Page 5

R ebecca had never dreamed the ship could be so quiet. Even the wind died down so that the sails didn’t creak. The whole bay resounded with Sharkhead’s declaration.

She’s mine.

She didn’t know whether to look at Captain Boukman or Sharkhead and ended up doing both.

Except for a straighter spine than usual, Sharkhead looked as disinterested as ever.

As for the captain—Rebecca hadn’t been prepared for him to be so much of a man.

Skin as dark as midnight. Head as high as a tree. Shoulders as wide as a house.

Desires as big as demands.

He stared at Sharkhead as if the quartermaster had turned into a kraken. “She is yours ?”

The rest of the crew stared, too, and Rebecca wondered who would be the first to contradict Sharkhead.

“How much did you pay for her?” the captain asked.

She bit her cheeks to keep from defending herself. She had known a pirate ship wouldn’t be friendly to a woman. Sharkhead himself had warned her of this. If she quibbled over being mistaken for a whore, she would still be taken for a whore—only, perhaps, more roughly.

“It’s not like that, sir,” Sharkhead said again. He gulped. “She’s my wife.”

His wife ?

Rebecca had never thought she would be someone’s wife without a wedding—or without being consulted on the matter first.

Captain Boukman parroted back, “Your wife ? How did you come by a wife and not invite me to the ceremony?”

Sharkhead’s whole head was red as a tomato with the lie. “Well, sir, it wasn’t in a church. You know I don’t hold with any of that. I met Rebecca doing provisioning, and…well, how else does a man end up married? A pretty face and too much alcohol.”

“And a goat,” old Julio said.

Rebecca didn’t know whether to thank or resent the navigator for backing up the story.

The captain swung around, hands out, to see everyone’s reactions. “And so you have all been celebrating Sharkhead’s nuptials in my absence?”

“Saved most of the celebrating for when you came back, Captain,” replied Liberty.

“She’s been mighty helpful with the mess,” added Cook.

Captain Boukman revolved on the spot, taking in everyone around him. When his eyes landed on Rebecca again, they were no less greedy or invasive than they had been moments ago. Yet there was a distance to them, and after a moment, he smiled.

“Well then, congratulations are in order! I never thought I’d see Chow with a woman!

” The captain stepped forward and clapped a hand on Sharkhead’s shoulder.

This time, he kept it there, and even from where Rebecca stood, she could see his fingers hook into Sharkhead’s flesh.

“Let the celebrations wait no longer. Take your bride into my cabin and enjoy some private time. The rest of us will have rum waiting when you are done.”

If Sharkhead had been a tomato before, he was now a blazing evening sun. “Now? Surely we need to—”

“I insist.” Captain Boukman’s fingers guided Sharkhead across the deck towards his private quarters. When they reached Rebecca, he grabbed her by the arm, too. His grip was not kind, and up close, she could see something false in his smile.

He was nothing like the mythic captain she had imagined.

“Come on, men. It’s bad luck to send a groom and bride to their chambers without a little ribbing!” he cajoled, and suddenly the whole crew surrounded them. Next thing she knew, Rebecca was pushed inside the captain’s cabin.

Sharkhead stumbled in after her, and the door swung shut.

Leaving her alone with this man who had just talked himself into being her husband.

C how was a fucking idiot.

There was no other explanation for how he found himself trapped in the captain’s cabin with Rebecca. An idiot who should have just kept his mouth shut.

Behind him, the crew was growing raucous as Captain Boukman led them in an old pub song about a husband and wife on their first night.

The doorknob grew slick from the sweat of Chow’s palm.

On either side of him, the carved wooden shelves with their ledgers and instruments and charts loomed as if they might collapse on top of him.

And in front of him stood Rebecca, hands braced against the captain’s desk as if that alone prevented her from falling into the ocean.

“What now?” she asked. Her voice was just as silken as when he had first met her, undisturbed by what had just unfolded. She looked him straight in the eye, and damned if there wasn’t a hint of a challenge curving that thick lower lip of hers.

That didn’t make Chow any less of an idiot. “We don’t have to…”

He said it softly, yet in almost the same moment, something small and sharp jabbed through the keyhole into his upper thigh and from the other side of the door, Captain Boukman jeered, “No wonder you didn’t have a wife ’til now. Don’t keep her waiting!”

Which meant they were being observed.

He crossed the cabin to stand close to her. Too close. Now he could see the dark shadows beneath her eyes and smell the oil in her long hair. She was a pretty woman, and he wanted her, but that didn’t make her his. “I didn’t mean to put you in this position.”

“Oh? What did you think would happen?”

He should have kept his mouth shut and let her reap the consequences of her own actions. “I didn’t want Captain to abuse you.”

“I’ve been handling men like the captain since my tits began to show.”

The men behind the door broke into another song, this one about a sailor with too long of a prick and the various prostitutes he tried to swive.

“It seems I would have ended up in this cabin either way.” Rebecca released the desk, her palms spreading wide in the air. Chow breathed in her scent again and realized he was feeling drunk. “What are you going to do with me?”

“I’m not going to do anything with you,” he growled—barely remembering to keep his voice low enough for privacy. “I’m not that kind of man.”

Her eyebrows jumped. “It’s true then, what they say? You’re a virgin?”

Chow had heard that whisper. He had nothing against virgins, either. Yet the accusation felt like a sharp knife held against his balls. “I’m not a virgin.”

“Do you only like to play with men?”

“That’s not it either.” Bad memories flashed behind his eyes as pressure mounted in his chest at trying to find adequate words for something he didn’t want to explain.

He didn’t owe her an explanation.

“Then what kind of man are you, Sharkhead Chow?”

It was what he had been called for nearly a decade now, and he didn’t have any complaint with it. Yet he heard himself replying—in a voice as rough as any villain’s—“My name is Martin.”

Rebecca blinked, clearing for a moment the game that was playing out on her face. “Martin Chow, then. What are you going to do now that you have cheated your way into claiming me as your wife?”

The younger boys on the crew were getting even louder now, pounding on the wall, and Chow didn’t know what to do.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for this to happen.”

Surprisingly, she smiled, a great rainbow of teeth that beamed across her whole face. “I know you didn’t. You entered this game without knowing the rules.”

“Are there rules?” He couldn’t imagine she had ever been in this situation before, yet he realized that she wasn’t the least bit anxious. Not even as a dozen men on the other side of the door called for him to throw her on the ground and take her like a beast.

“There’s one. You have to fuck me now.” Her hands slid backward again, her fingers caressing the fine grain of the captain’s desk. “Luckily, you’ve been wanting to do that since the moment you met me.”

Chow couldn’t have argued with that even if he wanted to. Her breasts were practically in his face—and she smelled so wonderfully appealing, like a magic bottle of orange blossom in this stinking desert of sweaty men.

“Do you think you can take me right here?” she murmured.

“Yes.” He wiped his palms on his trousers.

Rebecca caught his gaze in hers and smiled. “Prove it.”

It still felt wrong. But when he gripped her hips like a brute, she exhaled a little squeal right into his ear.

When he levered her hips onto the edge of the desk, she wrapped her legs around to clench his arse and her arms to hold his neck close.

And when he pushed back her skirts, she reached down to stroke her own cunny and show him the glistening treasure of black curls and soft skin.

He unbuttoned his trousers faster than ever before. His cock ached to be inside of her. He stroked his thumb across her little hill once, then twice, then three times, watching her back arch in delight. Her ankles tightened around him. Then, when she looked ready to burst, he thrust inside of her.

Rebecca cried out in pleasure so robustly that the men on the other side of the door cheered.

Chow wanted to protect her from them, but he couldn’t, so he kept on fucking her. The inkwell on the desk rattled. The papers beneath her bum crumpled. As she arched backward another time, the ledger slid off to the floor behind.

And Chow evaporated into someone who wasn’t Sharkhead or Martin or man.

He was his body only, and all that existed was Rebecca’s, and he was feeling her hot, wet channel; he was seeing her tight little breasts; he was tasting the salt of her skin; he was listening to her huffs of excitement; and he was smelling the sea air of her quim and the orange blossom of her desire and the coconut oil of her hair; and then he came in an explosion of delight.

He had forgotten how deeply pleasure could spiral when he finished inside a woman instead of in his hand.

Captain Boukman swung the door open. Chow slid out of Rebecca in a hurry, pulling her skirts down for modesty, and kept his back to the door as he rebuttoned his trousers.

For her part, Rebecca almost looked woozy, with a great big smile on her face. “My thanks for the wedding gift, Captain Boukman,” she said. “My husband had been too shy of the men in your absence to show me his full prowess.”

Chow turned to face the captain. He didn’t know what Boukman had expected, but he knew this had been a gambit, not a gift. The only question was: had fucking Rebecca under supervision of the men been enough to make up to the captain for bringing a wife on board?

Or were there further consequences awaiting him?

For the moment, Captain Boukman grinned and slapped him on the back once more. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Chow.”

There was nothing to say but “Yes, sir.”

“Now, enough carrying on. Ready the ship to make sail. We’re going to find those slavers.”

“Yes, sir.” This time, Chow said it more heartily. The captain, it seemed, was willing to treat him as normal.

And, as Chow turned to deliver orders to the crew, the whole day almost felt normal again. Except Rebecca slid her fingers into his as they exited the cabin, and Chow kept them there as long as he could, before finally they both had to go ready the ropes.