Chapter 3 #2
A shout sounded from up ahead, and Rowan lowered the glass.
They were gaining on the Sweet Lettie, tightening the noose.
Rowan could see the sailors’ faces now, but not the fear that no doubt marred them.
A creature crept from its hiding place behind the Canine, its great glass and wood tentacles glimmering in the harsh sunlight.
The sharp anxiety dulled as the bow of the Kraken pulled out from behind the white rocks.
Seeing the other ship always filled his heart with elation.
Her deep blue sails full of wind and the Deep Water Demon’s flag with its tentacled skull and hourglass snapping in the breeze.
She surged through the water, sure as a predator, blocking the Sweet Lettie’s path.
Panicked shouts echoed across the water as the merchant sailors realized they were trapped between the unyielding force of the Kraken and the sharp talons of the Siren. They knew exactly who they faced, exactly the reputation of the pirates who now held their fates in their bloodstained hands.
“Prepare to board!” Rowan ordered. The Lettie dodged left, attempting to sneak between the Kraken’s bow and the island, which would leave the Siren trapped behind her ally’s bulk. The Kraken fired a warning shot off her bow.
All at once the fight seemed to go out of the merchant ship, and the Siren finally allowed herself to catch up, pulling up to the starboard side and trapping the ship between not only the two pirates, but the shallows next to the island as well.
Nephele screeched high above, scenting impending violence in the air.
Rowan bounded down to the main deck as the crew threw grappling hooks across the water.
Fox and Gael appeared at his side, Fox grinning and Gael stoic as always.
He and Fox had become Rowan’s de facto bodyguards in battle.
The captain’s elite force for cutting through the enemy, getting him to wherever he needed to go, and guarding his blind side.
“Not too much bloodshed,” Rowan ordered, his voice low so only his boarding party could hear. They nodded. Gael flipped one of his axes across the back of his hand and caught it again.
“What’s our goal here, Captain?” he asked.
Rowan wasn’t quite sure. He didn’t know what Yves wanted with the pretty little ship but judging by the fact that the Kraken had fired a warning shot and not just straight up obliterated the Lettie, Rowan suspected Yves had plans that required her to stay intact.
So there were two ways they could go about capturing this ship without a drawn out, bloody battle.
Intimidate them into surrender, or kill those in charge.
“Capture the captain, and secure the ship,” Rowan ordered.
Rowan leapt over the shrunken gap as the crew hauled the ships together, landing on the pristine deck of the Sweet Lettie.
He leveled his pistol at the first terrified crewman he saw and fired, not looking to kill.
The bullet caught the man in the arm, and he screamed, clutching at the wound as it poured crimson onto the deck.
Thumps sounded behind Rowan as the rest of his boarding party landed on deck. It bolstered him.
“Bring me your captain!” Rowan barked, his voice ringing off the cliffs.
Across the water, the Kraken maneuvered closer.
The crew of the Sweet Lettie was in a frenzy, but a group broke off and charged toward Rowan’s landing party, yelling a frightened battle cry.
Rowan holstered his pistol and drew his cutlass just in time to stab the first man in the gut.
Blood gushed over his hands as he yanked the blade back out and let the man fall at his feet.
Rowan’s crew charged around him like a rushing tide, clashing with the sailors with a whoop.
Rowan stalked forward, eye scanning for the captain or first mate, anyone with the authority to surrender the ship to him.
“There.” Fox pointed the tip of his knife toward the other side of the deck, where a rotund man in a fashionable, curled wig frantically tried to release a landing boat from its moorings.
“Let’s go.”
They began to cut a swath across the deck.
But more sailors were surrendering than fighting, and the rest of Rowan’s crew rounded them up with ease.
Rowan and his two shadows had made it halfway across the deck when the bewigged man reeled back with a scream of terror.
But it wasn’t Rowan he was afraid of. He stumbled away from the half-released boat as three figures prowled over the rail like horrors from the deep, dripping wet from their swim across the short distance from the Kraken.
Rowan let out a startled laugh as his one blue eye met Yves’s dark, demonic ones. Yves dispatched the captain with a knife across the throat, arterial blood spraying across his beautiful face. He didn’t even spare a glance for the man whose life he’d just taken.
So it wasn’t the captain that Yves was after, even though he looked like a rich man whose family would pay a hefty ransom.
But Rowan couldn’t think of that now. He was drawn across the deck toward Yves like a moth to a flame, and Yves likewise seemed transfixed by him.
Everything else fell away as they drifted together like a pair of dreamers.
Face-to-face once again after so long apart.
Every moment without Yves had felt muffled, but now that he was only feet away, the world brightened again, even as the chaos around them slowed.
Rowan smiled, tasting blood, but Yves didn’t smile back.
He crossed the remaining distance between them in a few long strides, looking murderous.
“Are you hurt? Where?”
Rowan let Yves fumble with his bloodstained clothes for a moment, searching for an injury that wasn’t there.
“People are watching,” Rowan said, low and warning, side-eyeing the captured sailors who now stared at them. None of the pirates cared. They were used to it by now.
Rowan caught Yves’s wrists.
“I’m not hurt,” he reassured him.
The murderous worry in Yves’s eyes dimmed, replaced by a sultry expression that suited his beautiful face much better.
“They’re watching, are they?” he purred.
Yves grabbed Rowan by the neck, leaving finger marks in the blood spatter, and pulled him into a hard kiss. Rowan tried not to visibly melt into his arms as Yves’s tongue snaked into his mouth.
In the year since their marriage, they had taken many ships, hunting both together and separately.
And they’d fucked like rabbits each time they reunited.
But they’d never, never so much as touched in front of outsiders.
Never kissed. Never given any hint that their relationship went beyond business.
They couldn’t risk the authorities finding out and using them against each other.
Not again. Not after Rowan had lost his eye and been used to lure Yves into a trap that had resulted in his death and the near wreck of the Kraken.
This felt like meeting for the first time all over again. Defiant. The tension as palpable as salt in the wind. Except this time Rowan already knew the addicting taste of Yves’s lips. The heady sting of being full of him. The passion creeping like a shadow beneath his skin.
The contours of Yves’s twisted soul.
And now he was in Yves’s arms on the deck of the Sweet Lettie with blood on their faces and what felt like the whole world looking on.
Either Yves was planning to kill them all, or something had changed and he no longer cared to keep the nature of their relationship a secret.
Either way, Rowan could never refuse him.
He wrapped his arms around the back of Yves’s neck, rising on his toes to deepen the kiss. He felt more than heard Yves groan deep in his throat.
When the kiss broke, lightheadedness feathered Rowan’s vision, and he let Yves take his bloody hand and drag him toward the door beneath the quarterdeck.
“Nothing to see here,” Yves barked over his shoulder.
“Eyes down,” Gael ordered the prisoners, but many of them continued staring. They knew exactly who Yves and Rowan were. They’d just witnessed the two most infamously ruthless pirates on the seas making out in broad daylight.
Yves shoved Rowan up against the door as it slammed shut behind them, lips and hands almost frantic, as if he could not stand to be apart from Rowan a moment longer.
His kiss tasted of blood, and burned coppery on Rowan’s tongue.
The blood from his shirt soaked into Yves’s immaculately expensive clothes, but neither of them cared.
The question of why Yves had chosen to reveal their relationship to outsiders pushed to the back of Rowan’s mind in the onslaught of physical sensation.
Rowan couldn’t help the moan that escaped his lips.
Yves broke the kiss, but kept Rowan pinned against the door. One hand cupped the side of Rowan’s face, the pad of his thumb swiping through the blood on his cheek. They leaned their foreheads together, breathing heavily.
“I missed you,” Yves said simply, black hair falling into his eyes.
A joyous warmth spread through Rowan’s stomach, mingling with the heat of desire.
Being apart was always painful, but with the tension between the empires heating up, the seas were more dangerous than ever, and though Yves could come back from death, Rowan had no such privilege.
He was always grateful to find his way home to Yves.
“Missed you too,” Rowan murmured back. He wanted to stay this way forever.
Yves’s thumb continued stroking Rowan’s cheek, even as his lips strayed across the other.
His tongue lingered on the spots of blood, lapping them up like sweet nectar from Rowan’s flushed skin.
Rowan tilted his head back against the door, and Yves’s mouth trailed down his throat, eliciting another moan.