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PART I

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MARCH, 1780
ATLANTIC OCEAN, TRADE ROUTE

WHY NOT.

Elliott dragged his hand down Fury’s side, shocked by the heavy scarring, far more so than his own. She had been flogged—and severely. He allowed his fingertips to study her scars, tracing each bump and ridge, feeling himself harden in her hand. He cupped her breast in his palm and realized that it, too, was riven with scars. He flicked his thumb over the peak, but the nipple didn’t respond.

“I have no feeling there,” she whispered absently, lost in their kiss. She did not seem to find that anything out of the ordinary.

“A flogging like this would have killed a lesser man.”

“Aye, but I am not lesser nor a man.”

He grinned against her lips while slipping his hand between her legs to caress her velvety inner thigh. She gasped. “You have feeling there.”

“Aye, I do. Stand down and prepare for my boarding, Cap’n.”

She arose to her knees as he turned to lie on his back. She lifted one strong thigh and straddled him so his growing prick nestled in the crack of her arse and slid along her back. The tail of her braid brushed across his thighs.

Elliott thought he must have died and gone to paradise, as this was truly not the reception he’d anticipated, nor had he anticipated how … at ease … he would be with her and how rapidly.

She wiggled, grinding her cunt into his belly.

“Madam, you are an accomplished tease.”

“That,” she said pertly, “is what Marquess Rathbone thinks, also.”

Elliott thought to toss her off. “What ho, then?”

“Nay, not so much as that,” she said with a wry tone. “He is one of the last men on Earth I’d tumble, and not for any reason I would tell you.”

“Ah, you were speaking figuratively.”

“You are the one who wanted to discuss the blockade. I have decided to indulge you.” He groaned, and she reached behind her to wrap her hand around his cockstand. She pressed the pad of her thumb into the tip to collect the liquid there, then manipulated the rest of the head with that same very talented digit while she squeezed with just the right pressure. “I have heard no expressions of gratitude from you, Judas. Methinks you’d be more appreciative of the gaping hole Maarten and I left you to sail through.”

“My thanks, Captain,” he croaked. Surely the woman had been born for the sole purpose of driving him mad. “Your turn.”

“My thanks for your assistance, Captain,” she purred. “Enlighten me,” she continued with amusement. He could smell her arousal and wondered at her control. Then she put her hand between her legs and spread her flesh open against his skin and bore down.

“Fury, is this some new form of torture?” he gritted.

“Nay,” she said with a little gasp. One more tiny sound of pleasure slipped from between her lips, and the hand wrapped around his prick tightened. “Not for me, anyroad.”

“If I enlighten you, will you cease torturing me?”

“Aye, perhaps. If I like the answer.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I am perfectly capable of pleasuring myself, Judas.”

“But you would rather have me.” He quickly, unerringly slid two fingers up into her cunt, making her gasp in surprise. “Wouldn’t you?”

He could feel her shrug. “This will do.”

“Liar. Ask your question.”

“Would you say that your ship is fucking my figurehead or my figurehead is fucking your ship?”

Oh, Elliott knew which answer would get him buried inside this evil woman, but he could not bear to give her that. Yet. He lunged upward and rolled her over so that he was on his knees between her thighs, his body pinning hers to the bed. He grasped his prick and guided it to her cunt, sliding the head between her wet folds, up and down—

“Now who is the tease,” she gasped, lifting her hips, seeking his prick.

He grinned. He had barely entered her when she drove herself upward until he was sunk into her to his bollocks.

“Oh, yes,” she sighed.

He leaned down to press her into the bed and whisper: “Your figurehead might be fucking my prow, Madam, but I am fucking you.”

“Oh, yes,” she sighed again. “Do continue.”

She was deliciously tight, perfectly wet, as he gave her long, leisurely strokes she sought to quicken by tightening her legs around his hips until he could not move at all.

“Do you wish me to continue, you should not hold me so tightly.”

In answer, she reached above her head to the iron rings in the bulkhead, then tightened her legs even further, making him lose his balance so that he fell upon her. It was delightful to have her restrained so closely underneath him, but not so much that he would trade it for control. He pushed up, his body braced by his palms on either side of her head.

Her chest was heaving. Her legs tightened. Her mouth found his. Her hips and legs worked in some odd rhythm for the purpose of—

She growled just as her pussy clenched around his him.

—grinding her pearl against him. She released the rings and his hips, letting her knees fall open wide.

“Judas,” she whimpered.

He could do naught but fulfill her plea.

He thrust hard and fast, and she met him on every stroke.

She arched her back and let forth a guttural cry from deep in her chest when she reached her crisis. Not long after, his groan of satisfaction came from somewhere deep in his soul, and he stilled.

They stayed that way, spent but connected. They were both panting as they looked at each other for a few minutes until Elliott could no longer claim any firmness.

“That needs must happen more frequently, methinks,” she murmured, cupping his face in her hands.

“Aye,” he said brusquely. “You said a night or six, as I recall.”

He turned his head to press a kiss into her palm, then pulled away, twisting to land on his back beside her. She looked at him.

“As long as we are becalmed, I see no reason not to indulge. But my hold is empty, so I have prizes to hunt and, hopefully, a shipment to deliver. As soon as the winds pick up, I must be upon my way.”

“Where are you bound?”

“Eventually, London. You?”

“Ah … London. Eventually.”

She lifted herself and moved closer to him, until she was tucked in the curve of his arm and her head upon his shoulder. She caressed his belly, tracing the lash lines with a fingertip, and whispered, “You are acquainted with the cat, too, I see.”

“Who among us does not bear the scars of a life at sea?” He tightened his arm around the back of her head and she adjusted her position so as to grant him the kiss he sought.

They kissed, teased, nipped, sucked. He felt her hand in his hair, pulling him closer as if they could lose themselves in each other. He suspected that might be possible. It had been nigh twenty years since a woman had so strongly caught his fancy, and somewhere at the back of his mind, he wished she hadn’t.

She was dangerous.

Nay, his compulsion to have her was dangerous.

“Will you be in London long?” he whispered against her mouth.

“I am not quite certain,” she returned.

“Will you meet me?”

“Mayhap. Washington is expecting our return in October or November.”

“’Tis nearly March. You could make two or three voyages in that time.”

She paused and pulled away from him, leaving a sudden chill where her body had warmed his. She rose up and knelt beside him, her knees touching his ribs.

“I … There are … complications with my presence in London,” she said slowly, continuing to trace his scars with a finger. He shivered, and not from any chill: He could see no fewer than three glowing braziers dotting the cabin. “’Tis not simply a matter of slipping in and out, meeting suppliers and selling cargo. I have other obligations to attend.”

“As do I, so I ken.”

“You are British,” she said softly. “What is your quarrel with your own countrymen?”

“That is not up for discussion, Madam.”

“I can tell by the way you choose your battles that you feel you have cause,” she continued as if she hadn’t noticed Elliott’s tension, but of course she had, “yet you have taken the name of the betrayer and raised him up to destroy the Messiah that is England. ’Tis the stuff of bathos.”

He snorted. “And yours is not equally ridiculous? Fury.”

“Oh, that was a gallows jest I made after I killed Skirrow.”

“And no one laughed.”

“Nay, but I did not find much humorous about it, myself.”

“Dunham called you ‘Jack.’”

“‘Jacqueline’ wearies the tongue.”

“Ah. Jacqueline what?”

“You are so set upon having my name, are you? Methinks you should give me something other than Judas.”

Would that he could hear his name on her tongue, but there were few enough Englishmen with his given name that she could deduce his surname, too, given a few weeks in London.

“I’ll not give you that, Madam,” he said gruffly.

“Then fie upon you, Judas, expecting my name when you will not give me yours. Anyroad, I hate ‘Jacqueline,’ and ‘Jack’ only slightly less. I always have, so do not think to address me thusly.”

“And Calico Jack? To my mind, that would be a dueling insult, as you are more man than he ever was.”

“Another jest, though foisted upon me because of my fondness for calico cats.” Elliott grinned. “I was very young and did not know the history, so I did not object. By the time I knew the history, ’twas mine forevermore. I do not care for that appellation, either, but ’tis useful for legal purposes, contracts and such, with my flourish and seal. For many reasons, I simply do not have the luxury Dunham and Maarten have to go about wearing their names on their chests, or I would.”

“And what would you have me call you?”

“I prefer the name by which I am known in my … communities … on land, but since you will not give me your name, I will not tell you mine.” And he regretted that. “So until you give me yours, you will call me Fury or Captain. None of this Jack business, Calico or otherwise.”

Elliott said nothing more as she climbed over his body to disappear into the shadows behind a screen. He started when something soft brushed against his foot.

Mrow.

So. There were two cats in this cabin. He chuckled when it climbed up on his belly and walked up his chest to stick its cold, wet nose up his. He stroked its silky fur, then its back arched and its claws dug into his chest, begging scratches at the base of its tail.

“I was not expecting to be taken hostage and ravished this eve or I would have prepared,” she called softly.

He snorted. “Did you think I would wait until the wind blew so I would not have to row?”

Fury’s soft laugh drifted to him.

Once she had finished her ablutions, she emerged from behind the screen, her shadow moving vaguely about the cabin until a lantern flared. She cast a glance at him where he lay with one arm behind his head and a calico cat on his chest.

“I see you’ve met Dindi.”

“I am now the one being ravished,” Elliott murmured, allowing the cat to scratch its face upon his rough jaw. He had never been in the habit of keeping pets, but he found himself scratching the cat’s other cheek such that its purr increased until his chest was thrumming.

“She’s spoilt. None of the other ship’s cats require such excessive praise for their valor in keeping us free of vermin.”

He studied Fury’s rather large body as she went about her cabin completely nude, lighting lamps until the cabin was quite bright. He had not noticed her size until now, accustomed as he was to looking at her many-times-larger figurehead. Tall and muscular, she was yet voluptuous, with a nipped waist, soft belly, and hips and breasts reminiscent of graven images depicting ancient fertility goddesses—

—all overwhelmed by the most grotesque scarring he had ever seen.

From chest to waist, they encircled her torso, a thick mat of pale pink ridges. Her breasts were pert, but her nipples lay flat despite the chill in the air. The left nipple had been cut in two vertically. On the other hand, her arms were smooth but for the welts circling her wrists: She had been hung from a yard instead of strapped to a mast. He found the contrast between her feminine-smooth limbs and arse and ravaged torso to be profane.

Aye, her midsection was hideous, and even though he, too, had been flogged, he could not imagine how she’d lived through it— And that her mentor had wielded the lash …

By any definition, Elliott was an uncommonly big man and, with his strength, had unwittingly killed a man with fewer than twenty strokes of a common cat. Dunham was larger than Elliott and had he not personally witnessed Dunham’s affection for Fury, he would swear that the man had tried to kill her.

“Not so eager for me now, eh?”

Her bitter question shook him out of his reverie and realized that she had caught him staring, most likely with some measure of horror on his face. He scowled at her and snapped, “Do not assume what I do and do not find arousing, Madam.”

She blinked and her delectable mouth dropped open a little in confused surprise. “Oh,” she finally said, but then her mouth tightened. “Oh, aye, I apprehend,” she said acidly. “You have been looking at my figurehead these weeks past and can simply close your eyes and think about how I once looked.”

Incensed, he leveled a glare at her that had quelled more unruly sailors than he could count. “That is enough of that,” he growled. “I am no callow youth, easily impressed by appearance to the good or bad. Your scars are ugly, but they are part of what makes the woman I have pursued since we met. ’Twould take more than the sight of those to thwart my interest in you.”

Her expression was filled with uncertainty, but she made no more protest, for which he was grateful. It was not well done of him to confess how much he wanted her, as she did not seem to reciprocate as deeply.

With one final, suspicious glance, she turned to dig a small box out of her sea chest and sit at her desk with her back to him. Her scars might be hideous, but the rest of her was precisely to his taste: Her arms and shoulders were shapely but muscular. Her legs were likewise. Her hips were more than generous, her arse firm and smooth. Her pink braid brushed her skin.

That pink hair! Elliott thought his wonder at the sight of her hair may never cease.

“Why did you not stay in Oranjestad if you wanted me so badly?” she mumbled as she unpacked the small box, sorted its contents, and began a process he understood. “I would not have rebuffed an apology.”

“Pride,” he rumbled. “I do not grovel well. Rather, not at all.”

“Thus you knew you were in the wrong.”

“No question of that.”

The pestle clinked softly against the mortar as she ground spices. “Why did you think I would be more receptive to your overtures after you stole my property?”

“I was angry, so I thought nothing of it at all. I saw it. I wanted it. I took it.”

That made her chuckle, and she paused in her grinding to cast a sly smile at him over her shoulder. “Like Caesar. You took a great risk, coming here, sneaking aboard. We’ve had you in sight for days, and certes, my watch saw your approach.”

Elliott scoffed. “’Twas no risk at all, considering you all but dropped anchor the moment you sighted us.” The smile spread across her striking face, and Elliott’s breath caught with her beauty. “I am curious as to how you appeased your crew, however.”

“I didn’t. You did.” She bent back to her task and spoke matter-of-factly. “You saved us from the three patrol frigates. Whatever your quarrel with Britain, had you any real quarrel with me, you would have left all of us to her mercy. Then, once we were sunk, you would have finished the job we began.”

“Aye, that would have been efficient,” he said dryly.

She shrugged. “At that point in the battle, you had the advantage of time. You could have done anything you wanted without Britain to belay you.”

Elliott said nothing. It had never occurred to him to leave Fury and her fleet to the Royal Navy’s mercy, and that she had any idea he might have done so unsettled him a bit. But then, that was a hazard of pursuing a woman with whom his only conversation had involved swords, daggers, curses, and the theft of her effigy.

“And,” she continued, “my crew knows what I want from you. Hand me that rum over there. ’Twill kill the taste of these herbs.”

He displaced the cat to sit on the edge of the bed, grasp the bottle she’d indicated, and hand it to her. She poured some in a glass and mixed it up with the herbs, then tossed it back with a grimace. “God, that’s vile,” she muttered.

“I told you I have no intention of returning that figurehead.”

“Not that.”

“Then what?”

“Your cock,” she said absently, her hands carefully re-packing her box.

Elliott’s mouth dropped open. “My cock? And now you’ve had it, you’ll toss me overboard?”

She huffed and looked up at the overhead. “Bedsport with a man I both respect and desire. Is that better? Forgive my lack of sentiment, Captain, as I am a mathematician and astronomer, not a poet.”

With that, Fury looked down to finish packing up her herbs. That she had such a collection and in such an exquisitely carved Moorish box told Elliott more about her tendencies than he cared to know. He was the latest among many, and would not be the last, just as Covarrubias had warned him.

For the first time in his life, that irritated him.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asked abruptly.

“Love?” she hooted. “I fall in love with every flap of a sail!” That shocked the bloody hell out of him, and when he made no response, she looked over her shoulder and said, “You were hoping I’d say ‘never’? That perhaps you might be the first?”

He shrugged, loath to admit it.

“I may have exaggerated a mite,” she said with an impish grin. Oh, God, that smile!

“How large a mite?”

“Oh, mayhap no more than two flaps of a sail.”

Elliott could do nothing more than laugh, his relief far greater than the situation warranted. “Number one?”

She raised an eyebrow. “This is not the moment for such discussions, Judas.”

He almost called her bluff by confronting her with Covarrubias, but decided she was probably correct.

“You know who I am,” she said when he did not respond. “Did you think that because I am a woman, though neither whore nor lady, I would remain a maiden, lying in wait for a handsome pirate captain to climb in my window and skillfully ravish me, thereby allowing me to abdicate any responsibility I have in my enjoyment of fucking a man I don’t know but want desperately?” He said nothing, but she began to laugh. “You did!” she squealed, then clapped and laughed with utter glee. He scowled at her, irritated with her mockery. “My womanly awakening did not begin with your stolen kiss, Captain.”

Still chuckling, she arose and disappeared behind her screen. Soon the faint scent of lemon touched Elliott’s nose.

“Tell me at least if you are married,” he called.

“I am not,” she returned immediately.

Thank God. “Now tell me about the blockade.”

“Desperation. The Navy had cut off all our avenues of escape. Did the trap draw tighter, we would all have lost our ships and our lives, not to mention what the loss of eight or more privateers would have done to Washington’s supply lines. I would not have done such a thing otherwise or on my own, and I hope never to have to do it again. I do not relish captaining a fire ship.” Elliott closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. “By the bye, did Rathbone or Bancroft survive?”

“Aye, both. They are too wily to die.”

“They are intact?”

“So I hear. I imagine their pride is in tatters, however. You may find your head with a price attached.”

“Nay. You would have a price on your head regardless. No matter what I do, I would be merely a prisoner of war.”

Elliott snorted bitterly. “Being a prisoner can make a person wish he’d been executed,” he said before he thought.

Once again she appeared from the head and went about putting out all but one of the lamps she had lit. “And how do you come to think I have no experience of imprisonment or torture?”

“Touché.”

“One missive to Ambassador Franklin would cut short my imprisonment and put a period to any plans for my execution. Besides the fact that the ambassador adores me, there are many leaders in the army who would not hesitate to kill Britain’s finest officers—sons of nobility, as you well know—should their suppliers be harmed.”

’Twas true enough. She and her cohorts may be considered pirates, their letters of marque not regarded as legal in British courts, but as a practical matter, they were treated as enemy combatants.

“Now, Captain,” she said silkily as she approached the bed. She put a knee alongside Elliott’s hip, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him deeply. She tasted of lemon, cinnamon, and rum. He pulled her to him tightly as he lay back on the bed. “’Tis my turn to ravish you.”

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If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.

Pirates!