Page 72 of Rears & Vices

Not until you told the world you wanted me, Everard thought.

With the space of Vitaliy’s body open, welcoming him again, Everard shifted closer and crowded in, so that their noses nearly touched. “And a very good raised black he presents,” he whispered. “But you said the pirate and the flesh-and-blood man are the same.” He tapped Vitaliy lightly on the chest. “So, what’s changed to impede that altruist, judgmental heart of yours? Why do you need Alarie?”

“I don’t.” Vitaliy turned his eyes downcast, swept them back up over Everard’s face, wide and earnest. “Varfolomey does.” He lowered his voice. “He wouldn’t oblige him more than outwardly but for Jean Lafitte.”

Everard drew back. “Lafitte is such a threat to you? Preston said he has only a few schooners, war hero or no.” He sneered. To think that such a man was dubbed a hero of anything.

“It’d be unwise to consider him not a threat. But lately, neither he nor his brother has been seen at Barataria or New Orleans. Not once o’er the past months, before even I was detained in Canada.”

“Mayhap he’s dead,” Everard said. “Caiman-eaten. Barataria’s a swamp, isn’t it?”

Vitaliy smiled. “No, I doubt he’s dead. I think he is too restless since his American pardon.”

He sat up, drew his hands through tangled hair, pushed it behind his ears. “I think that he is planning. Sitting on a corsair in the Gulf with his secretary, writing letters.”

“A secretary. He sounds quite dangerous,” Everard teased.

Vitaliy nodded. “He is,” he said, matter-of-fact, either ignoring Everard’s tone entirely or not hearing it. “His loyalty is as unfixed as his citizenship. He’s American now, but before that, he was spying for the British, and before them the French.”

“What a coincidental pattern,” Everard said dryly. “Who do you suppose is next?”

Vitaliy’s gaze turned suddenly serious, fixed on Everard. “Spain.”

The query mark was back, loud as a bell.

Everard swallowed. “Of course. Galveztown. He’d want it for Spain, then. And Varfolomey, in contrast, has declared his support for revolutionary México?”

“No,” Vitaliy replied. Still serious.

Vitaliy wouldn’t… suspect Everard? After all that, for an offhand, accidental remark? For a surname, a language? Vitaliy had been more forthcoming, more honest than anyone he’d ever met. Trade routes, ship manifests, crew numbers, gun counts—he’d kept nothing back.

Vitaliy nudged closer, ’til his knees were touching Everard’s hip. He began to pull at the sheet entangling Everard’s ankles.

“No?” Everard watched warily. “Not even México? I thought…”

“Varfolomey declares for no one now. I learned this lesson with Alarie, and Cartagena. But Spain is his enemy. And the enemy to most of the Sévère’s ports of call.”

“Slaver bastards,” Everard agreed.

He resisted the urge to defend himself against those cool dark-blues. Could Vitaliy really think him a spy? With their history? It made no sense.

What in hell would the Spanish crown have wanted in York, Upper Canada, anyway?

But one couldn’t just say Yes, I am Spanish, not actually English, you have me there; but not a spy, I swear it.

In the silence, Vitaliy bent to Everard’s left ankle, sheet in hand, and wrapped one tail around. He glanced up as he tied a knot that Everard didn’t recognise—Russians had their own system of knots—but it had a slip loop. When he had finished, he sat back, and waited to see what Everard would say.

Which was a mystified “Er” but definitely not a “No”, which was what he suspected Vitaliy was looking out for.

He didn’t want to give it. He wanted to see what came next.

“Are we done with talking?” Vitya said. Watching him, he wrapped Everard’s other ankle with long fingers and pulled it closer, across the width of the cot. Then Everard’s legs were spread obscenely, toes almost meeting each corner, one thigh resting across Vitaliy’s lap.

“Yes, fine, if you wish.” Done talking, but Everard’s prick had a lot to say about this situation. “Are you really tying up a man with six fingers?”

“Yes,” Vitaliy said, and then did the same to the right ankle—again inserting a slip loop, drawing the sheet taut between Everard’s spread ankles. Everard groaned.

“The stones on you. Mayhap I should revise— Are you really tying up a Navy man? With slip loops?”