Paid to the Pirate by Una Rohr

Chapter 3

Colt

Iwanted to wrap my hands around her pretty little neck and squeeze the life from her.

One part of me did, anyway.

Another part of me inwardly smiled, grateful for Mrs. Penningham’s insistence on her well-being, on a certain standard of treatment. It gave me the perfect excuse to tell the crew that we not kill her or lash her with the cat o’ nine tails until she wished we did.

I wasn’t capable of that.

Not even that fateful night when she challenged me to do it. Or perhaps she’d thrown out the request in desperation. I could never sort out what went through her beautiful head those evenings. And for two bloody years I’d been wondering.

But seeing her sashaying blithely around the tavern, passing out ale as if she hadn’t a care in the world -- processing her nonchalance in seeing me -- caused me to temporarily indulge the fantasy of wringing her elegant neck.

That was a lie. I’d indulged the daydream many times over the years. Almost as many times as I’d indulged… other fantasies.

What did it mean that she still wore the locket?

I ran a hand down my face, forcing my thoughts back to business. I needed to get a handle on how much of my crew felt the same. Conks and Johnson wouldn’t be any trouble. Robert the Red would be a problem, no doubt, living up to his name.

My hands found my belt, adjusting.

Oh, she’d be punished alright. After I got the story from her own lips as to what she’d been up to these past two years. Nay, before. She’d speak more honestly after a belting.

This was clearly yet another game of Charlotte’s but what was the purpose this time? I informed the innkeeper that Charlotte belonged to us, and she countered by alluding to a more refined upbringing Charlotte had before they’d met.

Nonsense.

Perhaps Charlotte was lying to this woman as well? She was skilled at deception, after all.

“She’s like a daughter to me. I won’t be seeing her harmed,” Mrs. Penningham insisted, after a long, strange line of questioning I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Mrs. Penningham’s story about how Charlotte came to work at the tavern didn’t add up. The details were vague and evasive. The outspoken old innkeeper had been hiding Charlotte, that much was clear. But she was hiding something else too, and I didn’t think it was the Crimson Eye.

Mrs. Penningham obscured something about Charlotte. I gritted my teeth, fist clenching beneath the table as I guessed it might have something to do with that Daniel boy who freely touched her as he escorted her up the stairs.

Charlotte might be like a daughter to Mrs. Penningham, but no one could misbelieve her to be the spawn of this dowdy woman and her timid husband.

But what did it mean that she still wore the locket?

Charlotte had further bloomed into a stunning woman. My cock twitched at the memory of those intimate glimpses. Too few, but seared into my brain nonetheless. Time had only fleshed out the curves of her hips and breasts, separating her even more from the scrawny girl I knew before.

What her rear looked like; I couldn’t tell beneath the voluminous skirts of her ridiculous gown. But I’d find out soon enough.