Page 4 of Her Perfect Pirate
Rebecca offered her upper arm to Liberty.“Will it take long?”
“Depends on what picture you want.”
Chow pinched his fingers together, trying to bring some sense of reality to his body.He would not look at her any longer.What she did with her skin was her own business.He would turn around now and let her make her own mistakes.
Her eyes roved over him.“How long did your shark take?”
“Days.”That had been in his early years on theGhost, before he was quartermaster, when he lolled about in the doldrums instead of joining the captain in worrying over course and supplies.
“Show her the whole thing,” Liberty said.“Let us all admire it again.”
He didn’t want to.Shouldn’t want to.Yet, without any further coaxing, Chow found himself lifting off his shirt—his coat long since discarded in the heat—to show his torso.He turned, like a pig being roasted in his final fate, so she could see where the shark tail began between his shoulder blades.
“Did it hurt?”she asked, her voice husky.
The part on his back had felt more like incessant scratching.The shark’s jaws that curled up his neck had been excruciating.But Captain Boukman had ordered the tattoo, and Chow had wanted to prove that he belonged on theGhost.And so he gritted his teeth through the pain and, in the days that followed, kept up his daily work even though his skin felt like it was about to blister off his very bones.
He debated now whether to lie to make it sound even worse in order to save Rebecca from the inner demon driving her to Liberty Johnson’s needle.He turned back around, shirt balled in his hand, and answered, “Of course it did.”
She swallowed, which drew his attention to her throat, which drew his eyes down to her collarbone and the smooth slope of skin leading to her breasts.
Which he wasn’t looking at.
“That’s not why you shouldn’t do it,” he added.“There’s no removing it once it is done.It will mark you forever as a…”
Pirate.Sailor.Anything other than the housemaid she had previously been.
“I don’t plan on going anywhere.Anywhere theGhostdoesn’t take me, that is.”At last, she pulled her eyes away from him and set them on Liberty Johnson.“What do you suggest for the design?”
Chow had done his best.There was no talking sense into this woman, just as there had been no preventing her from joining the crew.He would walk away now, retreat to his book like he had planned, and get some peace.
Except he found himself standing in the same spot suggesting, “A swallow.”
It was a typical design, though not simple.It might hurt her a little.
But it was an offering to the deep power that controlled the universe, one that might be worth the pain.
A prayer for safe passage home.
Wherever her home was.
“What does a swallow mean?”Rebecca asked.
This time, Chow didn’t debate about the lie of omission.“Swift sailing.”
She smiled, her eyes landing on his again.“A swallow it is, then.”
Rebeccahadn’tmeanttotalk her way into a tattoo.She hadn’t known what to do with her leisure time—never had been good at quiet moments when no direct action needed to be taken—and had been curious about the needles Liberty Johnson pulled from his wooden case.
But now, because shirtless Sharkhead Chow wouldn’t stop glowering at her, she was offering up her bare arm for a tattoo.
Her bare arm—and the rest of her torso, exposed down to her underthings.And she, anicegirl who always succeeded innicehousholds!
She could feel all eyes on the pirate ship spinning towards her like a compass needle pulled towards the North Pole.After a week on theGhost, she knew them all.In a pack with their feet dangling off the starboard side sat the green boys who thought they were ready to handle a woman, shoving each other amid muffled guffaws.Fearsome Fred, who flirted with her in French over the mess table, watched from the steps leading to the quarterdeck.
It was Sharkhead who intrigued her the most.Whose glare felt the most potent.Rebecca knew what he wanted, but she didn’t thinkheknew.In the course of only a few days, she had learned much about him from the crew: he was called Sharkhead because he had once, in the shallow waters off an island, been attacked by a shark and won the fight by punching it in the head; he looked Chinese but hailed from the middle of England; and—most interesting to Rebecca—he didn’t take on lovers.The elder de la Cruz swore Sharkhead was a virgin.Fred argued that Sharkhead had taken a vow of celibacy in reverence to some Chinese god.Long Tale Lee—who, it turned out, was from some kingdom called Joseon, not China—insisted it wasn’t a choice at all but rather an order from Captain Boukman that Sharkhead act like a neutered dog.
Rebecca didn’t know what to think of it.She had never heard of a man outside the priesthood taking a vow of celibacy, nor could she believe a pirate would remain a virgin.All she knew was if Sharkheadwasn’tlooking at her, then he was intentionallynotlooking at her, as if he were a young boy who only knew how to express his interest by insisting he hated her.
