Uncharted Secrets (Uncharted Secrets, Book 1): Endless Horizon Pirate Stories

by Cristi Taijeron

  “I am looking forward to it. And now that I have seen your beautiful face, I am sure I will see the piece in an even better light.”

  He went on to ask me more questions about my work, and sounded quite interested in buying more pieces from me in the future. Though everything he said had to do with business, there was desire adrift in his eyes. I couldn’t help but feel complimented by his admiration for me and my art, but I was stunned to the core when he said, “I’d like to know more about what inspires you. Perhaps I could take you out for a picnic sometime.”

  My jaw dropped in a completely unprofessional way. Was he the only person on this island who had not heard that I was Mason Bentley’s lady? Suddenly wishing that I was, I was finally about to say it out loud when a woman dressed in red interrupted us. “I hear that you are the artist.”

  Brandy was with her. Holding onto her arm, sloppy drunk as could be, Brandy slurred, “Hannah, this is Lady Heidelberg, and Lady Heidelberg, this is Hannah, my best friend.”

  Annoyed by Brandy’s embarrassing behavior, I politely excused myself from Mister Gregory before she made matters worse. With another kiss on my knuckles, he told me he’d be back around, and left me to speak with Lady Heidelberg about the painting she had in mind. Even with Brandy’s nattering commentaries getting in the way, I was able to leave Lady Heidelberg with the promise to paint her a colorful flowerbed, and finally headed out to the yard.

  What I found there made me wish I had never come out of my room.

  There, at the card table, under the outdoor chandelier, Mason sat playing cards with Adaline on his lap.

  She was pinching his cheeks and rubbing his face against her bosom like she did to everyone. Though I did not like it one bit, it was the sight of him grabbing on to her arse when she did so that made me want to vomit. That warm, hard hand that had just held on to mine, was now grabbing at one of my two friends, lustfully. After watching her pour a shot of rum in his mouth, I retreated to my room.

  Getting through the crowd as fast as I could without looking like I was running, I broke into a full sprint once I hit the stairs. Flopping down on my bed in the dark, fully dressed, I hugged my cat as I cried. “I knew it, Feather, I knew it. He is nothing but a dirty rotten pirate. No wonder you never liked him. He may act like a nice man, but that is probably part of his ploy to get what he wants. Well, I am sure glad I said no. We did the right thing, Feather. But I can’t help but think that it would be fun to take Mister Gregory up on his offer, just to spite that crafty pirate, Mason Bentley.”

  Chapter 10

  One More Day

  Awaking terribly hot and uncomfortable in my blue dress, I sat up in the dark and grabbed the little fan I kept on my nightstand. Leaning against the headboard, I fanned my face and listened to the sounds of the house. It seemed the party had died down greatly, leaving only a few stragglers out by the fire, but it was the sounds coming from within the house which captured my attention.

  It was the sounds of sex.

  Erotic wailing was a common occurrence when Adaline had her male friends stay overnight, and to drown out the familiar thumping of the headboard against the wall, I spoke out loud to Feather, “You know, Feather, I love Adaline, but I sure wish she was a bit more courteous about her late night pleasures.” I giggled, until I remembered that it was Mason she’d been flirting with tonight.

  A wildfire of jealousy heated in my chest. I sprang to my feet. “It was one thing to sit on his lap, but if she brought him to her room…”

  Then I heard her call out his name. First and last. It surely was Mason Bentley in that room with the woman I had thought was my friend. Murderous wrath shot through my veins. Storming down the darkened hall with the fire of my hatred lighting the way, I quickly realized that the voice didn’t belong to Adaline. It was higher pitched, and the ravenous howls were coming from one of the short-term rental rooms.

  Coming upon the door, nearly choking on my heartbeat, I tiptoed closer to try to determine who he was with. Standing in the dark hallway, listening in on two people having wild, furniture-thrashing sex, I realized that I had completely lost my mind. I turned him down. He can do whatever he wants, I told myself as I started to leave, but then I heard his voice. His moan. His heated, passionate moan. That was it. I snapped like a lunatic and busted through the door.

  There was one candle lit, and in the flickering glow, I saw Brandy riding my man like a wild horse. Of course they had heard me blast my way in. As she jumped in surprise, I grabbed her by her natty hair and threw her off of him. Her stick thin body sloppily crashed against the dresser. Before she could catch her footing, I punched her in the face. “How dare you!”

  She cried out in pain. I grabbed her hair again and held tight as I bashed her face against the dresser. The crashing sounds rung out as bottles and glasses went flying. The mirror shattered to bits as I continued to shove her around. Enough vengeance could not be found to equate for the pain of her backstabbing betrayal.

  Mason pulled me off of her. He was laughing. I wasn’t. While I tried to break away from him, Brandy slid into her dress. With a primitive shriek leaving her blood-covered mouth, she jumped at me like a panther in the wild. The moment her dirty nails dug into my cheek, Mason let me go.

  Without hesitation, I charged at her again, shoving her into the armoire. The vases on top of it fell over and broke as she flung herself back at me, striking my mouth with a solid punch. Mason tried to break us up as we clobbered each other. Amidst the violent blur I heard Adaline’s voice. Next thing I knew, Mason was holding me against him. Through my blurry eyes, I had the pleasure of watching Adaline slap Brandy across the face. As the skinny, two-faced bitch fell to the floor, I kicked and flailed and cursed her with the nastiest words that had ever spewed out of my mouth.

  Pointing at me, Adaline yelled at Mason, “Get her the hell out of here.”

  Remembering the way Adaline had been sitting on his lap earlier, I screamed at her, too. “You’re just as bad!”

  “Do not make me slap you, too, Hannah,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

  And it was at that moment in which I realized I was being held against Mason’s naked body.

  Jumping and crying, I tried to break loose. “Let go of me! Let me go. I hate you the most.”

  He did not let me go. No. Rather, he picked me up, tossed me over his shoulder as though I was weightless and headed for the door. Adaline handed him a sheet before he made his exit, but as he grabbed it, I took hold of the doorjamb and screamed at Brandy again. The smug little smile on her ugly, blood-splattered face made me want to break her jaw so she could never smile again. But there was no escaping Mason’s hold on me.

  Down the stairs, I punched at his back. “I hate you, I hate you!”

  Through the hall, I pulled at his hair. “You dirty rotten, lowdown pirate!”

  In the entry hall I kicked and flailed. “You are the worst person who ever lived! I can’t believe I let you touch me with your dirty rotten hands and your devilish lips!”

  And of course, because I had the worst luck of all time, Mister Gregory happened to be standing in the entryway with Lady Heidelberg. Yes, my handsome client who had politely asked me on a picnic, heard me scream those awful things at the naked pirate who was dragging me out of the house I was being kicked out of.

  Drowning in a flood of rage and embarrassment, I choked and coughed on my fitful tears as I continued to fight with Mason while he carried me across the lawn. I wanted down. I wanted to run. Anywhere far, far away from him would do. Just as we reached the gate, Madame Adaline Janvier, the woman who had practically saved my life, shouted out from the porch, “Mason. You are welcome anytime, but Hannah is never allowed back here.”

  How many times could my heart break in my life?

  Then I thought of my cat. “What about Feather? Where’s my cat? I need my Feather!” I started to panic. “And my paintings!”

  “Don’t worry about that shit right now,” Mason huffed as he h
eaded toward the horse stable.

  I was breathing so rapidly my head became light. “I need my cat. He is my best friend, I can’t leave him. I can’t lose him because of you. And those paintings are my memories of Thomas. You cannot take that away from me! Please don’t make me leave them.”

  Setting me down, he tied the sheet around his waist like a toga. As he grumbled about my shit, I ran away. I would scale the wall if I had to. I was going to get my cat and my memories. As fast as I could go, I ran down the dirt path. Before I’d traveled far, I heard horse hooves stomping on the ground behind me. Oh, dear God! He was chasing me on horseback. All my worst nightmares raced through my mind, fueling the absurd amount of speed I had gathered. With the stone wall of La Vie en Rose blowing past me in a haze, I screamed like he was going to kill me if he caught me. And just before I reached the gate, he caught me.

  As he circled around me with the terribly large horse, I was forced to slow my pace. The guards at the gate didn’t bat an eye as the horse grunted and sniffed like a beast beneath the seemingly demonic horseman who was shouting at me to get on. Being as scared as the rats that Feather would back into corners, I stood against the wall and shrieked, “No! No. Never. I hate you.”

  While holding onto the reins with one hand, Mason reached down with the other, and like a long slimy tentacle of The Kraken he wrapped it under my arm. He almost slipped off the saddle while yanking on me. His force was so rough I thought he’d break me in two as he hauled me over the saddle. The landing was hard on my gut. When I yelled that he had hurt me, he scooped me up on his lap. Now I was facing him, straddling his lap with no way to escape his monstrous hold on me. Stuck, with only the sheet he wore between us, I ended up riding him like Brandy had only moments before. But my vocal outbursts were of a completely opposing nature.

  His riding was swift, the speed was impeccable, and the way we whipped through the heavy night air only intensified the exhilaration of my savage rush. Crying for my cat, I slapped Mason’s arms, and cursed him to Hell with all the hatred I had raging in my body, but he never said a word. That made me hate him more.

  By the time we reached the harbor I was completely exhausted from my useless outrage. Reaching the docks, I hardly had the energy left to fight, but refusing to give up, I continued to curse him to the hell he came from as he held me tight and hopped down, slapping the horse and sending it home. Holding me like luggage with one hand, he held his sheet on with the other and carried me down the lantern-lit dock through a crowd of pirates. Some of them hooted and some of them laughed, but not a one of them questioned the ridiculous situation.

  After heaving me up the gangway to his stupid Esmerelda, and once we reached his ill-lit cabin, he finally set me down. The moment my feet landed solid beneath me, I punched him across the jaw. His face flew to the side from the force of my blow. Fearing that he would react adversely, I backed up with my fists ready to take him on, but to my great relief, he only grabbed his face and growled. “I knew it, goddamn it, I knew it. I should’ve never taught you how to throw a punch.”

  Slightly humored by his comment, but not enough to laugh, I stayed still where I stood and yelled, “That’s right. And I’ll do it again if you come close enough. You are a dirty rotten pirate, Mason Bentley, and you have shattered my broken heart to itty bittier bits.”

  “Is that what happened, Hannah?” He was still rubbing his jaw. “Because to me it looked like you just lost your goddamned mind.”

  “I did! I won’t even deny it. Why did it have to be her, Mason? She was my friend!”

  “Ah, just stick to the cat, sweetheart, that bitch isn’t anybody’s friend. In fact, she’s the one who told me how much you hated me and how you hoped I never came back.” He opened the lid of his wooden chest and pulled out a pair of breeches.

  “How dare she!” I screamed, raging with betrayal all over again. “I talked to her about you all the time. She saw all the paintings I made of my memories of you, and she knows I was making you a colorful sash.”

  “You made me a sash?” His expression lightened.

  “I did, but now I just want to choke you and Brandy with it. But I can’t, because it is gone like my paintings and my cat.” Remembering my soft, furry friend, I cried, “Feather is my only friend in the world and it is your fault I lost him.”

  “Don’t put that on me, Hannah.” He wadded the sheet into a ball and hurled it into the corner before pulling his breeches on. “You’re the one who went bat-monkey mad and got yourself kicked out of the place I housed you at.”

  “Of course I went mad! How would you feel if you saw me doing that nasty thing with Mister Gregory?” I wanted to throw up just thinking of it, but my point had to be proven.

  “Who the hell is that?” Mason’s muscles hardened as he began to pace.

  “He’s the man who offered to take me on a picnic tonight,” I said smugly, enjoying the possessive look of jealousy on his handsome face.

  “Ah, he can picnic his own liver off of the bloody spoon I cut it out with. Everybody knows you’re mine, Hannah…”

  “I am not yours!” I planted my fists on my hips.

  “You’re right. You’re not. Because you don’t want to be. And that is why all this is happening.” He slapped a chair over.

  “I never said I don’t want to be yours. I just can’t be.”

  “So, that’s it? You can’t.” He waved his arms in the air. “Well, I’ll tell you what. I can’t do this,” he pointed back and forth between us wildly. “You made it perfectly clear that you don’t want to be mine, but you don’t want anyone else to have me, either, and that isn’t how it’s going to go. I’ll get your damn cat in the morning and then—”

  Everything else he said flew out the porthole when I heard him say he’d get my cat. “You’re going to get Feather for me?” I instantly calmed.

  “Yes, Hannah, I will. In case you haven’t noticed I’m in love with you and I’ll do all sorts of stupid shit for you.”

  My heart stopped beating in my chest. “You’re…You’re in love with me?”

  “I didn’t leave a willing slut to chase you down on a goddamn horse while wearing a blasted sheet because I like anybody better.”

  His summary of the night’s events made me giggle, but in all seriousness, I asked, “But how could you be intimate with someone else if you love me?”

  “That isn’t intimacy.” He fanned his hand at me. “That was dirty rotten, lowdown, senseless sex. And sex don’t mean shit to me, Hannah. It never has.”

  “That is disappointingly obvious.” Completely appalled by his nasty confession, my mind flashed with the visual of that hideous tramp jumping all over him like a rabid bunny. Disturbed to the point of sickness, I shuddered. “I would think the mighty king of freedom would at least have some standards for the sluts he chooses.”

  He laughed. “I prefer them pretty, but that ugly one flung herself at me like a bar trollop. I told her no. I did. But after she solidified your abhorrence for me—”

  “I cannot believe you believed her!”

  “Why wouldn’t I? You turned me down like a dirty bilge rat, so I went and fu—got dirty with one of my kind.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “It is. But after being at sea for that long without any, I took what I could get.”

  Placing the puzzle pieces together, I squinted at him. “So you admit it, then. All that sweet talk you spewed at me was all in the hope to get what you could get after being lonely at sea.”

  He slapped his forehead. “No! Good Lord, no.”

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I lifted my nose in the air. “And as soon as I was of no more use to you, you abandoned me like your Sunrise.”

  He squinted at me with irritation. “Belay that nonsense, woman.”

  “This stupid Esmerlda will always remind me of an ugly, second-rate slut. I will never paint her.”

  Ignoring my insolent jabs, he went on to explain himself. “Look Hannah, I like wome
n and I like sex, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t dreamt of getting sweet with you.” He looked me over as if he was dreaming of it right then. “But if that was all I wanted from you I wouldn’t have put in all this effort to respect your space and consider your fears. And I sure as shit wouldn’t have shaved my face and all that bullshit.”

  Remembering how handsome he looked when he walked in my door, I whispered, “You did that for me?”

  He rolled his eyes. “All for you and all for nothing. Now, I got no sex, no clothes, and worst of all, no Hannah.” He pointed his fingers at his head like a gun and pretended to pull the trigger.

  Feeling a terrible mix of joy and pain, I lowered my face in my hands. “I am so sorry, Mason.”

  “What the hell are you sorry for?”

  “For reading you all wrong. I have just been torn apart so many times that I hardly know where all my pieces are, and I have no idea how to handle any of this. I honestly never thought you’d come back for me, and when you did, well, I just figured it’d all fall apart like everything else in my life has, so I didn’t even want to bother.”

  “That’s the kind of attitude that’ll get you killed.” He took a massive shot of rum as if he needed any more. “If I looked at life that way I would have died in that damned longboat last month. Or starved when the Spanish killed off the boars I was hunting. Or let that damned slave driver who worked me in the field beat me down until my spine went as limp as the other men he robbed of their pride.

  But I’m a fighter. I know what I want and I go after it, win or lose. And when I lose—which I have many times—I can watch my failure sink like my Sunrise knowing I did all I could while there was time to do it.”

  Moved by his heartfelt and powerful words, I stood there speechless.

  “And the same goes with my attempt to love you, Hannah. I threw my foolish heart at you like an idiot, and you didn’t want it. It isn’t my way to force my will so I walked away, but you know what?”

  “What?” I meekly responded.