Page 26 of Hooked By a Hero
“I’ll give you a thorn in your side, if that’s what you want,” Dick said, gripping the handle of one of his daggers.
“Please!” Ruby shouted, raising her hands to cover her ears for a moment. “Now is not the time for arguments. Caspian is ill.”
“I will be well in a moment,” Caspian gasped, attempting to muscle himself into a sitting position. He was grateful for Elias’s arms around him, even if their closeness earned a sneer from Tumbrill.
“See?” Dick demanded. “He will be well in a moment. I, however, will not. I’ve been stuck on this floating prison for months now with no entertainment at all, without so much as a drop of rum to ease the ache.” He grabbed his crotch again.
“Is that what you want?” Tumbrill turned to him. “Would rum make you shut your gob for a change?”
Dick looked as though he wanted to argue, but he cocked his head to the side and considered the question. “Yes,” he said, then shrugged. “I would be satisfied with a bit of a drink.”
“Fine, then,” Tumbrill said, marching away from them. “I’ll open up the rum rations for you and the rest of the crew. But only in moderation.”
“Truly?” Dick followed after him like a dog who had been promised a meaty bone. “There’s rum aboard this ship you haven’t told me about?”
“Perhaps that will keep him quiet,” Ruby whispered as the two of them walked out of earshot.
Caspian shook his head. “Men like that and drink are never a good combination,” he said.
“It looks as though we have no choice in what Dick and Tumbrill and the others do,” Elias said, shifting and helping Caspian to his feet. “My concerns are only with you right now.”
“I will be fine,” Caspian said, believing it less by the moment. “I am more concerned with those clouds ahead of us.”
His words were meant to distract Elias and Ruby, which they did, but the more Caspian looked at the darkened skies ahead of them, the more concerned he was. There was no question, they were heading into another storm. Whether it would be as harrowing as the last one or not was hard to tell, but if the crew was drunk when they sailed into it, the severity of the storm might not matter. Either way, they were in for another fight for their lives.
Nine
Elias had spent enough time at sea now to know when the ship was in trouble. It wasn’t just the threatening skies they were clearly sailing into, though the storm would be just one more thing that could kill them all. TheFortunehad already weathered everything from patchy rain to what had felt like a hurricane. Elias could see that the darkness ahead of them was dire indeed.
But an even greater problem was the enthusiasm with which the disheartened crew broke into the ship’s rum supplies.
“We’ll have a grand old time in this storm!” one of the younger convicts, who was quiet and kind most of the time, but had quickly turned rowdy after his first few drinks, slurred, throwing his arm around Elias’s shoulders. “Drink up, doctor! Join us!”
Elias had no intention of doing any such thing. Not when Caspian was clearly suffering from some sort of malady. Elias shrugged out of the drunk man’s hold and staggered away from him along the bobbing deck to where Caspian and Ruby sat in the corner near the forecastle. He had no idea what sort of illness was trying to take his beloved friend. He’d never seen anythinglike it before. Caspian had no fever, he was not wasted or wan per se, but his strength was deserting him at an alarming rate.
“You’ve no reason to worry, truly,” Caspian insisted weakly as Elias reached him with the flask of fresh water he’d gone to fetch from the stores below. “I will be well in just a few hours.”
Elias frowned, concerned about what his sweetheart was implying. “You do not look as though you will be well anytime soon,” he countered, handing Caspian the flask. “If you would only allow me to give you a thorough examination?—”
“No,” Caspian cut him off, though not unkindly. “You have more important things to concern yourself with.”
Elias huffed and sat back on his haunches. If he did not know better, he would have been convinced Caspian did not want him to touch him. In one regard, that seemed ridiculous. They had done quite a bit of touching in the days after the last storm, when they had huddled together in his cabin, praying they would survive to the next day. They’d touched weeks before that, when Caspian had had his cock in his mouth. But they had never disrobed in front of each other before, and Elias was suddenly suspicious of that.
“Stop fretting,” Caspian said, sending Elias a sly grin, as if he could see his thoughts.
“I will most certainly fret where you are concerned,” he said. He peeked sideways at Ruby, then continued with, “I care for you, Caspian.”
“And I care for you,” Caspian said warmly, reaching up to cup Elias’s face, even though Ruby watched them. “But I am well enough, I can assure you. I know what ails me and how to ease it.”
“Then cure yourself,” Elias said, losing his patience. “Or tell me what is wrong so that I might cure it.” He held his hand over Caspian’s against his cheek.
Caspian did not reply immediately. He glanced warily to Ruby, as though she were involved in whatever had made him ill. Elias’s mind raced. Had Caspian contracted some illness from Ruby? It seemed impossible, as Ruby was as hale and hearty as ever, perhaps more so since she’d donned her masculine disguise and begun working alongside the crew to maintain her secret.
“Isn’t this a pretty sight,” Dick’s thick, drunken voice sounded from behind Elias. “Two little love birds perched in a tree. Or is it three?” he suggested, leering at Ruby.
Elias tugged away from Caspian and pivoted so that he could shield Ruby. The movement was made clumsy by a sudden dip as the ship sailed into the trough between two large waves. “You will not touch her,” he said stiffly.
A second later, sense took over from his bravado and his need to protect Ruby.
