Page 90 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

“Bash,” she breathed, bursting into tears as she flew into his arms, touching his face, his hair, his shoulders, kissing ever part of him she could reach just to convince herself he was real.

She cast a glance back at Constantin who set the chest on a ledge built into the bulkhead and, smiling to himself, quietly shut the door.

Pirates are hanged. Hostages are not.

He’d understood everything after all.

Bash spun Maggie around and they clung to each other, hugging and kissing and crying until Maggie’s knees began to buckle and then he guided her to the tiny bed along one wall and lifted her onto it.

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered, clenching his shirt in both fists and refusing to let go until he climbed up beside her.

“I wanted to be,” he murmured into her neck. “Because I thought you must be.”

“But if Mad was shot, then who was hanged?”

“A superficial wound,” Bash explained. “Not enough to prevent the hangman his pound of flesh.”

Maggie began to cry again, in shock as much as relief. Bash kissed her eyelids, murmuring softly, “It’s all right, my love. I’m here.”

They kissed slowly, hungrily. Her fingers shook as she tried to unbutton his shirt, so he took over for her, wrestling out of the garment. Maggie drew a ragged breath, once again marveling at his broad chest, sculpted from years of laboring aboard the Revenge, a chest she had thought never to set eyes on again. He was here. He was whole.

He helped her out of her skirts and stays, and finally his breeches were off, and she rolled onto her back to welcome him, but he continued to take his time, kissing her neck and between her breasts, teasing her nipples into hard little points.

“Please,” she begged, and he grinned that roguish smile and entered her slowly, gently, sliding part way and then studying her with dark, starry eyes before capturing her lips once more and sliding forward to fill her all the way up.

Maggie gasped as lightning seemed to shoot through her and out each finger and each toe.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“No,” she panted, pressing up to meet him, encouraging him to do the same. “Only I’m afraid if you ever leave, I’ll completely shatter.”

“Never,” he whispered, his breath hot against her ear as he continued to rock into her like the undulating tide, building, and building, and building until it washed over both of them completely, but instead of drowning it replenished them with the promise of new life and a future ripe with possibility.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Though Bash wouldn’t have traded those first weeks of Maggie’s adventure for anything, transatlantic travel as guests of a naval captain was in many ways far superior to life aboard a pirate ship, largely because they were left entirely alone in their tiny berth at the stern of the vessel. If they wished to take the air, they were allowed to do so at their leisure. If they required food, the galley chef was more accommodating than he might have been to ordinary sailors.

But when the bells rang the watch, they had only to look at each other and smile. They could stay wrapped up in bed for days, and no one seemed to notice. It was perfection. Climbing the rigging with Maggie would always hold a special place in his memory, but, though he loved to be out in the fresh sea air working under a hot sun, Bash had never been more content to remain idle. He kept an eye on their course out of habit, but no one looked to him for orders.

In fact, the only person aboard the ship who noticed them with more than idle curiosity was Constantin. Every night they were invited to dine with the captain, and most evenings they accepted. He seemed intrigued by Bash’s knowledge of navigation and curious about his childhood.

He never once treated either of them as though they’d been anything more than prisoners aboard Auldfarrand’s Revenge, but his empathy left Bash feeling unsettled. His sire’s old nemesis was not at all the sea monster he’d expected, and Bash kept waiting to learn it was all some elaborate hoax, the rug pulled out from under him the moment he relaxed. Especially once he noticed the cages for homing pigeons, not unlike those aboard the Woebegone Whale.

At last, one night, about three weeks into their journey, Bash worked up the nerve to ask about the gold.

“Why did you keep chasing him? If you didn’t care about recovering it?” he demanded. “You used Walsh to lure us into an ambush, did you not?”

Constantin took his time wiping his mouth and placing his napkin upon the table. “Once the theft was written off, I wasn’t interested in Cornelius,” he admitted with a shrug. “I was interested in you.”

Bash stiffened, and Maggie took his hand. Was he about to learn he wasn’t actually the son of a pirate, but of a temporarily disgraced naval officer? It couldn’t be. He had Mad’s nose and jawline, and his grandfather’s before him, not the features of this fine-boned Englishman.

“You don’t remember me, do you, Bastian?”

Sitting up a little straighter, he searched Constantin’s face and all at once the years melted away, and his youth came rushing back—a fishing rod and basket weighed down with the day’s catch, an officer who’d been asking after the pirate Captain MacLeod.

“Freddy?” Bash asked, and Constantin grinned at him. “You said you were called Freddy. You wanted to take me back to Jamaica to live with my auntie. At least that’s what the adults whispered once you’d gone.” A warmth flooded him along with the memory and the sudden realization that all this time, someone somewhere had cared.

“I knew you were the sort who liked to listen at windows,” the captain teased, but then he turned sober. “They were afraid the lure of Jamaica was what turned your father into a pirate. They thought keeping you on Lewis would keep you far away from such a life.”