Salvage

“Hector!” Elizabeth tried to cry out, but her breath caught in her throat as the dam of pleasure broke within her, her entire body shuddering beneath his as he pumped into her mercilessly. How exactly they’d gotten to their room she wasn’t sure, just knew they’d torn into one another like ripping the top off of an aspirin bottle, this was a sedative, something to mask the effects of the shocking and disparaging thing Brendan had said about Quinsy and Jack.

Adrenaline fueled their lust, burned through the haziness of the Drambuie that would have otherwise put Hector on his back while Elizabeth moved above him. No, he was in control of this, seeking to feel something good, instead of the ire and crushed hopes for his daughter that coursed through his mind. The notion of engagements were gone for now, Elizabeth was drinking him in and holding him deep, his cock plunging into and out of her convulsive tightness, his body challenging hers and his winning. But perhaps he’d been too in need of this? He felt himself growing continually harder, the tension winding and winding, but it wouldn’t break, leaving him to thrash against Elizabeth as her body found release, gripping his spasming cock as it numbly reverberated within her.

He was thrusting hard and deep and fast, and while it wasn’t painful, Elizabeth did her best to stop him; often when Hector drank enough to be drunk he would come at her with boundless strength and power, only to hammer her soundly until he wore himself out, his senses dulled and his body unable to gain any satisfaction. Now it was both Drambuie and intolerable news that clouded and blocked his pleasure. She was fortunate to have been his lover for so very long, for she knew how to move with him, how to angle her hips into his thrusts and take all his might and force in deeply without feeling as though she was being ruptured or bruised, for their bed shook, headboard and posters knocking against the wall so hard that the framed photograph of The Pride’s commissioning ceremony wobbled and swayed, hanging now only by one nail as it rocked back and forth. His strength had impressed her the very first time he’d lay above her and little had changed over the years; he’d go on in this crazed state until his body was too worn to orgasm, unless she intervened.

“Hector,” Elizabeth gasped again, this time stroking her hands up and down his locked arms as he braced himself above her, ramming all that he could into her willing sheath. “Stop, my love,” she whispered soothingly, letting her hands roam up over his shoulders to his neck and then down over his chest. “Stop.”

She wasn’t panicked and didn’t try to move away from him as if he was hurting her but the very thought of such froze him above her. “Lizabeth?” His voice was a rough, breathy, concerned whisper. “Too rough?” He panted, now well aware of how swollen his balls were between his thighs, but there was no relief for them.

“Yes, but for you, not me.” Elizabeth smiled as her fingers slid over his pectoral muscles, caressing his nipples and feeling a low growl rumble from within his chest. Her hand traveled lower, down over his heart and his navel, smiling when his abdominals tightened and shook beneath her fingers, and then her hand sank downwards, into the coarse dark red hairs above his root, and then around its base.

Hector’s eyes closed as a ticklish feeling now rippled through him, replacing the dull ache of need with something that held so much more promise than the wild abandonment that wound him up so. Her fingers now made a ring around his cock where she could grasp it, squeezing pleasantly, making the head of his organ throb within her. She’d never quite gotten over that part of him, his body could hold no more mysteries for her, and yet his wife’s hands always seemed to be feeling for some answer between his legs. And now she even touched him while he was within her? Did she ever get enough? Apparently not; Hector growled as her fingers gripped his base, neither did he. “Yeh going to jerk me off while I’m fucking yeh?”

Elizabeth smiled. The idea held some appeal for him; she could see it light his blue eyes. Good, she’d meant to stoke his fire. “Is that what you want?” There was scarcely any shaft to stroke, but she slid her hand down and then up what she held, her fingers drenched in the nectars he had coaxed from her body. “For me to rub and caress you until you cum inside me?”

That made no sense, didn’t even seem to be an accurate possibility, and yet her words aroused a new appetite within him and his cock jerked with a new anxiety he’d been striving to feel as soon he’d thrust himself within her. “Just want to cum.”

Elizabeth pushed herself up on one elbow to kiss him as the hand that gripped him rubbed him more and more, her fingers cupping his heavy testicles. Hector withdrew himself to allow more of her touch and groaned lowly. Elizabeth smiled; she could give him what he needed. “I want to taste you in my mouth and suck you off, lie on your back.” She whispered, and kissed him again, driving her tongue against his, feeling his cock slide entirely from within her, and Hector’s arm slipped around her back as he got to his knees, taking her with him and holding her to him to continue being kissed by her. “And you can tell me exactly what you want to feel, how much tongue, how much hand, how hard to suck,” she spoke nearly against his lips, his mustache brushing her own lips as she whispered to him, pushing against his chest with one hand until he lay down as she’d prescribed him to do, and her hand once more wrapped around his cock and began to slowly stroke him up and down. “Do you remember when we were still new to one another? How eager I always was to do this for you?”

“Yer still eager,” Hector’s eyes closed and he concentrated on how good her hand felt on him, so glad that Elizabeth knew how to pleasure him when his body was too tired, or drunk, to focus on such achievements. He smiled, thinking back to their days as new lovers, and how Elizabeth had desired his most masculine of features so much that she’d come to reach for him there first before she even kissed him the moment they were alone. Never before had a woman kept him so constantly erect, or lavished the attentions of her mouth upon him so freely and frequently. He’d been who taught her all those years ago, but eagerness like that could not be taught, it was pure Elizabeth, and Hector had considered himself as fortunate then as he knew he was now. “And I want voraciousness.”

Elizabeth smiled, drew her hand up his cock and held the head of it, rubbing the underside of it with the pad of her thumb until he growled again and his body jerked. “Good,” she turned her gaze to his erection, watching her fist slide down and back up the length of it, still slick with her own lubricants. All of him glistened with the sheen of sweat, every muscle highlighted and taught, the organ within her grasp throbbing as though it possessed its own heart. He was beautiful when he was in such need; looked so much younger naked than he did with his clothes on. The night had been worrisome for her too, Elizabeth also needed distraction, and it was sprawled wantonly before her. “I love your body,” she breathed as she straddled his legs, filled with the same lecherous thrill that came upon her some years ago after reading that the average size of most men’s erect members was not much more than six inches, because her man topped that by at least an inch. She ran her hand up the length of him again, squeezing every single inch that was him as he twisted beneath her and thrust into her grasp. “Nothing makes me more voracious than this magnificent attribute of yours, Captain!” In one motion she lowered her head and slid him between her lips and into her throat.

Hector’s eyes closed and he exhaled slowly and deeply, feeling his body give over entirely to what she did to it. It had taken her a week, maybe two for Elizabeth to discover the perfection of this performance when she’d first been attempting it, but when she’d accomplished it she’d more than satisfied him. He felt her releasing him now, his erection so strong now that it snapped away from her lips and against his abdomen, Elizabeth following it with her tongue tracing up the faint line on the underside of his shaft, all the way up to the peak of sensitivity where the head joined the rest of his stalk. Elizabeth’s mouth closed over the spot, sucking, tapping with her tongue, kissing it and rubbing her lips against it until his hips lifted from the bed. Something wet and hot oozed forth from the widening slit in his cock onto the skin near his navel, more blood gushing through the veins beneath the smooth skin of his cock, a million tendrils of pleasure now uncurling and flourishing within him, filling every corner of his form.

Elizabeth kept his erection flat against his abdomen, wanting to play with the belly of his cock. She lay her head with her ear against his stomach, engulfing the tip of his organ within her mouth, sucking him and forming a tight ring with her lips as her fingertip lightly drew up and down the pale streak that lead from his balls to where her mouth held him. Hector had always been marvelous when his mouth was between her legs, astounding her with his skill and desire when it came to tasting her, making her want to show him she desired him the same way, and judging by how his body was reacting, he understood clearly.

There was motion within him now, pressure building and mounting, his swollen balls tightening and constricting against his body, crying out for her touch, “Elizabeth,” he tried to will himself to say, but his breathing was too hard and his teeth clenched too much to do little else but moan. She seemingly understood though, her free hand quickly sliding beneath the aching weight of his scrotum and slowly rolling it around in her palm. Hector bellowed, the throes of climax now held him in its clutches, her finger still tracing that line on the underside of his shaft, up and down, up and down, he shuddered and shivered, his release seeming to move up and also down his cock with her finger, brought nearly to the point of exploding only to be tamped back down again as her digit sank southward. The tension built and built each time semen rose and fell with her stroke, her mouth sucking the head of his cock harder, his balls caressed in her palm; her fingertip stopped stroking him, rested at his base, putting pressure there, harder, more, the head of his organ tremulous within her mouth, she sucked it deeper, pressed harder at his base, gave his balls a gentle squeeze; his body went rigid with pleasure, then detonated in liberation.


* * * * * * *

“Voracious enough?” Elizabeth smiled as she climbed back into bed, having left Hector to catch his breath as she brushed her teeth. She lay down beside him as he flipped off the light on the nightstand, snugging up to her, drawing her close, her back to his chest as his arm wrapped over her waist.

“Anymore so and I would be your queen.” He was much sobered now, and so much more relaxed, at least now he’d be able to sleep. Hector settled in one final time, nestling into her and his pillow, then closing his eyes as she giggled beside him. “Horrible night,” he sighed. “But you’re a capable distraction, and I love yeh, wife.”

“I love you too, Hector.” But Elizabeth’s eyes didn’t close, for it had been a horrible night, and she wouldn’t sleep until answers and solutions came to her that might bring peace. Hector however, if he could sleep, she was glad of it. He’d be a bear tomorrow no matter what, but if he at least slept, he wouldn’t quite be tearing throats out. “Good night, love of my life.”

“Night,” he half mumbled, and then all was quiet, a stillness that mocked what actually stirred within them both, but not for long. “Did yeh know Quinsy was to marry Jack?”

The words surprised her, made Elizabeth wince. “No. She kept that bit of information quite secret when we spoke.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Elizabeth looked over her shoulder in the dark at Hector. “Did you truly believe that if I’d known all that, I wouldn’t have come to you and told you, no matter what Quinsy thought it her place to say?”

“I don’t know, actually.” Hector raised his head and looked back at her. “But that yeh didn’t know makes me feel better.”

“Well,” Elizabeth sighed, unsure if she was insulted or not, for there were times when she deliberately kept things from her husband, until she could forge the best way of telling him. “I suppose I can understand you’re saying that.”

“So,” Hector paused, then shook his head. “What do we do about it?”

“Are you certain you want to discuss this now?” The sex, the intense, hard driving, raging sex, had that not been to dull the outrage and banish these thoughts?

“Would rather not wake tomorrow morning still having this nightmare…” again Hector paused. “Though I likely will.”

Elizabeth sighed, rolling over in his arms to face him. She couldn’t sleep, so why not discuss it if he wished to do so? “What do you want me to say, Hector? That we need stop them and this? That we should do whatever is in our power to prevent our daughter from marrying someone she so clearly loves enough to want to marry? Is that fair?”

“It’s Jack!”

“I’m aware of that, yes.”

“Yer King, can’t yeh decree something to make this not viable?”

“Hector!” She replied in surprised laughter. “There is no more Shipwreck Cove, no more Brethren Court and no more piracy as we knew it; I’m King of nothing, it’s an empty title now.”

Hector grunted. “Will never be an empty title to me.” For a moment he hugged her to him.

Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you, but I still can’t do anything.”

“Yeh’d let her marry him, then?” Hector scoffed, his muscles drawing tense for quite a different reason than hugging his wife. “Jack? Marry our Quinsy? My Quinsy?”

And here it came. Elizabeth rolled her eyes as she felt Hector sitting up in bed. “Hector…”

“Inimitable thing about Jack; every time I begin to trust him the slightest little bit, he manages to stab me in the back. But this time, it weren’t me back, it’s me heart!”

Elizabeth sat up knowing talk like this could be endless. “And, so what’s your plan? Maroon him again? Seek to send him back to the locker? What is it Hector? Tell me, for I won’t listen to you complain and grumble all night if you have no course of action to set upon.”

“Why not just shoot him and chop him up into bits for that blasted whitetip?”

“Won’t work,” Elizabeth crossed her arms in front of her. “Someone already shot him in an attempted carjacking when he was walking Quinn from class one night, .38 caliber round; square in the heart, but Jack is as you recently saw him, alive and very well.”

Hector cocked his head and was silent for several moments. “Yer not saying…”

“Yes, I am saying…”

“It’s his damned water!” Hector avowed, smiling as if he’d just figured the whole thing out. “Has nothing to do with Quinn, it’s that elixir from the fountain what healed him up!”

“Hector,” Elizabeth began levelly. “How many colds have we watched Jack catch over the years?”

“Colds are different from a bullet.”

“Yes, they are, but in this context, how exactly?” He was grasping at straws, trying to make nothing mean anything, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but be a bit amused by it. “And a slew of years back, while raising that sunken Clipper, how long was Jack in the hospital recovering from a broken back after one of the derricks slipped loose from the old crane and nearly crushed him to death? I was the one holding cups of his water to his mouth for him to drink, and still he needed two surgeries and nearly died!”

“Didn’t die!”

“Thanks to modern medical science!”

“And the water!”

“It didn’t heal him, might have helped sustain him until help arrived, but that was all.”

“Yeh don’t know that!” Hector grumbled after a bit.

“I’m afraid I do.” Elizabeth said firmly. “And so do you, because when it looked as if Jack wouldn’t make it, it was you who said to me that you wished there was some blood between the three of us that might include him within our protection!”

“But…” Hector sputtered, not wanting this argument to end here, with some distasteful proof he’d have to acknowledge as truth. There just had to be something else, some occurrence when it was the water that saved Jack’s life, and his mind raced desperately. No, it couldn’t be Quinsy, Jack couldn’t have his Quinsy! “I can’t let me daughter marry Jack, Elizabeth!”

“Oh Hector,” Elizabeth sighed, shook her head and turned more towards him, cupping his bearded jaw. “I don’t doubt that, because you can’t let Quinsy marry anyone, can you?”

Is that what she thought? Is that what his wife was trying to reduce this to? “It’s Jack, Elizabeth!”

“And if it were some boy she’d met at school? With a four point ‘O’ average and captain of the football team, you’d be smiling and happy to see a ring on her finger as she moved her belongings off of this ship and into their new house as Mrs. Smith, or Taylor or Robinson, or whatever?”

A ring on Quinsy’s finger? Moving her belongings off of this ship? Mrs. Whatever? His heart turned to lead and sank into his belly, lungs refusing to lift with a breath of air. Quinsy…she’d be gone, and she’d belong to someone else, have his name…someone who couldn’t be trusted, someone who would never understand her, someone who wouldn’t be able to take care of her the way she needed to be, someone who didn’t deserve her and never ever would! Oh no…Elizabeth was right! “Well, how am I ever to be happy about such a thing?” Hector hissed, trying to keep his voice down in the night, but just barely succeeding. “She’s me daughter, Elizabeth!” His hands clenched into fists and he shook them up by his shoulders. “Me daughter!” He said again, but this time his chin was tucked to his chest and he gasped the words on a shallow, wavering breath.

There were tears in Elizabeth’s eyes as she looked at Hector, and she took him in her arms, holding him tightly as he held to her. “I know, because she’s my daughter too,” a tear escaped and slid down over her cheek into Hector’s hair. “And no one is good enough for her, absolutely no one.”

They were each quiet for a long while, sharing a few kisses and caresses, but mostly they held one another, sighed often, choked back tears and allowed themselves to feel unanimously miserable. Quinsy was getting married, to Jack, and they were in love. Suddenly they were startled by the blaring sound of a sultry melody from down the corridor, and then the smooth notes of Sade, “This is no ordinary love, no ordinary love,” floating up the hall to their door, permeating the silence and stillness that had calmed them both.

“Oh for the beating heart of Davy Jones, Caspian, not tonight!” Groaned Elizabeth, and fell back into her pillow with the heaviest of sighs.

Hector took a deep breath and steadied himself, getting to his feet and pulling on an old pair of sweat pants he was fond of sleeping in. “I’ll see to it,” he said, and was quickly out the door.

Once in the corridor, the music still loud enough to echo against the steel hull beneath the wallboard, Hector’s mind twisted, like his gut, with thoughts that the romantic tones could well be originating from Quinsy’s room…she and Jack…a ghastly thought, he shuddered, was sure to stop and listen for a few seconds outside Quinsy’s door, sighing in relief when it was definitely Caspian’s room that was occupied, and not by Caspian alone. He knocked, heard a young woman gasp, Caspian immediately saying something reassuring to her. Any other night, Hector may have been smiling proudly, but tonight, he just couldn’t find that smile. He couldn’t make his mind stop its ramblings; the young woman in Cass’s room, did her poor father know where she was, what she was doing, who she was with?

“Sorry, dad,” Caspian opened the door only a crack, just enough to speak. “I’ll turn it down, didn’t realize you and mom could hear it.”

“Aye, we can hear it!”

“My apologies, didn’t mean to wake you.” Caspian reached for his stereo and lowered the volume significantly, still keeping the door closed all but for a little sliver. “It’s a great CD for…you know, to play when you’re…if you and mom want a copy—“

“Cass,” Hector sighed, in no mood to discuss this, sorry that he had any inkling at all as to the social life of any of his children. “Just keep it down, please!”

On the way back down the corridor it was all Hector could do not to stop at Quinsy’s door and listen, or knock, just to be sure there was nothing afoot with Jack on the other side of it. But he didn’t truly want to know, for fear that there was…or that Quinsy wasn’t there at all, but instead was at the other end of the ship, with Jack in his…apartment. Besides, what if he did knock on her door and Quinsy did answer, alone? What did he do then? Get down on his knees and beg her to reconsider marrying Jack? Jack, whom she obviously loved, and was loved by, given the shooting information Elizabeth so recently shared. Hector sighed, he’d had so many more years with his young children then other fathers were allowed, so why did it feel as though this had come too soon? How had this happened? And why hadn’t he seen it coming?

“So good to have it quiet again,” sighed Elizabeth as Hector walked back into their bedroom, pulling the blankets back as he got into bed. “Thank you for dealing with that, I truly haven’t the fortitude for it tonight.”

“Yer not the only one,” Hector sighed as well, once more laying down beside his wife, and she was in his arms, her head on his shoulder before he’d even pulled the blankets over himself again. “I’m suddenly filled with deeply seeded want to seek out a method of contacting the fathers of any woman I’ve ever laid a hand upon and atone for having sex with their daughters.”

Elizabeth laughed. “If you embark upon that journey, given your former stature as a seducer, I may never see you again.”

Hector groaned. “Yer not helping me guilt.”

“Oh Hector,” Elizabeth laughed again, rubbing her hand through the hair on his chest. “You’ve brought a lot of joy to others, consider it that way.”

“Hmmm,” he groaned once more. “So has Jack…no doubt me daughter among them!”

“Well,”

“Well?” He questioned. “Go on, make that not seem as bad as it is.”

“I don’t prefer to think on it very much, actually.” Elizabeth admitted. “But calling it ‘bad’ certainly isn’t a compassionate attitude.”

“Compassionate attitude?” Hector repeated much louder than Elizabeth had said it. “I’m her father, yeh expect me to have a compassionate attitude towards Jack having…just, Jack.”

“Hector, while you’re off on your tour of atonement to the fathers of women you’ve rogered in your lifetime, don’t forget mine, and be sure to tell him that you’ve married me while you’re at it, and let me know what his reaction is.” Elizabeth raised her head and though it was dark, locked eyes with him. “And in the end, what has his judgment affected?”

It was sometimes easy to forget that Elizabeth had a father, for Hector himself had never stood face to face with the man, seen him only in death. But she was right, Governor Weatherby Swann’s daughter and only child, taken up with a pirate captain, and one who’s comparative age in no way reflected the words “son-in-law.” No, Weatherby Swann would never have supported or encouraged his daughter’s union with the likes of Hector Barbossa, and yet here they were, married, with three children, and still more in love with one another than most newlyweds. Quinsy and Jack…the connection was there between them, their future looked to hold the same blessedness as Hector and Elizabeth shared themselves. “Still not an easy thing to accept, Elizabeth.”

She smiled. “I know, it’s not, but I think we need to start focusing on other aspects of this situation, and then it will be, eventually.”

“Such as?” Other aspects? What could possibly make this pill less bitter?

“First, it seems as though in our family, true love has a very obvious barometer, and Quinsy and Jack have tripped that, so we know what they feel is genuine.”

“It’s still Jack,” sighed Hector. “But go on…”

Elizabeth ignored his jeer. “Second, they are good together. Jack has always been able to make her laugh when she’s crying, and give her confidence when she’s nervous. He’s there for her, has been for decades; he is a good man, Hector, and Quinsy’s the only person I’ve ever seen Jack put before himself without batting an eyelash, and that includes me hundreds of years ago when it still mattered to him.”

“Don’t need that reminder, either.”

“Sorry,” Elizabeth almost laughed, but stifled it; it didn’t matter now what she and Jack could have been in the distant past, for after their conversation in the barn during Christmas 1865, the changes motherhood had made upon Elizabeth became evident, and as Jack became part of the family, he also became one more face to wash, one more shoe to tie, one more hand to hold. “And Quinsy, well, just the other day Jack got one of those emails from a deposed Nigerian Prince who needed him to deposit $3000 into a bank account so that Prince so-and-so could send Jack $30,000 in return…Jack had this elaborate scheme he was pitching to Quinn about how they could truly get that $30,000, but long before he was through explaining the specifics to her, Quinn reached over his shoulder and just deleted the email.” Elizabeth laughed. “She knows how to deal with him, they understand one another, and that makes communicating so much easier and more frequent. She handles him better than I handled you when we first got together, Hector.”

“Who says yeh can handle me now?” He half smirked, but Hector had to agree. “But Quinn always has had the most patience for Jack’s meandering chatter.”

“Third, they know about one another. There’s no explaining to do about their pasts, or their lives, or how they got here and why they’re still here. It’s natural to them, all they know of living.”

“Does save on the awkward conversations,” Hector paused, then added. “And with Jack, awkward is built into conversation quite regularly enough.”

Again Elizabeth smiled. “Fourth, and this is one you’ll like,” she said, tracing his eyebrow with her finger. “She won’t be moving very far away, will she?”

At that Hector smiled. He wouldn’t be losing his daughter if she were only at the other end of the ship. “That is a plus.” He pulled Elizabeth down to him and kissed her, but then raised an eyebrow, a thought he rather liked blooming in his head. It may have been overkill, but it would finally make him feel that Quinsy and Jack were meant to be together. “But I’m inclined to add a condition to yer list of pros.”

Elizabeth stiffened a bit, not so sure allowing such was a good idea. “Which is?”

He smiled like a man with a true ace in the hole. “I don’t know that I feel this is the time to divulge such.”

Elizabeth heaved a sigh, shaking her head. Things had been winding down so nicely, but yet he had to go and be like this. “Hector—“

“Nay, woman,” he smiled at her, holding up one hand, palm facing her. “I’ll not be swayed, me mind is set. Yeh’ll know me conditions the same as when I set them to Jack and Quinn.” Then Hector chuckled watching his wife’s eyes in a state of both widening in surprise and narrowing in anger, not sure which she should do. “Oh but don’t be despaired, Lizabeth. Me secret is a good thing!”

“Oh is that so?” Elizabeth’s eyes now narrowed and she crossed her arms over her chest, looking away from her husband. Her own words come back to haunt her! Damn, but Hector was always so good at that. How was she to sleep now? She had to know something of Hector’s demands. “You’ll at least give me some hint tonight if you expect to sleep, you do realize?”

A hint? Well, why ruin a night’s sleep? Hector smiled wryly and kissed his wife again. “Who married us?”