♥ The Slippery Gibbet ♥ Medium Aphro ♥
She should have known that it was far too good to last for long and that her disguise wasn't good enough to last for long either. There was only so much on could do to disguise being a girl. Certainly she chest was strapped down and her curly hair tucked into a cap and she had long since swapped her skirts for britches. But there was no disguising
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Perhaps she had also expected the captain of this ship to be a man, but the figure in the door was fairly obviously a feminine one, dressed all in pitch black, shirt and coat and breeches and boots, blonde hair tied at the nape of her neck. She was young - older than Pasha by at least a decade, but younger than the grizzled and harsh men who made up her crew. Her skin was weather-tanned, and there were a few fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but it was not difficult to imagine she might have been some young eligible maiden at one time, perhaps a highborn lady.
"The trick about having dressed as a man once," she said, in a low, smooth, unreadable voice, "is that you can catch when someone else is doing a rotten job of it." Forthrightly, she strode across the deck, catching one of the other woman's brunette curls between slim, callused fingers and giving it a light tug.
"You're too pretty." A slight arch of her brows and a little twitch at the corner of her mouth. "Maybe it's the eyes."
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...the Captain of the pirate ship was a woman.
Pasha blinked dumbly at her for a few seconds. This was not what she had been expecting at all and the wideness of her eyes and the shock that she couldn't even think to disguise at the moment was openly showing on her face making that fact all too clear. When the young woman finally snapped back to her senses the first words from her mouth were. "I am not a girl." It was slightly ridiculous denying it now, but it was all she had left. "My name is Pavel. I just hawe long hair." It was a lame excuse but it had worked more times than she had dared to hope.
"I am looking for my brother, Alexander. Is he on this ship?" She questioned, knowing she was pushing her luck, being so cheeky to a pirate, but there was no way she was going to go home without her older brother.
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"No. And watch your tongue. I haven't decided what to do with you yet." Her voice was still even, measured; if she was actually angry, it didn't show. Oh, she had a fierce temper, when provoked, but Pasha hadn't done that yet.
Crossing to a nearby chair, Alex sat down - and she didn't sit primly like a woman should have, but rather more like a man, knees slightly apart with her elbows resting on them, hands folded beneath her chin, regarding the brunette thoughtfully.
"What's your real name?"
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Pasha promptly shut her mouth, pressing her lips together in a thin line. She didn't want to anger the pirate but at the same time Pasha had always had a horrible tendency to run her mouth off at the very worst of times. "Pav--" She stopped herself, giving a sigh. "Pasha. My name is Pasha."
She watched the woman carefully with her eyes large and wide, frowning only slightly. What a perfectly odd woman.
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"Pasha," she repeated, as if trying out the name to see how it sounded from her own lips. And then she smiled a little, the expression unreadable, and reached for a shot glass and a bottle of rum on the table nearby, pouring herself a drink and deliberately not offering Pasha any.
"Mister Crooks told me you invoked the right of parley." Her voice was thoughtful, like she was simply making an observation.
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"I only asked in order to awoid harm and to be able to ask if my brother was aboard this wessel but as he is not, I should like to go back to my ship now." Oh, right, she had to be polite, right? Pasha certainly didn't want to be thrown into the water, she couldn't swim for a start. "Please."
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"Oh, I can't do that." She smiled only slightly, and sat back in her chair, crossing her legs, drink caught in the long fingers of one hand. "Not when I can get some use out of you. Do you have any skills besides navigation?"
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"I was a nawal officer for three month, I know nawigation, I speak three languages fluently and two non-fluently, I am an excellent markswoman and I am not going to be a pirate. So if you will leawe me at the next port then I will appreciate it greatly, madam." Pasha listed, chin stuck out stubbornly as she looked fearlessly at the woman. This was probably a horrible idea but she wasn't about to be bullied into piracy by some harpy.
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"This is my ship," she told her, as if Pasha needed the reminder, "and I will do as I like with you." Her fingers relaxed slightly, some of the initial anger going out of her expression, replaced with a more thoughtful look. "I could use you as a gunner. The last one took sick and died a few weeks ago."
Her lips twitched again in a faint, less than kind smile. "The alternative, of course, is that I sell you to the highest bidder when we reach port - which will be some days yet, so you'd best get used to being here. Or I could give you to the men. It's been a long time since any of them have been ashore long enough to have a woman."
That wasn't an idle threat, and the look in her eyes said as much. Either Pasha could learn to be a pirate - which would afford her at least some degree of protection - or not. Idly, Alex's thumb was tracing the line of the younger woman's throat, just touching her, feeling the smooth, unblemished skin under her hand. Completely unintentionally, she was distracted by the sensation - it had been a long time since she'd touched anyone at all. And now she was wishing she hadn't made that threat to give her to the men, startled by the thought that she might have liked to keep her for herself.
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"I would rather you threw me to the sharks than your men, frankly, and I am a nawigator, not a gunner." Surely this woman wouldn't keep her prisoner? That was against the law, but then again she was a Pirate. "I only wish to go back to my ship." And she prayed that it wasn't sitting in Davy Jones' locker about now. "Presuming that is that it is not destroyed."
"I do not wish to be a pirate and I do not wish to be a whore for your men either. I will make an agreement with you, I will do whatewer you wish, excepting your crew, providing you drop me off at the newt port of call." Pasha attempted to bargain. Perhaps if she appealed to the woman's human side? "All I want to do is to find my brother and to bring him safely home."
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"It would be a little difficult for me to let you return to your ship," she admitted. "Seeing as she was already taking on water when we boarded, I expect the rest of her crew is food for the fishes by now." Cannonballs were fairly good at sinking ships, honestly.
Alex had little room for compassion or kindness. Perhaps at one time she might have, but to show mercy was to show weakness, and the last thing she could afford to do was to display anything that might mark her as soft. Some of her crew honestly respected her, but she was also aware that some of them loathed her, and any of them might challenge her captaincy in an instant. And if she lost... well, then she was only a woman aboard a pirate ship, and not much good ever came of that.
She admired Pasha's determination, really, she did. But simply letting her go wasn't something she could do. "Whatever I wish," she echoed, regarding Pasha lingeringly. The girl was very pretty, it was true - and while Alex didn't usually turn to women to satisfy herself, she also rarely had the option of taking a man to her bed. There were only a few who would openly admit to being interested in a woman who was so brash and forceful as to be in command of a pirate ship - she wasn't demure and sweet and yielding, and even if she knew there was something in most men that found that alluring, so few of them would admit it. And there was something in her that could appreciate the touch of a woman, if only because another woman usually knew what felt good.
"Have you ever been with a woman before?" There was no way to ask this except forthrightly.
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"T-that...I do not understand the relewance of such a manner of question. I told you. I will not hawe sex with your crew." Maybe that was it, this damned woman was going to humiliate her by forcing her to be intimate with one of the whores they must have kept on the ship. Pasha's cheeks were bright red by now and she looked utterly flustered.
Her mother was going to murder her if she ever found out about such shameful things and Pasha, well she had given up all hope of having a husband by now. Men did not like girls who ran away from home to bring back their stray brothers and who wore trousers. It was too scandalous.
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"You really are an idiot," she murmured, almost teasingly, and stood up, leaning down to kiss the younger woman full on the lips. It wasn't a particularly sweet kiss, but neither was it overly rough, either - just insistent, wanting. The contact made heat surge in her, and she groaned softly. It really had been a very, very long time.
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It was certainly different to her experiences with the Captain's daughter, giggling and sweet, there was very little innocence in the kiss but she quickly found herself responding, kissing back. She would never be so brazen as to start something like this herself but she was certainly no shrinking violet.
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And there was nothing at all innocent about the kiss - she didn't kiss like an inexperienced girl, for one thing, but like a woman who knew what she was doing. One of her hands went to Pasha's hip, tugging her in closer as she tilted her head to get a better angle on the kiss, tongue flicking out to taste her more fully.
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Her hands somehow managed to curl into Alex's shirt, so this was evidently what she wanted in exchange for her to get to port, tilting her head towards her and letting her eyes close as she pressed against her. It was certainly...amoral but Pasha highly doubted that this was ever going to be something she would admit to the minister back home.
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