I nodded and tried to speak, but breathing seemed more important, and it was hard to do. His eyes turned assessing, sweeping up and down me.

“Shit. You’re still laced up. Hold on.” He tugged at my bodice with an urgency that had nothing to do with passion. Of course. It wasn’t Simon’s kiss causing me to swoon. It was lack of oxygen due to ten hours in this costume followed by some after-work making out.

A few more tugs and the garment loosened enough that my rib cage relaxed, and I sucked in a deep, sweet breath. Another couple of breaths, and the dizziness subsided. I sagged into him, resting my forehead on Simon’s leather-and-cotton-covered chest, and his arm came around my back.

“Better now?” His lips brushed the shell of my ear and a thrill went up my back at Simon’s voice, low and oh so close. How had the sound of his voice gone from annoying to arousing so fast? Maybe I was still oxygen deprived.

I nodded against his vest. “You’re good at unlacing wenches. Very efficient. Do that a lot?”

“Well, I am a pirate, you know.”

That surprised a laugh out of me, and his smile widened as I straightened up. “You’re not, though.” Being this close to him was making my voice low and throaty, and it was all I could do to not pull his mouth back to mine.

He raised his eyebrows—both of them this time; he wasn’t showing off. “Not what?”

“A pirate.” Because the whole time he’d been here, when he was arguing with me and when he was kissing me, he wasn’t speaking with an accent. And he’d called me Emily. Not Emma. So he wasn’t Captain Blackthorne right now. This was Simon kissing me, not the pirate. Right?

“Aren’t I?” He stepped closer, trapping me between the bar and his body. My heart pounded as the rough pads of his fingers stroked back up my throat, plunging into the tangled knot at the base of my skull . . .

“Emily? Are you still back here? You missed the whole thing!”

My head whipped around at the sound of Stacey’s voice and Simon dropped his hand, backing up a step or two. By the time she appeared I was leaning on the bar, drinking a bottle of water, as though nothing had happened. Cool as a cucumber. Simon was a discreet distance away, cool as . . . well, cool as someone who’d been kissing a girl on a warm summer day. I took in his slightly flushed cheeks, his mussed hair, and the glint in his eyes and wished like hell that Stacey hadn’t come looking for me.

But she wasn’t alone. “Hey now, what’s going on here?” Mitch looked from me to Simon and back to me again, taking in my loosened bodice with raised eyebrows and a cheesy grin. “Now I see why you weren’t at pub sing. A little rendezvous with a wench, huh, Captain?” Now that he wasn’t in character, Mitch was back to being a one-man innuendo machine.

I shot a wide-eyed look in Simon’s direction. The three of them were established friends. I was the newcomer. What had happened between us was too new to give a name to yet, so I would follow Simon’s lead on this.

“Oh, knock it off.” Stacey dug an elbow into Mitch’s side. Not that he felt it; it would have been like elbowing a brick wall. “Em stayed behind to fix a banner that fell. Simon probably ended up helping her.”

I nodded at the half-truth. “Then I got distracted by moving the tables around.” And by being kissed senseless.

Thankfully Simon jumped on the story. “And then her costume got too tight, so . . .”

“So I loosened it. Myself.” That was a total lie, and the memory of Simon’s hands on me, tugging at the strings of my bodice, sent heat coursing through me now, although at the time it had been an emergency situation. “I felt like an idiot—I almost passed out.” I left out the fact that kissing him was the reason I couldn’t breathe in the first place. Another glance in Simon’s direction and I remembered the urgent press of his mouth. It became hard to breathe all over again. If Stacey and Mitch hadn’t come along, how much more of my costume would have been in disarray by now? How much of his?

Simon’s eyes went molten as his gaze met mine, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. I sucked in a shaky breath before I did something stupid like kiss him again. We had witnesses now.

“I’m just saying . . .” Mitch came closer, leaning an elbow on the bar next to me. “Next time you need your corset loosened, you can always come to me. I’m really good at that.” He waggled his eyebrows in an exaggerated gesture that made me snort-laugh.

“Please.” I echoed his stance and made a show of looking him up and down. “I know what’s under your kilt. It’s not that impressive.”

Mitch barked out a laugh and slapped the bar with the flat of his hand. “Nice!” While Stacey and I shared a grin in response to my vague put-down, only half of me was paying attention. The other half was hyperfocused on the black-clad pirate in my peripheral vision.

“It’s not a corset.” Simon’s voice had an unexpectedly ragged edge to it. The molten look in his eyes had gone as he looked from Mitch back to me. He looked like the normal critical Simon I was used to, and my heart fell. I could still taste his mouth, feel the weight of his kiss and the warmth of his touch. Simon, on the other hand, looked like our kiss had never happened. He looked like he hated me again. Damn, that was quick.

“What?” Mitch’s brow furrowed. “She’s wearing one right now. Kind of.”

Simon gestured in my direction, the wave of his hand taking in everything I was. “She’s wearing a bodice. Not a corset. And she had it laced too tightly.” He turned his glare on Stacey now. “You shouldn’t lace her up so tight.”

“It was fine.” I jumped in, wanting to save Stacey from his ire. “I just . . . overdid it.” He looked back at me, and it was all I could do to not shrink under his glare. How had things changed between us so quickly, and then back again even faster? It was relationship whiplash. “It won’t happen again.” I was talking about my bodice, but I had a feeling I was also talking about kissing Simon. Which was a shame.

A muscle jumped in Simon’s cheek. “Good.”

The word was like a slap, and it stung. I felt vulnerable, and not only because I was standing there with my bodice half-undone. I smoothed a hand down my throat as though I could still feel Simon’s mouth there. His eyes tracked the movement, the only outward sign of what had passed between us.

“Well, I’m sorry.” Stacey scooped up my basket from the bar and handed it to me. “I’ll make sure to be careful when I tighten everything up tomorrow, okay? Don’t worry, no more passing out for you this summer!”

I forced a laugh. It even sounded genuine. “I sure hope not. Once was enough.”

As I left the tavern with Stacey I looked back once, just in time to see Simon wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn’t see me, and I turned back around before he could.

Enough. I needed to track down Caitlin and go home. I’d had enough of pirates for one day.

* * *

• • •

The next morning, Stacey apologized for my near-fainting spell, even though she’d had nothing to do with the cause of it.

“I had no idea I’d laced you in so tight!” Yet she didn’t change her routine. By the time she was done, everything felt as strapped in and hiked up as ever. I shifted around inside the costume, and while I was a little worried about getting dizzy again, I decided the best way to avoid that was to stop kissing pirates. I shifted around again when I discovered a new problem.

I had an itch.

Just under my rib cage and to the right of my belly button. This was bad news, since Stacey had already gone off to talk to someone else on the other side of the stage where we’d all gathered before the day started. And even if she was still around, it would be a ten-minute, pain-in-the-ass affair to loosen me up, scratch, adjust, and tighten me back in again. No, I was dressed for the day. I’d have to figure something out.

I tried ignoring it and turned my attention to the stage, but that didn’t help. Simon hopped up there, ready to talk about something before we started Faire. So much for avoiding pirates.

“Some of you may have noticed we’re missing some cast members.” He adjusted one of the cuffs on his black shirt as he looked around the group. He avoided my eyes completely; he may as well have been looking through me. “I’m afraid we had to cut three people loose yesterday. We have some rules around here, and one of those is no cell phones during Faire.” Some of the younger participants dropped guilty eyes to the dirt. I tried to peel up the bottom of my bodice so I could reach the itchy spot. No dice.

“I know you’re tethered to your phones. We all are. But maintaining the illusion of the seventeenth century is the most important thing we do while we’re out here. That’s why we work so hard beforehand, learning about the time period, working on our accents. So when a patron walks by to see a cast member texting or Snapchatting”—he shrugged—“it breaks the illusion, and completely ruins everything we’ve created here.” He shook his head, clearly disappointed, and I felt a prickle of guilt up my spine even though my phone was off and in the bottom of my basket. His Teacher Voice was back on.