CHAPTER SEVEN

Not a thief? Or a man?? Well, she’d news for him, news she didn’t care if she broadcast from the crow’s nest. Crocodiles? Crocodiles? She wouldn’t just swallow crocodiles, a Mississippi of them, its tributaries too—whole—she’d swallow an emporium. Of elephants, of giraffes. Before she’d stay here, whatever he thought. As for being his bed slave? Not rather.? Well, how glad was she, she'd sooner die. As for his remarks about stealing his backside? When she’d taken such pains to disguise it?

“Jesus’s sake, what did you have to go saying all that for? Can’t you just hold your big, fat tongue ‘stead of rousin’ his temper?”

“No, Gentle, I’m afraid I couldn’t.” Big? Fat? The cheek of some of those without the benefit of a mirror was seldom less than amazing. “I don’t think you understand. The situation I’m in here. This is not where I belong.”

“I hope you think the rest of us do, Milady Poshlugs—”

“Poshlugs? This? From fat ones? How typical when there’s a man involved for you to try to demean me by referring to my ears as being upper-class Still, if you just keep your equally gross mouth shut about me getting over the side here, I can escape and you can have him all to yourself. How’s that for a good deal?”

“You really think you’re competition?”

“What? I beg your pardon?”

“But let’s just suppose for the sake of argument, you are.”

Suppose? There was no suppose about it. She was. Look at this grossly larded backside with short cropped hair. A grossly larded backside that was in danger of sinking this part of the ship, drowning each and every one of them.

“Do you really think he’d want someone who can’t shut their big gub? Men don’t like that. Unless it’s on them.”

Dear God, at all costs she must swallow a Noah’s ark of animals, rather than show how deeply ingrained with shock she was by the sheer crudity of the words. Especially in regard to him. “Oh? And you know what men like do you?”

When she’d be lucky to get a man to look at her, never mind anything else. Although the size of her, she’d be hard to miss.

“I know enough.”

“I see. The convent whore, were you?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised what I was.” The soft chuckle was unexpected. “That’s how I know—look around you, go on—this could be a very good life. So I’d just sit back down if I were you.”

“What? Are you crazy? I’m not staying here.”

“Well, unless you can swim, I don't see you've a lot of choice.”

“What?”

My God, had she seriously just gotten in an argument with a gargantuan goat, when a black sail not only flapped overhead, the shore line retreated into a misty shroud?

No. No. Not when she couldn’t swim. Not a stroke. Even in six inches of water. And she’d rather swallow an ocean of crocodiles than drown.

Unless . . ? She swallowed what felt, not just like that ocean but every ocean on the planet. He wanted a bed slave.

She made that her price.