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move.
    Lying atop him, she stopped struggling and stared down into those cold gray eyes. She licked her suddenly dry lips, afraid of what he might do to her now that he had her firmly within his grasp.
    To her relief, he released her and stood. Before she could run again, he pulled her up from the ground and locked his hand tightly around her upper arm. “As I said,” he ground out, “I really must insist.”
    When she tried dragging her feet and twisting out of his grip, he growled low in his throat, then picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder.
    “Let me go!” she shrieked.
    “I have no intention of renewing our chase.” He locked his arm around her legs to keep her from kicking him.
    As Lorelei drew back to pummel his back, she caught sight of the dark stain spreading on his shirt. Frowning, she touched it, then drew her hand back to see it covered in red.
    It was blood.
    “If you so much as pat that wound,” Jack warned, “I’ll see your back lashed with a whip.”
    Tempted to disregard his words and pound anyway, she decided the saner course of action would be restraint. This was a man whose very name symbolized murder, mayhem, and cruelty.
    Besides, as large as he was, it would probably only make him angry. And she’d already had a good indication that Black Jack Rhys was a fearsome ogre when angered.
    He carried her up a gangway.
    “Jack!” She heard a man’s excited shout. “Thank God, I was just…” The man’s voice trailed off as Jack stepped aboard the ship.
    “What the devil have you done now?” the man demanded.
    Jack ignored him as he carried her across the deck, past crew members who stared at them in a mixture of curiosity and disbelief, and descended a ladder to the decks below.
    The man followed behind them, his mouth opening and closing like a fish gulping for air.
    Lanterns were placed on the wall every few feet, giving her enough light to finally see the bloodstain seeping across Jack’s shirt. It was an ugly wound and she recalled the sound of a gun firing not long before Jack had tossed her poor escort to the ground and taken his seat.
    The man trailing them was extremely handsome and in his early twenties. With black hair and brown eyes, he stood almost as tall as Jack. She had seen him earlier that night at the tavern talking with another man she had suspected of being a spy by the way he would draw silent at her approach and scan the room nervously while she served them.
    But the man behind her had not been so cautious.
    “Is this the girl from the party last night?” the stranger asked.
    “Aye,” Jack answered. “I told you, pup, you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
    “What is it with you and this woman?” the man asked Black Jack, looking somewhat dumbstruck. “Jack, you can’t go around abducting heiresses. Are you insane?”
    Jack snorted. “So I’ve been told.”
    “Make him let me go,” Lorelei begged the handsome stranger. “Please don’t let him keep me.”
    The man opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
    Lorelei heard footsteps as someone approached from in front of them.
    “Tarik,” Jack said in greeting. “Get the men ready to sail. We leave immediately.”
    “Aye, Captain.”
    Jack paused and Lorelei tried to see the newcomer, but Jack held her so that all she could see was the shocked look on the dark-haired man’s face. Raising up, she bumped her head against one of the lanterns.
    “Hold still, woman,” Jack snapped. “The last thing you need is a concussion.”
    Lorelei balled up her fists wishing she could strangle the beast.
    “And Tarik,” Jack said, his voice thick with warning. “We were being chased. If they show up on the docks, aim to maim. Do what you have to, but try not to kill anyone.”
    “Captain?” the man asked as if the order confused him.
    “Just do it. Tell the men I’ll have the head of anyone who kills a Brit tonight.”
    “Aye, Captain.”
    Jack turned her to the wall as the man walked