“You feel this.” I glanced at his groin, unable to see the engorged ridge I knew was hiding beneath his frock. “You took as much pleasure in that kiss as I did.”

“Relish it.” He lowered his mouth and kissed me with infinite kindness, as though for the first time. Or the last time. He straightened and retreated a few paces. “It won’t happen again.”

I slid off the table and abolished the distance, pushing into his space and craning my neck way back to meet his eyes. “Is the view so very different from up there?”

He glared down at me, nostrils pulsing. “What I see is—”

“A whore sleeping beside a naked man every night? Tell me how this cozy situation doesn’t become cozier.”

In answer, he clutched my waist with both hands, lifting and setting me aside as if I weighed nothing. Then he strode into the day cabin and vanished around the corner.

I simmered until he returned with two cocked hats. One, he jammed onto his hard head. The other, he wriggled onto mine.

After adjusting my braid to drape just so, he offered me an elbow. “Would you like a tour of the finest warship ever built?”

Since talking seemed to get me nowhere with him, I welcomed the change of scenery.

“Yes, my lord. I would like that very much.”

27

I didn’t feel like a prisoner.

As Ashley escorted me through the passageways of His Majesty’s Ship, which stretched nearly two-hundred feet fore to aft, I didn’t feel like a pirate or a whore or anything comfortably familiar.

With my fingers loosely curled around his muscled forearm and my skirts swishing over my bare feet, I heard the greetings and commands he gave the sailors he passed. But I focused on what wasn’t being said.

I was, on the surface, ignored by all. No one looked at me. Not directly. Yet every man in the vicinity was viscerally aware of the woman on their commodore’s arm. I could practically hear their arseholes clenching.

The last time they’d glimpsed me, I’d just been plucked from the sea like a drowned rat, wearing only a man’s shirt. Today, garbed in a gown made from Lord Cutler’s frocks, I looked refined enough to be a lady.

If I’d wanted that title, I would’ve followed my mother’s rules, married the Marquess of Grisdale, and perhaps both of my parents would still be alive. My rebellion had cost them everything, and I would make damn sure it wasn’t in vain.

My pirating career would not end in a whimper on the gallows.

The gown, the modest braid, and my delicate hand upon his lordship’s elbow were but small steps to freedom. If I embarrassed the commodore in front of his soldiers, I would lose the progress I’d made toward warming more than his bed.