was so shrewd, really.

“What am I agreeing to?” Jack said, peering at the drawings.

“Hopefully to having a back free of pain,” I answered, looking him dead in the eyes.

Jack didn’t bat an eye. “That doesn’t sound at all bad,” he admitted. “I’ve developed a very tight back from days of leaning over that double-cursed table.” His soft voice simply flowed through me. When Jack spoke it was as if every fiber of my being strained to hear him.

He looked up at the reddening sky, closing his eyes. “Peter will be giving the orders around here tomorrow,” he said. “I have begged off.”

I didn’t have duties tomorrow.

Smirking to myself, I nodded. “You need it, Jack,” I said quietly, mindful of addressing him personally without checking to see if we had an audience. “A man can only go so long without off time.”

Jack returned my nod. “Do you want to go now? I think it will be an early night for me.”

“Of course,” I answered, standing up. I snatched up my bag. We started down the beach, Scorby scampering across the sands ahead of us. I looked at the outline of Jack’s gloriously hard body, illuminated in the intense rays of the setting sun by a nearly invisible shirt. His favorite, lucky shirt.

Well, it seemed it was a lucky shirt, after all.

Jack had a unique beauty. He embodied grace, simply flowed inside his affected, reeling walk. That mane of hair blazed a halo of red. His trinkets chimed softly. When his dark eyes met mine I allowed long eye contact for the first time, compelled to soften his day. He smiled gently at me, though I could see him wondering about my direct eye contact.

“Don’t be worried, Lizzie,” he assured me softly. “I’m fine. I’m just tired. By no means am I so tired I can’t take you to the cave.”

And indeed, he still had a bit of swagger to his step. Perhaps his fatigue had as much to do with mental strain as it did with standing for hours in the hot sun over a table.

I stopped to pluck five ripe lemons from a tree. Jack joined me, reaching up past me to get one I just barely lacked the height to retrieve. “My favorite,” he sighed, simply biting into the thing. I shivered helplessly. I intended to use the lemons, but not to eat.

“How can you do that?” I asked. “It’s bitter, it’s acrid, it’s a big bite of rind!”

“I don’t know,” Jack replied after a moment’s consideration, chewing while he talked. “Probably because my tongue is ruined from years of drinking too much and the like. To me, any fresh fruit is good no matter how it might taste.”

“You aren’t drinking right now, I notice,” I said.

“Letting the hole close up, like you said.” Jack smiled. “I really don’t like vodka.”

“Apparently,” I said, feeling a bit awed. “I would have thought by now you’d have such a compulsion to drink it wouldn’t matter.”

“My only real compulsion is standing right in front of me,” Jack answered. He made no move toward me, only dragged his eyes over my body very slowly.

I trembled under the force of that stare. On a normal day Jack’s eyes had the power to make me do anything, but today he had the power to command my very soul. I parted my lips to release a rush of air, watching his eyes follow the movement.

“You’re just as beautiful in yer lad’s togs as you were in a dress,” Jack said, his voice soft and smooth. “Maybe even more. Without all that cloth you glide.” He reached out and took off my hat. “But I miss seeing that glorious hair. Sometimes I dream it’s wrapped around me.” He untied the knot holding my hair back and pulled the tresses over my shoulders a few locks at a time, meeting my eyes again. Suddenly, Jack’s eyes shuttered. “I’m finding it terribly hard to be a good man these days,” he told me quietly. So saying, he moved away from me.

I released a breath. Gathering my scattered wits, I tucked the lemons away. “Be that as it may,” I said in a shaky voice, “I find I need a guiding hand.” I held out my hand. “It will be dark by the time we get where we’re going and I don’t know the way like you do. Scorby more or less led me the last time, though I don’t know how.”

Jack’s grip felt gentle enough to hold a butterfly without marring a single feather.

“You’re a man of contrasts, Jack Sparrow,” I told him. “You can knock a tooth out of a man’s head and still you touch me like I’m made of glass.”

Jack pulled me back onto the trail. “And yer a woman of mystery, Lizzie,” he answered. “Still, why should I touch you with anything other than gentleness?” But he paused, eyeing me in a way that made me feel positively naked. “Unless you prove to be the kind who likes it rough. I suspect that may be true.”

I didn’t answer, since he hadn’t posed his question as a real question. Simultaneously, I wanted to slap the rest of his teeth out or roll him right there on the ground. The arrogant son of a bitch. I couldn’t wait to blow his mind… or something else, damn him.

We walked and walked. When we reached the mouth of the cave, we lost our light. I expected such, since Jack’s timing ever involved perfection. He let go of my hand and crouched to enter. “Let me make sure no one else has pitched camp in here for the evening,” he said.

“It’s dark,” I protested, beginning to fumble for matches. He chuckled.

“Lizzie, anytime you can see them, they can see you,” he informed me. “Scorby’s coming with me anyway, and I promise she can see a lot better than I can.” He went in.

I waited somewhat nervously, hoping Mokulu hadn’t left my bag of things so close by that Jack tripped over them.

“Clear,” Jack said, startling me. He stepped back to let me in. “Now maybe you’ll tell me why we had to go all the way to the cave for this thing you want to do?”

“The bath,” I said promptly. “The hot water will relax your muscles.”

“Ah.” Jack took my hand. “Well, I know the way. Stay close to me unless you like walking into rock walls.”

Once inside the chamber with the bath, I heard Jack starting to disrobe. Scorby made a little chirp at my feet. When I felt for her I discovered the large bag Mokulu brought for me. “I’ll be right back,” I told Jack. “Try to relax if you can.”

“Not a problem,” Jack assured me. “Being away from the throng is already relaxing me.” His baldric hit the stone. “Where are you going?”

“I need to relieve myself,” I answered promptly.

“Any more than ten minutes and I’m coming after you,” Jack said calmly.

I hefted the bag and went back to the main chamber, Scorby at my heels. “Tell me when I’ve been gone nine minutes,” I said jokingly to Scorby. She purred loudly.

With minimal effort I found a bundle of candles and the matches. I only lit a single candle, preferring not to waste them. By the dim light I unrolled the two blankets underneath the ceiling hole. Mokulu had packed us water, wine, cheese, bread and some fruit, the latter of which he likely picked along the way. A wooden bowl and the sea sponge I sat aside reluctantly.

The more I’d thought about it the more I realized I wouldn’t be able to use the lemon juice-soaked sponge for awhile. Not only would my barrier prevent the first application, the lemon juice would set me on fire. I had to risk it this time. But I accepted the risk. I could have Jack’s baby. I wanted Jack’s baby, crazy as it seemed.

Scorby chirruped, batting my leg.

“Has it been nine minutes already?” I asked absently, rising. Scorby chirruped again, nudging me with her head. When I began to move she darted off for the entrance to the cave and sat directly in it, back to me.

My little sentinel. Apparently she not only understood everything Jack and I said, she understood my motives. Five years ago I would have been amazed. At this point I wondered why she didn’t simply answer me back in English.

I carried another candle with me. The shadows danced just ahead and behind me. Jack lifted his head from the rock pool ledge. Water rippled around him, throwing a dancing light over his exposed skin. “Where did you get the candle?” he asked.

I put the candle down and rid myself of the medical bag around my shoulder. “I have ways,” I said, playing up his claim to love my mysterious side.

He grinned and let his head drop. “This does feel good,” he admitted. “All the more for knowing I’m not going to have to leave it in a few minutes and tend to matters somewhere else.”

“You work too hard,” I said, looking at his scarred, tattooed chest and arms. He was magnificent.

“It won’t take long before that isn’t an issue,” Jack replied. “Did my mysterious lady also bring the little box sitting beside me?”

I glanced at it. I hadn’t, of course, and he had to know it since I hadn’t moved to that part of the room before leaving him. “No,” I said. “What does it have in it?”

“Soap and some sort of oil,” Jack answered, putting out his long arm to lift up the box. “If you didn’t bring it, where did it come from?” The scars over his veins stood out, pale ribbons of old pain across dark skin. At one point in Jack’s life, someone had tried to bleed him out. I marveled they hadn’t succeeded.

“Mokulu knew what I intended to do,” I said easily, turning my thoughts away from Jack’s past. If he wanted me to know something, he’d tell me. This moment I would not be indulging in curiosity and prying questions. “He came this way to hunt crabs,” I went on. “No doubt he brought it.”

“I see.” Jack closed the lid and lifted his dark eyes to me. “I smell a rat, Lizzie,” he said.

“Scorby will take care of it,” I replied, ignoring his ever so slightly threatening claim.

Jack regarded me with glittering eyes. “Did you bring the box up the last time you had a bath?” He refused to drop the subject.

“You brought up the box,” I replied, “I didn’t.”

“Ah, but I brought up the box because someone else brought the box up,” Jack replied, not missing a beat. “Somebody had to bring up the box because the box got brought up by someone or someones unrevealed.”

I couldn’t help a small snicker. Not only could I now employ Jack’s circular speech, I could understand it entirely. It was indeed a disease, a disease one caught from Jack and spread to others if given just half a chance. “Don’t worry about the sodding box,” I said, unbuttoning my vest. “It just so happens to contain exactly what I need to liquefy your muscles. I carry oil and soap around with me, you know.”

“Am I about to see that for myself?” Jack’s eyes watched my hands. “You look as if you might be getting in here with me.” His voice rode the edge of hope.

“That’s because I am,” I informed him. I felt nervous as hell, yet I whisked off my shirt, exposing my breasts in their criss-crossing halter of linen. My nipples peaked under his rapidly heating gaze. “I can’t very well experiment with pressure points and the like while standing out here.” I unwound the bandages and dropped them on top of my growing pile of clothes.

“Int’resting choice of words,” Jack murmured, “Pressure points.” One of his hands moved down into the water. His head tilted to the side. “The pressure points on me back seem less important than the one in front of me.” He paused, looking up. “It was a gradual-like transition, but accelerated to full sail once you started showing me what God gave you.” The muscles in his arm and shoulder moved slowly, fluidly, and his hidden hand worked.

A creeping thrill edged around my nerves as I looked at him. He stroked himself in the water; I knew it though I couldn’t see it. He stroked himself while looking at me for inspiration. Something about that made me feel hot inside. I unbuckled my breeches and stepped out of them, watching his eyes take me in. The heat in those brown orbs seemed strong enough to scorch me.

Jack inhaled sharply through his nose as I entered the pool. His eyes dilated to almost pure black, the brown irises becoming slender rims. His chest rose and fell in shallow breaths as I moved closer, air escaping him in short puffs that sent the steam around us swirling.

I took up the box and found the oil. We were so close we almost touched now.

“Jack,” I murmured. “You’ll have to turn around so I can work on your back.”

He seemed to brace himself. Taking a deep breath, he turned his body to face the wall. His strong arms bristled with cords and veins as he gripped the edge of the pool. “Better?” he asked in a tight voice. His long lashes swept down to his cheekbones as he closed his eyes.

I felt he both dreaded and loved the idea of me touching him.

“For this job, yes,” I answered, pouring oil down his spine. Jack stiffened, and then shuddered as the cooler oil made its slow way down his scarred back. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t think about heating the oil. Next time I will.” I gathered his hair, moved it to his sculpted shoulders, delighting in the varying textures and heady scents. Very slowly and with gentle pressure, I began to massage the oil into his flesh. “I have a feeling you’ll want this massage fairly often,” I said.

Jack groaned out loud as my thumbs tracked his spine. I spread my fingers out like a fan, taking oil to both sides. His flesh felt hard underneath my fingers, completely without slack. He used his body hard and stored no fat. I looked closely at his marred back. At some point Jack hadn’t just been whipped, he’d been brutalized. More scar tissue than skin lay across his shoulder blades.

My efforts to rub the tension from his muscles were rewarded. Groaning again, Jack slumped forward. I dug with more pressure into the muscles above his hips, making him gasp his pleasure. The high curves of his perfect arse simply begged for my touch. I felt slick both between my legs and inside of me, slick and needy. I couldn’t dally in this game very long. I’d already waited far too long to bring myself to this point. I wanted this magnificent body laboring over mine. I wanted to see Jack’s eyes as he gave and took pleasure. I wanted him to claim me.

Jack’s shoulders and neck resisted my attempts. I attacked the knotted muscles with vigor, warming them with friction and forcing them to release. He rocked in my grip, nearly limp from enjoyment. “Sacrément,” he swore in disbelief. “Oh Lizzie, where did you learn to do this?” His voice sounded like nothing more than low growling. Hearing him like this made me even wetter inside.

“Instinct and books,” I answered, circling the back of his neck and pressing down with my fingers. I moved closer to him on my knees, touched my aching breasts to his back. He stiffened and shuddered in much the same way as when I’d poured cold oil on his back. “And you are the perfect teacher, Jack,” I continued softly. My nipples slid frictionless against his skin, hardening until they felt painful. “I’ve learned so much from you. I’ve learned things from you no one else could ever teach me.” I dropped my hands to the front of his shoulders, telling him with gentle pressure I wanted him to turn back around. Slowly, he spun in place. His eyes rested upon me softly, indulgently, the fire inside carefully banked.

He wanted me. He wanted me but he expected nothing even though I knelt naked in a bath with him. Jack was a good man. He wouldn’t take unless I offered.

“I’m ready to learn your body now,” I said, looking into his eyes. “I brought you here for privacy. I’m burning up for you, Jack.” My confession spilled from my lips as easily as if I spoke to a priest. Indeed, I did speak to a priest. Hadn’t Jack told me he served as my judge, my priest? He remained my captain, lovemaking or not. The idea of that, of his total dominion over me, made me squirm in enjoyment. I felt so tired of maintaining control. Nothing could liberate me more than giving him the reins.

Jack closed his eyes a moment. Breathing heavily through his nostrils, he then met my gaze. He reached for me unhurriedly; as if afraid I would bolt. Tenderly, he cupped my chin, tilting my face up to his. “Are you, Lizzie?” he asked lowly. His arm wrapped around me, pulling me up against his body. “Are you burning?” I felt the hard length of him pressing on my belly. His hand released my chin, delved down into the water, skimmed over my side, my hip, and slid over my abdomen, moving all the while his arm crushed me to him.