“I know how we can get some muscle,” Elizabeth whispered, despite the fact that they had been sitting in her office alone. It was probably good to be cautious, Hawk granted, in Port Royal even walls had eyes and ears, and the last thing they needed wasanyone overhearing their conversation. “Captain Tyson owes me. I made him what he is. And he’s easy to control. TheHecatemay be slow, but she has the best munitions of any ship in Port Royal.”
”I don’t need a consort,” Hawk growled. “Especially not one of your little playthings that doesn’t know a cannon from his own arsehole. Plus, what’s to stop him from betraying us, sinking theOrcaand taking the entire prize for himself?”
“We’ll put half his guns on theOrcaand put you in charge of both crews. It’ll be like he’s not even there. Just leave it to me.” Elizabeth had that faraway look that meant she was calculating several steps ahead in a complicated game of chess that had kept Port Royal in this woman's iron hold.
“That is well,” Hawk drank and let the rum percolate down his throat. “I look forward to putting that hunt behind us and moving on.” He raised his glass, “To the Pirate Republic of Port Royal.”
“You look forward to being rid of Silver?” There was a gleam in Elizabeth’s eyes as she toasted him.
“Aren’t you?”
“Not I. He’s easy on the eyes,” she smiled. “And I hear the whores all love him.”
“That’s... I’m... no.” Hawk shook his head, attempting to dislodge unwelcome thoughts of Silver amidst whores. Or Silver naked. Or Silver and his unruly fucking cock in the first place.
“They call himThe Cannon.”
A strangled, embarrassing noise escaped Hawk's throat. “Elizabeth,please.”
“I could have sworn I heard Mara call him ‘brother’ the other day,” Elizabeth persevered. “I presume she meant that metaphorically. He cannot be her actual brother, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about him,” Hawk protested weakly, though the two certainly looked enough alike. “Where is Mara from, anyways?”
“Tortuga?”
Hawk shook his head again. “Well, at least she actuallysoundsFrench.”
He’d never really given much thought to Elizabeth’s former - lover? Personal bedroom assistant? - Mara, but he supposed he’d assumed from the tawny color of her skin that she'd escaped from the Americas.
When it came to Silver, as beautiful as he was, he might as well have been born and raised in a jungle for all Hawk could figure.
Only the other day, he'd caught Silver staring at his dinner, and instead of eating the damned fish like a sane person, he had started having an entire one-sided conversation with it. Then he stormed off, muttering like a madman about how “Some friends you eat, and some friends you don’t!”
If only Silver hadn’t been so infuriatingly attractive! With hiseyesand hislipsand those god damn collarbones! And hands, so firm, so scaldingly hot on his own skin when Silver had touched him.
Hawk wasn't about to admit to anyone how he'd jerked off thinking about those hands - those lips, that neck - an embarrassing number of times since that night. It was too easy to remember the proof of Silver's, er, handiwork that the pretty young man had left behind on the windowsill of his cabin, which quickly degraded into, ug,fantasies. It was far too easy to picture Silver perched in his cabin, flushed and hard for him, stroking himself. Or kneeling at his feet, looking up at him with those pretty blue eyes as Hawk pushed his cock into that infuriating mouth -
Jesus.
“Where are you right now, Hawk?” Elizabeth grinned like the cat who got the cream.
“TheEstrela,” he grunted in reply. “Firmly.”
Returning to his ship, Hawk had found his quartermaster, Ruiz, in some kind of secret cabal with their bosun, Hank Thompson.
“Captain,” Ruiz nodded at him with a glint in his eyes.
“Captain,” Hank echoed Ruiz, no doubt emulating the man who had been a father figure to him.
“Gentlemen,” Hawk frowned. “I use the term loosely, of course,” he added lest they take offense. “What, pray tell, are you giggling like little girls about?”
“Just a funny joke that Silver told us about whales, Captain,” Hank offered with a look of feigned innocence.
“Oh yeah?” Hawk was already not impressed. “Care to share?”
“What do whales eat?”
“What?”
