Raven Pirate Assassin Spy

by Landra Graf

  He only got a chance to groan “What?” before stumbling to his knees.

  Sorella grabbed the little girl under her arms and dragged her away just as the giant pervert fell, face first, onto the floor, dead. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Eyes wide, the waif’s gaze darted between her attacker and her savior. Then she nodded.

  Only then did she notice the men surrounding them. Not club participants, but men dressed identical to the majordomo, the same ones she’d glimpsed hiding in the shadows of the room.

  “Leave the females be, and remove the body,” Janken called out.

  She took the opportunity to move the girl to the side. “What’s your name?”

  “Gretchen.”

  “All right, Gretchen.” She began steering the small thing toward her table. “I’m going to have you sit in a chair right here.” They stopped at a table two away from where her host and partner watched them. “Don’t leave. Don’t move. Because, when I come back, I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “Really?” Gretchen shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why?”

  “Because no one should go through something they don’t want to, and, if you go back home now, it will happen again, won’t it?”

  Gretchen nodded. Of course, trading your children for money seemed a common practice here and in many other cities across the world. Kids were no longer prized for their innocence; they were valued for the services they could deliver, most usually for the use of their flesh.

  She helped the girl get comfortable in a white metal chair with the same plush red cushions that adorned all the seats in the room. Then she returned to the table where Janken and Ian still sat. “There is my pleasure. Bringing weak, disgusting men to their end.”

  Janken smiled. “The rumors are true, then. Beauty has been trained to kill, not merely to act as a decoration on a man’s arm. But do you protect the one you marry or take orders from someone else? That’s the question.”

  He’d receive no hints from her. Her secret was now forfeit to him to use however he wanted, which might easily lead those looking for her right to her ship’s starboard side. She refused to give him anything more.

  Ian cleared his throat, frowning. “The Cursed?”

  “Ah, yes. You’ll have to speak with Mistress Eva. At the moment, I believe she’s the only one who’d know.” Janken tucked his cigarette case back into his pocket.

  “I thought Luther was done with her.”

  Their host chuckled, a low, raspy rumble. “Never believe every rumor you hear. If anything, Luther spread the whispers himself to keep suspicion away from her. He didn’t need anyone threatening his dish. The man has enough to worry about, non?”

  The news didn’t leave a smile on her partner’s face. In fact, his furrowed brow and scowl said something else entirely, something the albino, in his blind glory, recognized.

  “Mon ami, I never promised the sun and stars. This is all I know.” He rose from the chair and leaned against the back of it. “I must ask you both to leave now. Your presence, and especially that of our lovely client killer, is bad for business.”

  Ian shoved his chair back and stood, glancing at her. “Are we taking the girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Sorella was used to giving the orders; in any other situation, she’d knock him down a peg. Yet a wild look had entered his countenance, coupled with a silent frustration. Mistress Eva was obviously someone he didn’t want to see.

  She stood, ready to call the girl to her, when Janken called out, “Oh, others have already asked me about your package. If they have information to trade, I will gladly share your direction.” So much for secrecy.

  Gretchen’s hand tucked in Sorella’s, the trio left the building without speaking a word or exchanging a glance. Once outside and away from the wall of people still looking for buyers for their children’s innocence, Sorella slowed and asked, “Is there anything you need, Gretchen? Do you want to say good-bye to your family?”

  The little one shivered. “No, they’d only want you to pay them. Are you a princess?”

  White lies were better than truths sometimes. “I’m a captain.”

  Chapter Six

  Once they reached the ship, Sorella turned the girl over to Bonita’s care. The cook knew plenty about young charges, having been a keeper of girls not so long ago.

  Sorella moved to confer with Bastille, but not before Ian growled, “I can’t believe you’d be so reckless.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your little stunt in the club. Killing a patron? We’re lucky Janken didn’t have us skinned alive as an example.”

  Sorella took a deep breath. “Is it me you’re really angry with or someone else?”

  “You. Risking our entire operation because of a girl.” His shoulders hunched, he looked downright livid. His brows were furrowed in a never-ending scowl.

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but the albino wanted to know what my guilty pleasure is. I had no choice. Thankfully, I got to execute such a task on a rapist.”

  He ran his hands through his hair, tugging on the ends. “But why keep the girl?”

  “Why not? Her family doesn’t care about her. If they did, she wouldn’t have been inside that awful club.” Time to level with him. He’d spent plenty of time telling her his tales of woe. “I know what it’s like to be unloved, to be thought of as a possession rather than a thing. I watched the person closest to me, my brother, be ransomed off to The Cursed for my safety, treated like an object, and given up without a fight.” She left out the parts about how her brother had protected her, sheltered her, and shown her emotions their parents never had. He’d been her first true family member. Since then, she’d come to call many others her family, but none of them was related to her by blood.

  The merchant threw his head back, staring toward the sky. When he finally acknowledged her again, he said, “I understand, but that still doesn’t mean I agree to it.” Then, he marched off.

  Ian stalked down the hall to his cabin and slammed the door behind him. A waste of a trip going home, evading patrols, and praying no one recognized me.

  He flipped the switch and moved to take off his coat, but the swath of pink skirts and a heart shaped face surrounded in mahogany curls stopped him.

  “What are you doing here, Dixie?”

  She stood, flashing an all-too-familiar smile meant to charm and placate. “The first mate let me on when I told him I needed to talk to you.”

  “Who did you say you were?”

  “Your sister.” No shame. The woman had never displayed any in the all the years he’d known her, from the moment they’d met until the moment she’d betrayed him.

  “Thank goodness I don’t have a sister, or any siblings for that matter. Now, get on with it.”

  The less time she spent aboard, the better. Too bad his porthole was too small to shove a female in three layers of skirts through.

  With a flutter of her hands, she brushed the curls from her face, angling her chin so he’d catch a good look at her black-and-blue eye. Fresh from the previous night’s argument, no doubt. “Your cousin’s a madman, Ian.”

  “Ah, so you’ve discovered how he likes to deal with situations he doesn’t agree with.”

  “I made a mistake.”

  One of many, in his opinion. Yet, his ability to change anything had ended the day she’d confessed his activities. “You spun your web. I can’t help it if a bigger spider took up residence.”

  She pouted. “There has to be something you can do. Someone you know. All those illegal contacts…. You’re familiar with people who can get rid of him.”

  Funny how, over a year prior, she’d been singing a different song, one involving the authorities and a promise from his cousin to keep the family name clear of the problems tainted un-American activities caused.

  “Are you ready to pay the favors those t
ypes of requests cost?”

  “What favors?”

  He enjoyed how confused she sounded, how the concept that such dealings didn’t come free escaped her. A lovely part of being the daughter of an influential landowner and never needing to work for the clothes on her back, or anything else for that matter.

  Ian stepped forward and reluctantly put his hand on her shoulder so he could steer her toward the door. Then, a thought—“How did you know I was here?”

  “I have some friends working for the docking port. Told them to keep an eye out for you.”

  It wouldn’t be long now. “You know he’s following you, right?”

  “So what?”

  No time to lose. He opened his cabin door, ready to shove her out and head for the helm. Instead, he nearly ran face first into the captain. Somehow he pulled up short and got a squeak from Dixie as he trod on her leather-clad toes.

  “I heard you had a visitor?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “And she’s leaving. As are we.”

  “I thought I told you before. I give the orders on my ship.” She stepped forward, crowding his space. He wished Dixie was anywhere but in this room because he wanted nothing more than to grab the woman in front of him and make her experience the hot lust her close proximity generated in him. Her words, demanding as they were, chased away his anger, replacing it with something much more dangerous.

  “Yes, you did. I’m making an exception since the she-devil behind me has led my cousin and the police right to us.”

  Dixie poked her head around him. “Hi. Could you do me a favor and kill my husband?”

  “I take it her husband is your cousin?” the captain asked with a smile.

  Ian wanted to pull his hair out. “Yes, and he’ll have the authorities on us faster than we think. I’m surprised they’re not here already.” He grabbed his ex-fiancée’s arm this time. “You’re off this ship immediately. No one is killing anyone.”

  “Unless you can pay for it,” Castoa chimed in.

  There was something off about the way she eyed him. Not in anger, but amusement. She looked downright splendid standing there, leaning against the doorjamb, her hair still covered by the ridiculous headscarf. Meanwhile, a manipulative female, whom he’d once believed loved him, tugged at his grip on her arm while slapping her small hand purse against her bustled skirts with the other hand.

  “Let me go. She said she’d do it if I could pay.”

  “In human parts.” The captain whipped out her knife then, flipping it open and shut.

  Dixie gasped. “Why, I never.” Then, her struggling began in earnest. “Let me go. Now! I won’t let someone mutilate my body. Foreigners, depraved people. Uncivilized Europeans. I’m leaving.”

  Ian released her as if she was a hot Tesla coil, and she ran, the heels of her shoes clicking on the floorboards until they faded away.

  “I already paid off the police, at least for the moment. Until your cousin offers them more.” The words rolled off her tongue matter-of-factly as if this sort of situation occurred every day. His pants tightened at her words. A woman who feared nothing, who didn’t believe in danger.

  “Very generous of you.”

  “Hmm?” She stopped playing with her balisong knife and looked at him.

  He came toward her, arms open, expecting her to move away from the door and put distance between them. She didn’t. “You protected me at your own expense.”

  “I thought you might take my generosity as replacement for me losing the bet.”

  Less than six inches separated their bodies. The pulse point at her neck fluttered, her breath shallow. Her knife stilled in her hand, closed, but ready to deploy. She waited for him to make a move.

  The distinct possibility existed he’d be dead in the next minute, but her lips were deep red in the low light, like cherries he’d eaten in late summer. To leave them untouched would be a crime. “You thought wrong.”

  He leaned in. She gasped, and then he kissed her.

  She’d been kissed before, but it had merely been her parents’ chaste touches to her cheeks or forehead, and, once, her fiancé had brushed her lips with his. Otherwise, she had remained untouched until now. As he touched the tip of his tongue to her closed mouth, a sinful sensation swamped her body. Gooseflesh broke out underneath her clothes, and little hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

  Sorella grabbed the lapels of his coat and opened her mouth. Something carnal took over, an instinct to engage his tongue in some primitive dance. If this was considered uncivilized, she’d gladly abandon society and all its norms.

  As fast as the moment began, it ended, and Ian pulled back a few inches. “You taste amazing.”

  He did, too; like peppermint, and…. “You taste familiar.” Not as if she’d tasted him before, but somehow the aromatic tang of his mouth and the scent of his breath on an exhale resonated within her. She’d bottle it if she knew how. “Kiss me again.”

  “As my captain commands.”

  The next meeting of their lips was frenzied, their mouths battling for supremacy until she was drowning in everything Ian. He swamped her brain like the waterlogged forests of his homeland. As he pulled her flush against him, consuming her every rational thought, she felt the hard ridge of his arousal against her belly.

  She moaned.

  He moved them further into his cabin, slamming the door shut behind them. “Step back,” he mumbled, breaking contact briefly.

  She did as he commanded, not bothering to worry about losing control. She was more concerned that if she didn’t follow his request, he’d stop this exquisite pleasure.

  “Hands up above your head.”

  Another command; another one she’d follow. Only when her hands were in place did he begin pressing kisses to her jaw then chin and neck. His palms began to rove over her body, feeling upwards from her hips until he stopped at her breasts.

  “Would you let me touch these without the clothes?”

  She could hardly breathe or think. On the verge of saying yes, she remembered her uncertainty about giving this man such liberties. Until tonight, her body had been pure of all sexual interaction. Maybe her mind hadn’t, but that held no significance.

  Ian lifted his head then. “You’re so beautiful, Cap—I really can’t call you that when what we’re doing is so much more than standard ship activities.” The smirk on his face, the dimple forming above his eyebrow—those things made her forget. Made her revel in the innocence of their encounter. She adored the fact he had no idea who she was and wouldn’t angle for a play even if he did. A first name wouldn’t hurt.

  “Call me Sorella.”

  “Sorella.” Her name left his lips as a whisper, the sweet sound of a priest’s prayer to Dio. It touched something in her, put a crack in the steel wall she’d erected against romantic emotions. “May I open your vest?”

  She smiled then, unable to believe such a gentleman existed in their world of cutthroats, slavers, and the destitute. “More action, Merchant.”

  He inspired anarchy. She’d truly come to his room to find out where they needed to head next. Instead, she was standing against a cabin door, captivated by the way his fingers came up to the buttons on her vest and steadily worked one, two, three, and four of the casein plastic discs from their moorings. When that task was accomplished, he spread the sides of the leather apart and groaned.

  She laughed. A shirt and silk camisole still separated his hands from her breasts. Yet as she looked at his face, he seemed enraptured by simply moving the original obstruction out of his way. “What are you….”

  Her question trailed off when he leaned down and latched his tongue around the pointed tip of her nipple, apparent even through the barrier of her clothing. Without thinking, she dropped her hands onto his head, fingers running through his short hair, a pool of moisture in between her legs growing larger with every swipe of his tongue on that sensitive peak.

  Finally she couldn’t
take anymore. “Stop.” She secured her palms around his head and pushed him away.

  He appeared dazed for a moment, lost in lust. Then he slapped himself and cleared his throat. “Sorry about that. I got a little carried away.”

  She took that moment to secure her top and haul the gates shut on the desire coursing through her body. “Let’s get back to business. Where to next?”

  “Hamburg.”

  He had to be mistaken. “Excuse me?”

  “Hamburg, Germany.”

  “You want to fly directly to the kaiser’s homeland?”

  Ian shrugged. “It’s not like I’m saying we should go to his doorstep. We’ll be hours away from Berlin, but yes.”

  “This Mistress Eva is there?” Crossing Germany’s borders was a risky venture any day. With her three additional passengers on board, the risk rose exponentially. “If you can promise me this won’t be another wild hunt without actual answers, we’ll go. If not, you’ll supply me with a second location.”

  He dragged his hands through his hair. “I can’t promise you anything. Eva was—no, scratch that, is—Luther’s woman. She’d told me things had changed months ago, but Janken has confirmed that’s a lie. She’ll know where he is. She has to. If she were in trouble, she’d need to be able to reach him immediately.”

  Silence ensued. Sorella’s brain was still caught up in the memory of his kissing her mouth, kissing her breasts. She needed to flee before she asked him to do all those things again, to take this moment to even more dangerous levels of intimacy. Confession and meditation would take twice as long tonight.

  “I’ll tell the helm to change course for Hamburg.”

  “All right.” His raised eyebrows and emerging smile made her self-conscious, and she didn’t want him to see her as weak, to see her succumbing to his charms, so she opened the door and mumbled, “Good night,” before slamming it behind her and heading for the top deck.

  Trying to banish or at least defuse her recollections of a warm mouth, a willing tongue, and her desire-fueled heat, she focused on ensuring the Liberté left port before Ian’s cousin got any ideas and making sure a certain frilly woman in pink had been expelled from her ship. She crossed herself as she walked, silently sending pleas for forgiveness to the heavens above for succumbing to the temptation of sinful lips and tender touches. Her inexperience with intimacy had been a telling thing. As much as she wanted to expel the memory of her encounter with Ian from her mind, she also desired to save it away for those lonely moments when she believed herself to be merely a tool and not someone worth true love or admiration. Ian’s eyes had told a different story when he’d held her and fondled parts of her body never touched by another. Yet how fast would he turn her loose if given a chance at all of her? She couldn’t risk it, not even for fond memories.