Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“What will you show me?” My voice rose through several octaves. “Love?”
“Yes.”
“Love doesn’t betray.” That familiar pain announced itself in the cracks of my voice. “Why did you do it?”
“Believe me…” He dropped his head back on his shoulders and breathed out through his nose. “It wasn’t on purpose.”
“Oh? It was an accident, then? How does that work? Did you fall out of my bed and accidentally land in someone else’s vagina?”
“You think I wanted this?” He leveled his gaze on mine. “I never wanted to hurt you. Hell, I didn’t even know I was capable of falling in love. God knows I never meant for it to happen twice and certainly not at the same damn time.”
I gnashed my teeth. “A person can’t be in love with two people.”
“Wish that were true. It’s caused me nothing but misery and loneliness.”
“Give me her name.”
His eyes drifted shut, a deliberate gesture of reluctance.
“She rejected you.” My chest hurt. I didn’t deserve this. “Why are you protecting her?”
“I protect what I love.” His gaze returned to mine, unflinching in its cruel honesty. “Simple as that.”
“I see.” Everything inside me collapsed and burned as I moved toward the ladder. “Last chance to surrender the compass.”
“Can’t do that, Bennett.”
With a boot on the bottom rung, I stared up at the hatch, composing my thoughts.
“If I overlooked your philandering… If I could be the sort of woman who shared her husband with his paramours, all our disputes would go away. You would return my compass. I would welcome you back into my bed. You would have your lovers on the side. And I would have mine.”
I paused, letting him absorb that last part before glancing back at him.
Fists clenched at his sides, bare feet spread in a warrior stance, mouth a hard slash, complexion red with ire—he glared in shock.
Oh, yes. He’d heard every word.
“Don’t look at me like that, darling.” I cocked my head. “You set the guidelines for our marriage. I’m simply following your lead.”
“No. Hell no. By the Virgin Mother’s blood, I’m warning you.” His breathing accelerated, and his voice strained with barely controlled violence as a long menacing finger thrust in my direction. “I will not share you with another.”
“Know this, Priest Farrell. If you don’t return my compass, sharing is exactly what you’ll do.”
“Bennett!” His roar chased me up the ladder and through the hatchway.
As I strode along the dark passages, climbed up a level, and walked aft to the next scuttle, I could still hear him bellowing my name.
My threat had shaken him, just as I’d hoped. Whether I could follow through on it was another story. Right now I was determined enough to lead a crew member down to the bilge and fuck him in front of Priest. I fisted my hands, angry enough to do all manner of horrible things.
“Captain!” Reynolds stopped me on the lower deck. “How did it go?”
“As expected.” I held up a hand and listened. Either Priest had quieted, or the din from the nearby crew’s quarters consumed his shouting. “Did you find the compass?”
“No.” He wiped sweat from his brow and grimaced. “Searched the jolly boat. Stripped the upper deck and every wall and barrel he passed last night to your cabin.”
“It’s here.” I pushed by him, heading topside. “Keep looking.”
“Jobah spotted sails off the larboard bow.” He waited until I turned around, his voice hushed. “A British slave ship.”
My heart rate spiked. “Sailing from St. Christopher?”
“We believe so.”
“Can we take it?”
“Aye.” He flashed a barracuda smile bristling with large, sharp teeth.
I grinned with him, teetering on the verge of sudden laughter.
With the cultivation of sugar cane on St. Christopher came the need for laborers. A gluttonous demand for strong, hard-working bodies. Hence the rampant importation of African slaves.
My family owned slaves in Carolina. Native women had cooked my meals, prepared my baths, and styled my hair. I was ignorant of what that meant until four years ago when I met Jobah.
The day I decided to attack his slave ship—a year before I met Priest and Reynolds—it hadn’t been out of heroism or benevolence. I had no idea what was crammed, starved, and shackled together in the cargo hold.
That horrific discovery had earned me a sword through the belly.
My hand fell to the scar that cut across my abdomen. Jobah had saved me that day. Not only had he escaped his chains and killed the guard who stabbed me, but he carried me off that ship and to my surgeon before I bled to death.
Afterward, he could’ve returned to his homeland with the rest of his people. Instead, he chose to stay with me.
Over the years, I taught him English and how to navigate a fifty-gun galleon. And he taught me the value of freedom. His firsthand accounts of his months aboard a slave ship still haunted me. He would always wear the scars of a slave, but he was no longer that man. In fact, he was the best damn pilot on the high seas.