Page 44 of A Pirate's Pleasure
“Nothing.” I took a gulp of wine.
“No,” Lucretius said, those keen brown eyes of his far too intent on my face. “Finish what you were going to say. We shouldn’t have secrets from each other. No young couple in love should.”
In love! Right. Lucretius’ delusions knew no bounds. “It’s not important.”
Lucretius sat up straighter. “You’re wrong there. Your emotions… Your feelings are of utmost importance to me. You might even say that they consume my every waking moment.” He leaned forward over the table, coiled tension reflected in every fiber of his being. This sudden switch in moods was what made him so dangerous. “Finish what you were saying.” The words contained a threat that said things would be ten times worse for me if I didn’t. Oh, how I wished I’d stayed on The Navarino on that fateful night. I would have continued living my life oblivious to the near miss, and Lief and I would probably be in bed together now, rekindling an old flame.
I cleared my throat. “It’s just that sometimes I can feel like a prisoner. What with all the locked doors and these.” I lifted my manacled hands and gave the chain a shake.
“A prisoner.” The words were flat, but ice had crept into Lucretius’ eyes. “I give you everything. A beautiful island. A room of your own. A whole new wardrobe of clothes.” He gesticulated at the table. “Do I not give you all the succulent food you could ever eat? Do I not give you the best wine?” I stayed quiet, sensing that he neither wanted nor expected an answer. Hopefully, he’d get what he wanted to say off his chest and then calm down.
“I give you fervent companionship. All my attention.” With every sentence he spoke, Lucretius’ voice grew more strident. “I give you love, Zephyr, but that’s not enough, is it? It never is. I give and I give and I give, and what do I ever get back?” I sensed he was no longer just talking about me, that he’d lumped me in with the memory of all of his dead ex-lovers, which was a dangerous place to find myself when they were nothing but skulls on a shelf.
Lucretius swept his arm across the table, and I flinched and instinctively moved back as bits of food and crockery went flying to turn the usually impeccable floor into a mess of crumbs and spilt wine. “I’m sorry,” I said, figuring some hasty damage control was required. “I spoke without thinking. I didn’t mean to take all the things you’ve given me for granted. I appreciate them. Of course, I do.”
“You’re sorry,” Lucretius said, spitting the words out so vehemently that flecks of spittle came with it. “You appreciate the ‘things,’ do you? Not me. The things. Perhaps a bit of thinking time will get your head in order and help you understand what your priorities should be.” He stood, his chair crashing to the floor to join the crumbs and wine. Grabbing hold of the chain, he yanked me after him. An attempt to dig my heels in and hopefully reason with him came to nothing, Lucretius far stronger than I was and applying more force to get me moving.
I’d assumed he’d send me to my room with no supper like a naughty schoolboy, but we were heading in a different direction, my heart sinking as I realized Lucretius’ intention. Sure enough, he dragged me down the stairs to the basement, pushing me inside the cell and fastening the chain to the wall once more, his demeanor that of bristling righteousness. Once he’d secured me, he retreated to the doorway, his eyes glittering with suppressed rage. “If you want to make out you’re a prisoner, then you might as well live like one. Let’s see how many days it takes for you to realize how good you had it. If you’re lucky, I might even remember to feed you.”
The door slammed shut. The key turned in the lock, and his footsteps grew gradually fainter as he returned upstairs. I slid down the wall until I sat on the cold stone floor. One slip-up was all it had taken to undo the hard work I’d put in. No wonder no one had ever survived a ‘relationship’ with Lucretius Morgan. It was like balancing on a tightrope over shark-infested waters. Although, if I wanted to look on the bright side, it had brought a stop to any chance of him continuing what he’d started this morning. I was safe from Lucretius’ bed for another night. Every cloud had a silver lining.
I opened my hand, the half-eaten apple that I’d been holding when Lucretius had dragged me from the table still clutched in my palm. It tasted much sweeter when I bit into it than it had in the cloying atmosphere of dinner with a harpy. Two good things. I bet I could find a third before the night was over if I thought hard enough about it. I’d ignore the damp, and the cold, and the lack of a bed, and focus on the positive: time away from Lucretius and his ever-changing moods. A plan needed to be concocted to get back into his good graces, but that could wait till morning.
Chapter Eighteen
Lief
How did one go about making yourself look like a pirate? I didn’t know how anyone else did it—perhaps they didn’t because why would they need to?—but I started by raiding Zeph’s trunk of clothes, like a boy playing dress-up. His trousers and shirt fit just fine, so that wasn’t a problem. The boots were a little big, Zeph having larger feet than I did, but they’d do at a pinch. They were certainly more piratical than mine. A belt fastened around my waist gave me a place for my dagger, which made a change from keeping it in my boot—or Zeph’s boot, if you wanted to be pedantic. The coat, though, was too much and had me frowning at my reflection in the tiny cabin window. I’d bypassed pirate and gone straight to pirate captain, which was likely to do nothing but get the pirate’s backs up when most of them already hated me enough as it was.
The cabin door opened and West strolled in without knocking. “Come in,” I drawled. “Don’t let the possibility of me being in a state of undress deter you.”
“Why do you think I didn’t knock?” he said with a wink. “I was hoping to catch you in a state of déshabillé.”
“That’s a mighty big word for a pirate,” I teased, not buying him being interested in me in the slightest. Not when Whitby and I couldn’t have been more different. West liked his men big, beefy, bearded, and older. Not slim, trim, and relatively clean-shaven, although I’d let some of the scruff grow back in over the last few days.
West grunted as he grabbed me by the shoulders and ran a critical eye over me. Barely a second passed before he was shaking his head. “You can’t wear that coat.”
“I know,” I agreed. “I was just about to take it off before you came barging in.”
“You realize,” he said as he helped me off with the heavy coat, “that by all rights this cabin should be mine.”
“Yours?” I asked with a slight eyebrow raise.
“Well, Whitby’s, and seeing as I share his cabin, that makes it mine as well. He’s the captain. The captain is supposed to have the captain’s quarters.”
“He’s the temporary captain. Zephyr’s not dead.” West’s silence in response to my statement cut through me like a knife. “He isn’t.”
West held his hands up in a defensive gesture. “Didn’t say he was.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t say he wasn’t either. You didn’t see the way Lucretius was looking at him. The last thing he wanted was him dead. Trust me, I know the difference, given he was looking at me that way.”
“Why?”
“What?”
West tipped his head to one side and studied me quizzically. “I’m struggling to understand why he would have been looking at you that way when he’d never met you before. It makes little sense.”
“How should I know?” I could feel heat creeping into my cheeks, though.