Chapter Five
Aboard The Black Otter on the high seas
Reflections of the waves through our porthole window danced across the far wall. I stretched and rolled over into Jack’s arms. We’d been married over a month and my secret muscles still ached with a divine throb after a night of passion spent with the man who’d stolen my heart and overtaken my body time and again. I stared at him as he slept.
Jack’s sun-bleached hair, where I’d wrested my fingers as he deeply explored my body and brought those elusive sparks to light, stuck out this way and that. The tanned and strong-jawed face of the notorious pirate was soft, boyish, and strangely defenseless in the early morning light. I let my fingers dance across his chest and down the lightning scar on his stomach.
A wanting, deep within my core, urged me closer to him. The lightning scar traveled down into the area that would normally be hidden by his trademark black britches and continued on across the top of his thigh. As my fingers meandered along, Jack’s full lips flickered into a sleepy smile. “Good morning to you, too, Mrs. Rackham,” he murmured without opening his eyes.
I squeezed his thigh and groaned a quiet groan in the back of my throat. At once, his manhood began to swell.
“You’re like to get me spoiled, waking up to such things each morning.”
“Good.”
His lips found my neck in a ravenous kiss. Jack nibbled here and there as his muscled arms wrested me atop him. In a fluid movement, he had my filmy night dress hiked up so that our wet skin met in familiar places.
Finally, Jack opened his eyes. He cupped my face in his hand and slid his thumb across the blade scar on my cheek. “You’re beautiful, Red.”
Before I could answer or even lean to kiss him, someone banged the door in sharp succession. Tommy’s voice chimed from the other side. “A fog be comin’, it is.”
“A fog, or ships Tommy?”
“Aye, Cap.”
Jack covered his face with his hands in exasperation. “Tommy, have you seen ships?”
“Of course me has, Cap. Ole Tommy wouldn’t have come down otherwise, me wouldn’t.”
I stifled a giggle.
“We’re due to meet up with the rest of The Black Otter fleet in the next day or so, are you certain it isn’t our own men’s ships you see?”
“You know me, Cap. Ole Tommy can smell the gold, he can.” Tommy paused. “And I smell it, Cap.”
Jack was out from under me and on his feet in a moment. My aching muscles would just have to wait. “We’ll be right up, Tommy.”
I sucked in my lower lip and tried not to pout.
“If you’re going to run this ship as my equal, it’s high time I teach you how.” He wrenched his britches into place and plucked up his fur hat from his desk. “You’ll learn by doing, Red. Watch and do as I do. Me and the other men.”
I squirmed on the mattress and tried to name the odd emotion that soured in the back of my throat. “Watch Charles Swan and Dark Water William?”
“They’re cunning. You will learn much from them.”
I shifted my weight on the bed. I wanted to tell Jack that I wasn’t comfortable around those two, but I had no reason to back up my feelings.
“You’ll do fine, Red.” Jack winked. “I have a gift for you.”
I arched an eyebrow and slid my legs over the side of the bed. “Better than the one you were about to give me before Tommy interrupted?”
“Far better.”
I pulled on one of Jack’s black blouses and stepped into the billowy skirt I’d constructed from a torn sail.
Jack pointed to the far wall where two swords hung crossed above the door. He strode over and plucked one down as though he was plucking a peach from a tree. “Be a dear and slide my cutlass from under the pillow.”
Confused, I did as I was told. “Why do you need your cutlass when you have a sword in your hand?”
“This little beauty was my first fencing sword,” Jack explained as he accepted his cutlass and jabbed it into his belt. “This blade here has shed the lifeblood of many men in its day. Taken many lives.”
I hugged my arms to my chest and shivered.
“But for every life it has taken, it has saved mine doubly. It’s priceless.”
My hands twisted in my lap. “What does it feel like. To—” My words trailed off as the fog clouded the porthole window. “To take someone’s life for the first time?”
Jack let the silence that filled the room be for only a moment before he eased himself onto our bed. “There are no words to describe emotions that you feel in battle, regardless of which way the battle goes.” He twisted the blade in the dim light. “You become someone else and you will never be the same.”
I sucked in a breath and let it out slow. “Never the same?”
“You become the self that God intended you to be.” Jack stood. “Or you die.”
A thunderous charge of feet down the stairs interrupted Jack’s reverie. “We’ve come to a ship!” Tommy’s voice was sharp. “Come on, Cap!”
Jack ignored him. “This blade made me into Commodore of The Black Otter fleet, affectionately called Captain Russian Jack Rackham. No longer Mikhail Nemirovsky, worthless pick-pocket son of a consumptive English whore. Today,” he continued in his even tone, “this blade is yours. And you shall use it.”
My heart panged as I accepted it. “Who was your first kill?”
