Page 71 of Captive of the Pirate King
“Hm.” He tosses a hand through his wavy hair. “Perhaps you aren’t the expert you claim to be. Maybe the men felt cheated and decided not to take any further trouble with you.”
“Asshole,” I snarl, settling cross-legged onto the bed beside him. “I’m damn good at it. You certainly seemed to think so.”
“I’ve only sampled a few of your talents.” He smirks. “To render a fair judgment I’d have to try a broader sampling.”
“So that’s what this is about. You’re trying to manipulate me into pleasuring you, after you said I wouldn’t have to render any such services—”
“Not unless you want to.” His smirk broadens, but his eyes are hooded, lustful and playful at the same time.
I smack his ass cheek sharply, and he barks, “Gods, Nick! That hurt.”
“Surely the whipping you took for me hurt more.” That flash of his hot skin against my palm was a moment too much. It’s all I can do not to touch him again. “I don’t see any scars, though.”
“As I told you, I heal faster than most. A family trait.”
“So your abilities are inherited? Does anyone else in your family have the tattoo magic?”
“No. And I didn’t discover it until my parents and I had left Caligo. The first port we stopped in had an ambiance reader, someone who can discern a person’s powers. She was doing readings for two bits a head, so I stopped into her booth. She nearly keeled over off her chair when she read mine. She said most people who came to her had no powers at all, so to encounter someone with an ability as rare as mine was a shock.”
“And she taught you about tattoo magic?”
“She gave me a pamphlet on it, and told me about another tattoo mage who lived on a different island. I was already planning to turn pirate then, but when I was running theRaven’s Frenzyaround that area, I’d stop in every few months and take lessons from the tattoo mage. He works for me in Ravensbeck now.”
“Did he tattoo your back?”
“He did. He helped me craft the spell for dissolving the crown into my skin when I need to.”
“And is there a vow attached to this?” I sweep my fingertips along the moth that spreads over his shoulder blades.
“No,” he says. “I’ve always liked moths—night creatures who are also lovers of light.”
“They’re soft,” I reply. “And fragile.” My palm settles against his spine.
“Some people are afraid of them,” he answers.
“What about the braided tattoo around your ankle? When you were pretending to be a regular pirate, you told me it was your allegiance tattoo, the one that prevents you from telling where Ravensbeck is. Were you lying, or is that true?”
“I was lying.” He admits it blandly, without a hint of guilt. “It’s just a tattoo. I haven’t bound myself to secrecy like the others. I’m probably the only person in the world who can verbalize the location of Ravensbeck or point to it on a map.”
“Will you show me where it is?”
He scrutinizes my face. “Why do you want to know? Are you planning to betray me?”
“No.” I hold his gaze, unflinching. “I just want to know. And I couldmakeyou tell me.”
“You would make such an excellent spy,” he murmurs. “The king of Ivris had no idea what a treasure was trotting about among the sons of the nobility, fucking them senseless. Tell me, love, did you bite them and take their blood and their secrets along with their seed?”
“Crude bastard,” I seethe, my face blazing. “I hate you.”
“Do you hate me, or yourself?” He sits up suddenly, and I don’t miss the hard length curved up between his legs, nearly touching his belly. He drags the sheet over himself with an angry jerk, as if his own reaction to me infuriates him. “Stop ogling me and listen. You have more pain and darkness inside you than you want to admit. You pretend to be standing on some moral high ground from which you judge me—from which you judgeeveryone, pirates and prostitutes and all others—but the truth, Veronica, is that you are just as jaded and guilty as the rest of us. And I can’t trust you until you shatter that moral platform of yours and come down here to meet me in the blood and the grime where you belong.”
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The violence of being perceived so completely by him—it tears me open inside, slices into all the layers I’ve spread over my truth.
I don’t want to face any of it. I don’t want to tell him about the sickening darkness that was my life before Mordan left, or the raw ache ofnever being enoughthat drove me into the arms of man after man. I don’t want him to see that part of me, ever.
“You don’t know me,” I whisper, harsh and hoarse.
