Page 14 of Her Perfect Pirate
None of them would do the trick.She pulled her dress and petticoat up, instead, all the way up to where his fingers held the fabric fast.“See for yourself.”
In the lanternlight, his movements merged with the shadows.He rolled onto his shoulder, the better to slide those tough fingers down the inside of her thigh.She saw the gleam in his eyes and the curve of his lips, exaggerated by the darkness beneath them.She heard his breath hitch as he trailed his thumb along her skin.
She matched it with her own gasp.A small, quiet one, because this time, she didn’t want the crew to overhear.Yet she wanted to be overcome by the feeling, so she tipped back her head and shut her eyes.She focused on his fingers, which skimmed her like a breeze over still water.He stretched an ankle across their hammocks and hooked it around hers to keep them swaying in the same rhythm to the waves.The connection—his stockinged foot against her bare leg—sent a shimmy of pleasure down her spine.Pleasure that was outmatched when his lips found her ear and scraped a kiss in the tenderest part of her neck.Rebecca stretched her spine, wishing her breasts free of the confines of her gown, wishing herself full of him like she had been that afternoon when he had knocked her senseless against the captain’s desk.
Yet Sharkhead had not even started the good part.Because it was only after she arced against the hammock, only after she bit back a moan of desire, only after her body felt as red as the sunset, that he brought those fingers to her quim.That thumb—so thick, so sure—found her clit, and those fingers that could do so much with a rope slid down through her wetness and plunged inside of her.
He worked her clit first, flicking it so fast and so lightly that she barely knew how to breathe.As a hot spiral built from her deepest core to the magic of his thumb, her hips bucked up against those fingers of his, and he rocked his wrist with her natural movement so that the whole of her body was defined by the fiery desire connecting her clit to her slick channel.She buried her lips in his neck to keep from letting the whole ship know what he was doing to her; when she broke—and she did, gloriously, almost as deeply and as wonderfully as she had earlier that afternoon—her cry was for him and him only.
But she wasn’t ready for it to be over.Seizing his wrist, she brought his fingers to her mouth and licked off the remnants of her desire.His breath came jaggedly into the air between them.Rebecca reached down to where he waited long and hard for her.She untied his sashed belt, unbuttoned his trousers, and freed that cock.It was warm and velvety in her palm, but she didn’t want to work it with her hands.No, she climbed out of her hammock—carefully, quietly—and landed on her knees, propping her elbows on the insides of his sling to keep him in place.Breathing hard, he tilted his hips to give her a better angle.Rebecca took him in her mouth in the fluid, practiced movement she knew men to love so much.Then, her hand at the base of his cock, she slid her tongue and cheeks up and down, up and down, tasting the sea of his flesh and feeling the throb of his desire.She was gentle but firm, molding her mouth into a replacement for a sweet quim, matching her tempo to his breath, and when it sounded like he was nearing completion, she used her elbows to swing the hammock, too, so that his cock jabbed almost all the way to the back of her throat as if he were fucking her with all the force of his hips, and he came in a great spasm of body and breath.
“I should have gotten myself a wife a long time ago,” Sharkhead said as he returned to himself, and his hand cupped the back of her head as if she were something precious to him.
Rebecca swallowed.She climbed into her own hammock, even though she yearned for him to invite her into his.It was a hot night; their skin would chafe if they spent too long in each other’s arms.
“But then,” Sharkhead replied to himself, reaching out and taking her hand again, “she wouldn’t be you.”
Nice words.Rebecca told herself not to believe them too much.She knew from experience that nothing said after lovemaking was completely true.A phenomenon that made it easier to ask what she had been wondering all night:
“Do you think, if I showed up at Northfield Hall, that I might belong there?I mean, that perhaps I might be asked to stay?”
“Of course you would.”He tugged her closer.“But you needn’t go all the way there.You belong here, with me.”
She smiled, though she knew he couldn’t see it.The smile was for herself, to bask in this moment, even though it wouldn’t last.“Because I’m your wife.”
He yawned, and Rebecca thought she wouldn’t get a reply because he was already asleep.Until he murmured, “Because I like you.”
Words that nestled Rebecca to sleep at last.
Chapter Seven
Dayshadneverdisappearedinto the deep like they did on that sailing.They followed the same watch schedule that had always dictated his life, yet Chow hardly knew if it was morning or night, so dizzy was he from Rebecca.In every spare moment, he looked for her—to see if she was at work, to see if she was smiling, to see if he could steal her away for a private kiss or two.
They were playacting, of course.When she decided she was ready to leave theGhost, she would go without a further word.
Still, Chow could admit to himself that despite the farce, there was something real building between them.Its foundation was not kisses—though they stole plenty of those—but the little secrets they shared.Rebecca’s confession that her first love had been the senator’s son, who had sworn he loved her back but married a society heiress anyway.The hand she landed on Chow’s shoulder when he told her of his still-burning dream to find his relatives in China.The laugh they both had to stifle when, in the midst of fucking the brains out of each other one night, old de la Cruz ripped a fart so loud that it sounded like a gunshot.
By the time they reached the dark blues of the mid-Atlantic, Rebecca wasn’t a mystery to Chow anymore.He discovered how her expression stilled when she meant to frown; he saw the little limp in her walk when she had been sitting too long, due to the time she had twisted her knee lugging bathwater upstairs for her mistress five years before; he saw her sitting next to Long Tale Lee and knew she was eager to learn his art of tying ropes into intricate designs.
She wasn’t his wife, but it was easier than ever to pretend that she was.
They were in the cold waters somewhere between Florida and Madeira when they spotted the trio of cutters a few leagues ahead.They were too far away to see the names of the ships, even with the captain’s telescope, but Chow had learned years ago how to identify a slaver from far away.A shallow body, four or more masts of low sails, and the gleam of evil catching every ray of sun.These three sailed under the American flag, which meant they were immune from the British navy’s hunt for slave ships.
Chow handed the telescope to Jack Davies, the blond-haired Scotsman who served as coxswain, and asked the captain, “Should we try to take any of their supplies?”
Slavers headed across the Atlantic from the Caribbean were usually loaded with goods rich enough to pay theGhost’s needs for a year.In Havana, they had probably stocked up on sugar, rum, and coffee, which they were now bringing to Europe to sell at luxury prices.If it were just the one slaver, theGhostwould attack, maroon the crew, and keep the ship and supplies to sell themselves in the backwaters of the Spanish-held African islands.
Three slavers together called for a little more strategy.Davies lowered the telescope and said, “Too bad there aren’t any storms brewing.That would break them up long enough for us to pick them off one by one.”
Captain Boukman glowered as if Davies had questioned his honor.“We don’t need to pick them off one by one.Even if there were twenty ships, we would defeat them.”
The captain’s tone sharpened the air around them.More and more, he had been taking offense at innocent comments, and Chow was having trouble predicting whether he would recover his good cheer or descend into a blacker mood.
Chow let out a breezy laugh.“I remember when we took on five slavers at once.That was during the war, wasn’t it?Five slavers, and one of them tried to flag down a French man-o’-war for help.We sank three of them and took fifty prisoners.You’ve never seen anyone as fierce as Captain Boukman during that battle.”
For the moment, it seemed to work.Spitting tobacco off the side of the ship for emphasis, the captain said, “Sold a thousand dollars’ worth of cotton from them, too.”
Davies had already changed his posture, head nodding and stance open, to show he hadn’t meant any harm by his comment.“Aye, I’ve heard stories about that one.”
