“Okay? I’m …” He lets out a long breath.
“Have I finally stumped the clever Captain Hook?” I spin in the water and straddle him. “Nothing to say?”
He runs his hands down my chest, his gaze reverent, as if he can’t believe I’m here.
“You should see me when I’m not a prune.” I kiss him. Confidence rises inside me. I just made the fiercest pirate in the world come and rendered him speechless. Maybe I’m not as dowdy as I always assumed. Maybe Icanbe sexy. Maybe Icanfight. Maybe Iwillfind a way to make sense of Neverland and save it from darkness. Why does it all seem possible now that I’ve been claimed by a villain?
“You are beautiful, lass. Never doubt that.” He kisses me back, then holds me as we soak in the warm water.
As my body settles, my mind begins to wake back up. So many nagging questions resurface, and I begin to think about what this means. I just had sex with Hook. Hook said he’d wished for love and implied that it’s the reason the island started losing its magic and is also the reason I’m here. But then why does everyone say I’m the answer to Peter’s wish? It doesn’t make sense. And does that mean helovesme? Likelovesloves?
“I can hear you thinking, lass.” He spins me and pulls my back to his front, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “Let it go. Just be here with me. We’ll wash, and then I want to sleep with you.”
“We just did that.”
He snorts. “I want to feel you close to me in my bed. I’ve been wanting it from the moment we set foot here. I want to wake up with you in my arms.”
“Villains can be romantic at heart. Who knew?”
“I think most villains are romantics at heart.”
“How so?” I run my fingers along the surface of the water.
“I don’t believe villains are born. Not in the usual sense. Maybe there’s a vicious scoundrel here and there, but most of them are made.”
“Were you made?”
“Aye.” He puts his hand on mine, following my motions through the water. “I was a good lad for a time.”
“Like with your sister?”
“Aye. I think that’s when my fall began.” He sighs. “As I got older, I realized even more that I had no control over what befell me. And quite a bit of bad things did. Still, I had a heart thatbeat for better days and hope for the future. I believed I could drag myself out of the slums of my village and make something of myself. I didn’t realize that I’d have to do terrible things, many terrible things, to make that happen. I did them, though, thinking I could get by. If I could only get an education and learn the ways of the nobility, I’d be able to speak their language. I could pass for one of them. By the time I’d managed to enroll at Eton under a stolen name from a noble I’d gotten over a barrel for gambling debts, I thought I could perhaps change the course of my life. I learned quickly that wasn’t the case. They knew, you see. Theyknew. Even in my fine clothes with my adopted accent and my loose knowledge of how a noble should behave, they could smell the streets on me.”
“What happened?”
“It was late. I was walking along the Thames to get back to my tiny flat far outside of the school bounds. I didn’t realize they were following me until the rope was already around my neck.”
I spin to him.
He points to a faint scar on the side of his throat. “They dragged me back to a tree and threw the rope over. I fought, but there were far too many of them. Like sharks scenting blood in the water, they all came for me.”
“Oh, god.” I run my fingertips along the mark.
“They hoisted me, my feet kicking, my arms flailing.” He closes his eyes as if he can still see it, still feel the rope around his neck. “I passed out and woke under the same tree. I was soaked with their piss, my book and papers thrown into the river. They thought they’d killed me, I learned later.”
“I’m sorry.” I can’t imagine what that was like. I don’t want to.
“Don’t be. I had my revenge. First on the ones who were there, and later—once I’d gone back to the streets where I belonged and amassed a crew and enough money to take to the sea—I preyed on the nobles. Stealing their goods, sinking their ships, taking what I wanted. I was a scourge.” He smiles a little. “That was before I ventured to the triangle and found my way to so many other worlds. Though this one is my home.”
“You chose Neverland?”
“Neverland chose me.” He picks through my hair, pulling out the pins Widow had so carefully placed. “It’s where I belong.”
“How many people have you killed?”
He sputters a laugh. “No foreplay for you. Right into the thick of it.”
“I don’t know. It just seems like maybe I should get to know the villain I’m in bed with.”
