Bride of the Baja Read Online Free PDF Page B

Malloy sat heavily on the edge of his bunk and looked around his small cabin.
    Damn! He was captain. He didn't have to stay in this hovel. He strode along the passageway and pushed open the paneled door to the captain's cabin. Once inside he paused, half-expecting Captain Bradford to appear and order him out. Then he sat in front of the desk clamped to the bulkhead, putting his feet on Captain Bradford's sea chest and nodding in satisfaction. This was more like it! This was a cabin befitting a man responsible for a three-master.
    Spying a whiskey bottle on its side in the bunk, he pulled out the cork and poured himself a full measure. The whiskey burned his throat. In a few minutes his spirits lifted. He'd worked hard, he told himself, he deserved a drop of good cheer. He refilled the glass, sipping the liquor this time. Closing his eyes, he smiled. Wait until he sailed into San Francisco Bay to exchange the Yankee's woolen goods, linen, lead shot, tools and guns for a cargo of fur and hides. Wait till he returned to Boston with a ship of his own and a generous profit from the voyage besides.
    Opening his eyes, he watched the light from the lamp glinting on the empty glass. One more measure to hurry sleep wouldn't be amiss, he decided.
    He'd have to hold off the Boston women with both hands. And Alitha. That bitch'd be singing a different tune by then. Why, she acted as if she was afraid he'd touch her. He looked down at his hands. They were a man's hands. He splayed his fingers in front of him. A sailor's hands. Suddenly he folded his arms across his chest, his hands hidden beneath his biceps.
    Alitha. By God, she was a beauty. A beautiful bitch who thought she was too good for him.
    He remembered the night she had turned down his proposal of marriage, how he'd smiled and nodded, shaking hands ever so politely with her father as he bid the captain goodnight. Remembered how he'd stormed into town thinking to lose himself in drink. After a few rounds he'd spent his last dollar for an hour with one of the girls in the house on Dock Hill Road. One of the girls? Malloy snorted. Like hell she was a girl! That one hadn't been a girl for a good twenty years or more. He'd had to take the leavings, a man-worn harridan with orange-red hair and sagging tits. He grimaced with distaste.
    How different it would be with Alitha. He took a swallow of the whiskey, thinking of Alitha's soft hair cascading over her shoulders, her blue eyes that made him catch his breath whenever she looked at him, the whiteness of her skin above the scooped neckline of her dress, her breasts high, full and firm and her body slim as a girl's yet as rounded as any woman's.
    He had often imagined her taking his hand, the fingers of her other hand going to her lips to silence his questions as she led him into her cabin on the Yankee and bolted the door behind them. She turned to him, tall and proud, unbuttoning her dress and stepping out of it, pulling her undergarments over her head and hastily slipping into the bunk and clutching the covers to her neck, leaving only her slim white arms exposed. She reached for him, whispering, "Come to me, Amos. Hurry."
    Thinking of her white and naked body, Malloy felt his maleness grow. He slammed his fist on the desk in front of him. It would never happen. She hated the sight of him, shunned his touch. Once he had her abed, though, that would change, he told himself. She was a virgin, he was sure, but once she had a man she'd be a hellcat—she wasn't one of these prissy once-every-two-weeks women like some of his friends had married. He could tell by the way she looked at him sometimes, as though she too had secretly imagined their bodies intertwined.
    He was tired of whores. He didn't want another man's leavings, he wanted a woman who would be his and his alone. Where were the girls he'd known ashore?
    Married, the lot of them, most at fifteen or sixteen and none too soon at that, their bellies already swelling beneath their