by Qeturah Edli
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Pirate’s Spoils
Loose Id Titles by Qeturah Edeli
Qeturah Edeli
PIRATE’S SPOILS
Qeturah Edeli
www.loose-id.com
Pirate’s Spoils
Copyright © August 2017 by Qeturah Edeli
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eISBN 9781682523865
Editor: Christy Lockhart
Cover Artist: April Martinez
Published in the United States of America
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Dedication
For my pirate-obsessed amiga with unwholesome pastimes. More to come.
Pirate’s Spoils
Nassau, The Bahamas, 1730
Summer in the Caribbean was stormier than other seasons, but the average day was unremarkable: hot and humid, the air thick with unshed rains, the sun rising and falling in its unchanging arc across the sky. Except for the years he spent sailing past the Cape of Good Hope and stealing and selling wares throughout coastal Asia, Domingo had never known anything different from the swollen clapboard, sun-baked bricks, and mildewed textiles of the urban maritime tropics. He had never set foot in a place where the air did not reek of saltwater and spices.
A trickle of sweat trailed down the back of Domingo’s neck and dipped between his shoulder blades as he gazed out over the aquamarine waters off the north shore of New Providence. There was no mistaking the ship weighing anchor just past the tip of Hog Island: the HMS Royal Sovereign. Domingo would recognize her at three nautical miles on a foggy day.
The harsh sun glinted off the rolling whitecaps breaking over the reef. It would be yet another muggy afternoon of the dog days of summer, weeks of sultry weather that sapped energy and wilted ambition.
The Sovereigns had already begun to unload on longboats. Domingo swallowed against a parched tongue when he thought about the one sailor he hoped would be aboard and granted shore leave. It had been several months since he last laid eyes or hands on James Flint of His Majesty’s Naval Service, and Domingo knew they were long overdue for a reunion.
Domingo figured he had at least half an hour before the first Sovereigns hit the shore, so he made his way from the already crumbling fortifications, past rows of shining canons, down worn steps, and headed for the heart of the Nassau marketplace.
* * * *
Domingo, a shipless pirate since arriving in Nassau, let his tattoos speak for themselves. Though tattoos were still unfamiliar to some in this part of the world, any sailor worth his salt could read Domingo’s work experience inked into his skin. His forearm tattoos alone had secured him more work at sea than any words ever did. Domingo had been taking it easy for a while, but his pockets were empty and he needed to set sail again soon. Now that he knew James might be in town, Domingo decided to slow his search for work. He could afford a few more days of idleness if it meant reuniting with James, if only for a short time.
It would take some preparation before he was ready to welcome James appropriately, but Domingo had a plan. Domingo always had a plan and was usually two steps ahead of everyone else.
Domingo knew Nassau well. He spent time there as a boy when it was still a pirate republic, back in the days when Blackbeard sailed the West Indies. The market was an assault to the senses when he reached it: colorful wares, steamy and rank seafood scents, a cacophony of animal sounds and multilingual haggling, bumping elbows, and tripping toes. It was a collection of contradictions: sweet fruit scents competing with savory meats, soft textiles sold beside fishing hooks, wealthy vendors shouting over the pleas of hollow-eyed beggars. And running beneath it all, the ubiquitous sharp scent of the sea and burning bouquet of the spice trade. The market was an unrelenting sensory barrage, and the ideal place to take what Domingo needed without arousing suspicion.
He filched a mango from a well-stocked stall as he wended through the pungent crowds. He cut strips from the fruit, cubed its flesh, and folded back the skin to pop juicy morsels into his mouth. When the mango was gone, he snagged a pastry. He munched on this as he eyed a chandler’s spread of tallow and beeswax candles from his perch in a fragrant magnolia tree across the street.
A smoked snapper made it into his sea bag and a beaded bracelet onto his wrist before he reached the chandler’s shady stall.
“Can I help you?” the chandler asked when Domingo arrived at his ultimate destination. Normally, Domingo could navigate markets as unnoticed as an alley cat. This chandler was perceptive.
Domingo gazed at the long, slim tallow candles. He had a single shilling left and he did not want to spend it if he could avoid it. As with his mates, money was always lightly come, lightly go for Domingo. If asked, he would not be able to say where it all went. He never paid for sex, as there was no need, but he did tend to live lavishly if given the means. He owned no property beyond what fit in his sea bag, had no immediate family, and would never be allowed a bank account because of his heritage; he had no cause or way to save. A large part of Domingo’s careless spending was due to the unnatural monetary system in the Commonwealth. Domingo, though uneducated, could count reasonably high, but the fractions of the pound sterling were a foreign and uncomfortable concept. He knew there were twenty shillings to the pound and twelve pence to the shilling, but little beyond that. The Spanish dollar, divided into pieces of eight reales or doubled to make an escudo, was hardly a better system. The French livre was a complete enigma. Domingo did not know how the French livre or Spanish dollar compared in value to the pound sterling, though all three could be found throughout the Caribbean. As a result, a month ago, Domingo had been wealthy, and now he stole to feed himself. Outside raids, Domingo had no qualms about stealing from those who would not miss what he took. So much the better if they were unpleasant.
“I said, can I help you?” the chandler repeated in a haughtier tone. He was a bony, pink-cheeked man, the sort of person who always burned and never tanned. His once-white shirt was stained brown with sweat about the collar and beneath his arms, and Domingo smelled the man’s acrid body odor from three paces away. The chandler sc
owled at Domingo, his expression heavy with unuttered assumptions. Domingo suspected most of them were correct.
“Browsing,” Domingo replied. He wandered to the butcher’s stall next door and stood beside a sturdy, middle-aged woman selecting a cut. Like the other women of her class peppering the market with overburdened slaves in tow, she was overdressed for the sticky weather. Her upper lip was beaded with sweat and her hair was limp. She cast Domingo a nervous glance before turning her nose up and clutching her purse closer to her chest with one hand as she fluttered her lace fan with the other.
“Demi-sang,” she muttered.
She would do.
Discreetly, Domingo snapped his new bracelet. The beads spilled to the ground, their bouncing and scuttling over the grimy stones drowned out by the market’s din. He remained still, eyeing a pungent beef tenderloin oozing through paper as the woman paid for her cut. She shot Domingo a scathing look before taking a step from the stall. She stood on the beads, which rolled under her tread. Domingo watched as she flailed wildly to try to steady herself, lost her purchase to the street, stumbled, and then crashed into the chandler’s stall.
“Oh!” she cried when she collided with the chandler’s table. It buckled under her weight and then snapped, sending candles flying and rolling every which way. Domingo stole two of these and disappeared into the crowd before the alarmed chandler managed to heave the woman to her feet.
* * * *
Domingo had picked up French somewhere between Saint Domingue and Fort Maurepas over the years. His French was nothing like James’s, the result of a Parisian tutor and long hours in a Westminster study before his first voyage on his father’s ship at ten. Domingo’s French was a relaxed, versatile, deep-mouthed creole sprinkled liberally with Portuguese, English, Taíno, his native Spanish, and untold dozens of West African languages. It had been a shock to them both when they realized they could not understand one another outside James’s native English. Domingo had been trying to slip Spanish past James’s lips for some time, but James was resistant. Domingo smiled when he thought about their last argument.
“You know I don’t speak a word of Spanish, so why do you insist upon speaking it in bed?” James had demanded during a pause in one heated session, clearly annoyed. They lay side-by-side in a creaking bed in the stuffy, shuttered room of an inn somewhere in Essequibo.
“Can’t help it,” Domingo had replied. He was usually sparing with his words, especially in English.
“Explain.”
Domingo had kissed the frown from James’s lips as he considered a response. “My urges are primal,” he said after a minute. “They override reason. So my highest praises are in Spanish.”
James had scoffed, but Domingo glimpsed a reluctant smile.
“I can’t obey your commands if I don’t understand them.”
Domingo had delivered another slow kiss to James’s rosebud mouth. “You’ll always be able to understand my commands, I promise. The Spanish is things you don’t need to hear.”
“Maybe I want to hear them.”
Domingo had stroked James’s golden curls. His hair was a source of amazement for Domingo. As the son of a West African woman and a Spaniard, Domingo had thick black coils and dark eyes. James’s soft locks and grey eyes, like waves from storm-tossed seas, were unfamiliar attributes.
“Then learn Spanish,” Domingo had said mildly, before issuing his next instructions in lisping English. Never mind the tired blush in James’s cheeks. Domingo was not finished yet, and James’s petulance never failed to bring out Domingo’s most authoritative drives.
Now, as he fingered his new tallow candles on his way to the main street through town, Domingo relived the way James felt beneath him that afternoon many moons ago, slick skin and writhing muscles as he begged for more, fought to contain his cries of appreciation at Domingo’s order, and was reduced to a shuddering ball of gasping erotic enthusiasm in their damp sheets.
Not for the last time, Domingo reflected upon the events of his and James’s first encounter. Domingo had strung up James on sight for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Domingo had been told, as he calmly listened to James rasp for mercy past the narrow end of a whip wrapped tightly about his throat, that James would survive and go on to help Domingo escape a well-deserved death sentence, Domingo might have lifted an eyebrow in quiet surprise. If he had been told they would eventually become lovers, Domingo would have said he had assumed as much. He had always found James irresistible, even when he was choking to death. Or perhaps particularly then.
James was unlike any other man Domingo had ever known. He possessed power and poise in public, and he was a rigid authoritarian with the inflexible posture and clipped, decisive manner of speech to match. But in the bedroom, under Domingo’s capable direction, James became submissive, soft, and pliable. His desire to be dominated, to be twisted and bent, ruled by an iron will, was unparalleled. And Domingo was more than happy to provide for James’s hitherto unrecognized needs.
James’s skin provided a reliable indicator of the state of his arousal. His cheeks were their customary tan when he was relaxed and comfortable, but they flushed faintly pink whenever Domingo did or said something to pique James’s sexual interest. They were crimson when he was being fulfilled, and the top of his chest, pale compared to the parts of him regularly exposed to sun, flushed when he was about to come.
Even after so few encounters, Domingo could read James’s body better than he ever learned to read letters. He doubted he would find anything of rival interest in a book anyway. He thought about all the things he wanted to do to James that day, the things he wanted to make him say. James cursed like the sailor he was when he was aroused, and Domingo lived for the muffled obscenities that escaped James though he tried to hold them back. Domingo knew if he had not heard at least one “damn” or “fuck” over the course of an encounter, he was nowhere near satisfying James’s submissive demands.
Once he reached the main street, Domingo hid in wait among the roots of a silk cotton tree squished between two imperial-looking buildings. He used his earring to clean beneath his nails as he squinted at the passing hoards, more and more swaggering seamen joining the throngs of Nassuvians as the sun reached its peak. Domingo thought fleetingly of how, if he had seen any in the market, he would have stolen a flask of coconut oil to smooth his humidity-induced frizz. Domingo was always meticulous in the care of his person when circumstances permitted it. As it was, he hoped James would recognize him. Coconut oil had other uses, besides. Domingo would need to find some for next time.
And then Domingo saw him.
James was flanked by two men on either side. Domingo had never gathered the meaning of the emerging naval uniforms, but by the way James smiled easily with the other men, Domingo assumed his well-dressed companions were of near rank and probably friendly. James had good teeth for a British sailor, and they flashed white in his bronzed face as he laughed at something the Malay man at his elbow said. Beneath his cocked hat, he wore the curly white wig he usually donned when in public.
Hearing James’s laugh made something stir within Domingo’s breast. Domingo had missed that laugh more than he had realized.
On catlike feet, Domingo followed James and his mates through the backstreets of Nassau, waiting until the last of his companions had paired off on a whore’s elbow and disappeared to some dark doorway before he struck. Domingo’s heart pounded as, without warning, he stalked up behind James, seized his nape, clapped a hand over his mouth, and shoved him face first against a wall. When James reached for the pistol at his waist, Domingo released James’s neck and grabbed his wrist. He pinned James’s arm at his side, crushing the lengths of their bodies together. Domingo let James struggle and try to bite his fingers a little before pressing his lips to James’s ear. He did not miss the shiver that cascaded down James’s spine in response to the contact. James fell still.
“I hope you weren’t going to see a whore,” Domingo murmured. He kn
ew James was. A male one, which was why he waited for his mates to join their ladies first. Domingo pressed the front of his trousers more snugly against James’s ass.
“Domingo?” James demanded, muffled. He sounded incredulous. “Bloody hell!”
Domingo released James and stepped back.
“Bloody hell!” James repeated as he turned around as he adjusted his hat and wig. He looked tired in the oppressive heat of high noon despite his alarm for, as the unfortunate woman in the market, James was overdressed for a Caribbean summer. Domingo wondered when was the last time James had had something to drink other than his usual rum rations or wine at the captain’s table.
“I thought you were going to kill me!”
Not for the first time.
“Does it feel good to be alive?” Domingo asked, tilting his head as he took in the sight of James’s blazing eyes, faintly flushed cheeks, and tenting breeches. He was always very quick to react.
“I—” James raised a hand to the back of his neck beneath the tail of his wig and rubbed it. The ire in his expression faded. “Of course it does. You mad bastard.”
Domingo closed the distance between them and took James’s chin. He examined James’s face.
“You’ve a new scar,” Domingo said when he noticed the white line bisecting James’s left eyebrow.
“Caught the wrong end of a blade,” James said, rolling his eyes. He was always devil-may-care when it came to his safety, no matter what happened to his pretty face. “You should’ve seen the other man.”
“Filleted?”
“Like a fish.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
James grinned in his boyish way and knocked Domingo’s hand aside. “So what if I was going to see a whore, anyway?”
Domingo licked his lips and eyed James with unmistakable intent. “You don’t need to waste your money.”