My Pirate Lover Read Free Page A

smashed the glass and the bars and now there was just a great gaping hole, easily big enough for someone to climb through.
    “Ye’ll never get the Lightning Circles off me!” said Captain Bloody.
    A horn sounded. Both men stopped to listen.
    “I believe I just did!” said Lance with a grin.
    Captain Bloody let out a roar that shook the cabin and ran at Lance like a charging bull.
    Lance stood his ground. He smiled.
    Josephine thought he must be crazy, then, at the very last moment, he stepped aside.
    Captain Bloody charged headfirst into the wall.
    “C’mon, lass,” said Lance, sheathing his sword and holding his hand out to Josephine.
    Josephine shook her head.
    “I wasn’t asking,” said Lance and in one smooth movement he wrapped an arm around Josephine’s waist, grabbed the rope he’d swung in on and jumped out the window.
    #
    Another bottle smashed against the wall.
    “Stop throwing things at me, you crazy wench!” cried Lance and then ducked as Josephine hurled a book in his direction.
    “I’m not a toy,” she panted, “to be dumped in boats and chased around and swung through the air like Tarzan of the jungle!”
    “Ach! You’re a mad one, lass!”
    “What!” Smash. “The!” Smash. “Hell!” Smash. “Is going on?” Josephine picked up another bottle but never threw it. Lance’s sword whistled through the air and Josephine’s hand was suddenly without a bottle.
    She stared at her hand, expecting to see blood but there wasn’t so much as a scratch.
    She looked up. Lance held his sword, point upwards. The bottle hung on the tip.
    When Lance had swung them on a rope, 30 feet above the water, from the shattered window of Captain Bloody’s cabin to land safely on the deck of his two-masted schooner he’d done so to a chorus of cheers. Josephine was deposited in his cabin and there she’d stewed. Her fear had reached its boiling point and undergone a sort of chemical transformation. Like water turning into steam, her fear became anger.
    This was unlucky for Lance who had opened the door to his cabin a short while later expecting to find the timid girl he’d put in there. Instead, he was attacked by a missile hurling banshee.
    “I don’t have time for this, lass,” said Lance, taking the bottle off the tip of his sword and setting it on the table- out of Josephine’s reach. “Bloody won’t take kindly to my having stolen his booty. He’ll be after us.”
    “I want answers!” said Josephine. “Where am I? Who are you? And what’s happened to Katie?”
    Lance counted the answers off on his fingers. “My ship, Ripple Thief. Captain Lance Breakheart. And who the hell is Katie? Those are the quick answers and that’s all I’ve time for now, lass.”
    There was a jumble of rat-a-tat-tats and thump-thump-thumps on the door.
    “What?” Lance asked.
    “Cap’n? Can we come in?”
    “We gots it Cap’n!”
    Lance swung open the door to reveal a motley bunch of pirates crowding the doorway. Their dirty faces were bright and eager.
    Josephine ducked out of sight behind a table.
    The pirate at the front raised something in a sack with great ceremony.
    Lance snatched it and flashed a smile. “Good work, men!” he said and shut the door on their eager faces.
    Lance reached inside the sack and lifted the thing up, letting the sack fall to the ground.
    Josephine saw an object similar to a shaving mirror in design, only far more elaborate. It was set upon what looked like one foot of an eagle-claw bath.
    On either side of the disc was a monster’s head, mouths open and tongues sticking out. At the top there was an engraving of a sun and at the bottom there was a sundial.
    Framed by the disc were three pieces of broken glass which, while reflective, had a strange, pearly quality.
    Lance turned it in his hands, thoroughly engrossed.
    Now, thought Josephine, was her chance to escape. She tip-toed to the door, reached for the handle and-
    -a dagger flew from Lance’s fingers and stuck in the