Page 21 of Scandalous

“I’m warning you, Captain.” Her voice was louder, but less assured.

“Mademoiselle, you will have to shoot me before I take orders from you or anyone else while standing on the deck of my own ship.” He closed the distance between them in a few long strides, only stopping when the barrel of the gun touched his chest, the metal tip against bare skin where his jerkin gaped open. He watched with genuine interest as she looked from his face to the end of the pistol and back again. The moment seemed to stretch forever. Her mouth twitched; her nostrils quivered. If she fired at such close range it would be the end for him. He smiled. Would she?

Her entire body shuddered, and she closed her eyes.

Martín took the pistol from her limp fingers and handed it to Jenkins with a withering glare that made the small man flinch. Daniels came forward and led the unresisting woman away, murmuring to her as he guided her below deck.

Martín thrust the woman from his mind just as a shout broke through the gloom, accompanied by the flaring of a torch on the Blue Bird’s deck. Men boiled from below deck, many armed with swords or clubs. Those already on deck—mainly former captives—scrambled to repel them. The entire ship erupted into hand-to-hand combat within seconds.

More torches blazed to life, and Martín saw that one of the Blue Bird’s sails was flapping uselessly in the mild breeze. An African stood below the billowing canvas, a large knife held at the ready, mute evidence of who had halted the Blue Bird’s progress. Dozens of freed slaves, as well as the men Martín had left onboard, grappled with the mutinous sailors they’d locked in the ship’s hold earlier that day.

The same mutineers he had pardoned for the woman who had just threatened to shoot him.

Martín shook his head, both at the bargain he’d made and his own stupidity. He’d been foolishly confident to leave only a half-dozen of his crew on board the Blue Bird, and he was very lucky both the freed slaves and loyal members of Graaf’s crew were making short and brutal work of the mutineers. He swept the Blue Bird’s deck for Beauville, holding his breath until he spotted him. His first mate was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, but otherwise looked unharmed.

Martín heaved a sigh of relief. “It appears Beauville is taking matters in hand. Salier, Truesdale, and Marx, prepare to take us over.” He turned to find Jenkins beside him, clutching his pistol. Martín gestured for the gun and slid it into his second holster.

“Go below and make sure the woman has not located more of my weapons.”

Jenkins turned a dull red, but kept his mouth shut before scuttling away.

Martín turned back to stare at the other ship. The night had been exciting, but not in the way he had hoped.

* * *

Sarah huddled on the small, hard bunk in her cabin and hugged her knees tightly to her chest, appalled at what she had just done. By drawing a weapon on the captain—his own pistol, of all things—in front of his men, she had surely signed her own death warrant. Bouchard was not like Graaf. The Dutch captain had seemed almost grateful when Sarah took him hostage and made his decisions for him at the parley.

Bouchard was something completely different.

Everything she’d learned about him thus far screamed of his pride and his obsession with appearances. She had attacked both in full view of his men. It wouldn’t matter to him that he had easily disarmed her.

She winced as she recalled how quickly he had done so. His face had been as hard as a stone wall when he put himself at the end of a loaded and cocked pistol. He did not fear dying. No, what he feared was looking weak or foolish. Twice in one night she had found the gap in his carefully constructed armor and shoved something sharp inside. She shook her head at her own idiocy. Why had she goaded him about his inability to read? His look of murderous rage when she’d exposed him had been even more frightening than when she had held him at gunpoint.

But what he’d been doing to her in the cabin before Daniels interrupted them had been even more terrifying.

The place between her legs—a place she’d given little thought until tonight—tightened with a frustrating combination of intense pleasure and nagging want as she remembered what he’d been doing.

Sarah covered her hot face with her hands, embarrassment vying with desire at the memory of his eyes and hands and mouth on her skin. She’d thought she knew what would happen tonight, but nothing the captain had done was like anything she’d seen village boys doing. His hands were so clever and wicked, and it had felt as though he had ten of them instead of just two. She would dare any woman to get that close to the gorgeous man and keep her wits. She refused to feel guilty about giving in to his practiced wiles. The physical sensations he’d evoked had been impossible to ignore or rise above. She’d wanted something so badly—still wanted it—that she would have given anything to get it. Was that how it was for everyone? Was that what her parents had always preached against?

The memory of his arousal and how it had felt in her hand made her throb and tingle. She knew what his hardness meant. He’d wanted her. He wanted to put himself inside her. Her entire body thrummed at the mere thought, and she pressed her thighs together, mortified. She must be some kind of deviant; she’d not felt ashamed or embarrassed, just hungry. How could she be so wicked? So wanton? What would her mother and father have thought?

Sarah tried to summon her parents’ faces, but couldn’t. The desire in her body overwhelmed any shame. She couldn’t stop wondering if he would come back and finish what he’d started.

The memory of what she’d done on deck came crashing down on her, and she groaned. If he came to her now, it would be to throw her in the brig—or even overboard. Sarah would not be surprised to find out that she would be joining the rest of the mutineers, her severed head bobbing among theirs on the open water.

* * *

Beauville was waiting for Martín when he stepped on board the Blue Bird. A pile of unmoving bodies lay on the deck behind his first mate.

“De Heeckeren?” Martín asked.

“He is dead, Captain, along with five others.”

Martín looked at the bleeding cut on his first mate’s forehead and frowned. “What happened?”

Beauville’s hand moved to the goose egg on his forehead, and he winced. “I was sleeping when he sneaked aboard. He knew this ship like the back of his hand and was able to get down to the brig unmolested. He knocked out the guards who were standing watch and jammed several crew cabin doors shut, but not mine. And then he led his men to take back the ship.

“The commotion of so many feet woke me, and I came on deck and was attacked at the top of the stairs. It was lucky for me that several of the Africans jumped on the man who hit me and subdued him. The mutineers took many of the sleeping crew by surprise,” Beauville admitted. “Without the assistance of the Africans, we would have been done for.”