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Edward Teach watched Lucius walk away on Izzy’s arm. An initial, casual review could not have told which man led the other.
Edward watched until they turned the corner and were hidden from sight by a building. Then he sighed, and felt oddly… free.
From tonight onward, Israel’s leash would rest in Lucius’s hands. Someone else was going to have to be strong enough to take over; the consequences of failing to restrain the Dragon would stain someone else’s ledger.
Mixed in with the heady rush of freedom was a little taste of surrender.
He had surrendered Izzy to Lucius. He had fully given up control of the powerful beast who had helped to create and maintain him as Blackbeard.
The trouble about getting a little taste of something you deeply desire is that, on its own, it’s never enough to truly satisfy.
Edward went back onshore, reserved a room for himself and Stede at one of the nicer hotels in the Republic. He availed himself of the facilities to shower thoroughly and dress again in clean clothes – then met the Gentleman Pirate at the restaurant at the call of eight of the clock, as they’d planned.
“You’ve been watching me so intensely tonight, Ed,” Bonnet said halfway through dessert. “I’ve really got to wonder what’s on your mind.”
“Just you,” Edward whispered over the rim of his wine glass.
“Your warm, beautiful eyes… you remind me of a poem I’ve read:
‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss within the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.’”
How is it that he knows a poem or a quote for everything inside me? Edward thought. If there are writers out there that really understand how I feel, I need to learn how to read so I can find all of them…
But aloud he said: “Well. By Jove.”
Stede chuckled, as if he’d been witty. “By ‘Jove’ they mean Jupiter – the Roman god of the sky and thunder, of oaths and vows, and of omens and luck.”
Jove be with me tonight, then, Ed thought. I’m about to risk it all.
Walking with Stede’s hand tucked into the crook of his arm, the night air had turned bracing and seemed to feel it in his heart and gut as much as he did in his damaged knee.
When Stede opened the door to the room, the golden-haired man looked around in confusion. This was not their regular type of suite per se – not two connected rooms, not one room and a comfortably sleepable couch.
It was one room, with only one large bed.
“Stede… you and I need to talk,” Edward said, shutting the door quietly behind them.
“Of course, Ed.” Stede turned and his eyes were luminous in the moonlight from the window. “Whatever you need.”
“Do you remember the day we met? The day that I asked you if you wanted to do something weird?”
“I’ll never forget it, dearest.”
The gray-maned man swallowed hard. “You had the gut-stab from the Spanish. I remembered I helped you into those orange breeches you rediscovered. We had to go so slowly. You leaned on my shoulder.”
Stede was coming back to where he stood at the door, one step at a time. “Yes, I did. The most famous pirate in the world… let me do that.”
“I had your whole closet to choose from. But I wanted the clothes that were already on your body… do you know why?”
“Well the breeches are a rather fetching shade of tangerine…”
“Yes, they are! But… it was because they had been warmed by your body, Stede. I tied on your cravat, donned your lacy shirt – and then I could feel the warmth of your skin. I could smell your soap and shampoo and your musk. Then I pulled on your breeches and all of a sudden your warmth was around me.”
He made himself meet Stede’s gaze. When he’d had so many lovers before, why in God’s name was he so shy now?
“Right there,” he whispered. No, say it. Say it so he can’t misunderstand. “And I wanted that. I wanted your warmth around my cock, Stede.”
“Ed, no…” Stede groaned, his tenor deepening. He sounded like a man with a mortal wound and Edward wanted to make a joke, say he didn’t mean it, or even simply turn and run from the room. Anything to make this not fucking ruin it, not destroy it all.
Instead he held himself still.
And Bonnet took another step forward.
“What does your ‘no’ mean right now, Stede? When you say it to me.”
“You’ve got to stop, my dear. Because if you keep talking I’m… I’m not going to want to stop, and I don’t know what happens then.”
The night around them was still; the noise in the streets of the Republic was far below them.
“Nothing’s going to happen, Stede, other than we’re going to be happy. That’s what I believe: that I can make you as happy as you make me. I’ve had men. You know that I’ve had men. And I had Izzy, and I loved Izzy – and a little part of me always will. But nothing in me has ever wanted anyone, as much as all of me wants you.”
“Ed…” he breathed, and now he was close enough to touch.
Blackbeard stepped in then, scarred and tattooed hands closing on his lapels but gently, holding them as if they were flower petals. They stood nearly temple to temple; both of them breathing harshly, like two race horses having sprinted the course together only to cross the line in a tie.
“Just kiss me,” Ed sighed gently. “Just… that’s all you’ve got to do, love. Kiss me and if at the end of that kiss you don’t want this tonight, I’ll find some place else to sleep. I don’t care. We’ll go on as we have.
“But just kiss me, and see how it feels. Because if it’s as good as I think it’s going to be, we’re both going to want more.”
Stede leaned in and their foreheads touched; he tilted his chin up and their cheeks pressed. Edward’s hand rose to his shoulder. They continued to breathe each other’s breaths. His fingers came to the side of Stede’s neck.
They moved with the slowness of a total eclipse: the pale moon, the brave sun. The point of Ed’s nose in the hollow of his naked cheek where sometimes a dimple would appear. Stede’s chin pressed in steel-gray curls of flowing beard. A last breath before the totality, before the moment that changes everything for always.
Stede committed to the kiss the way he had to the Revenge; an inch at a time for ages, and then with his whole heart at once. He cradled Ed’s cheek in his palm with one hand. The other landed on the slender plane of Ed’s hip, fitting as perfectly as if it were built to be placed just so.
Edward Teach realized an entire moment without distractions, without other ideas tugging at him. There was nothing else in the world for him but this man, this kiss. He had no idea how long he had been standing there. He had no concept of a life before or after.
He felt a tear slip down Stede’s cheek, and be lost in his own beard.
Eventually they parted just far enough to breathe, by millimeters.
“That was… oh … oh God, that was… that was really…”
“Yeah, yeah it was… Stede… I’m never going to regret you touching me, wanting you to touch me. No matter what. This will always be something that I think of with love. With gratitude. Whatever you do with me… tonight or any other night… it’s a gift as sure as if God Herself had given it.”
He let go the last lapel, let his arm slide around Stede’s side. His hand found a level in the small of his co-captain’s back.
“So tell me what you want, m’love. Do you want me to go? Or do you want me to stay?”
“Stay. Please, stay!”
Ed smiled, bound his lips again for another sweet kiss. “I’m yours to command, tonight.”
“... just tonight?”
The question held a subdued note of longing; it reached into Ed’s soul and strummed him like the plectra of a harpsichord. He felt himself resonate intimately.
“Tonight and every night you want it,” he breathed.
Stede gave a tiny moan of desire and distress mixed and they clung to each other then, holding fiercely.
“It’s okay. You can want that, and it’s okay. You can want it because I know I want it. I’m not worried and I’m not afraid.”
He kissed Stede’s cheek, kissed his brow. “You’re strong enough for this. If you believed in yourself half as much as I believe in you, you’d never doubt yourself again. I’m strong enough too, and this is just what we do. Together.
“However we need it to be, that’s how it’s going to be. So tell me what you want. Every step of the way… because you’re going to get it. Because what I want is to give it to you.”
Stede shut his eyes. “I want to take off our clothes. I want to see you naked.”
Edward smiled; his beloved’s tone had been one of a desperate wish. “I’ve had baths with you in the room and the other way ‘round. You’ve seen me naked before.”
“I want to see you naked when I was the one who got you that way…”
“Then take every piece. For you I’m a conquered town – pillage me.”
Stede’s eyes opened and now they blazed; his need had caught on something in the statement, had burned away the last bit of fear and shame.
“'Take me to you, imprison me,’ ” he said in a tone that Edward knew meant he was quoting someone else’s writing, “ for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me…’ Is that it, my dearest? Is that what you feel?’
“Fuck , Stede… yeah . Yeah that’s fucking it,” he gasped.
“A gentleman named John Donne wrote that poem about God… supposedly.”
I’ve never wanted God Almighty to fuck me until we’re both raw, Ed mused. Then Stede’s hands were under his cropped shirt and sliding it up his chest and in the moment it was crystal clear – God in the body of my lover. God making love to Her creation through the way we touch. My lover is my God.
“Those words,” he panted, shrugging out of the shirt as Stede pulled it off over his head. “Say it again.”
“Take me to you. ”
“Take me to you, imprison me… for I…” Stede let his jacket hit the floor; Edward’s hands went to undo his cravat.
“Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.”
“Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me,” he recalled, quivering. The last words came out nearly as a sob: the hollow of Bonnet’s naked throat where his pulse jumped suddenly seemed as intimate as the inside of his thigh. “Stede… goddammit–”
“The bed,” the blonde man said and he moved with alacrity, on his back and squirming into the center of the mattress, leaving only his boots hanging off so that they wouldn’t dirty the coverlet.
Stede was on him so fast, shedding his own shirt as he went; he found himself leaning against the bed between Ed’s thighs with barely a memory of how he got there. He tugged off Edward’s boots and dropped them to the floor at the foot of the bed. Then his hands were on Edward’s knee-brace, seeking the buckle with a sense of proprietary care.
This is mine: mine to keep, mine to tend, mine to adore.
He unfastened the brace as other men in their times would undo their spouse’s garters: he drew it down and off, and laid it gently across a nearby chair.
He put his hands to the waistband of Ed’s leather pants but did not unfasten them – only gripped and pulled firmly, grinding Ed’s ass down against his crotch. The gray-haired man felt the hard length inside the fine fabric of his breeches: warmed by his skin, he thought. The intensity of both the memory and the feeling startled a squeaked “fuck!” from his lips.
“I have been scared,” admitted the pale, moonlit figure over him, “of how much I’ve wanted you.”
“Why?”
Stede’s fingertips were undoing the button of Edward’s pants, but his gaze never left Ed’s face.
“Because I wanted to touch you. So badly. Seeing you in the bath, in the candle light. You were bronze in the copper tub, and your hair was steel and silver. Your obsidian eyes. The treasure map of your tattoos. Every inch of you precious to me.”
He tugged the pants down and Ed moaned again as the pressure came off his erection. He lifted his legs, even the bad one, and wriggled all the way free.
“There,” Stede breathed, his gaze hungry. “My God. Every inch of you.”
“It’s cold up here alone, m’love.”
Unable to look away the blonde man toed out of his shoes, discarded his socks, shoved his breeches onto the floor. He climbed onto the mattress and Edward crawled backwards on his elbows at the same pace, bringing them to the center of the bed. The pirate tilted his chin up for Stede’s kisses; his lover settled his body atop his and ran covetous hands along his sides.
“You said you wanted my warmth on you,” he whispered. “How do you find it?”
“The best. All I want is more of it.”
Stede shifted to one side, putting his weight on his knees and one elbow to reach between them, and Edward couldn’t decide what was better: feeling the thick weight of Stede’s erection at the join of his thigh or feeling Stede’s hand slide down and grip his cock with a possessiveness that felt incredibly right.
“There you are, do that,” he said, cradling Stede’s cheeks in his palms. “I want to feel that.”
“You want to feel… what? ” his co-captain prompted in a low voice, no less dark for all its sweetness, and Edward groaned with lust.
What you never usually realize about a lighthouse is how the brightness of its beam could deepen the gloom around its passing; a brilliant light will cast a stark shadow…
“I want to feel… your hand… on my prick… jacking me off,” Blackbeard answered deliberately.
The hold changed; gentle fingertips explored his length and he wanted to sob with the torment of it.
“Your flesh is tight, my dearest… will it hurt you if I do it dry?”
The midnight current in his voice told something in Blackbeard that something in Stede might like that. Might like hurting him just a little, sometimes.
Jove help me – I want everything he can make me feel.
“There’s oil on the nightstand,” he managed, however. Stede didn’t need to face that part of himself just yet. Not until he was secure in all the rest of this.
Stede glanced to where he indicated, then turned back. “You had plans,” he whispered archly.
“I had hopes. ‘s different.”
Stede moved away to get the bottle and the night air hit Ed like a slap; the involuntary whimper he voiced made Bonnet move faster, opening it even as he settled back into position.
“Take it and put the cork back in it, my hands are too slick,” the blond man ordered and he did so, setting it down against his side so he could find it again soon.
Then a single wet hand was back on his throbbing prick and he keened again, feeling the knuckles of the other hand brush his skin – in the darkness of the bed Stede was kneeling between his thighs and jacking both of them in alternating rhythm, one stroke up, one stroke down.
“Stede… oh … fuck, that’s hot,” he moaned.
“Dreamed about this. Literally dreamed it, one of those nights you wound up in the bed with me. Woke up to my pajama bottoms soaked. Prayed you’d slept through that - nocturnal emission.”
“Never again,” Edward gritted urgently through his clenched teeth. “Next time you dream like that you wake me the fuck up, m’love… God, you keep going like that and I’m going to come too quick.”
“Nothing’s too quick. You were right, dearest. If there’s breath in both our bodies there’ll be more of this. I’ll never be able to give you up. So come if you want and when you can we’ll go again.”
“But I want you inside me,” he begged, hearing how his voice went high in desperation and then broke, and not caring.
The hands that were moving stilled. “Inside you, as in–”
“Stede I swear, if there’s breath in both our bodies we’ll do everything that two men can physically do to each other. Lots of times even. But our first time together… I want you inside me.”
The blond man hesitated; he opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
“You weren’t the only one who dreamed, my love,” Edward whispered, and that decided it.
“I don’t know what I need to do to get you ready.”
“More oil on your cock, more on your fingers that you put on my hole; try to get two fingers in.” He considered what he’d felt of Stede’s prick already and revised his estimate. “Maybe three.”
“I’m worried I’m going to hurt you.”
“I don’t think you can… but I want you to try.”
“To hurt you? Why, my darling?”
“Because I want to feel every sensation you can ever give me. If it’s a part of you, I want it for me. You won’t hurt me so bad that I’ll die, and the moment we’re past it it’ll feel so good. So give it to me. All of you.”
In the moment of consideration Edward shifted around, carefully drawing his stiff left leg up and between the two of them then curling onto his right side, reaching up for a pillow to put under his knee. The position had the advantage of spreading his ass open, and he knew that what Stede could see in the moonlight would entice him.
“Come here, either side of my good leg. Come into me,” he breathed, opening up the bottle again, reaching for Stede’s wrist and pouring a goodly amount into his palm.
Stede distributed it between his hands, reaching up and putting two dripping fingers into the cleft of Edward’s ass; he reached to guide them, bearing down, and was glad that his body had gotten enough experience to ease this along. When the digits sank into his heat he groaned; when they curled unconsciously he cried out. “It’s good, it’s good, fuck, keep going,” he managed. “Want the rest of you.”
Two more strokes to both of them and Stede was moving up, sliding his fingers out to replace them with the tip of his cock, oily hands on the top of Edward’s thigh and up to his shoulder to drag him down and impale him.
When all of his warmth was around all of Stede, the pale man sighed and quivered, undone. Edward reached up and touched his face, stroked his hair again.
“I know. It’s a lot, I know. My love. You’re so good,” he said, leaning up as he pulled Stede down, pressing their foreheads together.
“This… fuck,” his captain breathed.
“I know, love. I want you to take me. Make love to me, ravish me. When you do I’m gonna come.” The words came out with barely a breath, a string of pleas.
“Hold me. Kiss me, while I – I need you to touch me.”
“‘m right here. Give it all to me.”
Stede’s arms were a gilded cage around him. The blonde man let the weight of his torso rest on Edward’s side, eyes shut on the sensation; he would ease his clinch just long enough to draw back, then tighten slowly to thrust all the way in again.
They were entangled; Edward focused on his face, stroking the line of his jaw and his cheeks, his lips, kissing the tip of his chin – and he realized that Stede needed the grounding sensation of touch so desperately because his wife had never touched him in this.
Not that she was the only one to blame – both Stede and his societal expectations had been in the marital bed also. Whatever they’d done he was expected to do quietly, dryly, respectfully… not vocally, not oozing wet with all these uncouth fluids, not with familiar loving intimacy.
Speak it. He’s gotta know. He’s gotta know that it’s me and my body he's in, not anyone else’s. He’s gotta know he’s free to feel it all.
“I love it, Stede. Love the feel of your cock inside me, it’s so good. I want you to fuck me just how you want. I want you to fill me up with your come. I want you to feel it when I come for you.”
“Fuck,” Stede said again and this time it was a needy whine.
Speak it all.
“I love you, Stede. I’ll love you as long as there’s breath in both our bodies, and after. Ever after.”
His eyes snapped open; Stede stared down at him in awe then, his hips still rolling into Edward’s backside.
“Ed,” he managed. “Loved you from the very first moment, every moment after. As long as there’s breath in both our bodies. And always. My dearest–”
“Yes, give it to me. I want it.”
The hand on his thigh went down between his legs, found Edward’s aching erection and fondled just the over-sensitized tip of it, in a way that hurt as wonderfully as it aroused. Ed felt his plateau shatter, felt the wave break over him and tingle everywhere it went; he clenched reflexively and that was all it took to tear Stede apart.
Their cries echoed in the night air, but went unnoticed amid the raucous streets of the Republic.
Edward swooned in the sheets, feeling the twin pulses fade as they eased into delicious languor. Stede’s left hand did not resist when he pulled it to his face and licked his own ejaculate off it leisurely, tasting a bit of the coconut in the oil.
The blonde man was curled with his cheek against the curve of Edward’s shoulder, and the shuddering gasps of his breathing told Ed that there were tears mixed into the climax.
“Sweet love,” he whispered, kissing the top of his curly head. “My lover. Come lay down on the bed; I’ll get us cleaned up.”
“But I should–”
“You did most of the hard work this time around. You can do the mopping up next time. Lay down and let me take care of you now.”
Slowly Stede withdrew, then found an empty patch of coverlet and carefully collapsed, oily hands held over his body so as not to stain the sheets. Edward paused just long enough to stroke his tears away with the side of his thumb.
The pitcher and basin were on a stand by the window; Blackbeard knew he would be painted in the white moonlight and gloried in it, looking over to see his beloved watching from the bed as he tended to himself. Everything two men can do to each other – I’ll show you all of it and you’ll love it. You’ll receive those experiences from my hands like I do the poetry from your lips.
He wet another washcloth and wrung it out, then carried it to Stede and gently cleaned his hands, his groin. He followed it with the towel to dry off and then they were both remedied enough not to muss the sheets too much so he pulled them back and put Stede beneath them.
Soon they were entwined once more; Ed’s left leg supported on Stede’s thigh, his head on Stede’s chest. Stede’s fingers were in his hair, holding as if he thought Edward would vanish into the air if he let go.
“Shilling for your thoughts, Captain Bonnet,” he murmured affectionately.
Stede took a breath.
“'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,’ ” he quoted. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wand'ring bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.’ ”
Cradled and supported within Stede’s warmth, he caressed the blond man’s bare side and felt himself drowsy and safe. “There’s more to it than that; I can feel it in you.”
Stede reached down, stroking his fingers into Ed’s beard to turn his face up. His brown gaze was intense in Edward’s as he continued: “‘Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come… ’”
He reached up with the side of his thumb to stroke the laugh-lines at the corner of Ed’s eye.
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.’ ”
“That’s… that’s beautiful. Who wrote that one, m’love?”
“William Shakespeare. He knew loves like ours, too.”
“Will you read it all to me, then?”
“I will.” Stede kissed him thoroughly, with abiding gentleness. “And one day you’ll read it all back to me.”
“I promise.”
“So do I.”
The image, staged some while later, recorded onto a fresh page and framed for Captain’s private enjoyment in a place where no one else could see it except Edward Teach: a knee brace around a muscled leg, being slowly unfastened by a pair of well-shaped masculine hands. The hands are bare past the wrist and suggest the arms may be naked. The ring finger of the left hand has dipped between the leather strap of the brace and the leather of the trouser leg below, pressing against the man’s inner thigh in an intimate caress.