Page 65 of A Pirate's Pleasure

He rolled over onto his back as I reached him. “Magic,” he said.

“Magic,” I agreed with a nod. “So it’s pointless you running. You can’t win.”

Lief had reached us now, and it was to him that Baravor turned pleading eyes. “Just let me go,” he said. “I promise you’ll never see me again. I’ll leave Silkdrift and I’ll never come back. You can have the house.” He wrapped fingers that bore a slight tremor around Lief’s ankle. “You’re a good man. I can tell that now. You can tell the authorities what I did and they’ll believe you. Surely, it’s enough of a punishment that I’ll spend the rest of my life on the run. You know what that’s like.”

“Not pleasant,” Lief said, his expression neutral. “Not pleasant at all.”

Baravor struggled to his knees. “So we have a deal?”

“Lief!” I said, a warning in my tone. “We have no guarantee that they’ll listen. He killed a man, probably two. He doesn’t deserve your compassion.”

Lief heaved out a breath, the conflict showing on his face. Finally, he gave a nod. “It’s too late to take him to the authorities tonight, so it’ll have to wait until the morning.”

Baravor visibly deflated as I nodded. “If we don’t want to be stuck guarding him all night to make sure he doesn’t escape, we need rope. We can tie him up.”

Lief went to fetch some, leaving me staring down at Baravor, the man looking quite wretched as it dawned on him what a predicament he’d found himself in. “I just wanted my inheritance,” he said, his voice only a whisper.

“Unfortunately, the end doesn’t always justify the means.”

He fell silent after that, Lief returning with rope within minutes. Between us, we dragged him back into the library, where I used my knowledge of nautical knots to secure him tightly enough that there’d be no chance of him getting away.

“Do we need to gag him?” Lief asked.

“No. He’ll be quiet, won’t you?”

Baravor’s nod was enthusiastic, the mere thought of being gagged on top of being bound apparently enough to make him behave himself.

“So… this is your house,” I said. The quiet from the library had given us the opportunity to rid ourselves of the worst of the grime from traveling by bathing. Lief had been all for calling on his servants to heat the water, until I’d pointed out that he was still a wanted man, and continuing to lie low might be a better idea. Besides, Baravor had obviously won them over to his side, given his continued and unopposed residence in the house. Who knew what sob story he’d come up with? Or perhaps he’d lied and told them he had Lief’s blessing to be here. However he’d pulled it off, I doubted the middle of the night was the best time to address it. That task was better tackled once Lief was no longer a wanted man.

“It is,” Lief said. He was naked, and I soaked in the glorious sight as he roughly toweled his hair dry. “I just never knew it was worth killing over.”

“You couldn’t have predicted it.”

“I could have listened to my mother’s warning and stayed well away.”

“Perhaps. Did she really never say what made her leave?”

Lief shook his head. “And trust me, it wasn’t from a lack of asking on my part, but she’d never budge. I always assumed from her unwillingness to discuss it that it had something to do with my father.” I knew the story. He’d died when Lief was just a baby to leave him with no memories of him. A lack of a father was one thing we’d always had in common. Mine had just come with a lack of a mother, too. “There were a lot of things she’d never talk about even when I asked,” Lief went on. “Such as where my phobia of blood came from. I have this dream sometimes…” He trailed off, his expression saying that whatever he was thinking about, it wasn’t pleasant. “But I don’t know if it’s real, or…”

“Sometimes the past is better left alone,” I offered. Or at least it was if it made him look like that.

He nodded. “I guess the truth died with her,” Lief said with a sigh. “With my uncle, too.”

I pulled Lief down onto the bed, the bed that was at least five times bigger than the one we’d shared in my cabin. Ridiculously big if you asked me, and far more ornate than it needed to be as well. “It sounds like you were lucky you never knew your uncle. Perhaps that should be enough.”

He nodded as I rolled us to trap him beneath me, and I cursed having put my trousers back on so I couldn’t feel his bare skin against mine. Hopefully, we would sort everything in the morning. And then what? I already knew the answer to that, though, didn’t I? I’d return to the ship and Lief would stay here. And that knowledge already left a huge gaping chasm in my chest, even with him right here with me.

“Zeph?”

He was peering up at me with a look of concern on his face. “What?”

“You look sad.” He stroked his fingers over my cheek, the look of adoration in his eyes killing me. “Why are you sad?”

I couldn’t talk about it, so I kissed him instead, Lief responding with equal fervor. If things went as planned tomorrow, everything would change. But tomorrow wasn’t here yet, and I intended to make the most of it. We’d already wasted enough time being at loggerheads when we could have been doing something infinitely more interesting.

With that in mind, I dedicated myself to driving Lief to where, even if he wanted to think, he wouldn’t be capable. And when it occurred to me that Lief’s bedroom, and the library weren’t that far apart and it was possible Baravor could hear us, I made Lief cry out all the louder.

After, we talked for hours, sharing pieces of our respective lives that we hadn’t been there to witness. Some stories were amusing. Others were sad. Some made me roll my eyes as Lief detailed the duties expected of a lord: the charity events and the parties, making them sound worse than torture. He should have spent some time with Lucretius, then he’d know the meaning of the word.

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