Pirated Love Read Free Page A

stripped of all usable rigging, supplies, and cargo.
    He showed her to a luxuriously furnished apartment with a large set of windows and an actual bed instead of the normal bunks that were found on a ship.  This bed, Claire could see, was bolted to the floor as any furniture on a ship normally was to prevent it becoming a nuisance in bad weather.  Men had been known to be crushed from moving cargo or gear caused by the battering that waves gave a ship.  “If I were you, mademoiselle,” he began, in a French accent.  “I would do ANYTHING the capitan asks of you.”  He locked her inside and Claire shivered in a chair, refusing to lie on the bed, not knowing her fate.  The little she had gleaned from what the captain had said was that she was valuable and they would be using her as a hostage.  She wondered if her father would pay?  She looked around the cabin at the shelves of books with a thin rail set up on the ledges to keep the books from falling off them.  There were several cabinets and she wondered if they contained clothing or other personal items, but she did not explore.  There was a large table bolted to the floor in the middle of the room with an odd little lip of wood around the edge and she realized this was so the dishes would not slide off onto the floor when they ate meals.  A bench stood bolted to the floor on each side of the table and two chairs, one on each end, both elegantly appointed and plush.  There were odd little hooks above head level in the walls and in the ceiling rafters, and she wondered at these as she glanced around.
    She finally stopped shivering enough that she stood up to look out the large window along the back of the apartment.  She could look out over the smaller ship as the pirate ship had shifted forward a little in the current.  She could clearly see the men who were moving cargo and booty to the pirate ship.  The sailors were working to save their own lives for they knew the pirates would not hesitate to kill anyone reluctant to work.  She could see where Edmund had been stripped down naked in front of the pirate captain.  His white body was even uglier than his face.  It was scrawny and the black hairs covered most of it, almost as a pelt to make up for the sparse facial hair.  The little worm between his legs caught her attention with all his bragging.  This was going to enthrall her?  As little as she knew about men, after seeing the horrible thing that was the pirate’s manhood she instinctively knew that this little insipid thing would have been disappointing despite his boasts.  She watched as the captain struck the man with her own fists repeatedly in the jaw, using both hands on each side of his face, then one to his stomach.  As he bent over, she kneed him swiftly in the face causing his nose to spurt blood.  With a flick of her head, she indicated to throw him overboard.  Wiping her hands as though she had dirtied them, she looked around and then suddenly up, catching Claire looking down on the scene, before smiling insolently and turning deliberately away.
    The transfer of their booty was achieved in a relatively short time.  The pirates were thorough and took nothing that did not have value.  There was no point in hauling damaged goods or something with weight that would give them no profit.  They stripped sails, took the extras, even fittings and hardware.  The captain and her pirate crew left the long-boats for the crew of the British ship before going across to their own ship and unhooking the grappling hooks.  The sailors who had cooperated were left aboard to decide the fate of those floating in the ocean as the pirate ship sailed away.  Left with no sails, the ship was useless and they got out the long boats to put in the water.  The pirate captain had left them three day’s rations and they were going to try to row to the nearest populated islands.
     
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    It was quite dark when Claire heard the door unlock and