Page 22 of A Pirate's Pleasure
I almost… almost smiled. That was the Lief I remembered. The one who said to hell with everything and everyone. I settled for a slight headshake instead. “I don’t need my men distracted. You need to lie low and not antagonize them.”
“I’ll try.”
It was as good as I was going to get with Lief. I would have taken his knife off him, but experience had taught me he wouldn’t relinquish it that easily. It would require force, and a fight I wasn’t guaranteed to win unless I brought magic into the equation. And I’d never used it against Lief. No matter how bitterly we’d argued. Eight years’ absence might have changed a lot of things between us, but it hadn’t changed that. “Maybe you could stay in here for an hour,” I suggested. It was doubtful he’d comply, but it was worth a try. Keen to resume my conversation with Fletcher about the best option for resupplying, where we were sure of a quick in and out and an absence of authorities, I turned to go.
Lief moved to block my exit. “Wait a minute!”
I sighed. “Now what?”
“When were you planning on telling me your sexual tastes had veered toward feathers and a beak?”
I cursed Whitby and that loose tongue of his. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“This harpy boyfriend of yours. The one you’re apparently running away from, that you never saw fit to mention.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” It felt strange to have this conversation with Lief, of all people. I might have shared a bed with a select few men for more than one night over the years, but there was only one person who’d ever held that title, and I was looking at him. My first love. My only love. Not that I’d be admitting that anytime soon. “And when was I supposed to have mentioned him?” I didn’t leave a space for Lief to answer. “When I told you I wouldn’t help you, maybe? Whilst rescuing you from the clutches of the authorities? Perhaps you would have had me shout it during the long and arduous swim to reach my ship? Or…” I paused for dramatic effect. “Perhaps I did tell you, but you’d already passed out at the sight of your own blood and, therefore, don’t remember it.”
“Last night,” Lief said obstinately, refusing to rise to the provocation. “You could have told me then.”
“I guess it would have made for interesting pillow talk.”
His lips twitched. “Was it the feathers that did it for you?” He thought for a moment. “Don’t they have breasts even when they’re male? I didn’t know you were into breasts, Zeph. That’s new. I thought I knew you, but apparently not.”
Scowling, I retreated to the other side of the small room to lean against the desk, whilst Lief took a seat on the end of the bed and stared at me expectantly with a smirk on his face. I glared at him, but it did nothing to shift the smirk. “I don’t owe you an explanation. I don’t owe you anything.”
Lief gave a slow nod. “True. But that won’t stop me from being curious, and you know what happens when I’m curious.”
I did. He didn’t stop badgering until he had all the answers he wanted.
I could either give in now and tell him everything, or suffer a barrage of questions until I reached the point where I’d tell him just to get him off my back. I resigned myself to the inevitable. “Obviously, he didn’t look like a harpy when I met him. He was a young man who introduced himself as Lucretius Morgan. Not a name that would ever lead you to thinking he was anything but the nobleman/sailor he made himself out to be. We talked about ships for most of the night, and he was clearly very knowledgeable about their workings. Far too knowledgeable for it all to have been a lie.” Lief’s lip curled, something in what I’d said not going down too well with him. “Nothing about him aroused suspicion. To my eyes, he was just a handsome companion to spend the evening with.” The lip curl became more pronounced. “What? You’re looking at me like there’s a nasty smell under your nose.”
Lief shook his head, flicking his hand in an impatient gesture. “Do go on. I’m enjoying this story immensely so far.”
His expression told that for the lie it was. Was he jealous? He was the one who’d walked away. It would be ludicrous to have made that choice and then be jealous. But then, Lief had always been more complicated than he appeared on the surface. Perhaps it was time to embellish the story a little and see how he reacted. Test out my theory, so to speak. “Where was I? Oh yes, Lucretius proved to be wonderful company. Charming, and with the most devilish smile.” Lief’s jaw took on a distinctly mulish set. “Things went as these things tend to do, when two people find themselves enamored with the other.” I was exaggerating wildly. It had been more along the lines of there being nothing better to do on the godforsaken island where we’d found ourselves, with few inhabitants. That should have been our first warning that all was not quite how it seemed. But then, things always looked far clearer in hindsight.
“Skip forward a bit,” Lief said. “I’m presuming you ended up in bed with the harpy?”
“There was nothing about him that said he was anything but human. Trust me, I saw every inch of him. I would hardly have continued had that not been the case. He was human in every way. Human mouth. Human hands. Human cock.”
“So you fucked,” Lief said drily. “Then what?”
“We kissed. We caressed. We explored each other’s bodies. We—”
“You fondled his breasts,” Lief said. “You just didn’t know it.”
Definitely jealous. Which shouldn’t give me as much pleasure as it did. It was evidence that a small part of Lief might regret the decision he’d made eight years ago. “We lost ourselves in an orgy of mutual pleasure. A celebration of—”
“Zeph, you’re not fooling me.” Lief’s tone was sharp enough to slice through metal. “You don’t talk like that. You didn’t even talk about me like that back when we were in…”
In love. Neither of us said the words. We didn’t need to. We both knew how that sentence had been going to end. “Fine,” I admitted. “It was functional. It was easily forgettable sex. At least until the next morning when I told him I needed to return to The Navarino.”
Lief leaned forward slightly. “What happened?”
“He acted like I was his husband of twenty years, and I was walking out on him and our six children. Begged me not to go. Said I had to return to his island with him and stay forever. I laughed, because what else was I going to do? He didn’t like that. That’s when he changed, and I don’t mean his mood changed. I mean, he changed. He grew taller and sprouted wings.”
“Did he grow breasts?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re obsessed.”