by Eris Adderly
“I’m sorry, but what has any of that to do with me, Mr Bone?”
He was silent for a moment, as he appeared to consider jumping from a ledge.
“Mrs Collingwood,” he began again, his normally jolly tone now quite sober, “those two men are nigh inseparable. They may as well be opposite halves of a single man.” Bone spread adjacent palms apart like a clamshell to illustrate, pinning her with a serious look from under ruddy brows for emphasis.
“I know there comes a time when a lady is pressed to choose among … suitors”—he coughed out that final word, clearly substituting it at the last moment for another—“but with these two the choice cannot be between one and the other. You’ll forgive me, Ma’am, a ship’s cook hasn’t got the tongue to say such things proper-like, but … with Mr Till and the captain … you’ll either have to find some way to turn them both aside at once or …”
He let his words trail off into a shrug and a spreading of his hands, unwilling to voice the rest of his thought aloud. His eyes pled with her for understanding. She had no idea what she could possibly say. The very notion of what he’d left unsaid, of what she’d left unthought …
It was beyond contemplation.
Bone busied himself with filling a larger dish for her to take. The ever-present salt pork and tack were there, and today he wedged in a covered bowl of the pease as well. He was avoiding her eyes now, possibly regretting what he’d said.
Not sure what to say now that the air was twisted over on itself with the cook’s acknowledgement of uncomfortable realities, Hannah took up the dish of food and stack of plates he’d pushed at her and made a clumsy goodbye.
“Thank you … for the food, Mr Bone. And … and … well, good evening then.”
There was no graceful way for her to leave at this point, so she simply turned and mounted the steps, avoiding the now sleeping cat, and walked at a steady pace back along the deck, carrying plates and food, toward what would surely be the oddest dinner yet.
* * * *
“While we’re in Nassau, Mrs Collingwood, perhaps we’ll see if something more to your liking can be found for you to wear, if you wish.” The captain made his offer over what was left of the wine in his cup, his eyes watching the contents swirl around, boots up on the table.
“That would be most welcome, Captain, thank you.”
Hannah and the quartermaster sat opposite Blackburn, and the three took their ease after they’d finished the meal she’d brought up from the galley. Till leaned back but had scooted his chair well forward and his arms rested on the table, folded over one another.
“But when you come ashore with us,” the captain continued, “you’d best stay as close to Mr Till or myself as possible, at every moment. Nassau is no place at all for a lady such as yourself to wander alone.”
His tone sounded ominous and she returned his caution with a serious nod. “Of course.”
Hannah had no illusions that the measure of safety she’d been afforded aboard The Devil’s Luck would extend to the denizens of a notorious pirate haven like Nassau. No honour among thieves, and all that. No, this was not Bristol, and she knew no one on the island who would see and gossip against her reputation. No one who knew her would see if she pinned herself firmly against the side of Edmund Blackburn for a day or two, if it was necessary. Or Benjamin Till, whomever was free.
Or both.
The cook’s words were still a nagging echo in her head, and work as she did, she could not push them down.
… you’ll either have to turn them both away at once or …
The idea was sheer nonsense. A thought that could not be. I’ve achieved a balance, she thought, as she moved to gather up the plates into one place and cover the remainder of the meat. A fragile equilibrium wherein she held her delicately constructed existence together by implicit silence and the studious ignorance of reality. If the widow from Bristol allowed the wrong thought purchase, the entire tenuous structure would come tumbling down around her, and there would be no way to predict the consequences.
As she came around to Edmund’s side of the table, collecting utensils into a metallic bundle, the captain stood, grating his chair back over the floor with the motion.
The wooden sound was a demarcation. Denial was on the far side of it. On the near side was Blackburn, mere inches in front of her, dark eyes drawing her in like a whirlpool.
Hannah had constructed a Tower of Babel supported by so many melting candlesticks. The fall was coming, and she knew it.
His fingers traced down her arm, which hung at her side now, mesmerised as she was by the unwinding of her own fate. He took the handful of forks and knives from her to place them back on the table. Hannah was frozen stiff, arrested at once by both a raging desire to keep control over her next actions and a terrified fear of a surrender she’d been avoiding, even in her dreams.
Edmund tilted his head, leaning down to kiss her and she hurtled toward the point of no return. She was pliant in his arms, but her heart hammered in her chest. It was the most excruciatingly slow kiss, their lips pressing together, tongues flowing against one another like the gentlest waves over a midnight shore. His hands were at her waist with the lightest touch possible. She knew Till was watching, and had in no way been dismissed. Hannah was going to break soon. If she, or any of them, opened the door just the tiniest crack …
A warm, massive presence fell in behind her.
Benjamin.
You will never get this door shut again, Hannah Collingwood.
She was shivering now, and her body did not seem to know how to stop, although she commanded it to do so. Edmund drew back from their kiss and searched her gaze with frightful transparency for an endless moment. If no one said anything … could they still turn back?
The captain firmed up his hold at her waist. “The Widow Collingwood is delicious, my friend,” he said to Benjamin in sleek tones, still holding her eyes with his. “You should really have a taste.” He turned her by the hips then to face the quartermaster.
No. There would be no turning back.
Hannah looked up at the tattooed man who’d been so kind to her these past weeks. The captain’s best friend. One of two lovers. With a final exhalation, she put her trust in fate.
Her lips were on his and the walls crumbled. His hands pulled her against him and brick after brick came loose, her careful fortress of propriety being further razed to the ground with every stroke of lips and tongue.
Edmund moved in again at her back and his hands wrapped around to smooth their way up her bodice and over her breasts. At the very same time, Benjamin captured her mouth. Her foundation, at last, lay bare.
A forbidden seed had been planted that first day aboard the ship, when she’d found herself pinned between the two men so soon after her disastrous arrival. It had spent these many weeks pushing unseen roots down into the fertile soil of her desires, but today the first shoots made to thrust up into daylight.
She moaned into Till’s mouth and nearly came undone on the spot, but Edmund clasped her to him with a steady forearm and broke her away from the fateful kiss.
“Bolt the doors, Benjamin.” The words came from the captain low and hoarse against her ear, causing her belly to twist into a delectable knot of nervous anticipation.
Till moved off to see to the doors and Edmund didn’t wait for his return before moving his lips to Hannah’s throat. She could feel the heat of his lust pressing into her from behind and his hands were sliding into the tops of her sleeves at her neckline, working to expose more of her shoulders. She didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to breathe in a useful manner.
Her eyes snapped open when she felt Benjamin return to his place in front of her. He seized her gaze with a single fevered look before bending his head to her breasts as he’d done so many times before. Only this time Edmund was tilting her chin back and claiming her mouth, warm masculine fingers cupping her throat and guiding her jaw to work with his. She tasted the wine on the capta
in’s lips with her head bent back, while Till brought out first one of her nipples and then the other to be introduced to his earnest suckling. Heat roiled between her thighs as he took the tender flesh into his warm, wet mouth. Hands kneaded at her bottom; she was not sure whose.
At the very same time that Hannah did not know how she could possibly bear any more, she also knew there was still so much more to be borne. Her knees almost gave out from under her.
The many buttons marching down her back were being worked apart with deft fingers. Her whole body jostled along with the accompanying tugs at the fabric, causing her nipples to come jerking away from the attentions of the man in front of her. His teeth caught her as the urgent efforts at her dress pulled her this way and that under his greedy mouth, and she gasped at the sensation.
Stays were unlaced and her arms drawn from sleeves. Male hands pushed material down over her ribs and hips in a flurry of eager movements. Hannah made a small noise of frustration at the process. There were so many, many layers to a woman’s dress.
When Till stepped back to admire her form, Hannah realised she was finally, truly bare. In a meaningless gesture born of instinct, no doubt, her hands went to cover her sex. Her nervous laughter at the move broke the silence. Would she be ashamed and hide now, after all that had led her here?
She felt Edmund pull off his shirt behind her and she turned about to face him. It had become one of her newfound joys to press her bare bosom against the warmth of a male chest, and she took the opportunity to do so now. His arms circled around her back, his arousal plain against her thigh.
At that moment, it struck her. Out of every scandalous encounter during this voyage, she had yet to see the captain completely undressed. The man was always in such a rush to have her that he seldom did more than push the front of his breeches out of the way, and beyond that might have removed his shirt only once or twice.
“Edmund,” she said, her tongue bold now and a mischievous smile on her lips, “Are you hiding something from me?” Her fingers slid below the waist of his breeches, the palms of her hands gliding over his firmly muscled backside without interference from any troublesome cloth. He chuckled at her little joke, but she was serious in her intent. She kept her hands moving toward the floor and bent at the knees to sink down with them, peeling clothing away from male thighs as she went.
Eye level now with an alert, bobbing erection, Hannah first dragged her tongue along its silky length and then took the tip into her mouth, working her lips and tongue over the plump head. Her suckling served as a pleasant distraction while she tugged off his boots and stockings with her hands.
It was Hannah’s turn to stand now and take in the sight of a nude body, neatly stripped. The captain was not at all unfavourable to look upon, she decided as she watched him step at last out of his lowered breeches
She turned to see if she’d need to do the same for Benjamin, but the quartermaster hadn’t waited to do his own disrobing. He stood there as bare as the day he was born, one hand stroking lazily over his swollen shaft, watching her as she moved.
Hannah looked from one man to the other. They stood on opposite sides of her, Edmund her darkness and Benjamin her light. The one wore a halo and the other horns. She wanted it all; she wanted them both. The warm embrace of her tattooed angel and the forceful violation of her dark-eyed devil. What had become of her that she could entertain such unspeakable desires?
This ship was a separate floating reality that existed outside of the one she’d come from and whatever one she was sailing toward: a world beyond the fetters of mundane events. For a time, and in this place, Hannah would surrender. She would not judge herself. All the dark, heady joys she’d come to want could be permitted. Perhaps later she would allow herself to pile up regrets like coins to be counted. Today, though … today she would soar and fall into the twin infinities of blinding paradise and blissful perdition.
The bed was so very close behind her. A step, and then another, and she was there. Benjamin was there, climbing up. Edmund was there, closing in.
Hesitation was gone. Hannah knelt between male knees, Benjamin’s, and he leaned his shoulders back against the adjacent wall that framed the berth. His body ran lengthwise down the bed, firm and inviting under her greedy hands. She spared him a kiss or two more, but what she wanted to taste was much lower.
Till’s cock nodded in eager response to her thoughts and she slid down his body to make them manifest. The velvety heat of him in her mouth was intoxicating. The way his thickness pressed her tongue down reminded Hannah of how her body had been repeatedly pinned under the weight of her two lovers these past weeks. Her lips stretched around his girth as she made her way down to rest them against the warm nest of hair at his base, his male scent filling her up, awakening the pulse between her thighs.
She knew what he liked now and brought up her fingers to gently knead and tug at the heavy, silken bag below his shaft. His immediate groan of pleasure was the greatest reward and it brought an involuntary reply in kind from her, which thrummed from her working throat directly into his rigid flesh.
As she took her time at Benjamin’s pleasure, her fingers joining her mouth to tease out those sounds she loved to hear, she felt a pair of hands smoothing over her backside. Her cheeks had been up in the air, unabashed while she’d distracted herself with sucking, and now Edmund moved in behind her.
Nimble fingers slid down through the cleft of her bottom to burrow into the wanton display of the moist pink blossom between her legs. He spread her apart and toyed with her flesh, fingertips pinching and flirting and rolling. The gasp that came from her, when he finally pushed a pair of fingers inside, made her clench in arousal at the way it sounded, muffled as it was by the man in her mouth.
Edmund took her with his hands then, though he kept his body pressed close behind, his thighs grazing hers and his knees spreading her further. Her pussy fairly dripped around his fingers, and her saliva was beginning to pool at the base of Benjamin’s shaft. It was becoming a very … liquid affair.
The slow burn had just begun to melt into a more insistent throb as the captain wrought a fluttering song over her most sensitive flesh. She was straining now, pushing back into his touch, her body pleading for release, but Edmund Blackburn had other ideas.
His hand left her, sensation replaced by a momentary pang of loss, but instead he made her feel the nudging head of his cock.
Oh yes. That. I want that more.
Hannah pressed her hips back, ready to receive, urging him to take. And take he did.
He plunged inside her then, delving deep within her heat, his balls coming to rest against her wet little treasure. For a moment, he only held her to him at the hips as they enjoyed his delicious thumping into the tight welcome she’d offered. But this could never be enough, not for either of them, and he began to move.
A man down her throat and a man between her legs. It was as if the universe had turned on its end. Men moved inside her. Fierce men. Outlaws. Pirates.
Oh, Hannah. You’re doomed! This is all too much!
Top and bottom she received them, her body splayed and invaded.
No. No, it isn’t too much. It’s hardly enough. Give it! Give …
Till had moved beyond his usual passive reception of her licking and suckling and was now pumping his cock into her willing mouth. Blackburn drove into her soaking pussy with rapid, vigorous strokes.
Surrender, surrender. So very wide open.
The moment stretched into forever. Male hisses and grunts filled the silence of the cabin over the incoherent mewling coming from somewhere deep in her throat.
It could not go on.
It must!
Benjamin yanked his hips back and left her shocked at the sudden relief on her jaw. He was repositioning himself below her, flat on his back now atop the mattress. The rooting behind her came to an abrupt halt as well as Edmund left her.
What’s all this?
Ah, she realised, as Till pulled her
down over him at the waist, he wants a turn now.
Hannah was all too happy to oblige. Benjamin aimed himself, already slick from the caress of her tongue, and quested about until he found her entrance. He was inside at once, filling her where the captain had been mere seconds ago.
Are you a whore, Hannah? a little voice whispered from deep down where she’d buried such things.
What if I am? I don’t care.
I don’t care.
The quartermaster was deliberate in his claiming, one muscled forearm across her lower back, pulling her down so her belly slid over his and their hips ground together with the motion. His green eyes blazed into hers with unrestrained lust and she did not look away.
She held herself up with her arms locked, palms against the mattress on either side of the man beneath her, raking her swollen nub over him with every shallow thrust. Hannah all but snarled in heat. She would allow herself every indulgence today.
From your mind to the Devil’s ears, she thought, as warmth from the captain’s body blanketed her back. Again, with flesh on all sides of her, Hannah tensed and shivered.
A shiver, it turned out, would not suffice for what was to come.
Edmund reached his hand between them and laid his erection between her flexing cheeks. Her fluid arousal was everywhere by now and, as Till pumped away, the man at her back began to sluice through the slippery furrow. She felt a firm heat rubbing against her, massaging the tight outer ring of that most vulnerable entrance he’d taken liberties with that first night after her punishment at the mast.
When she understood his intentions, her body gushed in response. She wanted him to punish her some more.
The tip was deceptively soft when it prodded at her and, for a moment, she thought this might be an easy trial to bear. When he pushed further though, the dense little knot of flesh that guarded her most forbidden secrets was forced to stretch around more and more of him and she cried out in surprise at the dull, focused pain. Her eyes went wide at his entry and Benjamin stilled inside her to allow this second invasion to take place with less jostling.