Ned

I didn’t know what had come over me.

It had taken every ounce of willpower in me to reject the pirate captain’s advances, gentle though they had been.

That kindness, that respect, were not what I had been taught to expect from a pirate and had almost broken my resolve when force never would have.

I realized as I left his cabin and was led by one of the pirate ship’s crewmen down to my new quarters, that I had never even asked the captain’s name. Oh, I was sure I could find it out soon enough. But it wasn’t like me to even consider having sex with someone I didn’t know at all.

Something was wrong with me. I felt strange, disconcerted, unlike my usual self.

As I reeled over to the hammock George and Bailey had saved for me belowdecks, my stomach lurched in a way it hadn’t since those early days aboard Felicity.

“Are you all right, man?” Bailey reached out to steady me.

George gave me a hand up into the hammock. “Here, let us help you.”

For several moments, my head swirled, everything around me seeming to swirl in the opposite direction of my hammock’s swinging. As we set sail again, though, the world around me steadied.

Bailey and George got into their hammocks nearby, turning to face me to whisper their urgent questions.

“Did the captain hurt you?”

“Do we need to enact our revenge?”

I waved my hand weakly, brushing aside their worries. “No. We merely spoke. Don’t concern yourselves about me.” I swallowed, closing my eyes against horrific memories of The Felicity’s fall. “How many did we lose? How many are dead?”

Bailey shook his head. “Fewer than I would have expected. The captain and the first mate. They fought together, and they fought hard. There are whispers that Captain Blackwood lost more men than we did.”

My eyes popped open and I stared at Bailey. “How can that be possible? I saw more than two men stabbed and thrown overboard. There’s no way only two of our own died. I was watching from the crow’s nest.”

“Theatrics.” George leaned back and closed his own eyes. “The wounds weren’t fatal, and Blackwood’s men fished them out of the ocean. Apparently, he has a pretty good surgeon on board, too. Word is that they plan to patch everyone up and make all of us full voting members of their little pirate confederacy.”

“What does that mean? Full voting members? Surely none of The Felicity’s crew will agree to that.” I couldn’t imagine the men I’d worked with giving in so easily.

“I don’t know,” Bailey said. “It seems like it might be more lucrative that being a crewman on The Felicity.”

I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep that night, but the steady rocking of the waves as I swung in my hammock with George and Bailey on either side of me, so like the nights I’d spent on The Felicity, eventually sent me into dreams.

By the next morning, I had almost come to terms with the idea of joining the pirates in their confederacy, at least until I could escape.

By noon, I had settled into the pattern of life that I would follow for the next several weeks. My experience aboard Neptune’s Jewel during that time was remarkably similar to life aboard The Felicity. We manned the sails, tacked the sails as necessary to catch the wind, washed and scrubbed and sanded and patched.

We did this last more aboard Neptune’s Jewel. It was an older ship and needed to be tended to more carefully.

Truth be told, Captain Blackwood was better about making sure his ship stayed in good working order than the captain of The Felicity had ever been. I hadn’t known enough aboard Jones’ ship to even realize how many corners he’d cut. I hadn’t been back over to The Felicity since coming aboard the pirate ship, but I would have been willing to bet that it was in better shape now than it had been before it had been shot, boarded by pirates, and taken under pirate control.

It seemed ridiculous to come up with a generalization like, “Pirates are good for ships!”  And yet, that was exactly what I was beginning to believe.

At least, that was true if the pirate in question was William Blackwood.

I wonder if pirates are good for other things, too.  I slapped down my inner voice and tried to refocus on the bit of deck I was sanding.

Just then, though, Captain Blackwood came and stood behind me, staring down at me where I was kneeling on the deck, bent over and scrubbing. “Nice work,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Oh. Yes. The deck as well,” he replied with a grin.

And even at that—such a small piece of innocuous flirting—my cock leaped in response.

That had been his usual mode since I had come aboard his ship. He didn’t come out and offer himself to me again. And yet I was absolutely certain that if I had suggested we adjourn to his cabin, he would have accepted with alacrity. We would have been in his bunk within minutes.

And the more I learned of Blackwood and his pirates, the more likely that became.

It had never occurred to me to question the provenance of the goods The Felicity carried back and forth to and from England.

But as it turned out, many of the goods were all but extorted from colonies in the Caribbean.

Blackwood, along with the republic he and other pirates had created in the islands, was determined to make trade in the Caribbean as fair as possible. Therefore, he didn’t allow pirates under his command to predate upon those who had reputations of paying fair prices and offering quality goods in return.

Only those who cheated, swindled, or otherwise treated islanders unfairly were subject to a visit from one of the pirate ships associated with the Republic of Piratical Islands.

Captain Jones, it turned out, had been one of the worst. Half the cargo we’d moved to the Neptune’s Jewel had been out-and-out stolen from various islands. Captain Blackwood was returning the stolen goods and add some of the British goods brought by The Felicity as trade in compensation for the islanders’ trouble.

That was our first stop.

Watching their faces as Captain William Blackwood helped restore their lost income, their stolen goods, melted my heart. Thus I began to see him as a kind of seafaring Robin Hood, taking from those who had too much and giving to those who had too little.

I began to forget he was a pirate.

I never should have let myself lose track of that fact.