Captive Passions

Book 1: Captive Series

by Fern Michaels

Genres: Sea Adventures; Romance; Action & Adventure Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

International bestselling author Fern Michaels fashions a sparkling romance about a beautiful young woman on a quest for vengeance, and the forbidden desire she finds in the arms of a dangerous enemy. . . Boldly commanding a sleek Spanish ship, Sirena Córdez possesses a headstrong and impatient demeanor that inspires both shock and respect from her male crew. But when a band of marauders attacks the vessel, killing her beloved sister, Sirena vows to destroy the man she believes is responsible for the assault. Ruthless and impossibly handsome, Regan van der Rhys will stop at nothing to ensure his company's success in the Spice Islands. Blaming Regan for her family's tragedy, Sirena poses as his demure bride and plots revenge. Yet he stirs her blood as no man has before. Desperate to expose his treachery, the lady captain lures her husband on a fateful journey at sea, where each will fall under an enticing spell of burning passion as the truth is uncovered. . . Praise for Fern Michaels and Her Novels "Heartbreaking, suspenseful, and tender." — Booklist on Return to Sender "A big, rich book in every way. . ..I think Fern Michaels has struck oil with this one." —Patricia Matthews on Texas Rich 150,000 Words

Release date: February 6, 2014

Publisher: eClassics

Print pages: 458

Sample

The sleek, three-masted frigate seemed to scrape the late afternoon heavens of the South Pacific with her topsail, as she skipped and frolicked before the playful persuasion of the easterly trade winds. With flair and grace the pride of the Córdez Shipbuilding Line was skillfully demonstrating her prowess in this her maiden voyage, to the proud pleasure of her owner, the young and vivacious Sirena Córdez. Named for the Greek goddess of the sea, the Rana sported fresh decks scrupulously scoured with holy stones and a stern castle whose varnish had not yet dulled from the salt spray.

Sirena impatiently paced the deck, her bottle-green eyes on the sails. “If I were skippering the Rana I’d steer her two points into the wind. The sail would draw fuller! What do you think, Tio Juan?” Sirena turned to her uncle, a tall, graying, elegant gentleman of the Spanish aristocracy.

He knew this impetuous niece of his had no need for his opinion; she was a better sailor than he would ever be. She was deferring to his age and experience out of love and respect. “What do I think? That you’d better allow the captain to sail this ship! He’s complained to me of how you interfere with his orders. I wouldn’t care to have a mutinous captain on my hands, Sirena.”

“Spare me, Tio,” Sirena laughed, her chin lifting with a hint of her stubbornness and headstrong character. “If I hadn’t taken some matters into my own hands, we would have lost days! Didn’t I tell you it was best to sacrifice cargo for speed? I’ve no doubt we’ll set a new record for the distance between Spain and Java.”

“Sirena,” Don Juan Córdez said in an indulgent tone, “has it ever occurred to you the empty cargo holds are the reason behind Captain López’s black moods? He’s a hard businessman and has no time for dalliance. Yet you insisted your Rana carry little cargo. That cuts his profits from this journey in half.”

“He’s being compensated,” Sirena answered hotly, her full mouth forming a pout. “This is my ship! The captain is a grog-soaked drunk! I’ll never understand why you commissioned him to sail my ship in the first place. And his ablebodied seamen! Straight from the dregs of Hell! They’re poor beasts who have been press-ganged from the worst ports on earth. They handle my ship roughly and I won’t have it!” Sirena stamped her narrow-booted foot for emphasis. “The Rana is mine and I intend to get her to port in one piece, even if I have to throw the crew overboard!”

Juan Córdez watched his niece with an expression that contained equal amounts of admiration and awe. Her wide green eyes glittered fiercely when she spoke of the Rana; her dark, unruly hair now billowed free of its pins.

“It was unwise of your father to take you with him on his sea voyages. And to teach you the art of the cutlass and rapier!” He hesitated, throwing his long, slim arms up in a gesture of hopelessness. “Sirena, you should be thinking of marriage and children. You’re past eighteen, you should be settling down . . .” He shook his iron-gray aristocratic head forlornly. “I only want what’s best for you, child.”

“As you know, Tio Juan, the good sisters at the convent adored Isabel, but despaired of me,” Sirena laughed, a glimmer of remembered mischief lighting her eyes, “and father felt that only he could guide my youthful energy.”

“And now you’re going to tell me about wise old de Silva, your late father’s master-at-arms, who took such a motherly interest in you, seeing to your studies in geography, science, Dutch, English, French, and Latin, sitting up with you when you had the croup, and”—he pierced her with a disapproving stare—“teaching you to use of the cutlass, the rapier, the scabbard—”

With lynx-like grace she spun about. Quicker than the eye could see, she had Juan’s scabbard in her hand, the point pressed firmly against his ribs, Her head thrown back, revealing the long, graceful arch of her throat, her hair, spilling down her back, she laughed again—the silvery, tinkling tones dancing over the waves. “De Silva was the best damn teacher in all of Spain and you know it, Tio Juan!”

Córdez pretended shock as he looked at her reprovingly. “And that’s not all de Silva taught you. Your speech is as salty and briny as his own. Am I doomed to watch you become a sinewy old spinster, who for want of a cool nature and a sweet tongue loses all chance for marriage and children?”

“Why do you chastise me, Tio? Is it perhaps because you’re jealous of my talents?” she teased lightly, her eyes softening as she gazed fondly at the man who had assumed responsibility for herself and her sister, Isabel, on Don Antonio’s death not quite a year ago.

“It’s true, Sirena, that you have an expertise few men possess, but it’s not a sport for a gentlewoman.”

“Then I am the first! Please Tio Juan, I’ve heard this all before. That I’m a woman and although I do possess some talent in the art of fencing I overestimate myself—I’d be useless opposing a man who really meant me harm.” She sighed with repressed vexation. “As for marriage, I’ve yet to meet a man I would prefer to my ship. I’ve only to look at Isabel and how she dreads this ridiculous marriage our father arranged before his death. She wants only to join a convent. She has a genuine calling for the order and you know it, Tio. Perhaps when we reach Java you’ll speak to Señor van der Rhys and tell him Isabel wants only to be left to her prayers.” Sirena grasped his arm earnestly. “Say that you’ll speak to him, try to buy him off, anything!”

“Child, you speak of our family honor! Your sister has been promised to Regan van der Rhys and it will not be changed! Isabel hasn’t your verve and resilience but she’s strong in a way you could never be. She accepts life, and endures.”

“You may think I am obsessed with my sister. I’m not, I assure you, but I know her better than you do. I love her and it saddens me to know she’s being denied what she wants most, to become a nun. She wants to be close to God! Can you deny her that?”

“Your protection of Isabel is most admirable, but quite unnecessary.”

Sirena accepted his gentle admonishment quietly. Great green eyes brightened by tears looked up at him. “I shall never understand why Father promised her to anyone—much less a Dutchman and Protestant.”

“I am as uncertain of Don Antonio’s motives as you are, my dear, although I know Regan van der Rhys’s mother was a Catholic. Perhaps one day we shall discover them. Though, with the elder van der Rhys dead, I have little reason to believe we shall.”

“The Dutch nations breeds milky-skinned barbarians. And this van der Rhys is with the East India Company, a competitor of the Spanish Crown! How could Father do such a thing?”

“You make your father sound like a criminal, Sirena. And I will not have that! Sirena, your father was more than a Spanish grandee, he was above all a man of business—with a sound head for it. You, more than anyone, know to what extent he succeeded, since it is to you he left the bulk of his fortune and all of his shipyards and vessels. Perhaps—and I am but guessing—his mind ‘worked this way: he had two daughters, one of them independent-minded, the other pliable if over-religious. He had little hope of ensuring your future by marriage; your husband will be of your own choosing, when and if you will. He therefore left his wealth to you. Isabel he knew he could marry—and doubtless wanted to marry, for he had little belief that convent life would make his elder daughter happy, regardless of what you seem to think. The favor he did for Chaezar Alvarez afforded Don Antonio the opportunity of arranging a prosperous marriage for Isabel, and of sending her far from our Inquisition-hounded Spain, with its cloisters and black gowns!”

Usually a man of few words, Don Juan Córdez exhibited his pent-up exasperation with Sirena through this long dissertation.

Sirena wanted to remain on good terms with her uncle. Together they enjoyed an open, loving relationship. She also knew him to be a man of strong convictions and a deep sense of duty. At the moment, he saw it as his duty to marry Isabel to Mynheer van der Rhys. She knew it irked him that he would probably never be able to arrange a marriage for herself—her energy and independence were an embarassment to him. Quickly, Sirena stood on tiptoe, kissed Juan’s leathery cheek, and fled down the deck to the sterncastle, where she and her sister shared quarters.

The red glow of the setting sun reflected off the calm, azure sea through the sterncastle’s mullioned window. Isabel was utilizing the last light of day to read her prayer book. Upon Sirena’s entrance, she dropped her slim hands to her lap and glanced up, her liquid-brown eyes gentle and doe-like.

Isabel’s composure irritated Sirena, who would have much preferred to find her sister spent from crying, eyes red and swollen with tears. Uncle Juan had been correct in his remarks about twenty-year-old Isabel’s inner strength. At times Sirena believed that she was more upset about Isabel’s thwarted vocation than Isabel was.

It seemed to her that Isabel had always been destined to join the Order. When the girls’ mother had died in childbirth with Sirena, Don Antonio, having no close female relative to see to their upbringing, placed one-year-old Isabel with the holy sisters and had one of his young servant maids midwife the infant Sirena before confiding her in turn to the sisters a few months later. Isabel fit very well, from the first, into the quiet and restricted life of the convent, while Sirena, from the time she first walked, was into one kind of mischief or another. By the age of ten she was incorrigible—demanding, to the sisters’ astonishment, to know why girls must either join a convent or marry and have babies, whereas boys were encouraged to seek exciting lives as warriors, explorers, and sailors. Having no answer to Sirena’s demanding questions, the piqued Mother Superior immediately sent word to Don Antonio Córdez, pleading with him to come and take away his inquisitive daughter.

Córdez first cajoled, then pleaded, and finally begged the Mother Superior to revoke her decision. The sister, nevertheless, held out. So that at last, with a wary glance at his exuberant daughter—sitting curiously inactive and composed across the dark-walled visitor’s room of the convent—he found himself not merely a wealthy shipbuilder and a father, but also a mother.

In addition to his shipyards, Don Antonio possessed a tidy fleet of trading vessels that sailed between West Africa and Cadiz. On one of three ships, retired from active service to become the don’s private pleasure boat, Isabel rejoined her sister for several weeks each summer. Although the older girl appeared to enjoy these excursions along Spain’s Atlantic coast and in the Mediterranean, her behavior was always so proper and decorous that it sometimes prompted Sirena to pull at Isabel’s hair and tease her unmercifully. Isabel endured all this, saying, “I shall pray for you, Sirena.”

“What has Captain López done this time, Sirena?” As was everything else about her, Isabel Córdez’s voice was gently modulated and unhurried.

“Nothing. If you must know, it’s you! Why don’t you put up a fight? You don’t want this marriage and you’ve resigned yourself to it! If you’d only kick and scream, I know Tio Juan would listen. But no, here you sit while I’m on deck pleading your case with Tio Juan.” Swiftly, she dropped to her knees and buried her head in her sister’s lap. “Isabel, I don’t want you out on the edge of nowhere, dependent on the whims of a barbaric Dutchman!”

Isabel lightly touched Sirena’s lustrous dark hair. “You silly! Don’t torment yourself so. We have no reason to suspect Señor—er, Mynheer van der Rhys is a barbarian. Besides, even if I did not marry him we wouldn’t be together any longer. It was my intention to join a cloistered order. Sirena, it’s time to put childhood behind us!”

The younger girl jumped to her feet. Were she a cat, Isabel could have imagined her snarling and baring her claws. Her words came fast and furious. “Is that what you think? That I want to prolong our childhood? That I want us to cling together like a pair of marmoset monkeys? Isabel, it would benefit you to hear me well! I don’t give one twit how you spend the rest of your days as long as it’s of your own choosing! If you want to be a nun, then you should be one. If you want to be a whore, then so should you be! What I object to is your being forced into a life you don’t want. You can’t fool me, Isabel, I hear you crying in the night. I see the aversion in your eyes when one of the crew looks at you the way men will look at a comely woman. Do you really expect me to believe you’re so strong that you could sleep with a man and let him have his way with you night after night, and not go crazy?”

“I like men . . . well enough, Sirena. I love Tio Juan,” Isabel protested.

“I’ve no doubt of that, Isabel,” Sirena went on, her voice calmer, softer. It was unbearable to hurt her sister this way, but it must be done. “But I also have no doubt that you have already committed yourself body and soul to God! In a way only one who seeks the religious order can understand. Please, Isabel, go to Tio and make him understand. If God has truly sent you the calling, perhaps He wants you to protest this marriage and He will grant you Divine Intervention.”

“Sirena dear, I know that I hear the call to become a nun. It is true, what you have said. And,” she sighed, smiling contentedly, “my faith in God is so strong that I know He will intervene somehow. . . and that this marriage will never come to pass.”

Isabel had spoken softly, her piquant face glowing with an inner faith. Sirena’s eyes lit up happily. So . . . Isabel had not given in to their father’s whim after all. She hoped to be saved from the approaching marriage.

Impetuously, Sirena hugged her sister tightly—not yet knowing that her sister’s words about God’s intervention would haunt her till the end of her days.

“Sail ho!” a loud cry rang out from high in the ship’s rigging. “Sail ho!”

“Where away?” the captain shouted.

Sirena, excitement heightening her vivid coloring, released Isabel from her embrace and ran out the door and up on to the deck.

A cry in the rigging answered the captain. “Directly astern, sir!”

“What flag does she fly?”

“No flag, Captain.”

Sirena swiveled about to face the stern, her hands to her forehead in order to shield her eyes. A brigantine was approaching them from the north, the crimson light of sunset giving it a black, spectral appearance. A chill penetrated Sirena as she peered into the distance.

Slipping up beside Juan Córdez, she said, “I don’t like her looks, Tio. Captain López! Loosen sail and full speed away,” Sirena shouted. “I see her sail and she gains on us!”

The captain shot her a disapproving look and ignored her command. “Swing those yardarms. Look lively, men. Heave to!”

“How dare you!” Sirena exploded. “This is my ship! Can’t you see she flies no flag? Do as I say! Full speed ahead!”

“Send Señorita Córdez to her quarters, Señor Córdez, or I’ll not be responsible for the men’s actions.” The captain’s voice was thick with warning—and, Sirena thought furiously, with grog.

“Sirena, you heard the captain. Go below with Isabel.”

“I won’t! The Rana is mine! Isabel is fine.” Turning again to face the captain, she commanded, “I won’t warn you again, Captain López. Full speed ahead!”

“She flies a distress flag on her foretopmast!” came the clear call of the Caleb, the young cabin boy, who had climbed into the rigging for a look at the vessel.

“It’s a trick, I tell you!” Sirena implored her uncle. “She doesn’t appear to be in distress, her speed is too great. She gains on us by the minute and that fool of a captain won’t listen!”

“Sirena, I insist you join your sister.” The determination in Juan’s eyes pierced her. Nimbly but sulkily, she stepped over a coil of rigging and headed for the sterncastle.

Isabel was sitting quietly, her hands folded in prayer, eyes downcast. Noticing Sirena’s presence, she crossed herself and looked up. “What’s all the shouting? Is something wrong?”

Sirena forced a smile in order to abate the alarm that widened her sister’s dark, long-lashed eyes, flushed her pale olive complexion and accentuated her still girlish heart-shaped face. “Everything is fine,” Sirena said, her hand going to Isabel’s gleaming black hair. “Go back to your prayers.”

An eternity crawled by as Sirena compelled herself to sit on her ornate but narrow bed listening intently for sounds out on deck. She felt the Rana’s slow pace; she was merely drifting. She heard the sounds of the crew slowing her ship and the angry shouts of Captain López. Then, finally, the bump and scrape of a second ship nestling up to Rana.

Startled, Isabel looked up at her sister, a questioning expression arching her brows. Sirena was unable to be still any longer.

“Stay here and don’t come out on deck!”

She reached for her rapier, which hung near the bed. Encumbered by her long skirts, she stumbled. With the rapier, Sirena tore the hem of her gown, then ripped upward to the level of her knees and crosswise, until she had made a short, tattered skirt. It allowed her free movement.

Cautiously and quietly, she closed the door behind her and moved up the steps toward the open deck, anger constricting her breast. Distress! In a pig’s eye! she thought. Wasn’t she her father’s daughter and hadn’t he schooled her well? And to think this stupid wretch of a captain had ignored her orders and allowed an assault on her Rana. There was no room for fear, only white-hot anger. If her father had been aboard he would have seen through the ruse. Now it must be left to her. She stood barely breathing, listening to the shouts on the mid-deck.

Creeping out further, to see what was happening, her heart pounded fiercely in surprise—the second ship was lashed slackly to her Rana. What was that in its rigging . . . A glint? God! she screamed silently. Her father had told her of marauding ships and of the harquebusiers who stood in their riggings sniping at the crew of their victim ships. She knew that first they would pick off the captain and then down the crew one by one.

Sirena, herself, had never seen it done, but instinct told her this was the situation. The square-rigged sails hid the marksmen from view; it would be as easy as shooting unsuspecting birds.

The ship was broadside to the Rana, and Sirena could see its captain standing on deck. Naked to the waist, his broad, deep chest was covered with a mat of thick brown hair. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted, “Do you have a man versed in medicine aboard? I have wounded men! We were attacked by pirates at sunup!”

The man spoke in English! Sirena noted with surprise. That cursed language of those old enemies of Spain, and the aiders and abettors of the Dutch in their war to gain independence from the Spanish.

Seeing that López did not understand him, the man began to use Spanish—but a garbled Spanish it was.

“We carry none!” came Captain López’s reply. He was unsteady on his feet and Sirena guessed that he was well on the way to intoxication—again! “How many wounded? Can your ship make port?”

From her position Sirena could see the crew of the brigantine. They had gathered behind their captain, evil sneers marking their faces. Cannons were jutting from the ship’s ports. What did they want? Couldn’t they see how high her Rana rode the waves? They must know she carried in her holds little more than what was necessary for the journey.

Anger blazed in Sirena’s eyes as the brigantine’s crew abruptly, and without warning, threw grappling hooks across the Rana’s deck rails. The result was instant chaos.

The Rana rocked from the force of a burst of cannon shot from her enemy while her crew hacked frantically with short-handled axes at the lines attached to the hooks embedded in their deck rails. The marauder’s crew now scrambled aboard the Rana and as Sirena raised her eyes she saw that she had been frighteningly correct. There were men in the brigantine’s rigging, their flintlock pistols aimed directly below. The Rana was outnumbered and outmaneuvered; her beautiful frigate would be totally disarmed within minutes.

Panic seized her, choking off all reason. She wouldn’t allow this, she couldn’t! She must fight for her ship, for her life!

Sirena moved out onto the deck, her rapier in hand. Taking a moment to orient herself, she ran to her uncle’s aid. He was fighting for his life, but was no match for the near-naked crewman of the brigantine, whose cutlass was swinging so widely and wickedly.

She advanced a step, and her eyes spewed flames as she thrust her sword at the surprised crewman, bringing up the weapon wth a forceful motion to knock the attacker’s arm awry, and bringing it down again with such force that the quarterdeck rail received a gash an inch deep. In that second the crewman lost his advantage and Juan pierced the man’s chest with his cutlass. Blood spurted from the wound and streamed from his open, gaping mouth.

Averting her eyes from the gore, Sirena swung about. Where was her crew? Hiding below decks, she would wager. “All hands to repel boarders!” she shouted, her voice ringing over the waters. “Fight, damn your eyes!” she yelled as she directed a highflying swing at one of the pirates. Taken by surprise by a woman bent on cutting him down, he was sent off his stride.

Sirena’s arm flashed in the twilight, her unruly, sable hair billowing out behind her. “You dare to assault my Rana! I’ll kill you first!” Her rapier flashed and jabbed, feinting to the right with a lithe movement, slashing at the pirate’s arm. Wildly, in frantic defense of her ship, she parried his advances. Unbridled savageness raging within her, she forgot the rules of the polite art of fencing: she had become a tumultuous barbarian defending herself and her own. When with one final slash she saw the pirate’s arm roll along the deck, instead of shock she felt herself near to elation. Could she have gone mad? Was this Sirena Córdez laughing cruelly at the bewildered, wounded pirate and calling, “Pick up your arm, dog.”

As he lay howling on the deck, Sirena snatched up his cutlass, which lay near the severed arm. Then she swung about—a blade now in each hand—to see how young Caleb was faring; she’d heard his voice a moment before. The half-grown lad had abandoned an English ship some months ago in Cadiz and had signed on to sail with Sirena’s small fleet of merchant vessels. She’d taken a great liking to the boy.

Within seconds, she found herself back to back with the boy—facing a new opponent. With a lunge and a jab, Sirena quickly had the man pinned to the ship’s rail, however, and without further ado she wiped the wet, crimson blade of her cutlass on her short, ragged-edged skirt.

Turning, she saw that Caleb was fighting far more valiantly than any twelve-year-old could be expected to do. But he was no match for his brawny attacker. Her head thrown back and her long legs apart, she shouted in order to be heard above the bedlam around her. “Caleb, push off the bow! If they fire into us again they’ll smash us to pieces! I’ll take this man for you.”

The boy gone, she attacked the man with her rapier, shrieking, “You had no right to board my ship! Now you’ll fight and die! I’ll not ask for quarter, nor do I give any!”

“I’ll cut your heart out and hang it from the topsail,” the pirate spat. “But first I’ll have my way with you, same as every man aboard this ship.”

For answer, Sirena brought up her cutlass.

The man was jarred from his feet as it caught his arm. Clumsily, he tried to regain his footing, but Sirena was too quick for him. In a lightning motion she struck once, then twice, forcing the pirate backwards. A fierce left jab—and he was pinned to a mast, his nostrils quivering in fear.

In a last frantic effort, he lashed out at her. For defense she plunged forward with the cutlass, sinking it in his chest but at the same time feeling a stinging sensation down her left arm. In surprise she saw red soaking through the sleeve of her tattered gown. Gasping with pain, she turned about, only to see her Uncle Juan’s body topple to the deck. The frigate’s crewmen were lying about now like slaughtered cattle. Rivers of blood ran everywhere.

“Quarter! Quarter!” the Rana’s crew were shouting. They fell silent, backing away, as the pirates picked their way among the dead bodies and came to stand before them awaiting their captain’s orders.

“Throw the stinking flesh overboard!” he roared in English. His command was instantly obeyed. Jeering obscenely, the pirate’s crew fell to their task. The sound of the dead and the half-dead hitting the water rang hideously in Sirena’s ears. Fighting back hot tears, she stood mute near the sterncastle, her shaking hand cupping the elbow of her injured arm.

“Spare one,” the pirate captain growled loudly. “The pretty one there by the sterncastle! I’ll have plans for her later,” he chortled, leering lewdly in Sirena’s direction. “But tie her hands. That young woman is too handy with a weapon!”

“Pray God they don’t find Isabel! Not alive. . .” Sirena whispered as two tall brigands strode towards her.

The pirate captain then set his crew to the task of emptying the hold. Within a half-hour nearly everything of real value was transferred to the brigantine, save food and water. Evidently they were not going to destroy the ship . . . her ship, Sirena mused as she stood, hands tied behind her, near the foremast.

The cruel shock of the twilight attack on the Rana, her Rana, had begun to wear off, however. Now Sirena trembled uncontrollably, her thoughts only on her sister Isabel’s fate. She grieved, too, for her uncle —he who had protected her for the past year. But he had died like a man; of that she was glad. Then her thoughts turned to her own part in the defense of the ship. Had that fighting, shrieking animal really been Sirena Córdez? Could she had been so merciless, so barbaric? But she had been compelled to it—to defend her ship and her family. It had to be done! She had been taught the art of self-defense, and to have done any less would have been idiocy. She had been like a tigress who defends her cubs, but she had not enjoyed taking men’s lives . . .

A hoarse shout suddenly broke the air as one of the pirates dragged Isabel Córdez onto the deck. “The prize! See the prize! And she prays! What do you think, men, does she pray for salvation or does she pray for—”

“Pig!” Sirena shouted, her eyes spitting fire. “Leave her alone! She is promised to God, she’s to join a convent!”

Raucous shouts of laughter greeted her statement. “A convent! When we finish with her, there’s not a convent that’ll have heir!”

The pirate leader called for order. “Take her below and let the men have their sport. Look lively now, we’ve many leagues to travel. This wench,” he said, roughly pulling Sirena against his sweating, hairy chest, “is mine. Only when I’m done with her is she yours!”

Outrage seized Sirena, fear gripped her innards. “Isabel! Isabel!” she screamed.

This couldn’t be happening! But it was, and the reality was paralyzing. Isabel, her sweet, gentle sister, who wanted only to be a bride of Christ, was writhing, struggling to be free of the brawny monster who pawed her roughly, intimately, heedless of her gasping sounds of protest, pitiful pleadings, and pale, terror-stricken face.

Laughing and sneering derisively, the lusty captain untied Sirena’s hands, dragged her across the frigate’s blood-slick deck, and threw her down near her sister. She struggled to get up, and kicked—her long legs aiming to strike a vulnerable mark. She screamed in protest, obscene oaths she hadn’t realized she knew, torn from her throat along with low, heart-wracked sobs for mercy for Isabel and herself. She wrestled laboriously beneath the captain’s brute strength, her fingers stretching into curving, talon-like claws and punctuating her screams with swift, violent slashes at her attacker’s amused and jeering face.

He straddled her, his bulk pressing her back against the deck. Writhing and fighting, Sirena yet struggled to escape him. Suddenly, her hand made contact with the knife stuck in his wide belt. Clutching its handle, she whipped it forth, a murderous intent contributing to her strength and agility. But for all his bulk, the pirate was a nimble warrior. He adroitly dodged the swift slash of the knife and retaliated by delivering a stunning blow to the side of Sirena’s head. The amusement disappeared from his coarse features; in its stead was a dark, malicious, purposeful light.

He called to one of his men, who now knelt near Sirena’s head and stretched her arms above her, holding them fast to the deck. The captain, still straddling her legs, retrieved his fallen weapon and cut and tore her clothing from her body. His hands touched her shrinking flesh, his weight pressed her downward. Her breath came in painful rasps.

Sirena’s head ached from the blow he had dealt her. Her wounded arm felt l