by Eris Adderly
And what was happening was that she wanted this man, this pirate, to sweep her up and carry her along to all the forbidden places she’d never been.
He appeared to be well on his way to doing just that.
Righting himself, he rested his forehead atop hers and moved broad palms into a light grip just above either of her knees. She angled her head back to look up at him, thoughts spinning even as her breath slowed.
Before today, Brigit couldn’t have imagined blue eyes would remind her of fire.
With a squeeze of his thumbs, and a sliding shift of his hands a mere inch higher on her thighs, John Bone made his most dangerous promise yet. She exhaled in a silent groan that threatened to turn her wrong side out. The bare hint of a smirk on his face spoke of wickedness to come.
“Care to show me what you’re hiding ‘neath these skirts, pretty girl?”
The coarse edge on his voice teased and suggested, made the floor seem to drop away, leaving her falling, untethered.
What else could he teach her, down here in the dim light of this galley?
She slid her own fingers under his and, without releasing his stare—she didn’t know how she’d maintain her courage if she looked away—began to gather up the several layers of fabric between her and the intentions of this man she’d known for mere hours.
Inch by inch her hemline rose, until she felt the brush of air against her thighs above the top edge of her stockings. A handful or two of material further and the bulk of her garment was gathered at her waist. Bone stepped back and she swallowed, fearing his reaction now that they’d come this far.
The first thing he did then was the last thing she expected.
He didn’t reach for her secrets now that she’d laid herself bare. He didn’t pull back to leer at her, either.
Brigit felt each of her wrists covered by a hand and, with his eyes still on hers, Bone drew his touch in a tortuous place up along her arms. Over her shoulders he went, fingertips a whisper, until he cupped her jaw from both sides, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. Tracing over her scars. She wanted to avert her eyes, but found she could not.
Again, he kissed her. Only this time, despite the slow care in his touch, Brigit felt the way the tips of his fingers curled under just so, the way the muscles in his arms were tight beneath her hands where they’d risen to rest during the kiss. Here was a man barely restrained, schooling himself to patience with all of his will. His tension was bleeding over into her body, curling her toes within her slippers.
Were that not enough, as he’d moved close again during the kiss, her newly bared and humming flesh had been pressed right up against the blatant desire tightening his breeches. He was not small.
Brigit whimpered, overwhelmed with the still intensity of the moment, and the noise from her made Bone inhale sharply through his nose as they kissed. He was moments away from losing his grip on control, she could feel it.
One of his hands slid away from her face and moved lower. Her heart sped and fluttered. Warm male fingers came between them, setting her nerves on fire. She was soaked, and now he knew it.
Bone pulled back from the kiss, eyes fierce with arousal, and stole his first glance down to where his fingertips slid. He drew his hand back enough to glide thumb and forefinger together, sampling her wetness and giving a tiny shake of his head. A slow grin spread over his face and he met her eyes again.
“It’s almost as if you’ve taken a fancy to me, Mrs O’Creagh.”
Had she not been strung taut as a bow at that moment, Brigit would have laughed. The best she could do was turn some furious shade of red.
She almost fell forward when he took an abrupt, long step back from her. In a skilful move, he hooked his foot behind a leg of the low stool he’d sat on before, drew it near, and sat, scooting closer as he did.
His face was just of a height with the edge of the tall cutting block. The one on which she was perched. Splayed. Showing him all of her secrets. She held her breath.
In a sudden move, John Bone took both her thighs in his grip, right where they met her hips, and his face dove straight for her centre. He stopped, however, just short of making contact. She exhaled in a rush of air. Lord, but this man was skilled at toying with her.
One of his hands moved in, and she started a bit when his thumb made the first inevitable contact. He passed over her lips with it, dipping into the moisture he found there.
“I don’t think we’ll need any honey down here, lass,” he murmured.
Turning his head, he set his mouth high along the inside of her thigh and began to kiss and nip at her. The thumb took up a lazy circling between her legs and she found herself mumbling quiet affirmations by the time he’d moved his lips to the other leg.
“Mmm … yes, John … please …”
When he first nuzzled his nose against the modest patch of curls above her sex, she almost didn’t notice, floating in a sensory fog as she was. His tongue on her, however, almost had her jumping straight up into the air. Heavy palms at her thighs kept her in place, though, and the pirate who’d seduced her out of her skirts in less than a day began to eat.
Brigit knew of this act, but only from gossip she’d heard from other young women. Mostly the pretty ones who had the faces that could charm a lover into doing anything they wanted. None of the men she’d entertained had ever asked to do any such thing. More often they seemed to prefer she bend over, face away, and spread her legs in the dark. Hers was not a face men dreamt of.
Now there was light, dim though it was, from an oil lamp in the galley, and what she saw was at the edge of her comprehension.
Bone had his mouth buried in the folds of her sex. His tongue danced and delved and rasped. Every nook, every hidden crevice of her pink, swollen flesh … all new subjects of his thorough exploration. She felt her hips beginning to roll, an instinctive response to pleasure’s pull.
With a shift on the stool, he brought a hand under her right knee and hoisted her thigh over his shoulder so she could relax and rest it there. Her left leg he allowed to dangle where it was, but she was held quite wide apart for him this way.
There was nowhere for her to hide, parted as she was, no place for shame. Nothing to do but allow this man to take her every measure, the pull of his lips and even teeth drawing from her sensations she’d had no idea were possible.
She allowed herself to bring her hand up to his shoulder, running her fingertips along the side of his neck, the top of an ear while he worked at unravelling her sanity. It was a feeling unlike anything she’d known, his tongue playing over her lips, sliding along that furrow between her thighs, catching at the swollen bead that made her whimper with every pass. It was altogether wetter, more unpredictable than her own fingers, which she’d so sinfully used on herself in the past, and she found herself pressing into his attentions now, wanting whatever more there was he had to give.
A different sort of touch joined the lusty strokes of his tongue, then. Something firmer smoothing over the silk of her entrance.
Speaking of fingers …
Her breath caught in her throat for a moment before shuddering out in a rush. Bone toyed with her, circling the pad of a finger through her moisture, occasional teasing sallies suggesting he might even intend to—
“Uunngh!”
The noise he startled out of her was almost a question, and the gasp that immediately followed was a sound she’d never heard herself make. The cook had filled her in one smooth motion with a thick forefinger, and was now sliding it lazily along the inner walls of her channel.
He glanced up at her then, a satisfied smirk on his face as she continued to sputter and whine over this new sensation.
“Ye like that then, do ye?”
“Mmmhmm.” She chewed at her lower lip, nodding urgently.
How much more confirmation could a man need? Haven’t I wet his knuckles enough?
“Right.” He chuckled at her frustration. “Let’s see to ye, shall we?”
See to
me? What does he—
“Auugh!”
His mouth fell on her again, lips latching over her swollen flesh, and her world lit on fire. The finger inside took up its swirl and plunge again, and John Bone began to orchestrate the most heavenly assault on her senses.
Self-control bid her farewell. Brigit felt as though she’d been tied to a horse whose backside had been slapped and she was now careening forward through unstoppable pleasure, unable to clutch even the tiniest branch along the way to help her slow down.
There was an awkward wriggle between her legs for the briefest of moments which made the beginnings of a question go flying by in her mind. A renewed pushing made her grasping sheath tight. Bone had added a second finger, and she was now doubly full.
She gritted out a strangled moan at this, but he was not finished. The tips of his fingers curled up, and as he dragged them out again …
“John!”
Brigit nearly exploded on his hand.
What is he doing to me?
The strokes continued, and his fingertips raked over some seed of pleasure she didn’t know she had, the pull of his mouth again added in, making her cry out with startled enjoyment.
“That’s it, girl.” His words of encouragement came low between bouts of determined suckling. “Show me. Show me what ye want.”
She began to truly whine and writhe, her bottom flexing atop the block and her sex grinding up into Bone’s mouth and hand. Her noises grew more desperate as she abandoned caution. He laughed and nipped at her a bit to draw her attention.
“Bite yer lip, Mrs O’Creagh, or you’ll have half the crew down here.”
The reality he painted set her into the briefest moment of panic and she choked back her moans into a tighter staccato of urgent whimpers and grunts. Though how long she could go on like this in relative silence, her pussy burning with need and pins and needles coming into her toes, she didn’t know. Surely not much longer.
“Now, Brigit,” he said. “Show me.”
His busy hand turned so that his palm faced her thigh instead of the ceiling and, before there was time to question, a new fingertip was circling at another entrance.
Lips and tongue lapping and pulling, fingers plumbing within, and now this unfamiliar massaging press at her tight, hidden pucker. It became too much all at once and Brigit burst apart into a million tiny pieces.
Her mouth fell open in a silent scream, some remote part of her remembering Bone’s caution for quiet, but she made up for it by clutching at the fabric of his shirt at his shoulder, her right heel digging into his upper back. Her hips rolled of their own accord as she grated her fluttering, soaking sex over his mouth, riding out her climax, wringing it of every last drop.
It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever felt, and it happened here. In the galley of a pirate ship, at the touch of a man probably wanted for crimes in every respectable port.
He looked up at her then, as she floated down from her peak and the muscles in her thighs began to relax.
A man whose blue eyes and merry smile were starting to make her knees weak, it seemed.
Bone placed a final, reverent kiss atop her little patch of curls before taking hold of her hem and lowering her skirts back into place. She gaped at him.
“My God, John! What was that?”
He stood with a grin, pushing the stool away again with his good leg.
“What?” he asked in a teasing rumble. “Ye think a man my size doesn’t know how to eat?”
The disbelieving laugh that burst out of her then at such a comment was interrupted at once by Bone’s mouth catching hers up again in a victorious kiss. She realised with a start she could taste herself on him, but entirely failed to care. His arms circled her shoulders, crushing her into him, and she gave back his kiss with a passion of her own.
Brigit O’Creagh knew in that moment she would peel potatoes to outnumber the stars if it allowed her this each time, after. Board a thousand pirate ships if there would only be a galley on each of them where John Bone wanted to kiss her. To Hell with Boston, or Bristol, or even Cork. This could be home. Maybe.
Still, a question remained unanswered. She looked up at the man who stood between her thighs and reminded him of where they’d left off before they’d been … distracted.
“Mr Bone,” she said, “you’ve yet to tell me where I’m to sleep.”
* * * *
II
Peg Legs and Pretty Girls
“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
* * * *
The hold was seldom a quiet place, not at this late hour and full of snoring sailors, but the maid lying next to him seemed to have little problem falling and staying asleep, despite the noise. John lay on his back, fingers laced together over his belly, awake and trying to ignore the tempting, warm body to his left.
It was dark in the space where most of the crew hung their hammocks, save for a lone oil lamp which was kept alight so men could rise in the dark, if need be, and not stumble about and disturb their mates. The air was close, as could be expected from a space full of unwashed men, and he was unsatisfied with the notion of bringing the young woman along to bed down there, but there were no other acceptable alternatives.
The only other woman aboard was surely sleeping in the captain’s stateroom, so there would be no sending Brigit O’Creagh to sleep with her. If he left her to make up a bed in the galley she’d be left alone, and that would never do. He knew there were members of the crew who would sneak into the kitchens with an idea that they were being so very clever, to pilfer a midnight ration, and he wouldn’t leave her in there to be alone for one of them to come blundering in and find something other than the normal fare available for their perusal.
His sudden protectiveness for the girl made him screw up his face in the dark.
What is she to ye, John Bone? Ye met her only this morning, and now ye worry about protecting her honour? Who protected her from you?
The thought made him cringe, but only for a moment. She’d hardly seemed unwilling. In fact, her kisses told quite the opposite story. And the way she’d said his name … Again his breeches were becoming unnecessarily tight. She shifted in her sleep, her back to him, and he fought off the urge to roll onto his side and cover her in greedy hands and pent up lust. That seemed the way to treat a whore and he was beginning to realise he didn’t think of the young Brigit that way.
John let his head turn towards her dim outline. Her sleeping form faced the interior wall of the hull and some instinct had made him place himself between her and the rest of the sleeping crew. She hadn’t argued for a moment when he’d led her down here, nor when he showed her the narrow platform they would need to share. She’d simply nodded, settled in, and was gone to the world within moments.
His was the only low berth of its kind in the cramped hold. In a skirmish aboard a ship Captain Blackburn had led them against some seven years gone, another man had fallen atop him while he descended a stair into their lower gun deck. The weight of the other man had driven his leg between the steps where it twisted, breaking the bone clean in two. An infection and amputation later, and he found himself promoted to Cook. Not only were his days of boarding and fighting over, but so were the nights he could navigate the trickery of a hammock. Mr Adams, the cooper and John’s friend after so many years at sea, had suggested a platform be erected and a thin, straw-stuffed mattress procured for the ship’s new cook, and the quartermaster had approved the plan.
And now, tonight, it was because of his lost limb and not in spite of it, he had a place for an appealing young maid to bed down beside him. John wondered as he made valiant efforts to keep his hands to himself, if it were not luckier that he had broken the leg. If he were a whole man, someone else would be cook. Someone else would have heard her bold, easy laughter. Buried his face in that freckled bosom of hers, or lifted her skirts and brought
out those lovely sounds.
Or perhaps someone else would not have treated her so well. John knew then that he wanted to protect her from any other man who might even think of treating her poorly.
After one day? Ye have it bad, John.
Yes, perhaps he was getting a bit caught up in the idea of a woman allowing his advances without having seen the inside of a purse first. Most men of the sort that crewed The Devil’s Luck were accustomed to paying for a night’s affection, and that went doubly so for a man missing part of a leg. It had been years since he’d wooed anyone by his own charm, if that was truly what had happened today in the galley. And yet Brigit didn’t seem like the sort of girl who would part her legs for just any man.
No matter what sort of woman she was, Brigit O’Creagh was doing a fine job of keeping him awake. He needed to sleep. There would be plenty of time tomorrow for chewing on thoughts such as these.
John settled into his usual routine of fighting off wakefulness and began imagining what places his life would have taken him if he’d never taken to piracy in the first place. Soon, however, those fantasies gave way to musings of what more he would do with the lovely little maid, if she showed an interest. Sleep took him all the same, though for once John Bone had a smile on his face when it did.
* * * *
As always, he awoke before the sun. The hold was quieter now that most of the first watch had made their way above decks, and John’s meagre bed was warmer than normal. As his waking mind assembled his surroundings, he realised that this was because there was a soft young body nestled up against his. The next thing he realised was that, as it did every morn’, his prick had risen with the dawn, as well. Only on this day found it pressed between himself and a lovely round bottom instead of pointed at the ceiling.
