My breaths cleaved as I jumped onto the gunwale and held the spyglass to my eye.
Fifty feet away, iron guns protruded from the slave ship’s bows, belching smoke and hauling in for reloading.
“Aim high and true, gunners!” My hand clenched around the glass, my heart pounding. “If you hit her belly, I shall seize you up by your pissers and dangle you from the yard-arm!”
We were here for the precious cargo in her hold. If we lost those innocent lives, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.
A crack of cannon fire erupted from Jade’s starboard. The volley of shot hissed across the turbulent waves, and the slave ship’s mainsail erupted in flame.
Yes! The metallic scent of gunpowder burned the air. A few yards away, Priest caught my eye from behind the smoking bronze snout of a gun. He held a lit wick and flung me one of his roguish smiles, flirting with the rhythm of my heart. Viciously handsome man.
I grinned into the choking smoke. “Jobah, bring her about! Hard to starboard! Keep her as tight as you can.”
My helmsman grunted and strained against the tiller, driving all his strength into turning the arm.
“D’Arcy and Saunders!” I spun, scanning the fray of whooping and hollering pirates as they flew to the sheets. “Haul your arses to the helm and help Jobah with the rudder. Lively now, lads! Throw your weight into it. We can’t board that ship from here!”
I raced across the upper deck and leaped onto the larboard gunwale, shouting orders as Jade tacked hard and cut toward the enemy. The change in direction didn’t just bring us closer to board the enemy ship. It also swung our heaviest, double-shotted guns around to bear down on the slave traders.
“Gun crews to larboard! Prepare those batteries!” I pivoted on the gunwale and sprinted aft.
And stopped, caught by an iron fist around my ankle.
Ashley stared up at me, both hands clamping down like shackles on my boot. Capable hands. Strong and manly. I loved the commanding way he touched me, the way he looked at me.
The calculation behind those glowing blue eyes held my fate and that of every man on this ship.
This had been his idea, after all.
His proposal to besiege slave trade routes had been met with a unanimous roar of Aye’s from Jade’s crew. The men had been attached to this cause since the day we’d accidentally raided the ship that had enslaved Jobah.
But we were just one crew. To fight an entire island and the vessels that surrounded it was an impossible undertaking.
Until Ashley.
With his wartime naval experience as a commodore, he knew how to wound the enemy without getting ourselves killed in the process. We wouldn’t be able to stop the importation of slaves, but with his depth of knowledge, we could save more than just a few.
We’d spent the past six months preparing for this, gathering more guns, bigger guns, recruiting fierce sailors, scouting the courses of slave ships, and planning tactics and maneuvers against St. Christopher’s slave traders. I commanded the crew, but Ashley had led the entire effort.
“Get down from there,” he ordered in his imperious tone and tightened his hold on my ankle. “My heart can’t take another second of your balancing act.”
“But you’re so good at saving drowning women, my lord.” I hooked an elbow around a shroud, kicked my free leg beyond the gunwale, and leaned far out over the waves. “Will you put that fine-mannered mouth on mine and give me air?”
“With pleasure. After you come down from there.”
My blood purred, but a kiss would have to wait. Jade was finishing her sharp turn.
“Ready about, Chops!” I jumped to the deck and sprinted toward the gun crew at the bow, pausing behind Priest. “Load those guns and run out!”
On the lower gun decks, Chops roared back, “Gun crews at the ready!”
Priest darted along the lethal armament on the upper deck. His shirtless back flexed and glistened with sweat as he heaved eighteen-pounders into long bronzed noses.
The slave ship was directly on Jade’s larboard, neatly in the sights of our heaviest guns. But we were also in the range of theirs. Through the glass, I spied enemy gunners holding wicks soaked in saltpeter, the fuses glowing red hot. Others waited with wadding, shot, and powder, ready to reload once the guns were discharged.
My stomach hardened as I filled my lungs with air and bellowed, “Fire!”
Both ships fired at the same time. Shot from cannonades blackened the sky with smoke and