Pirates Read Online Free PDF

vines, wearing fig leaves, and living on coconut milk. No, she only wanted to get through the evening, return to her room, and listen for the faint strains of a harpsichord.
    Phoebe’s headache intensified as she stepped into the elevator, alone, and pushed the button for the basement level. Odd place for a ballroom, she thought, opening her purse and rummaging for the small, dented tin of aspirin she’d glimpsed a few weeks ago among the debris.
    “Hell,” she said, doggedly plundering the mysterious depths of her bag as the metal cage lurched on its no-doubt rusty cables and settled, with a clatter, to the floor. There was no sign of the wonder drug, and by now Phoebe knew she wasn’t going to survive the evening without anesthesia. No sooner had she left the elevator, her attention still fixed on her purse, when she decided to risk going back to her room to swallow two tablets from the bottle in her cosmetic case.
    She turned, hoping to get back inside before the elevator doors closed.
    A blank wall confronted her.
    For a moment, Phoebe just stood there stunned, staring in disbelief. The elevator was gone, grillwork, rattle and all, and furthermore, the light had changed, dimming from a hard fluorescent glare to a faint and flickering glow. She could no longer hear the laughter and talk coming from the ballroom.
    Phoebe took a deep breath and shut her eyes for a moment. It was the headache that was making her see things, she reasoned. Maybe she was suffering from sunstroke. Or it might be that she’d simply gotten off on the wrong floor while she was looking through her purse for the aspirin.
    She raised her eyelids again and was discouraged to see that the elevator had not reappeared. Some time had passed before she realized that her head no longer ached, and underthe circumstances, she wasn’t sure whether that was good news or bad.
    She stood still, waiting, but the wall where the elevator should have been was just that—the wall where the elevator should have been. And most definitely wasn’t.
    Phoebe had decided to look for another way out of the basement when she heard whistling, decidedly masculine and unconcerned, from somewhere farther along the passage. She peered into the shadows.
    “Hello?” she called. “Who’s there?”
    He rounded a corner just then, carrying an old-fashioned brass lantern in one hand, and something slammed into Phoebe’s heart, like a mallet laid hard to a great brass gong. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, let alone speak, and simply stood there trembling with the reverberations.
    The man was tall, with dark hair worn long and tied back at the nape of his neck with a thin ribbon or a thong. Fawn-colored breeches of some soft material like chamois clung to his finely muscled thighs, and his black boots reached, cavalier style, to his knees. He wore a loose shirt, probably made of linen, and carried a dagger in a scabbard on his belt.
    Phoebe found her voice at last. “Wow,” she said, a little too brightly, “you certainly got a better costume than I did.”
    He raised one eyebrow, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly, though whether from amusement or impatience, or something else entirely, Phoebe could not determine. “Who are you?” he demanded, his gaze moving over her in an imperious sweep of assessment before swinging back to her face.
    Phoebe was flushed, and she hoped he couldn’t see that in the dim light of the lantern. “My name is Phoebe Turlow,” she said. “And I’m lost. I’m also late. Could you just show me the way out of here, please?”
    He ignored her request, stooping a little and peering at her as though she were some sort of curiosity. Her breath caught in her throat, though not from anything so sensible as fear, when he reached out and touched her hair. What she felt, to her everlasting chagrin, was the same erotic heat that hadmade her cry out in her dream that afternoon. “Have you suffered a head injury?” he asked. “Or been