Kidnapped by the Pirate

After a time, she spoke again. “They say it’s only about base desires. Two men being together. Venal and depraved. But as I think about it, I remember a case of two men in Guildford who shared a cottage. An accusation was made, and soon it was a scandal. One went to prison, the other the gallows. If I recall, there had been suspicion of them for years. Years. I didn’t consider it at the time, but why would they have lived together for so long if there was no affection? Granted, plenty of marriages sorely lack it, but they had chosen their companionship.”

He opened his eyes and found Susanna’s full of tears again. She shook her head. “That pirate. Father will see him hanged. And my God, you would be in such danger if the truth were discovered. They could kill you for this love.”

“I must stop the trial. With him, I was…whole. A worthy man. Powerful in my own way, not stupid and useless. With him, I felt I could do anything. That the world has new possibilities to be unearthed, as sea shells are by the retreating tide. That there is so much more. Unseen, but ever-present under the surface.”

He remembered the roughness of Hawk’s beard against his face countered with the softness of his lips, the wet slide of his tongue, and how Nathaniel had wished they could kiss forever under the palm trees. How he’d felt utterly protected and cherished in the aftermath of death and destruction.

“But how on Earth will you stop the trial?”

It was a fine question, and Nathaniel fervently wished he had the answer.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Never again.

Those two words echoed, taunting Hawk endlessly in the black belly of the privateers’ brigantine. The air was dank in the small hold serving as his cell, and he was almost certain a storm brewed.

Sweat clung to his skin. His leather coat was musty and damp, the chains on his wrists pulled tight, wearing away at his festering skin where he’d uselessly attempted to pry himself loose. His feet had swelled in his boots, and he couldn’t have yanked them off if he tried.

He supposed his one consolation was that he wasn’t trapped in the bowels of a Royal Navy ship. From what he’d overheard before being locked away, Walter Bainbridge had hired privateers to thwart him. The navy could not be negotiated with, but privateers? Perhaps.

He had no notion of time in the blackness but for the distant bells and occasional delivery of brackish water and scraps of food. Nathaniel’s screams of agony echoed in his mind.

Why the devil had he wasted so much time keeping Nathaniel at bay? He should have kissed him every moment he could. Now he never would again, and it tore at him with razor teeth.

Did Nathaniel live? Hawk prayed uselessly to any god listening that he’d survived. That he hadn’t died to save Hawk’s sorry life.

It played out again and again in his memory: Nathaniel hurling himself in front of that blade, accepting its grievous wound without a second thought.

Hawk hadn’t believed he could love again, and in that moment he’d known how wrong he’d been. How deeply love could truly gash, crippling him. He offered bargain after bargain to the universe, promising up anything—everything—in return for Nathaniel’s safety.

To not know Nathaniel’s fate was torture, the misery waking him from fitful bouts of sleep, his heart seizing, lungs frozen. Of course he’d asked for news, and of course he was denied. He hadn’t even been told where he was being taken for trial.

And what of the men? He’d drawn the attention of the privateers with explosions and mayhem so Snell and the others who’d survived the battle could escape. He’d stayed with his ship as long as he could, and would have remained to the end if he hadn’t been beaten into submission by too many men to fight. The Damned Manta might sail again, but without the Sea Hawk.

He laughed harshly, rats scurrying at the burst of sound. The Sea Hawk was dead, at least in spirit, with his body soon to follow. His ending had been inevitable, and Hawk only wished it had not come at Nathaniel’s expense. All that for a ransom that meant nothing now.

He should have left Nathaniel aboard that merchant ship with his sister, should have left him to his safe, comfortable future. Stifling and unfulfilling as it might have been.

One night—or day—he awoke hard, craving Nathaniel. In his dream, Nathaniel had reached for him, entreating him to come to bed. Yet Hawk had been unable to move. Now he ached, and not merely to fuck.

He yearned to hear Nathaniel’s cries of pleasure. To bring him bliss with mouth and hands and cock. Then to hold him as they slept, breathe him in, close and safe and warm.