16
Elliott found Fury's rituals charming—when she was the one performing them. But making sure to respect her as a captain on her ship in this manner would grow tedious very quickly.
"Kit's the only cabin boy I've ever had who could put my things where they belong," she said softly. "He's teaching George, but in this respect, she is yet slow. She doesn't understand its importance to me."
He dropped on her bed and lay between her thighs, his head on her belly. She stroked his forehead and ran her fingers through his hair, which was one of the most heavenly things he had ever experienced. He yawned. "You do seem rather obsessed of it. How does Kit come to know this?"
"Kit shared my bed from the moment I stepped aboard the Carnivale until I took command. It was the only way I could protect him from Skirrow and his men, who passed him around. He learned my habits very quickly in an effort to please me."
Elliott's eyebrows rose. "Your bed?"
"Not in that manner. He, like you, could finally sleep in peace. Do you know: I never heard him speak until I killed Skirrow."
"Any other captain would have simply taken on more boys," Elliott pointed out.
She laughed. "Aye, who sought refuge in my cabin eventually. I ordered the bo'sun to vacate his bigger cabin so I could accommodate them all." She paused. "This ship has more hammock-sharing aboard it than most, I imagine, since I hire women and take on girls as well as boys, but it must be discreet, it must not interfere with ship's business, and it must not be with the children. When they are old enough, they will experiment for themselves amongst themselves."
It would be little time now before he was asleep, being coddled as he was by this magnificent woman who commanded a ship in such a foreign way. Then again, her anomaly began with the fact that a female commanded it without benefit of a masquerade.
"Have you ever gone as male?"
She snorted. "Aye, I have, but only when I must, which is not seldom enough. The first time, it was against my will and better judgment. It was not a successful endeavor, if by successful one means that I was mistaken for a boy."
"What happened?"
"Rafael took me for a girl and promptly took me to bed," she answered matter-of-factly. "Because he is perverse and reckless, he thought it would be a grand bit of mischief to train a woman to stand in a man's world and spit in its face. And I will forever be grateful for that."
Now Elliott could apprehend the reason for her attachment, which did not seem quite so girlish. Perhaps he should show Covarrubias a bit of gratitude himself.
"Surely you can understand the difficulties inherent in continuing such a ruse, and for so many years," she murmured, still stroking his forehead, running her fingers through his hair. "'Twas far easier to prove my sailing worth as a woman than prove it as a man while also secretly tending to my womanly needs, binding these breasts, and fearing discovery every moment of every day."
She fell silent whilst she fondled his head and shoulders, caressing, kneading, exploring him with her fingers. Lying in this woman's arms made him ache with emptiness over one fact: He could not have her. His future was bound up with a woman who, as pertained to his duty, could not legally be Fury. The fact that she refused to be his mistress only put another stake into his gut.
Yet another decision made by someone else, another decree in which he had no choice but to comply.
Elliott prided himself on his ability to foresee and plan for contingencies and enact those plans at a second's notice. Fury and all the implications of her presence in his life was not a contingency he had planned for.
You're a pirate.
I am only interested in me ... We are thieves and liars.
Kidnapping her was out of the question. That was an assault she would never forgive.
But lying ...
An entire scheme bloomed in his mind as he lay in comfortable silence, feeling her skin against his.
Truly, he could see no reason why she should ever know of his marriage. She didn't know his name and the likelihood of her finding out—even after Croftwood's tale—was slim. He did have an heir presumptive, after all, and he could simply inform her he had decided to allow that to suffice.
He would tuck his wife away in Northumberland with his sons. Fury would be at sea, in London, or some other port of call he could attain easily.
Aye, that was the way of it: keep them apart and ignorant of each other.
Finally. A choice. One he had created for himself.
"What are you thinking, Judas? You appear so smug I should rather become suspicious."
He opened his eyes and stirred himself to look up into her face. "I am thinking, Madam, that you are delightful."
She gave him another one of those pleased, yet shy, smiles. "You're at half-mast," she observed most unnecessarily.
"Aye, but there is method in my madness. I told you that."
She laughed and pushed him aside, then arose to open the box he had so painstakingly put away. She produced the gold ring he had asked about earlier and said, "You may find this helpful." It took her only a second or two to put her chest to rights again.
He groaned when she touched his yard and closed his eyes again in pure bliss when she slipped it through the ring, then carefully maneuvered one bollock, then the next, also through the ring so that they were comfortably tight against his prick.
This sensation, too, was like nothing he had ever known, and he sighed when she continued to stroke and fondle him.
"I have heard of men who wear these as a matter of course," she murmured as she worked her magic with her wonderfully calloused but gentle hands. "This is gold, so it is somewhat malleable once it is warmed. I'm told there is a certain ongoing mild pleasure. Once you are fully erect, you will stay that way as long as you please."
"That is exactly what I wanted, Madam. Why do I not know of this?"
"Why do I not know what you intend to do with my stays?"
"Touché. Is this also something your husband introduced you to?"
Her body stiffened. Slightly. The way it had before when he had referenced her toys. Had he not been in such close observation of her, he might have missed it, then, too.
"Ah ... no," she murmured with slight melancholy.
Then he realized her reaction was not one of having taken offense; it was one of having remembered something that saddened her.
"You miss him," he said softly.
She nodded. "Very much, aye." She turned abruptly and crossed her cabin again to pluck her copy of Fanny Hill off the bookshelf. She handed it to him as she plopped herself back into bed. "I saw you reading this yesterday. You may have it, if you wish. I've no interest in it."
"I have one, but thank you. I would have thought this would suit you."
She snorted. "'Tis the most ridiculous thing I have ever read and possibly the most boring."
He laughed. "Boring?"
At that, she snatched it away from him again to fan the pages. "I am not a scholar of words, but when I am reading what claims to be an erotic work and my response is to laugh, it must have failed in its purpose."
"Ah, my love," he purred, stretching out beside her and propping his head on his hand. "'Tis not meant for women like you who already know and revel in the delights of the flesh. 'Tis for people to experience vicariously and for men to stretch their yards by."
"Oh ho! Are their yahoo imaginations so lacking they need someone else to narrate their onanism?"
"Read to me," Elliott growled, "and I will demonstrate its allure."
Fury sat up, crossed her legs, and opened the book. "'The brute had, it seems,'" she read haughtily, but unable to hide her amusement, "'as I afterwards understood, brought on, by his eagerness and struggle, the ultimate period of his hot fit of lust, which his power was too short-lived to carry him through the full execution of; of which my thighs and linen received the effusion.'"
"Aye? What is your point?"
"'Tis an awful lot of words to say he came too quickly and spilt his seed on her legs. 'Hot fit of lust,' indeed."
Elliott could barely contain his grin. "Aye, but his villainy is established by the fact that he could not bring her to climax before himself. Hence, he is inferior. A virile and attractive man would not have done that."
She looked at him flatly. "The word 'brute' serves the purpose."
"The rest is figurative."
"Judas, if you deny you have done this very thing, I shall whack you in the head. You all do it, and you all cannot be villains."
He began to laugh and flopped onto his back. He waved a hand. "Continue."
The slight breeze from the flipping of pages was cool and tinged with the scent of lavender from the oil he had used to soothe her arse.
"'But every thing must have an end,'" she read. "Does this inane prose end? 'A motion made by this angelic youth, in the listlessness of going off sleep, replaced his shirt and the bed clothes in a posture that shut up that treasury from longer view. I lay down then, and carrying my hands to that part of me in which the objects just seen had begun to raise a mutiny, that prevailed over the smart of them, my fingers now opened themselves an easy passage; but long I had not time to consider the wide difference there, between the maid and the now finished woman—' God's teeth! Does this woman not take a breath? She frigged herself. Why can she not just say that?"
Elliott was near to lost in laughter. "Oh, Fury. 'She frigged herself' does not excite anyone."
"It does not excite me the way 'tis written! That is my entire point!"
"And yet, here we are, discussing it."
"Look here, this phrase, ' ... which the objects just seen had begun to raise a mutiny ... ' I dare say he does not know the meaning of the word 'mutiny.'"
"Do not pretend to thickheadedness, Madam. You know exactly what he means. You just find it overwrought."
"I do! 'Tis what makes me laugh." She read to herself for a while, then giggled. "Oh, this: ' ... where the narrowness no longer put me to intolerable pain, and afforded my lover no more difficulty than what heightened his pleasure, in the strict embrace of that tender, warm sheath—' 'Tis a cunt, you nincompoop." Elliott burst out laughing, but she continued to read. "'—round the instrument it was so delicately adjusted to—' Cock. '—and which now cased home, so gorged me with pleasure, that it perfectly suffocated me and took away my breath; then the killing thrusts!'" Fury squealed with laughter. "Killing thrusts! Lord above. '—the unnumbered kisses! every one of which was a joy inexpressible—'"
"That may be how George thinks of it," Elliott said dryly.
Fury squealed again and fell over on the bed, laughing. "I'm sure. But does she think of it in those words?"
"Who knows what latent poetry lurks inside our breasts?"
She did indeed whack him then, on the arm, and not hard. "You are mocking my mockery. Cease that." She sat up again. "'—and that joy lost in a crowd of yet greater blisses! But this was a disorder too violent in nature to last long: the vessels, so stirred and intensely heated, soon boiled over, and for that time put out the fire—' Disorders! Vessels! Boilings over!"
Elliott, in fact, ceased listening to her at all so that he could watch her amusement bubble. He loved the way she read in such an exaggerated manner to emphasize her point. He loved her laugh, rich but delicate. And she was squealing like a girl.
A woman who had beheaded her captain with a battle ax in one stroke—giggling.
"Judas! Attend! Only a man would write something this preposterous."
He chuckled. "It was an experiment, of sorts. Cleland wanted to write an erotic work without using vulgarities, which he accomplished, though not to the courts' satisfaction."
She stared at him. "Oh, aye? But ' ... the engine of love assaults ... '? Inexcusable."
"It has an unintentional poetry about it."
"Unintentional, you say?"
"Aye. I would even go so far as to say 'tis rather an accident."
"'Engine of love assaults!' There cannot possibly be a more absurd phrase in all of this book than 'engine of love assaults.'"
There she went again, off into squeals of laughter. "And—oh, look—" she said between breaths. 'Violent agitations ... wondrous treasure bag of nature's sweets—' Bollocks, for God's sake and I've not had a sweet one in my mouth yet. ' ... ran directly upon the flaming point of this weapon of pleasure, which she staked herself upon, up pierced, and infixed to the extremest hair breadth of it.'" That sent her into paroxysms so much that she could not catch a breath for several minutes, her face red, a dimple carving deep into her cheek, tears streaming down her face. He could do naught but wait for her to compose herself. "By all that's holy," she gasped, "this man is an idiot."
"He is not necessarily an idiot. He is bitter, which is actually quite evident in the work."
"How come you by this opinion? Do you know the man?"
"I do not, but I did hear his drunken rantings in a tavern once. Do you know of better material that serves the purpose?"
"Its purpose is to make me laugh, I am convinced of it. Do you not find this book humorous?"
He grinned. "In parts."
"Is your yahoo imagination so lacking you need to be led to your climax by ridiculous prose?"
Elliott dropped his hand to Fury's knee and stroked upward to her quim, caressing lightly, opening her folds leisurely whilst looking. The hair of her mound was a flame of orange and soft like a cat's fur. He smirked at the comparison.
"What is so funny about my tender, warm sheath, Sir? My vessel, if you will." She held the book up so she could watch him fondle her.
"Petting your cat, my love," he said huskily, feeling his yard begin to stiffen and reminding him there was a ring around it. He slipped two fingers inside her, and chuckled when she moaned. Giggled. Sighed. "I need no words when there is a quim in front of me in which I can bury my engine of love assaults."
She screeched with laughter once again, and it occurred to Elliott that she was far too easily distracted. First his clutter and now this book.
Yet he couldn't help grinning. Her face lit up when she laughed. Joy surrounded her when she smiled. The sly glances spoke of jests shared solely between the two of them and mischief yet to be wrought.
"Have you finished with your screeching, Madam, so that I may assault you with my engine of love and deliver unto you killing thrusts and violent agitations?"
"No— No— Oh— Can't ... stop ... laughing ... "
He reached up to grasp the back of her neck and pull her down to him for a kiss. Though she grinned against his lips and giggled into his mouth, soon enough he had effectively quelled her amusement into desire.
Elliott took the book from her and, with the flick of a wrist, tossed the book over his shoulder. He tugged at her leg and lay flat on his back, urging her to cover him.
She started when he positioned her hips over his and brought her down on his prick. "I thought you said—"
"I now want to see how well this vaunted ring works to enhance my engine of love assaults."
Her eyes narrowed as she lifted herself off him. "Oh, no," she purred, standing to the side of the bunk in all her naked glory, her feet spread, her hands on her hips as if she were on her quarterdeck bellowing commands. "You'll wear it all afternoon and evening."
He smirked. "Aye, I'll take that challenge."
"And we are invited to the Mad Hangman for supper with Maarten and Catherine. Just the four of us."
"Madam! Do you mean to say I must suffer through social niceties with this thing 'round my cod?"
"Aye, and in formal custom, no less."
She was going to be the death of him, but he decided to take her dare. "Aye, but a formal toilette for you requires stays, does it not?"
"And there it is again. What is this game with my stays that has you so fascinated?"
He grinned. "You'll see."