Page 50 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

“Your job is to stay safe,” he growled in a strained voice.

Maggie made her way to him like a salmon upstream as she tripped over the corners of boxes and crates like her first day in the hold. “I’m not a child. I can help.”

“This isn’t a game.”

“I never meant it was.”

“Lead balls. Expandable bar shot. Swords—they pierce through skin like it’s nothing and thirst for blood. You are flesh and bone,” he pleaded.

“So are you.”

“This is my lot,” he muttered, taking her hand once more to continue on.

“Then it’s my lot, too,” she protested. “Did I not choose it when I signed the articles to become part of the crew?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Then explain it to me. Where are we going if not to the magazine?” she asked, hating how small and needy her voice came out.

He was silent for a moment, filling the chasm between them with the sound of ragged breathing.

“I swore an oath to protect you,” he finally said, his voice the same low tone that betrayed his lust last evening. “So far I’ve done a piss-poor job of it. Christ. I will see you safe.”

Nothing made any sense. How would hiding with the rats keep her safe if the ship sank because she hadn’t been there to pull her weight? “I’m safest by your side,” she said, reaching out towards his voice in the darkness and finding his cheek, her thumb stroking the length of his scar. “Don’t you think there’s even the smallest way I can help?”

He turned his face to kiss her palm.

“I’m taking a party aboard that ship,” he whispered. “You’re safest as far from me as possible. You promised me you wouldn’t fight.”

He had tricked her into that promise, and she wanted to rage at him, but then he gently, lifted her hand away from his face, pressing his lips to the pulse point inside her wrist, before lacing his fingers through hers, and she allowed him to lead her forward once more.

Maggie’s skin burned where his lips had touched her, bringing back the flood of sensation and emotion that had surged through every limb as he tasted her last night. Then he’d seemed eager to be as close as possible, never parted. Now, in the face of imminent danger, he would push her away while he ran headlong into the fray? She may have promised to hide only an hour ago, but the notion was completely untenable now.

“I rescind my promise,” she said.

“That’s not how promises work,” he countered with an eerie, almost detached calm in his voice. “Elsewise they wouldn’t be promises.”

Finally, he stopped walking and released her hand to run his fingers along the bulkhead, fumbling with some sort of latch. Then a door popped open, a priest hole hidden deep within the hold, and he pushed her inside.

Maggie swallowed. “Have I done something wrong?” she asked, unable to hide the quiver. Was he angry that she’d told everyone about seeing the Whale, when he alone hoped to avoid engaging with the vessel? “Is it because⁠—”

“I need you to trust me,” he said, following her into the too small space and pressing his forehead to hers, and somehow that was all the answer she needed.

Trust? She owed him that much after the way he’d risked his neck to save her. How could she not honor such a request? Trust—he might be the only person in all the world who she trusted with her whole heart. She couldn’t let him go out there to face battle with any doubt on that front.

Raising up on her toes, Maggie crushed her lips against his, and he kissed her right back, hungrily, desperately. She wrapped her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers in his hair, trying to get closer, to climb inside him if she could and never let him go.

He ran his hands down her face, her sides, up her back. He caressed her bottom, her belly, her breasts, still frustratingly bound.

Maggie let go of his neck to memorize the shape of his taut arms and the ridges of his chest. Emboldened, she went further, grazing his crotch, rubbing the steel-hard length of him through is breeches, and he hissed.

Catching her right wrist, Bash moved her hand away from his erection, so she reached out with her left, but he caught that one too, pinning them both above her head with one strong hand as he pressed her against the bulkhead.

“May God forgive me,” he seemed to sigh, as he kissed down her throat and then up again to suckle her ear. With her arms still pinned above her head, he dipped his other hand into her breeches, right past her smalls, to cup her so his palm pressed deliciously against her favorite spot, and as she squirmed wantonly, he thrust a finger inside.

Maggie was shocked by how easily he entered her, how deliciously wicked it felt to welcome him in. Keeping pressure against her outside, he began to stroke her on the inside, and tiny little gasps escaped her lips, a pressure already building and begging for release.

Rocking against him—finger, palm, and shaft—Maggie found herself moaning as loudly as she wanted to, a surprising sound that almost seemed to come from someone else’s throat. Then her moans became a high-pitched sort of mewling the likes of which she’d certainly never uttered before, as her cheeks burned and tears trickled down her face.