Page 60 of Hooked By a Hero
Tumbrill snorted and shook his head at those words.
It was the wrong decision.
Hunt glared at him and said, “You, Mr. Tumbrill, will not be given a choice. You will be taken back to theFortune, and you will stay there in confinement until we are rescued. Then you will be given to whatever authorities find us, to be dealt with by them.”
Tumbrill barked a laugh and shook his head, but said nothing. Caspian fancied himself a good enough judge of character to think that the man was worried about his sentence but trying to hide it. “Dick will come back for me, you know,” he said.
“Dick is dead,” Elias informed him. “He drowned in his attempt to steal Mr. Ferrars’s treasure.”
Everyone went silent, not just Tumbrill. Tumbrill looked as though he’d just lost a high-stakes game.
“Is Ruby’s treasure gone?” Hunt asked, glancing to Ruby with concern.
Caspian shrugged. “It sank to the ocean floor near where the boat capsized. It should not be too terribly difficult to recover.” Not difficult for him, at least. And for Elias now as well.
“I can order it recovered,” Hunt said to Ruby, reaching for her hand.
Ruby took his hand and stepped closer to him. Even with only a scant bit of light from the fires and torches around them, she looked exhausted. “I cannot think about that tonight,” she said. “Too much has happened here this evening. All I can think about at this moment is sleeping. Can this decision wait until the morrow?”
Hunt smiled at her with so much affection that it made Caspian want to take Elias into his arms in a mirror of what he was seeing. “Yes, my love,” Hunt said. “It can all wait until tomorrow.” He glanced around at the rest of the survivors and said, “Secure the mutineers for the night. They can sleep out in the open while guarded. I will need volunteers to take the first watch. The rest of us should sleep, as Ruby has suggested. We will have much to do to make repairs and continue building what we have here tomorrow.”
Hunt’s word was final. Everyone began to move. Some of the stronger men assisted Hunt in shackling the captured mutineers or moving the bodies of those who had been killed in the fight. Fortunately, none of the survivors had died in their efforts to defend their homes. They had been far more judicious in their fighting and far less careless about their own persons than the mutineers.
Elias was called upon to treat a few injuries along with Hunt. Caspian helped clean up the debris from damaged huts and with repairs to those huts so that everyone who wanted one would have a roof over their heads that night.
It was late by the time he and Elias headed back to the beach to retrieve their packs.
“I cannot believe we came through this night and made it through more or less in one piece,” Elias said with an exhausted sigh as they reached the disheveled camp they had made hours before.
“I cannot believe we are both still awake,” Caspian laughed.
Elias glanced to the rumpled, sand-filled blanket they had lain on earlier, then back to Caspian with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “I do not think I have the energy to walk all the way back to the encampment tonight.”
Caspian knew at once what he had in mind. “Nor do I,” he said, then winked.
Elias broke into a smile that rivaled the moon above them in beauty. He nodded to the blanket, then the two of them headed over to pick it up, shake out the sand, then lay it down again under the lean-to.
Once that was done, the two of them sank to lie together on the scratchy wool. Caspian could not bring himself to care about the feeling of the blanket against his skin as he and Elias undressed and set their clothing aside. All he cared about was the feel of Elias’s warm body sliding against his as the two of them came together in a passionate kiss.
“I feel as if I have awakened to an entirely new world,” Elias whispered breathlessly as they scissored their legs together. Elias gasped slightly at the new sensations he must have been feeling between his scales and the tender flesh of his inner thighs. “I am not entirely certain I know what to do with myself now.”
“We can do anything we might dream of,” Caspian said, beaming at his lover and tucking a strand of his too-long hair behind his ear. “We have more time than you can imagine to make a life together.”
Elias’s eyes widened slightly. “Might I live to be four-hundred-and-ninety-seven as well?” he asked.
Caspian laughed. “Most likely. And perhaps much longer. Our kind are very long-lived. I have a great-grandfather who remembers taunting Julius Caesar as he sailed across the Mediterranean to attend the Empress Cleopatra.”
Elias’s jaw fell open in shock. “That is…that is incredible.”
Caspian shrugged one shoulder. “Who knows what remarkable people we might meet in the years to come.”
“Who knows indeed,” Elias said, rolling Caspian to his back and stretching his body over Caspian’s. “I will go anywhere with you and meet anyone. We have so much time to be together.”
“And yet, I have been impatient for exactly this moment,” Caspian said, brushing his hands up over the backs of Elias’s thighs to cup his buttocks.
Elias made a growling sound of desire, then dipped down to capture Caspian’s mouth in a powerful kiss. It was everything Caspian wanted, so he smiled into that kiss and returned Elias’s passion tenfold. Elias made a sound of appreciation and circled his arms around Caspian as best he could, bringing them even closer together.
“My lover,” Caspian sighed happily before gripping Elias tightly and rolling to reverse their positions. “You are wonderful.”
