Page 28 of Stalking Wendy Darling

“I had everything,” I moaned, leaning against a sturdy tower of crates. They hadn’t even locked me in with my gold, the treacherous bastards. “My own ship. People who answered my every command. A really great hat.”

“It made you look dashing,” Joanna agreed, crossing her ankles as she watched me. She’d taken everything in her stride, and it was kind of… annoying. Where was her explosion of rage? Her promises to murder, mutilate, and annihilate? She’d been kidnapped, held captive, freed, and now stuck back in the same hole she’d been captive in. And still she joked and smirked and looked… casual. Unruffled.

“Teach me how to be unruffled,” I demanded.

Not missing a beat, she said, “Step one: lose the ruffles.”

I groaned. “I don’t have ruffles.”

“Consider getting some,” she suggested, making me laugh despite myself.

“If I had ruffles, I’d choke Hook with them. Watch his face turn red and purple. Wait until his eyes bulged out of his head…” I trailed off, lost in the fantasy.

“Then remove the ruffles and fuck him silly?” Joanna asked, snapping me out of it. I levelled a murderous glare at my sister,which had no effect whatsoever. “I’m just saying,” she added, plucking at a loose thread in her flowy white shirt, “I’ve never seen two people have so much chemistry while threatening to kill each other.”

“Would I drive my dagger so deep into his butt cheek that he’ll never be able to walk without a limp if I wanted to fuck him?”

Joanna’s smirk grew. “Isn’t that just your way of calling dibs?”

I turned away from her with another groan. “I don’t care how annoyingly handsome and dangerous he is. He’s my sworn enemy.”

“I thought Nevis was your sworn enemy.”

I spun so fast the hold blurred, pointing at Joanna with a sharp knife. “Don’t you speak that monster’s name in my presence.”

“She’s just a cow, Wendy,” Joanna laughed, the bright, tinkling sound filling the quiet of the hold. It was so loud it could probably be heard by the asshole guarding the other side of the locked door.

“She’s a menace and an abomination,” I hissed, my temper spiking red hot. Probably because I was in constant pain.

“And she’s getting a much stronger reaction from you than the pirate wafting around in his brown coat and fancy hat up on deck.”

My expression darkened, pure blackened rage filling my lungs. Mostly because she was right. It was hard to hold onto true, undiluted hatred for a person when you wanted them buried deep inside you even as you both tried to kill each other. I dragged a hand through my hair, tugging at the ends.

I would have come up with a reply so scorching and scathing that Joanna would have known, once and for all, I wanted Hook cut into pieces and scattered through the seas, but a hollow clangcame from the door before I could speak. I straightened, knife in hand, prowling into a patch of darkness beside the door.

Joanna slipped off the barrel, no obvious weapon on her even if I knew she had a throwing knife tucked into her waistband. She stood very prim and elegant, as if waiting for a gentleman caller to take her for a walk about the harbour, not our bastard captors to make an appearance afterhours.

“What are you gonna do?” I hissed when she fluffed her hair, straightening the red bandanna keeping it from her face, a bright, sunshiney smile pulling up her lips. “Charm them to death?”

“How do you think I got such good treatment the first time?” Joanna quipped, her brown eyes glimmering. “These men are all starved for softness. A smile here, a kind word there, and they’re putty in my hands.”

My grin was as big as my sister’s but far more evil. “You’re wicked, Joanna Darling.”

I took a deep breath when the door opened, adrenaline taking off the finest edge of pain. When the hinges creaked, light spilling into the room from the hallway, and a figure entered the room, I launched out of my hiding place knife-first.

“Oh,” I said, grinding to a halt and juststaringat the tall, dark-skinned woman glancing from Joanna to me with mischief-bright eyes. “That dress is seriously working for you.”

She wiggled, pulling up the bust of her dress, her boobs barely clinging to the fabric, all but the nipple on display. “Thank you very much. It makes the girls lookamazing,right? The guards outside certainly thought so before they drank the coffee I laced with burn root.”

A jolt of surprise went through me, immediately followed by glee. “That’s what I used to knock out the crew the night I killed Hook! Would you like to be my new best friend? I’m Wendy.”

I stuck out my hand, thrilled when she instantly shook it. “Oh, I knowallabout you,” she told me with immense delight. Her brown eyes shone so brightly I wondered if she was a goddess of mischief, not a mere mortal. “The boss never shuts up about you. I swear, he spoke about you twenty-four hours a day before we found you. He even muttered your name in his sleep.”

“Ha!” Joanna crowed, striding towards us with a bounce in her step. “I knew there was chemistry.”

“Somuch chemistry,” the goddess of mischief agreed with a grin that creased her round cheeks. “When he threw you over his shoulder on the beach, I thought he was stealing you to ravish you.”

“Chance would be a fine thing,” I muttered, then realised I said that aloud. “Because it would give me a perfect chance to murder him,” I hurriedly added.

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