The Pirate's Witch (13 page)

Her bottom clenched as she prepared for another strike.
 
It whistled across her fleshy cheeks and she shrieked as her hips thrust into the hard wood of the chair.
 
Deegan could see her muscles squeeze desire from her depths as it began to trail down the inside of her left thigh.
 
His hand drew back, and another welt rose on her thighs while she screamed.
 
Her cream was flowing freely now, and he knew one more strike would end her suffering.
 
The welt raised on her bottom, and she wailed and gasped his name in passion.
 
Deegan was ecstatic as he put the cane back and watched her back shake with her sobs.

He removed his cock, which had been straining against his pants since he had watch her bend over the chair and display herself.
 
Deegan stroked her a few times, centered his shaft, and plunged deep in one thrusting motion.
 
She gasped and quietly sobbed as she gripped against him.
 
She was perfect, he decided.
 
It was as he was suspecting: Clarette was becoming aroused as she submitted to his torments, and she refused to let unconsciousness claim her and cause her to miss any tortures.
 
They rocked into an explosive climax.

Deegan had known from almost the first time he looked into her frightened turquoise eyes centuries ago, that she would learn to submit to pain.
 
He helped her up and wiped the tears coursing down her cheeks.
 
“Into bed, little witch.”
 
He no longer feared her, because even if she could remember the magic, the pirate knew she would never again use the words against him.

In the morning, before he rose, he knew he would have her dutifully finding his cock with her lips.
 
She was always available in any position or restraint when he had need of her, and on most occasions he stroked her to her own passionate release, enjoying her gasps and moans and the convulsive gripping of her walls against his shaft.
 
The routine and monotony of their days and nights were relieved by his creative sadistic uses for her, and Monique drifted to an existence of matching the passion in his eyes for what he devised.
 
The light brush of his fingers across her breast, with the murmured, “Clarette, I have need of you,” caused a heated, wet, clenching response.

Their routine was settled and quietly accepted, as Deegan had needs and Clarette supplied them.
 
Close to the end of the first year, Monique woke to find Deegan gone.
 
She panicked and rose, finally hearing quiet voices by the morning fire.

“The brothers have come to terms with their women, and they give them decided leeway.
 
The witch’s curse scared the hell out of them,” the voice chuckled.
 
Monique realized it was the Quartermaster.

“How is your redhead?” Deegan asked.

“As predictable as that squall your witch drummed up on us.
 
She keeps me busy, and must have a particular fondness for the cane,” Johnny laughed.
 
“What I came to discuss with you, before we have our celebration, is the curious stories Peter has told me his girl has been reciting to him.”

Deegan thought back to Marsha, and remembered how closely she observed the ship and the pirates when they were captured.
 
She seemed to understand, more than the others, their circumstances.

“Do you remember an unlikely sort named Jacques Cervais?” Johnny continued.

“He was that inept sailor who tried to join with us,” Deegan replied.
 
“Somehow, the fool ended up with his own sloop to Captain, and on his first trip out he tried to capture a Téméraire with his little ship and crew of ten.
 
If I recall, he was the one captured, and hanged for his efforts,” Deegan shrugged.

“Turns out, he was this gal’s relative, though in her account he managed two sails before meeting the gallows.
 
That is why Peter pays only half a mind to the stories she tells.
 
I am having trouble remembering some of the nonsense he has relayed to me, but you will want to be talking to him about some of it,” Johnny finished and rose.
 
“I just wanted to give you a little background on how content your crew is.
 
I will see you in a few evenings, Captain.”

Deegan knew that Johnny was not going to tell him anything further, though his curiosity was peeked with his news about Peter and his woman.
 
When Johnny left the clearing, Deegan smiled into the fire.
 
He could sense Clarette’s presence by the cave wall.
 
“Come, girl, give your pirate a proper welcome to the new day.”
 
Monique quickly dashed to kneel by his side.

For the next few days, she desperately wanted to ask Deegan about the celebration.
 
She had no idea if the women were even brought to the event, but the thought of seeing her friends… the thought of seeing anyone else after the year… excited her.
 
She wondered if the boat reappeared, though she gathered from Deegan it would be many more years before it returned.

Deegan knew she was anxiously wondering about the upcoming event, but said nothing as it seemed to promote a most agreeable nature within her, albeit somewhat distracted.
 
The day of the anniversary finally came, and was announced by Johnny loudly blasting a cannon shot across the island.
 
It was a small six pounder that they had taken from a ship with plenty of ammunition.

Deegan brought Monique to the pond and they washed up after their morning activities.
 
Over the months, she had boiled different flowers and fruits to the soapberry tea, and now the shampoo had a delicate scent instead of the bitter residue it had when she first experienced the concoction.
 
She carefully brushed out Deegan’s hair and then her own, and was practically quivering with excitement when Deegan rose and stared down at her.

“You will kneel quietly by my side and do as I say, or you will be gagged and bound until the celebration is over,” he said sternly.
 
He lifted her to her feet and stared into her wide eyes while brushing his thumbs down her cheeks.
 
“And perhaps, if I am pleased with you, I will give you time with your friends.”

Monique’s face broadened to a smile, and Deegan added as an afterthought, “I would not be telling the brothers you did not curse them.
 
Apparently, they have been much more agreeable to their women.”

Monique smiled up at him, content to share their conspiracy.

Epilogue

It had been a year since their capture, and a year since they had seen each other, and they knelt quietly in a circle with the pirates studying them.
 
Deegan knew that they were anxiously waiting for his permission to speak freely with each other, and he deliberately drew out the moment... besides, Peter was telling him something Marsha had kept insisting since almost the day of the capture, and Deegan was trying to discover the truth.
 
He finally asked Peter to have Marsha relay the story herself.

Marsha nodded nervously and began, “When my friends agreed to the sailing trip, I put together a gift for each of them.
 
I traced each of their families back several generations, and was excited when I learned that we all had ties to the islands.
 
It was one of the reasons I choreographed the trip to the Caymans, and I was going to tell them my discovery when we were there for the celebration.
 
We all have a relative who was sailing together back to France when the revolution was beginning in Haiti.

When I came to Monique, I focused on the mysterious identity of the woman in the portrait hanging in her bedroom.
 
It took me months to finally track down information, and I was led to a historical society on Haiti.
 
They actually had what they said was one of the woman’s journals, but they made me send them a picture of the portrait before they would tell me anything else.
 
I guess it satisfied them, because after sending them fifty bucks, they sent me a copy of the journal.”
 
Marsha looked at Monique.
 
“I was going to give it to you when we reached the Caymans.”

“Anyway, the woman in the portrait was a girl named Clarette Daniella Fontaine.
 
The journal began when she arrived back in France after narrowly escaping a pirate attack on her first attempt to return home, with six of her friends.
 
She married a French soldier, and she reported she found the experience dull and unsatisfying.
 
The man was killed in the war two years later, and he left her a small inheritance.”

“She missed the islands, and after a terrible fight with her parents over securing another husband, she announced that no one she could possibly meet in France would be suitable.
 
They disowned her and she sailed back to Haiti where she moved in with some of her uncle’s former slaves.
 
I guess, for the times, it was quite a scandal.”

“Clarette knew the workings of her uncle’s former successful holdings, and she helped her friends become wealthy.
 
Although she chose to live frugally, she invested her money into businesses on Tortuga, ensuring the prosperity of the island, especially the outlying areas where pirates were rumored still to be hiding.
 
In return for her generosity helping them re-build and stay free, she increased her wealth considerably.
 
Her original investments are still in Haiti and Tortuga, but by her request they have been filtered through so many solicitors that now it’s difficult to track the source.”

“Clarette wrote in her journal that she had been too young and too foolish to recognize the other, dangerous side of her soul when she had met the pirate.
 
The result of the meeting was a daughter, and her parents forced her into the marriage by reminding her how lucky she had been that the French Captain had been so mesmerized by her beauty that he was willing to accept the scandal of the pirate’s offspring.”

“After her husband died, Clarette never married again, and they only way she knew to make reparations to her lost lover was to care for the island he had called home.
 
Her attempts to unravel the curse with the African women were unsuccessful, and they told her that her emotions were so intense when she had cursed him that it would take time for the strength to weaken its hold.
 
The best they could do was cast a spell, that the two would be together again one day.”

Marsha again looked at Monique, and she noticed the tears in her eyes.
 
“I thought it was such a romantic story, and I thought you would be happy to finally know about the portrait.
 
Peter said Clarette washed overboard in the storm, and that what I was telling him was just a story, but I think I knew what was going on almost as quickly as the Captain.
 
I just didn’t get the chance to tell you.”

Monique’s mind felt like it was splintering.
 
The little hints of arousal and emotion that always seemed to surface when Deegan was near her began to storm over any residual dislike and fear she had for the man.
 
Monique felt as though an entire part of her mind was disappearing, the time with Frank, the time before the pirate, were being sequestered in some black hole in the back of her thoughts.

Marsha looked up at Deegan.
 
He was watching Monique with an expression that was slightly awed that the woman he had obsessed over for centuries had spent her life trying to make up for her hasty actions.
 
Marsha said, “Tell him, Monique.
 
It isn’t fair for either one of you to suffer any more.”

Monique’s head was still splitting into two distinct patterns, and trying to weave a tentative agreement where the edges met.
 
Her eyes watered and her fingers rubbed her temples.
 
“To avoid a scandal from my father’s business ventures, my name was changed when I moved to the States.
 
In Paris, I was Monique Clarette Duboise.”

The End