He let the torture go on until he could take it no longer, and finally pulled her up, drove his mouth against hers, and forced her back down upon the bunk. She reached for him as he lowered himself on thick, brawny arms so as not to crush her, her hands skimming his back. Her tongue tangled with his. The kiss deepened and with one hand, he reached down, parted her damp thighs and rubbed her between his thumb and forefinger until she squirmed and arched upwards on a single breathless cry.
Sea air swept in from the stern windows and tried to cool them. She turned her head, her cheek pressing against her own golden hair fanning across the pillow. Her young breasts were crowned with coral tips that were swollen and hard and when his hands, then his mouth, found them, she cried out with her own sweet torture.
“Oh God, Sam—love me, now, please….”
He positioned himself above her, parted her, and slid himself deep inside of her warm, slick sheath, groaning at the sweet embrace of her, quivering as his own control began to lose itself to the throes of passion. He bracketed her flushed face with his hands, gazed down into her eyes, and began the slow, deep thrusts that would take them both over the edge.
“I love you, Maria Hallett,” he rasped, and dropped his forehead to her shoulder as his hips brought them further and further to paradise.
“I love you, Sam Bellamy.”
Their mouths met, and climax burst over them both.
* * *
“Er, Cap’n?”
Maria lay drowsily in Sam’s arms. She stirred at the sound of the voice while Sam cursed the interruption and drew the quilt up over her to protect her privacy. “What is it, Stripes?”
The younger man poked his head around the door and tried to hide a grin. “Just thought ye might want t’ come topside, Cap’n. That brigantine’s within hailin’ range and is runnin’ like a dog with ’er tail tucked b’tween ’er legs.”
Sam cursed under his breath.
“Does that mean ye don’t wanna take ’er, then?” Stripes asked, raising a brow. “Crew’s voting that we do.”
“Then prepare the ship for action and keep your glass trained on her. I’ll be up momentarily.”
“Aye, Cap’n.” Stripes winked at Maria and exited the cabin.
Scowling, Sam rose from the bunk and yanked his breeches on. Maria watched him quietly. Again, that uneasiness at the base of her spine. Again, a stab of worry. She comforted herself with the realization that piracy had come second in his preferences; she had come first, and he would not be plying this dangerous trade forever.
She sat up in the bunk, watching him. He donned his coat, buckled on his sword belt, and gathered his pistols, tucking one of them in his waistband and knotting the others in a scarf that he slung around his neck for easy access to them. His movements were quick, businesslike, practiced and determined. As he picked up his hat, he smiled and gave her a long, smoldering look. “Keep the bunk warm,” he said, his gaze lingering on the swell of her breasts. “And don’t come topside looking for me. Things might get hot up there if it comes down to a fight, and I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to ye.”
“Then go, Sam,” she said softly, reaching out to touch the buttons of his coat. Their gazes met. “Just be careful. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Promise?”
He laughed and quirked a smile at her. “Promise.”
* * *
The sun hit him full in the face as he emerged on deck, and he squinted against the brutal glare off the sea until he spotted the brigantine. It lay a mere league off their bow, flying French colors and struggling to stay ahead of them. Sam watched it for a few moments and then stalked aft, where Silas West was running a hand over his blistered pate in agitation.
“Crew’s voted to take her,” the man said.
“Then let’s do it. Time to see what this little ship can do with a real prize!”
“And this crew,” grumbled Stripes, who’d come up to join him. “Times like this I sure wish I ’ad ol’ Simon Van Vorst beside me, or Paul Williams, or even—”
Sam cut him off with a sharp glare. “You have Mr. West, who is quite capable, you have Phil Stewart, who even now is casting the lashings from the starboard battery, and you have me. Now stop complaining and get this ship ready for action. I’ll not have a show of apprehension on your part, Stripes.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
Stripes moved off to carry out the orders. The rebuke was reassuring. Thank God the Cap’n and his woman had finally put their differences aside; it was about time Black Sam got down to business and netted them a fine prize, just as he’d done so many, many times before aboard Whydah and Mary Anne, now under the command of Paul Williams. Stripes grinned and cast a glance at his captain. There he was, standing on a gun as cool as ye please, one hand anchoring himself against the shrouds as he studied the brigantine, his eyes gleaming with cunning and satisfaction.
But whether Black Sam shared his doubts over the competency of this young, unseasoned crew Stripes was not to know, for his captain concealed such things well. Even now his voice was brisk and authoritative as it rang out over the deck.
“Her me, lads! We’ll stay on this tack for a few minutes longer, then come about so we’ve got the wind gauge.” He drew his pistol, checked the flint, and shoved it back into the sash tied around his waist. “Johnnie! Keep your fool head down, will ye? Ye’re bloody likely to get it shot off!”
Closer and closer they came to the brigantine.
“Ready about!”
The great mainsail was hauled close. Men crouched beneath the bulwarks. Gunners held smoldering matches. In the shrouds, men waited with muskets and stinkpots. All eyes were on their captain, awaiting his command. The tension built, thickened, until it charged through the ship, hummed in Sam’s blood, tingled in his fingertips. He counted the seconds. Ten…. Fifteen…. Far enough. “Helm down, now!”
“Helm a’lee!”
Nefarious swung her nose through the wind. Her great boom passed overhead, the mainsail was sheeted home and began to draw once more. Water foamed and began to roar from her lee bows and far forward, her long jib-boom aligned with a marksman’s accuracy on her unwary prey.
“Run up the colors, lads!”
Clean, hungry wind sped them forward. Gathering speed, Nefarious charged the French ship, her skull and crossbones breaking at her masthead, her gun ports opening to reveal her bristling array of four-pounders. Spray leaped and hissed from her bow, men crowded her rail yelling and howling like a legion of devils, and in no time, she was abeam of the brigantine.
Any other ship would have struck to them.
The brigantine did not.
Scowling, Sam clenched the wire-wrapped grip of his cutlass. Above, the Jolly Roger streamed, silhouetted by the sun and throwing a dancing shadow across the deck. Damn them for a pack of fools, why hadn’t they struck? Hell, if it was a fight they wanted, ’twas a fight they’d damn well get! He folded his arms across his chest and walked over to stand beside his quartermaster. “Would ye look at that, Mr. West,” he said, tugging at his jaw. “She’s still running. Why, I’d almost think she doesn’t know we’re here!”
“’Bout time she realizes it, don’t you think?”
“Aye, my sentiments exactly.” Sam turned and bellowed a command to his master gunner. “Mr. Stewart, lay a shot across her bow! If she doesn’t heave to by the time the smoke clears, load up with chain shot and take out her rigging!”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Johnnie watching him in awe. More men had leaped up from beneath the bulwarks, yelling themselves hoarse in an attempt to cow their quarry into striking. Forward, Stewart crouched, sighted along the gun’s long muzzle, and lowered his match to the touchhole.
The explosion was immediate. The deck quaked as smoke spat from the long black muzzle, the heavy boom rolling across the water. Acrid smoke came drifting aft.
The French colors came tumbling down from the mast.<
br />
“She’s struck, lads!” Sam pulled his pistol. “Ready with grapples!”
Great claws of iron sang across the rapidly decreasing distance between pirate sloop and hapless brigantine. Muscles strained beneath bare backs as the pirates threw their weight on the grappling ropes and pulled the ships together, hull to hull. Some leaped the distance between them before the hulls could even touch, overwhelming the terrified French crew before thoughts of resistance could enter their minds. Brandishing his pistol, Sam vaulted atop the breech of a gun, leaped into space, and landed lightly upon the brigantine’s holystoned deck.
Commotion and chaos reigned all about him. His men raced about, some snarling curses at the frightened crew as they herded them together with swinging cutlasses that needed no translator to make their meaning known. Others were already tearing open a hatch and streaming below. Random pistol shots rang out and smoke floated across the deck.
Sam strode through the melee like a victorious general, smiling. That smile widened as his moved to the helm, where the French commander, a trickle of sweat racing down his temple, stood quaking in his silver-buckled shoes at his approach. His hand shaking, the Frenchman offered his sword in surrender.
“Merci, Capitaine!” Sam accepted the sword, swept off his hat and bowing gallantly. “Nous sommes de la mer!”
The French captain went the color of oatmeal and put out a hand to grip the wheel in support. We are of the sea. If the black flag above didn’t announce who they were, the universal declaration itself most certainly did, and now Sam’s smile became a grin of genuine amusement. “Oui, pirates,” he affirmed with a glance at Silas West, who was hacking away at a hatch cover with an axe. Pirates surged into the hold before the last splinters could even be torn away. “Now, if ye’re easy, mon capitaine,” Sam continued, “we’ll get this business over and done with in no time, and ye can get on your way with minimal inconvenience. But if you’re not….” Deliberately leaving his words hanging, he turned and shouted, “Mr. West! Line up these lads and ask them if their captain has been a good master, and then see if any are inclined to join us. If so, take them back to the sloop and show them the Articles!”
“Aye, Captain!”
Ignoring the confusion and commotion surrounding them, Sam turned back to the Frenchman. “Parlez-vous anglais?” he demanded.
“Non—”
Sam drew his sea knife and held it to the other man’s throat. “Damn ye for a liar! Ye think I didn’t see ye go pale when I ordered my quartermaster to question your men about your treatment of them?”
“I—I am…sorry, Capitaine Lebous.”
“Lebous? I’m not Lebous, ye blithering idiot, ’though I know him well. And save your apologies for your men, ’tis they who’ll decide your fate, not I!” He jabbed the knife toward the horizon. “Ye know anything about that ship out there?”
“Wh-what ship, Capitaine?”
“Don’t play the fool with me,” Sam warned. “That one.”
“I know only that he has been chasing me since sunrise,” the Frenchman said, eyeing Sam’s knife. “Mais Capitaine, if you are not the pirate Lebous, then who are you?”
“You may call me Captain… Black.”
Something changed in the Frenchman’s face. Sam’s eyes narrowed. “What, have ye heard of me, then?”
“Word of your exploits, Capitaine, precede you.” Hopelessly, the Frenchman turned to watch the pirate quartermaster moving up and down the line of his men, relieving them of their pistols, swords, and finer pieces of jewelry.
Sam’s curiosity was aroused. “Oh? And what is it they say about me, eh?”
“That you are a bloodthirsty killer. That your ship has wings and disappears into the mist at will. That you are expert with sword, pistol, and wits, neither of which I should care to test. But Capitaine, in trade for my life I would give you a word of warning.”
Sam glanced at a group of his men, busily axing a cargo crate to splinters. “And that is?”
“That there is a man who has sworn to kill you. He says that you murdered his cousin.”
Sam laughed, but inside his every sense went on alert. “What blather are ye spouting?”
“Oui, it is true. As we speak he and the governor are on a mission to wipe the coast of New England free of pirates. If you are wise, Capitaine, you’d do well to avoid those waters.”
“And if they are wise they’ll realize ’tis I who rule them.”
He began to walk away, but the Frenchman had planted a seed in his heart, and Sam got only a few feet before he paused, turned, and narrowed his eyes at the Frenchman. “And pray tell, who might this imbecile be?”
“His name,” the Frenchman murmured, “is Ingols.”
Chapter 24
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea.
—Arnold
“Y’ know, Maria, I’ve been thinkin’ bout this Ingols fellow,” Stripes said the morning after the brigantine had been taken, plundered, and sent on its way. They were sitting together beneath the shadow of the boom, listening to the dawn breezes sigh through the rigging and watching a gull wheel lazily overhead. “An’ what I still can’t figure out is how ’e knows our cap’n’s the Black Bellamy. Doesn’t everyone think ’e died on the Whydah?”
“Apparently not.” Maria gazed forward, watching the jib-boom plunge and rise above the sudsy, oncoming rollers. She clawed a loose strand of hair from her face. “And what troubles me is that this man has the audacity to call Sam a murderer. Wasn’t his cousin the one who purposely let the storm drive Whydah off course and into the breakers in the first place?”
“Aye, but that don’t change the fact ’e was still on the ship as our prisoner,” Stripes pointed out, “and if ’e weren’t, I suppose ’e’d still be alive.” He looked over at her, sitting there with her back against the mast and her hair all awash in the breeze, thinking that Black Sam was the luckiest man in the world to have such a prize as Maria Hallett. “All’s I wanna know is how this cousin o’ his knows it’s our Sam who masters Nefarious.”
“I’m sure that was even easier to figure out.”
“How so?”
“Well, how many pirate captains go around delivering speeches on personal freedom to their prisoners?”
Stripes chuckled and picked at the frayed edge of his sleeve. “Ye know, we’re prob’ly gettin’ all worked up over nothin’. Ye heard the cap’n. Said ’e’s laughed himself silly over worse things than some sniveling pup and ’is thirst fer vengeance.”
“Like the storm that nearly killed him?”
“Aye, I do believe ’e found it rather amusin’, at least ’til we heard them breakers….”
“I’m not surprised. Sounds just like him. But somehow, I don’t think he finds that ship back there amusing at all.”
“Prob’ly not. And if you weren’t aboard, ’e’d turn around and give ’er a good thrashin’ with our guns. Never used t’ play it so safe back in the old days.”
A morning mist still hung upon the sea to the east, the glittering waves danced away to a silver horizon, and there, the sails of the mysterious ship were just materializing.
“Now don’t ye go worryin’ none,” Stripes advised. “Cap’n said ’imself she ain’t from the Royal Navy.”
“Well, who do you think she is then? And why does she hang back like that? Why doesn’t she just hail us and let us know her intent?”
“Hell if I know. Think I’m a mind reader? Yer supposed t’ be the witch, not me. Who d’ you think she is?”
“I don’t know either. But if I were a witch I’d wave my magic wand and make her disappear.”
“Oh, she’ll disappear fast enough. Cap’n’s tired o’ playin’ cat and mouse with ’er. He’ll lose her among them there islands off in the distance t’night, mark me words.” Stripes followed Maria’s gaze forward, where Sam stood far out on the jib-boom, a glass to his eye and a hand curled around a stay. Now, he shut the telescope, turned, and strode
purposefully down the pitching length of the spar, heedless of the sea that glittered and danced so far beneath his bare feet. “If not before,” Stripes added.
“Up with ye, lads! ’Tis time we show our heels to our little friend, eh?” Sam called, leaping down to the deck. “Now, let’s look lively about it!” But after celebrating the brigantine’s capture into the wee hours of the morning, the crew lay sprawled across the deck in a state that could only be called comatose. No one moved, not even Johnnie, who lay curled up in the shadow of the gunwale with his head pillowed, childlike, on his hand and a skinny arm thrown over Gunner’s ribs. Only the dog looked up, and this he did rather lazily before letting his head drop back against the youngster’s leg.
Sam stood glaring at the lot of them. “I said up with ye, ye lazy pack of drunken curs!”
Nothing.
Very calmly, he reached down, drew his pistols, and fired them harmlessly toward the clouds.
Gunner lunged to his feet, and the deck came alive as though a broadside had hit it.
“Holy mother of God, what the hell was that?”
“We’re being attacked!” someone yelled. “To quarters I say, to quarters!”
Wild eyes. Frantic scrambling for cutlasses, knives, pistols. And then, they caught sight of their captain, standing imperiously atop the barrel of a gun, arms crossed at his chest and two smoking pistols in his hands. He was grinning widely.
“Good morning, lads.”
For a moment, no one moved. And then Nat groaned and rubbed the dark circles beneath his eyes with a grimy fist. “Bloody hell, the captain’s lost his mind.”
“Lost my mind? Aye, I must have, burdening myself with such a pack of lazy, good-for-nothing whelps!” Still standing on the cannon, Sam jabbed his pistol toward the eastern horizon. “See those sails yonder? Well, I’m sick of seeing them. It’s time we stop playing games, time to show our heels to that bitch back there. Get the topsail up, Mr. Paige, and while you’re at it, the jibs, too. In fact, lay on every stitch of canvas she’ll hold.”
Pirate In My Arms Page 31
