Day 8, Sunday
Ann

Why does it seem that I'm always packing a suitcase when he's around lately?

I shook my head. No, that was not true. I wasn't always packing. Not that much anymore. I'd actually been home a lot more lately. But ... I stopped and looked at my hands holding a blouse that was all folded so neatly and ready to go in the suitcase. But ... sense of déjà vu and I bit my lip.

Why was I so sad that morning? Guess it's just that the Temple had been a refuge for a week and reality was descending again.

I knew he was approaching long before he tapped on the partially open door. I felt his disapproval long before I felt his approach. I called out to him anyway in a pleasant voice, telling him to come in, and then I took a deep breath, plastered a smile of welcome on my face and went out to see him.

Jack

She can take my breath away with no effort. She does not even know she does it.

I felt the air in my lungs evaporate when I saw her face and read her eyes. This look ... I had put this look there with my foul and rash words. She had just been coming back fully into herself, into the woman who's captured me, and will you simply look and see what it is I have done?

It is this element of her that both captivates me and infuriates me. She takes a step and then retreats at the first sign that she may have opened herself up too much. All it ever takes is the harsh reminder that she has allowed herself to be vulnerable. And yet ... somehow, it intrigues me as nothing else ever has in the arousing game of hearts.

For it is surely true that as tentative as she is in allowing herself to be loved fully by a man, it is also true that she is among the boldest of women I have known in so many other ways.

Perhaps it is only now that I think on this ... her view of love is not one I share. I want her to see my view is the right one. I want her to see that I understand what it is that a woman needs from a man who loves her. What I want is for her to be dependent on me for love. To feel that without me, she cannot exist. Is this not how I am coming to feel about her? I am not pleased to know she holds back from me and may never allow herself to love without a safety net.

That is how she has described it to me. That she needs the safety net of never forgetting that love can die.

Ann

Oh, Jack. What is it about a manly man after a hard night of the bad stuff men get into that turns me on? Heavy scruff and disheveled clothes didn't detract from that regal bearing. He smelled of the nasty remnants of a day and night of hard drinking. There was fatigued bluing under his eyes and his hair was all ...

Ahoo.

I smiled, really smiled, at that. In my mind, I am adopting his vocabulary. Only Jack ever says things are all ahoo. It's one of those words that sounds so rich coming from his lips. His lips. His tongue peeking out.

His bloodshot eyes openly studied me and I wondered what I'd really want to do if I could just relax in this morning and let myself be the honest author of my own emotions and worries. But I suppose in that instant, I decided as always that I would face the real issues with him when we were alone. While we were at the Temple and under the microscope of every member of our family, I would never show the unease I was feeling about what had been happening before I'd flown up here.

But I will also be honest enough to say that I was also putting some defensive walls back up and they would help me deal with this day's reunion. I had said too much and been far too honest with Jack ... and this was the price I paid. I'd leapt in and believed that I was safe with him. No man ever keeps you truly safe, Diary. They all have the ability to wound you and if you ever forget it, it can make your heart bleed to death. You have to guard yourself because, in the end, the only person you should ever rely on is you. Give a man only the part of you that you're willing to risk having him wound -- this is my advice to you and it comes, like the best of such advice, from the school of hard knocks.

It's like my grandmére used to say: you don't walk a high wire without knowing you're one slip from a mighty nasty fall.

So, I mentally shook myself into this new awareness and retreated away from where we'd been for that nonsensical time in the weeks following the trip to London. Truly, I'd been retreating from him ever since the argument that happened the day I left New Orleans for this trip here. It was his wounding words regarding what I'd shared with him about the things I'd experienced in London that made me realize quite clearly that I should never have come home from there and so let my guard down when I was swept into giddiness with all things Jack upon my return. Even a man as good as Jack isn't safe, Diary. And that's saying a lot, given how I've come to feel about him.

Where I was ... where we should be ... it was still such a good place and we were still so in love. However, we were obviously awkward that morning together. Just the thought of him being over at the Mother Tree and watching me for days and then the insanity of them trying to invade the inner Temple grounds?

"You're all grown men," I said as I evaded his hands trying to pull me to him for a hug. "You should be ashamed of the shit you pulled this week. It was pathetic, Jack."

He tilted his head to the side and adopted this sheepish look. Damn but I hate when he looks at me like that. His soft voice completing his deliberate attempt to move me with him: "My little dear, surely you will not choose this morning to make me pay for my crimes? I have spent the night in a vile dungeon and am paying untold damnations for my sins in the form of a headache that may never recede. Would you not show me mercy?"

"Mercy, eh?" I reached up and kissed at his cheek. "Ew. Damn. You stink."

It made us both chuckle but I noticed Jack holding the side of his head. I would have cuddled him but ... but I just ... I just held back.

"Okay, mercy it is but later I will make you pay." I said it with this mock growl and he knew I was joking around. I was a hell of a lot more amused by their drunken assault last night than I was angry or irritated. "And here's the first mercy, Jack. I've got a pot of coffee in a warmer over here and some medicine for your hangover. Why don't you get that down you and then take a shower? When you're clean, you can eat some breakfast. I know you must be starving and I scrounged around in the kitchen for pastries and fruit and juice and ..."

Jack

She rattled on and I knew she had decided that, at least for now, we would only deal with the consequences of this week of dubious activities.

But I was charmed by the fact that where another woman would have made me suffer for my inglorious excesses of the night before, this woman was not in the least disturbed about our drunken exploits. Instead, she had most considerately thought out what she might do to help me ease my way into a healthier state of mind and body.

She may not be a mother hen and tend me in that zealous domesticating manner of wives of my day, but she dotes on me in ways that make me see that she puts me first. As I watched her in this morning, I reflected on how little I am able to fully grasp the mind and attitudes of the woman who shares my life. There are times, and they grow more frequent lately, when I believe it might be gloriously simple if she were able to be a woman of my times and in that, a woman I might better understand and serve.

This thought makes me laugh whenever I have it! Imagine me, Jack Aubrey, thinking he ever truly understood a woman. They are mysteries and I would have them no other way. It is in the mysteries that I find their greatest enchantments. I may struggle to understand them, but it is as I have told Stephen: I believe I would be disappointed if they were so easy to understand as men are.

In this morning, I let her push me toward the bathroom and then she came in as I prepared for my shower. In her hands was a cup of coffee; made good and strong as I liked it. I knew she had likely brewed it herself to be sure it was just so.

She slipped away from me and I turned to the sink as I sipped at the coffee. God's teeth, but my visage was the picture of a man who is in a most absurdly revolting state. No wonder she did not want to be too near until I have properly cleansed away the remnants of the inglorious night. I went through the beginnings ... brushing my teeth, washing my face ... but I paused when I was almost about to smear shaving cream across my face. I remembered a comment she had made in that time we had alone before this trip. I had let my grooming go for a day as we spent copious hours simply wrapped too firmly in reacquainting ourselves ... and she had told me how she rather liked this look of heavy whiskers.

I believe her words were reinforced by her ardor when I decided not to shave that next day as well.

A man needs every advantage he can have when he wishes to seduce a woman into forgetting his transgressions. That is why I rinsed the foam from my hand and proceeded into the shower without reacquainting my face with my razor. Ah, blissful is the feel of hot water on a morning such as this! The pounding of the drops quickly began unknotting my aching muscles, and this time restored so much for me. My spirit lightened and I began to think ahead to making amends for my wayward actions and harsh words.

As I washed my hair, I saw her shadow move into the bathroom. I simply stopped what I was doing and watched through the shower door's mottled glass as she moved. I knew she was gathering the foul clothing I'd discarded and that she had likely already secured me an appropriate outfit for the day's activities.

And then I saw my chance. I tried not to laugh but as she stooped to pick up something from the floor just outside the shower, I whipped open the door, grabbed her around her waist and pulled her right into the stream of water with me.

I cut off her protests. It was the best possible use of my mouth. Well, I also used my mouth to whisper against her neck when she calmed in my arms and let me strip her wet clothing away.

God. To feel her skin. Her hair. Her lips. To watch arousal fire in her eyes. There is nothing like it to make a man feel his power.

Ann

He laughed at me as he pulled me in the shower. I shrieked out in surprise and then he started kissing me when I yelled at him.

One kiss. Jack's kiss. I am too weak to resist his kiss.

He started kissing me and all I could do was kiss back. I seem to be getting worse when it comes to Jack's kisses. I used to examine them and catalogue them and wonder on them. No more. Now I just want them and that's all that's ever important.

His hands held my wrists to the tile and his body rested against mine. He was not grinding into me. He was just kissing me and keeping me from hitting him until I was able to recover from the shock of being rudely pulled into the shower.

And then his hands came to my face and he smiled at me just before he dipped down to plant long, slow kisses along my neck. Whispering to me that he needed to be close to me for a while ... that he needed to remind me of how much we loved.

I tried to say no but it did me no good because he was stripping me with slow yet firm determination. And somehow, I felt all the fake sun melt down the drains and it was replaced with real joy to be with him again. Like it was just that simple to remember that no matter what, there was still a core of devotion between us that didn't go away.

Diary, I don't know why I am this way, but it is so true of me. My entire being reacts when I have a serious fight with a man I love. In my soul, I am always convinced that if we fight, really fight, we won't ever recover. And while I know it's not healthy to feel that way, because the reality is that every couple hashes out their differences and that it's healthy to do that as opposed to not caring ... still ... in my soul, I feel the fear of what the fight means long after it's over. So here in this one gesture, Jack was handing me the reassurance that our fight was something we'd recover from.

When he had me nude, I felt soft and mushy and warm and needy. And somehow, he knew the mood had changed between us. He looked in my eyes and held my rapt attention as he dropped to his knees before me. My hands were on his face but they slipped off when he gently parted my thighs and kissed me right on that spot that takes him nothing to find.

And I knew what he was doing and why it happened this way. He does things like that, Diary, when he feels the need to make amends for ... something. And I wondered ... would we ever find the way?

I mean, I have been trained by my adulthood to never let a man too close and I can never feel comfortable in really being totally open. And Jack has been trained by his lifetime to hold in reserve certain intimate issues and feels that some things are better left unsaid or discussed. And this creates a rather ungainly dilemma for us ... our intimacy stops short where we each refuse to grant the other access to our innermost thoughts and fears.

Diary, so many things we take for granted that the other just knows. So much we presume that the other doesn't need to know. How can we grow together if we don't know what the other's holding back? Is anything held back a violation of our trust? Do we trust only because we do not know all about the other?

Jack

Is there any man who can deny the pride he feels in witnessing the physical pleasure he is capable of bringing to his woman? We are such petty creatures, we men. There is no time that I feel more a man than when I have made her weak with gratification.

This then, I will admit. Catching her up in my arms after I loved her with my mouth ... I felt as though I could have conquered the world and all I really wanted was to conquer her.

But I made myself wait. It is unlike me not to give in to my physical needs and manly desires. In this morning, however, I wanted satisfaction to be delayed until I heard the words from her mouth and knew desire for only me coursed through her body.

Planting little kisses along her jaw, I simply held her until she was strong enough to stand. And then I went about my shower, singing a ditty and scrubbing my hair and ...

My eyes opened and I looked down as she startled me. She wasn't even looking at me. Just looking at my chest and her hands were buried inside a soapy washcloth as she swabbed my skin clean. And then her hands slipped lower and my body, still in natural response from our earlier intimacy, felt the surge of renewed desire flow into the part of me she was cleansing with measured strokes.

"Ah, yes, sweetheart," I whispered it to her and she looked up at me. "That is just the thing."

"You are incorrigible, Jack. You know you love tempting me with your body. How do you think I'm going to be able to be this close and not touch you? Admit it! You just wanted me to say that I'd missed touching you," she said. I heard the laughter in her voice.

"I admit no such thing, girl. I was simply trying to make myself presentable for my lady and you have interfered," I responded.

"Mmm. Really? And this is why you neglected to shave? Your lady prefers you looking so scroungy?"

"My lady has ... unusual tastes."

I simply adore the sound of her laughter when she cannot hold it in. It made me smile to hear her in this morning. "She must, Captain Aubrey. Else why would she want you?"

My growl at her impertinence made her giggle and I grabbed the washcloth from her hands and rushed through scrubbing my skin until it was reddened and chaste. And all the while I scrubbed, I was using my body to back her smaller frame into a corner of the shower while I stole quick kisses from her lips. As the water sluiced over me and rid me of suds, I leaned hard into her body.

"Now I have you, girl. I shall make you tremble as you discover how I satisfy my lady's tastes."

Ann

His lady's tastes. My tastes.

I was searching for hidden meanings and how was that possible? Jack is far too open and guileless to have hidden meanings most of the time. Surely not when he's focused on loving me. Right, Diary?

He saw me hesitate. He saw the instant worry in my eyes.

Jack whispered against my ear and held me close. The lighthearted play-acting was over for this moment between us. Now it was just us. Me. Him. I shoved the barriers down and gave myself to him.

It always scares me when he can do this to me. It's like it takes him nothing, no effort at all, and he's got me trusting in him. In us. In what we have built.

"God, Jack. I missed you. Just tell me ..."

"I have you, amorata. There is no chance I will let go. Ah, my love, this is the smile I have searched for."

His hands left me only long enough to turn the taps off and then he was lifting me up in his arms, carrying me out of the bathroom and I knew I stood no chance. He was seducing me and I felt it again. That way I feel with Jack in these moments. It scares me how safe I feel.

I have to remember ... I have to find a way to remind myself. Life never stays the same. People change.

But it's hopeless in moments like this with Jack. There is no room for it. There is only room for Jack and the way I love him.

He sat on the side of the bed with me in his arms and just cradled me to him. He murmured into my hair, words of longing. One hand touched down my body and I watched, fascinated, as his eyes followed that hand. Like he was reclaiming each section of my skin. This territorial gleam in his eyes.

No real disguise for what he wanted in this morning. His eyes snapped to mine suddenly and the look there was pure Lucky Jack and so serious in his focus that I trembled. "You had your fill of boys this week, amorata. Perhaps a reminder of the difference between a man and a boy ... I think that is just the thing this morning."

It made me shudder at his raw power and I instantly knew that in this morning, I wanted him to be totally in charge. I wanted to be taken as only Jack can take me. I wanted to give myself to him and for him to know I had. All of this passed between us in one long glance.

He is such a big man and he has the strength to do anything with me. He seems all the stronger for how he regulates his strength when he touches me like this. His hand spread my thighs and he stroked me, gently at first, fingering through the wetness ... and then expertly increasing tempo and pressure until I was moaning and moving with him. And then stopping with such a suddenness that my eyes snapped open and ... To see him remove his hand from between my legs and sit there looking at the evidence of my arousal as it glistened on his fingers. I watched this smile curl up the edges of his lips.

"Taste how sweet you are to me," he said and slipped his index finger between my lips. When I sucked, he growled ... low, purring, deep down in his chest.

I knew that would do it to him. And it did. He slung me onto the mattress, knelt next to the bed, spread my legs and pulled my sex into his mouth. I could barely watch and I was coming in nothing flat.

And just as I knew he'd appreciate, I was begging him to love me.

Jack

I can always see the moment in her eyes. It is that time when she is consumed in desire for only me. It is a look that I had missed for those long, painful weeks. Its absence and my inability to stir it in her had left me frustrated and confused. To this day, I am not sure if it hurt my pride worse to not have been there to protect her during the kidnapping or if it stung worse to not know how to help her as she struggled and nearly slipped away from me after.

To have this part of my sweet Ann back, it is what I cherished most ever since her return from London.

What I childishly detested was that it was not me who was able to restore that part of her. It has been my own pain, a pain that I was apparently not man enough to shoulder in silence. I had tried to tell myself that only a small man would be so troubled and hipped. I told myself to accept that in this new world, the ways between a man and woman will not run a course I was familiar with in my world. But I was a small, petty scrub in this regard. I believed it was only I who had the power to help her.

It had been a bitter realization that it was not me but another man. Thorne. Yet one more part of her he could lay claim to. Why was it him she trusted enough to allow what happened in London to happen?

But I am only a man. Jealousy, possessiveness and competitiveness are my weaknesses. I felt I must bury this before it reared up too far between us. I told myself to recognize it for what it had been doing to me for weeks.

I do believe in living each day as if it is all the gift we will receive. It was easy to look in her eyes and see the gifts I wished to receive that day and to be grateful that they were within my grasp.

Her hands were pulling on me; her fevered words and writhing body gave me all the invitation I needed. I would love her. I would have her understand why it is me who would bring her to the heights only we ever bring each other. She tells me that no other man makes her feel what I can. I would make her feel that in this morning.

In these moments, I was at war with the part of me that would crush her beneath the reality of my love and my lust. I held back only enough. But I would make this a time with no room between us but for our own love.

Ann

Oh, God. I can see the fire in his eyes. It's cold green encased in the wonder of him. It reaches deep within me and it's a wonder I'm not coming before he can get inside me.

I tried to hold on, I tried to remember who I was ... I tried to control my reaction to him. But when he looks at me like that, it's as if he's won and I've never been able to get my defenses up in time.

When he came inside me, I suddenly remembered the first time he took me. The way I responded instantly to his physicality and matched it with my own. The way I felt like I'd just found the one person who could make me relish this world like no other. The way it felt to find another person who understood without words, without guilt and without explanation ... to find that instant understanding of how the physical acts you do with a lover can transcend the physical and make the physical the embodiment of the emotional.

Me in a nutshell, eh, Diary? The emotional orphan who needs a physical home? This is what Jack is to me. He's the person who made me see that your life's wounds can sometimes be there for a reason. That they can just be waiting for the one person who will heal them.

On the other hand, I've never revealed the wounds and somehow, maybe I've cheated in that respect. Maybe my healing isn't real because I'm still too ashamed to show him the wounds he would never guess are there. Maybe I won't really be healed until I no longer feel the need to hide.

He was moving inside me and I was holding him and I felt it all over again. That delicious, consuming desire that is Jack. Everything else fled in the face of it.

"Oh, Jack," murmuring it over and over, stuttering with the intensity of this time, trying not to cry ... choking with it.

He rolled us over until I was on top and I let my tears drop straight down onto his chest. "Let me see your smile, girl," he ordered me. "Gods, but you are so beautiful to me. I have missed you, my little dear."

His big hands roughed over my face and shoved the tears away. His fingers traced my lips until I gave him my smile and I laughed to see his in return. And then he told me to hold on tight.

When his smile fades from his face like this and he gives in to what he wants to do to a woman ... she stands no chance. And it's incredibly sensual to watch him. Though that said, I can rarely watch for long.

I reached down to kiss him but his hands on my breasts refused to let me until I panted out my need to him. He was so engrossed in pumping up into me and grinding slowly but firmly against my clit that he wanted what he wanted. And what he wanted was to watch me lose control. It was only when my head dropped and I moaned so loudly and sobbed out his name that he let me fall against his chest.

And his mouth. How it scooped up my last measure of thought. How it captivated my remaining senses. We muttered against each other's lips as we came out of the first grueling kiss. I told him I was desperate for him. He told me he could fuck me forever.

When I came, that first time, my mouth opened with the shock of the pleasure and no sound came out at first. He pulled me in closer and my mouth gripped in over his neck and I screamed into his skin as the waves ebbed. He cursed ... that rough, coarse voice that I never hear except in times like this ... when he's so determined to hold on and so insanely furious that he can't ... and he wants me to know it's my fault that he can't.

It always makes me come again. And I came so hard that my fingers clenching his arms dug in so deep that I was afraid they'd rip through his skin. Maybe it's why he roared as he came ... but Jack seldom holds back the feeling he gets in these moments, Diary. Well, sure, you do already know that, eh?

Jack

What she makes me feel. To witness her abandon, to feel her trust, to know her devotion. To have no doubt that it is me she sees and it is me she chooses.

This is what it is like.

This is what it was like in that moment of our release. She felt so small and helpless in my arms. I wondered if I had hurt her in my lack of restraint in seeking our pleasure. But as I stroked down her cheek and smoothed her hair from her face, her eyes met mine and I saw that look.

Amorata. My love. This was the look I wished to see in her eyes. I felt my swaggering confidence return in that moment and knew I had, by all measure, restored us.

In these moments, she will allow me to protect her and shelter her. She so often seems confused by this instinct of a man that other women not only accept but expect. I am still fascinated by this aspect of her. It is not so much that she battles me as it is that she just does not acknowledge it. It is as if she simply will not submit to that natural order. If I am truthful, I will admit to how it can frustrate me because for all her need for freedom from convention, it is clear as it ever was that a man's most basic duty is to protect those he loves. But I learned from my early times with Ann that I will gain more with a purposeful blind eye and by guiding her with a tender hand that is always there when she will grasp it for help.

Only after words of love to match what we had shared did I let her slip into easy slumber. For long moments, I held her and just watched her sleep. I may never know better time spent.

Ah, but my body can betray me with its weakness at such times. I felt the grip of hunger consume me. After I covered her form with a blanket, I stole to the other area of the room and took a moment to decide what I should do to settle my appetite for nourishment. God's teeth, I could not relish this more. Imagine coming to a table after you have been accepted back into your woman's heart and you have restored the peace between you with a healthy romp. I took a seat where I could enjoy my breakfast and enjoy watching her sleep.

Ann

I knew his warmth was gone from the bed but I still stretched out in search of it. Before long, my eyes were searching the room for him and I turned over in bed, shoved my hair from my face ... and smiled all goofy to see him. There at the table. Munching on an apple. I wondered if it was the only morsel of food left from the tray I'd brought up there?

"And what, my little dear, do you find so amusing at the sight of me?" he asked me, pausing to give me this mock glare.

With his head tilted to the side and his wild hair swinging from him and those whiskers darkening his jaw and neck ... Can lust ramp up this quick again right after he's fucked me into a bit of nothingness?

Apparently so.

"Mmm. That was just a sign of my delight to find you here with me. I was afraid you might have already gone off in search of a naiad after wearing me out," I said to him and I loved the huskiness in my voice.

"Do not tempt me. I am still hungry."

"What! Hungry?" I jumped up and grabbed my robe, tying the sash and sauntering over to him. Looking at the remains of his breakfast ... Jack has a quite healthy appetite, as you know, Diary. It still amazes me. "Jack! The only thing that's left are the grapes."

"I did not say it was food I was hungry for, my little dear," he growled out to me and made this lunge, dragging me to him. "Come, amorata, sit up here on the table before me and let me feast my eyes on you."

"Ah, but I'm such a pale imitation of a naiad. How can I ever hope to satisfy a man such as you?" I whispered as his hands lifted me by the waist and placed me before him, using my body to shove dishes back and clear a space.

He stuck his apple between my teeth so he could free his hands to undo my robe. When it was open, he smoothed his hands over my thighs to spread them and then ran them slowly up over my waist until he hefted my breasts, squeezing them firmly and then bending over to give each a heartfelt kiss. Then he grabbed his apple back and sat back in his chair, munching on the apple and studying me thoughtfully.

"I am satisfied. For now. Besides, my little dear, there is not a naiad in existence who can do for me what you do." 

God. The look on him. In total command. That serious way he gets with me and I just cannot help what it does to me. I put a foot up on his bare thigh and his free hand came to caress my calf for a moment.

And then ... he shoved my foot off him. "Naiad, spread your knees. I wish to see you. Further. Further, girl. Do not force me to show you, for you very well know what I want."

 I swallowed hard and held my knees apart at this invasive angle. I licked my lips and tried not to laugh at Jack playing with me this way. I was determined to play the game out with him. We just sat there like that. I watched him and he watched me. Until he finished his apple.

"Grapes, my naiad," he said soft but in a voice that brooked no argument.

I reached behind me for the cluster of green grapes. He leaned toward me and I fed them to him. So obscenely. Tucking each one in and sliding my finger in to feel around his tongue. Then using my mouth to slip in a grape or two along with my tongue. He had this defiant, aggressive look about him.

"Goodness, Jack. I wish you could see how you look to me," I giggled when he bit my finger delivering one of the last grapes. I stroked his soft, light beard. "Those days at the Mother Tree with the other A-Team members seems to have fired up your need to dominate. I think they were a bad influence on you. Not that you don't look like the very definition of sexiness, mind you."

His eyes narrowed suddenly at me. "Ah, yes, sweetheart, this time at the Mother Tree was most enlightening. It is not in my nature to remind you of such things, but I did tell you quite clearly that this week at the Temple was a bad idea for you and the other women. I am most put out with your activities this week, Ann. I am given to understand that you conducted yourself in a most ..."

Whoa! It came from nowhere. His self-righteous voice grated against me.

"Hold on!" My hand pulled away from his face and I went to stand up but his hands were instantly on my hips to keep me in place. I glared in his eyes. "You had no right to come up here, Jack Aubrey. No right at all. And you have no right to pass judgment on me."

"The other men ..."

"I don't give a shit about what the rest of the A-Team was doing or how they think. I'm talking about you. Why did you come? Do you really think you had the right to ..."

"I had every right, my little dear. Every right on earth. You also do not know how I was provoked. I came here with only one intention and that was to protect you."

"That is not true. I didn't need your protection. I was with men in our group."

"There is one man here who purposely chose to endanger you with salacious reports of the women's activities. If you but knew of the abominations he wrote about you, then you would understand. It was my duty as your ..."

"What? Back up to the bit about reports of our activities. What are you talking about?"

And this was how I found out about the Shag Reports. An angry Jack grabbed for a few sheets of paper and thrust them on me.

Jack

How could I have been not only blind but so rash? How could I have not known that this would hurt her? She started reading and turned so pale and started shaking. It was when I realized what I had done in my jealous anger. I peeled her fingers off the sheets and took them back from her. For a long moment, I just looked at her, her face down and unreadable to me, her hair all ahoo in this comely wildness of a woman fresh from her bed, her body ripe and on display for me ... and I wanted to sweep her up and keep her safe from all pain, even that which I would inflict in my bumbling foolishness.

"That is enough to make you see why I felt the need to come here and see to your safety," I whispered to her. Her eyes met mine and I saw the fire of intense anger there.

Good Lord. I did not relish dealing with this anger. Is there a man alive who does not tremble in such moments? But, I was in the thick of it.

"You thought I did this?" She whispered it to me and I knew her well enough to know she only speaks this softly when she is overwhelmed with her own emotions. "I promised you that Stephen and I would never ... Yet, you believed me capable of ... You thought I would ... Five men, Jack? You truly thought me capable of such actions?"

She went still. Totally quiet. This is a mark, I had come to learn, of when she stops herself because even she fears her anger. Mercy, Lord, have mercy. Of all the reports to have shown her, why this one? Jack Aubrey, you are a fool like no other fool of a man. All I knew to do was bluff back with an anger all my own.

"Nonsense, my dear, nonsense. Of course I did not," I bit back at her. I read surprise and doubt on her face and charged ahead. There was one point of honor in my favor. I would use it to gain an advantage. "Nonetheless, it was obvious to us all that these scandalous attempts to damage the reputations of the women presented a most sinister danger to our world. Are we to take this effrontery on our backs? No, my dear, I think not, for we are men. What should any man have done but mounted an effort to rescue his woman when he perceives her to be in danger?"

"We were not in danger," she said, in this soft voice that did not fool me.

"Well, but of course we know that now, my love. But none of you would speak to us and we had only these vile reports by which to judge. But that is not the issue in this morning for we have come to learn that there was only the one man behind this shameless abomination."

"Which man?"

Why, I almost did not tell her and I believe you would understand if you had heard her voice. The truth is, I was suddenly fearful of the wrath she would visit upon the dastardly scrub Kim Barrett. But I did relent and tell her, though I held a firm grip to her body in the telling and I did finish by letting her know the way the matter was to be settled. It took a few minutes, but she calmed and came around to the plan for revenge.

Ann

He didn't fool me for a moment. And it hurt me, I have to admit, that he really had believed the reports, at least on some level. It was obvious he had; all it took was seeing his eyes. But then I realized something else was in his eyes ... he was ashamed that he had believed them. And truth be told, I felt like I knew Jack well enough to know that he knew then that it was his own jealousy that Kim Barrett played upon and I think Jack was angered that he had been so easily maneuvered.

My focus shifted to the scumbag Barrett. But it was obvious that others in our family had already come up with a game plan to make him suffer and pay for what he'd done. And that's when I felt this other pang.

A pang for Jack. Think how he must have suffered to have read these reports that contained large fabrications and deliberate manipulations of small truths just to wound each Number One right where he was most vulnerable?

"These must have hurt you terribly, beloved," I whispered into this huge void between us. "Added on to what was happening before ... I'm sorry, Jack. Those accusations were obviously well-chosen to hurt you in a specific way."

His eyes shifted and I saw his vulnerability for this flicker of a moment. My love raged for him in that moment and I don't know why but it was all my body could do to contain it. He tried to bluster his hurt away. "Nonsense, my dear. I might have been filled with fury for the deliberate affront to your good reputation but I never ..."

My fingers stroked down his whisker-rough jaw and I leaned toward him. He was so close to me, having scooted right up toward me in his chair. "Oh, Jack. I have treated you badly and I only now see it. How insensitive of me to have been talking about this week at the Temple around you so much. When have I ever done that with any impending visit I was having with one of the men? Of course I would never do that to you with other visits but look what I did about this week. I think I've been teasing you about it ever since the idea first came up. And then with Stephen ... both of us chattering away like boobs about what would happen."

He seemed to almost blush and cleared his throat. "That was rather ... not the thing ... it was most decidedly uncomfortable for me, Ann. However I should not have reacted as I did."

"My God, if the shoe had been on the other foot, I would have been so hurt and I would have thought you were purposely trying to make me jealous." I was holding his face in my hands and I felt his body shift in closer to me. His eyes dropped from mine. "And I think I maybe owe the Temple boys an apology, too. I treated this whole week as some kind of lark, like it was almost a joke. They didn't. They just wanted time with us."

"Ah." Saying it as a whisper and I felt his breath on my chest. "Then this week ... what I mean to say, this week was ... Watching you, amorata, it seemed ..."

I heard it in his voice. I read it in his refusal to look in my eyes. It slammed into me. This fist smacking into my heart. The mental image of what Jack's impotence must have felt like, to be watching from a distance ... I saw myself switch places with him ... The morbid fascination that might leave me powerless to do anything but look at what was happening before my eyes, to witness him visiting with other women ... I honestly don't care what Jack does when he's away from me, but I don't think I could ever take being forced to see it happen. I would hate it even worse if it appeared he was flaunting it at me.

"Oh, God, Jack!" I muttered it into his hair as I forced him to let me slide onto his lap. I felt my body gliding roughly down his chest. I felt my back scraping rudely against the wooden table's edge. My arms around his neck cradled him into me and I about wept when he gave this huge sigh that spoke of his pain that he would have held in forever. "I am so sorry. I would never hurt you. Not on purpose."

And with everything else that has happened recently, this covered so much territory I've yet to find the way to tell you, Diary.

His strong arms gripped me in tightly to his chest and he murmured into my hair with such sincerity. "That has never been an issue, amorata. Never."

I couldn't help it. It was such a reminder of the proof of how he loves me. It was evidence of how he can accept me just as I am. I didn't know how else to handle the way it made me feel. I started smothering him in kisses. All over his face and neck and shoulders and ...

And I was sliding down his body, squiggling from his grasp, until I ended up on my knees before him ... crying as I loved his body because it was all I felt I could do at the moment. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems between two people. This time was too complicated for words, Diary. We would never have been able to find the right ones anyway.

He tasted of me and he smelled of a combination of us. I heard this guttural noise from him as I took him in my mouth. His words ... nonsense mumbling of one lost in sensation. As he hardened inside the warmth of my mouth, his thighs quivered against me; his hands became restless on the sides of my face. He let out this bellow at me when I wouldn't relent and I sat up in alarm, smacking my head against the table.

Drawing in these huge gulps of air, he was trying so hard to recover enough sense to figure out why I was sitting there moaning and holding my head. Our eyes met and I started to laugh at my own clumsiness but the look on his face ...

"Let me care for you," he said; strong husky voice. No quarter for action other than immediate obedience. He scooted the chair back and pulled me up to his lap. Those rough hands of his ... ever capable of gentle touches ... rubbing the back of my head and ... His soothing words reaching into me. "Kiss me, amorata. I wish nothing more."

Our lips met. Tentative. As if this was the first we'd had in so long ... as if only now were we really kissing with our hearts fully engaged. My words held mysteries but I knew he'd understand: "I missed you, beloved. More than seems prudent."

He nodded against me, his face now buried in my neck. There was really nothing else either of us could say. 

Later, I snuggled in his arms as he sought sleep. But I stayed in reality even after his breathing shifted into easy slumber. And I sat up in bed and held his hand and watched him sleep. Jack. He has no idea what he'd done to my life.

I felt the weight of what I've done and for the millionth time I wondered when I turned into such a woman as this. It shouldn't have happened, but it has. I'll deal with the consequences if they come. But not just yet. This day belongs to Jack.

There's a place I need to retreat to ... the place inside me where I'm still safe. But later. It'll be there for me, just waiting for me. Sure, sure.