Page 33 of Desired for Her Blood
“N’ah.” And if I focus solely on that night, it’s not even a lie. “I met a ship’s captain in a bar, asked to join his crew, and by the next day, I was a pirate.” I look down at her. “See? Even easier than Craig’s List.”
She smiles. “What happened then? Where did you go? What was it like? And how did you become a vampire?”
“That, is a longer story.” And one I never tell. Not even to myself if I can help it.
“We’ve got time.” Her leg shifts over mine, and my cock throbs.
I take one of her hands off my chest and put it over my cock. “This part of me has run out of time.”
Heat rises in her eyes, and she strokes me softly, but then pulls her hand off my stiff dick. “Please,” she says. “I want to know you better. I want to understand you. Unless your story’s too painful to share?”
“Painful?” I wink. “Not as painful as the tension in my balls right now.” Oh, if that were true.
“Then the quicker you tell me,” she grins, “the quicker we can take care of that tension.”
I slide my hand down her back and squeeze her ass. She gasps in response, but then gives me a look telling she’s going to demand at leastsomeinformation before we fuck.
Fine. I’ll skip over most of it—the parts I never think of except in my nightmares.
“Pirate life was great.” I stare up toward the top of the cave. “Hard work sure, but revelry too. Our ship worked the Caribbean, but also up and down the coast of North America, and over to England and Ireland… I got to see a lot of the world for someone at the time.” I draw a deep breath keeping focused on those happy days when I was ignorant of the truth.
“And you raided other ships?” she asks. “All I know about pirates comes from the movies.”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “We made our coin by relieving other ships of theirs. It was stealing, sure, but it was how we survived and seemed normal.”
“I bet it was exciting.” Her eyes flash with interest.
“Sometimes.” Memories of those first yearsaremostly good, if I ignore what came later. “The captain showed me a lot of attention. Took me under his wing.” Looking away from her, I close my eyes.
The captain took me under more than his figurative wing, although it wasn’t until I was about fifteen that I had any inkling that others on the ship noticed how I was his favorite, and a few years past that before I realized the full extent of what he was doing to me most nights without me knowing.
It’s not like I’d have noticed any traces of blood in my shit. And even if I had noticed, I had no one to tell. The things that bastard did to me after he fed from my vein is why Inevertouch an unconscious human after I feed, never mind fuck one. It’s why consent has always been important to me, long before the idea was in the minds of many men.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asks softly. “The look in your eyes… I’ve heard stories about cabin boys… Did someone on the ship—”
“Sure,” I say like it’s nothing. “Getting fucked up the ass was kind of part of the job for a young sailor.”
“Oh, Ryker.” She strokes my neck.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.” And not the worst thing that happened to me on that ship. Not by a long shot.
“But you were achild!”
“I didn’t even know it was happening at first.”
“How is that possible?”
My chest tightens. “Because the captain was a vampire.”
Her eyes widen. “Really? And you didn’t know?”
I shake my head. “I’d never heard of vampires. Not even stories. Didn’t figure out for years that he fed from me most nights. He’d feed to knock me out before…” I force a grin. “Before Captain Roger would roger me.” I wink.
“That’s horrible.” She shivers in my arms and kisses my chest.
“With hindsight, it seems like it should have been obvious,” I continue. “But I didn’t question why the captain wasn’t ever on deck during the day. I thought that was normal. We attacked at night, it was the main reason for our ship’s success, so it made sense to me that the captain and senior officers slept during the day.”
“So this captain,” she asks softly. “He’s the one who turned you?”
