Beneath Black Sails (Beneath Black Sails, #1)

by Clare Sager

“Back-up plans are for people without confidence in their first plans.

She didn’t really command it, not any more than a person commanded their arm to rise and fall. Command was what one person did to another. It was for things that were separate. She and the sea were one.

There was something about a man in uniform. Especially one who wore it so well.

Because what did it matter? She could die doing something apparently safe, like eating a bad batch of mussels. Any of them could die tomorrow doing the simplest task—even something that didn’t seem dangerous. At least higher risks had the possibility of higher rewards.

This was what she needed—action. This was what had been missing in that former life—‘ladylike’ had no room for climbing or night swimming. Hells, ‘ladylike’ had no room for anything she did now.

Wild Hunt take her—who the hells laughed at someone shooting at them? And, gods, what a laugh—she tossed her head back and even from here, her eyes shone brightly.

His skin burned. He’d only wanted to catch her for the handsome bounty but now… Barking hoarse orders, he gripped the rail, knuckles aching and white. Now, she’d made it personal.

It had been too long since she’d felt a lover’s arms, lips—or anything else for that matter—and touching him had sent her spinning off course, dizzy as a teenage girl.

“Well,” he went on, “add in an absconding fiancée and being forced from our home, and I think it’s fair to say it was a difficult year.” The fiancée had left months before Father’s death, and she hadn’t exactly broken his heart. The betrothal to Lady Avice Ferrers had been arranged by Mother and Father.

Because my ‘help’ is just a way of getting you back to Albion without you realising and escaping.

It’s probably best not to trust me.

Blinking, she rubbed her nose and turned away. Well, it was rude to be quite that… She swallowed. Delicious-looking? Tempting? Off-limits? Yes, all of those. She cleared her throat,

She gave a brittle laugh. “Captain Blackwood…” Somehow formality felt safer, but damn it, did she want to be safe? “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re looking at me like you want to kiss me.” His fingers twitched against her. “I do.”

She huffed a soft laugh—damn it, she didn’t need encouragement, not in this. Pirate hunter or not, this was what she’d wanted to do that first time she’d seen him in deLacy’s ballroom, all tall and broad in his uniform. And the want had only built the more he irritated her, the more he flirted and teased, and the more he was simply in her presence.

Just like the reef, bodies came in hundreds, thousands of different forms, and she’d never seen one that wasn’t beautiful.

The pad of his thumb circled the silver scar on her shoulder, and he nodded with a frown of understanding—he could tell it was a pistol wound. Dipping his head, he kissed it, confirming what she already knew. It wasn’t a flaw, an imperfection on her tanned, smooth skin. It was something she’d survived. It said she was tough—she wouldn’t break.

thought the Pirate Queen would appreciate a man kneeling for her.” With a flash of a grin, he nudged her thighs apart and, Wild Hunt, she was not about to stop him.

He wanted it. He wanted it so much, it ached in his chest. He didn’t just want her to trust him, he wanted to be worthy of her trust.

“I don’t beg, I’m just not afraid to ask for what I want.”

“That poem,” he breathed, voice feeling far away. “The pin… But she’s—” “Dead?” She said it too brightly, and her eyebrows rose like it was a joke he was too stupid to fathom. “Do you still not understand? Avice Ferrers is just as dead as Knighton Villiers.”