This chapter is a bit more lighthearted than the last one. It corresponds to the scenes where Barbossa rescues May from Stoker and the first half of the scene where he finally manages to get her in his bed. The second half shouldn't be far behind.

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Chapter Five ~*~

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And so the day had started, and then gone downhill from there, Barbossa thought, where he was sitting across the fire from Chevalle and May. She'd just excused herself in French and headed off down the beach, and he had all he could do to pay attention to what Andre was now saying to him as he tried to keep track of where she was going.

Turk, sitting next to him and well on his way to being inebriated, nonetheless was still sober and savvy enough to engage the French pirate in conversation, and if Barbossa wasn't mistaken, he felt a surreptitious nudge in his ribs, indicating this was his chance as Turk created a diversion in the conversation.

Knowing he should swallow his pride and speak with the young surgeon while he had the opportunity, Barbossa rose and straightened his hat, and then headed off into the woods.

--

Barbossa leaned against a tree with his arms folded across his chest, biding his time for a few moments before he headed deeper into the woods after Madeline. It hadn't taken much effort to figure out why she'd gone off on her own, deep into the bushes, and he wanted to be sure to give her ample time to deal with nature's call without interruption. The Powers knew that invading the tiny amount of privacy she was managing for herself would not be counted in his favor.

Deciding to give her one more minute (Heaven only knew how women managed such a thing in a long dress!) Barbossa quickly and efficiently addressed his own pressing call, subconsciously giving thanks for another reason to be grateful for having been born male. Finally estimating that she'd had enough time to complete her task, he made his way along the route she'd taken, tracking her by the faint trail of trampled brush.

As he walked, he considered what he might possibly say once he managed to confront her, and he admitted that he didn't have the faintest idea. He wasn't used to apologizing to anyone, and he wasn't used to dealing with women in this manner. But he knew he had to do both, and he decided that he would first see if she would even deign to listen to him; it was possible that she hated him now and wouldn't let him near her.

Not that he'd blame her. After all, he had raided her ship, taken her hostage, thrown her in the brig, tossed her companion into the ocean, tried to seduce her in Tortuga, had Bellamy flogged, and then slapped her senseless when she'd foolishly hoisted his colors. Not the most conventional route to a woman's heart, he mused darkly, and she had every reason in the world to loathe him now.

But one thing told him she didn't, and he clung to that thought tenaciously: the memory of the night the blasted HMS Valiant had blown a hole through his stern. Only moments before the ill-timed attack, she'd come to his side and touched him voluntarily, tenderly placing her hand on his with affection that he'd so rarely experienced. And then she'd given him her hard-won trust, something that he coveted perhaps as much as her body.

She hadn't backed away in that moment; she'd stood her ground and allowed him to embrace her, despite the fact that she'd trembled with fear in his arms. Something within him had solidified that moment, when she'd made such an effort to conquer her anxiety and put her faith in him, and the unfamiliar feelings he'd been experiencing toward her since the day she'd braved bloodthirsty pirates and the storm to save Turk, slid sharply into focus.

He was in love with her, and he'd known at that moment that he would do anything to have –anything to protect the fragile-seeming, soft, warm creature in his arms. She'd seen him nearly at his worst, and despite the fact that she clearly knew who he was –what he was, she had looked past all the scars and the swaggering and the ruthlessness and chosen to give him the gift of her friendship.

And when he'd let her know, as gently as he could, that what he wanted was not simply the kiss that they both knew they were about to share, she'd held her course stoically, smiling a bit and teasing him about it being an adventure.

He thought back on that very moment as he picked his way through the brush. Despite the fact her fingers had been trembling against his arm, she'd met his gaze with a look that mirrored his own longing in those deep blue eyes, and then she'd closed them, tipping her head back in surrender and parting her full lips to meet his as he'd leaned to press his mouth against hers...

As the cannon fire had done at that moment, a sound from deeper in the brush took him away from the almost-kiss, and Barbossa frowned as he realized he heard a man's indistinct voice along with Madeline's.

She was out here with a man?

His first thoughts jumped to Bellamy, and scowling darkly, he stopped in his tracks to listen. She couldn't possibly be…

A soft whimper caught his attention, and his whole being cringed at what he thought he was overhearing. Was Bellamy that stupid? Had he really thought he could risk another tryst with her and live to tell the tale? Despite the fact that Michael Bellamy was near the top of his blacklist at the moment (number three, he estimated, right behind Charles Beckett and Jack Sparrow) he really thought the lad was smarter than that.

And more inclined to live a longer life.

Barbossa frowned, momentarily at a loss. While rutting in the bushes lustily with the female doctor like wild dogs certainly held a measure of appeal for him, he suspected that the proper young woman had not had nearly enough to drink to relinquish her well-ingrained inhibitions to that extent, and he realized that something didn't feel right about the situation.

Another soft cry, but this one clearly of anguish, brought him to his senses, and he knew she was in trouble. His hand went to his sword reflexively as he hurried quickly and quietly though the trees. There was only one pirate on his ship that might dare defy him and lay an unwanted hand on the woman, the same who was the only one who wouldn't hesitate to satisfy his sadistic need to torture by cutting and maiming her, long after he'd finished brutally demeaning her by beating and raping her.

Stoker.

Barbossa quickened his pace, knowing well what it was rumored the man was capable of. All the men on the Rogue Wave were pirates for good reason, himself included, but there were still certain things he simply wouldn't tolerate.

Such as blatant disregard for his orders.

Oh, and killing women, of course.

He recognized Stoker's vile laugh, and his gut went ice cold as he realized his fears were confirmed. Well, the Powers-That-Be help that bastard if he'd so much as mussed her hair.

Peering out from the shadows of the trees he stood behind, he found the situation in the small clearing was worse than he had hoped. Stoker had Madeline pinned against a tree, and by the look on her face she was angry and terrified. A thin stream of blood ran down her lip and one down her throat, and he could see that her dress was in tatters.

He reached for his pistol, and then thought better of using it when Stoker leaned closer to her, as he feared he might hit her if Stoker moved again. He debated the best way to get to her without putting her in more danger when he realized that Stoker had a knife in his hand, but another cry of fear from her set his heart racing and his blood boiling, and he saw red when he realized she was in pain.

Furious that anyone would dare hurt her, and feeling overwhelmed with the need to protect her as Stoker sliced open the bodice of her dress, something very dark and primitive reared up within him, snarling 'woman mine!' as his hand went instinctively to his dagger.

A cry of outrage from Stoker told him his blade had met his mark, and Barbossa said a little prayer of thanks to the previous owner of the dagger for diligently teaching him to throw so well, all those years ago.

--

From the time the dagger pierced Stoker's hand, to the time Barbossa was standing over his lifeless corpse, only a moment or two had passed, and as he debated what to possibly say to Madeline, he stalled for a minute, wiping the blood off his sword and gathering more courage than it took to face down the now dead pirate. What should he say? How did he go about apologizing?

Talking a deep breath, he turned to face her, but when he saw her crumpled on the ground, looking like she was going to fall apart, he found himself at her side, unconcerned about whatever had previously happened. The look of profound gratitude and admiration she met him with made him realize he'd been an idiot for doubting her feelings for him still existed, and with the way she was struggling not to cry, he suddenly felt guiltier than ever.

She looked so young, so frightened, and despite the bruises and the blood, so lovely in the moonlight, and he wondered how it was that he could have ever raised a hand against such a fragile creature.

He dropped to his knees and raised the same hand to her cheek again, this time with a tenderness he himself hadn't known he possessed. And fragile she was at that moment, for as soon as he had spoken to her she'd come undone, falling into his arms and sobbing hysterically.

Not knowing exactly what to do with the young woman crying against his chest, Barbossa held her and tried to think of something to say, anxious to make her stop. "Easy, lass," was the most brilliant thing he could come up with, and he rolled his eyes at his own inadequacy while she clung to him tighter and continued to cry.

Bloody hell! Why the fuck did they have to do this? If there was one thing that could undo a man faster than anything else, it was the sight of tears in a woman's eyes.

Madeline continued to sob irrationally, and he supposed that this was not the right time to pay more attention to the fact that the front of her dress was largely absent than the fact that she was falling apart.

He tightened his arms about her a little more and bit his tongue. This made no sense – here she was safe and sound, out of danger and no longer at the mercy of the savage pirate, and now she was crying? He'd never bloody understand such a thing, even if he lived to be a hundred. He doubted there were many men who did.

Finally her tears stopped, and he drew her to her feet gently, steadying her as she rose. Realizing that he had blood on his fingers where he'd set them against her side, he tried to inspect the puncture wounds Stoker had inflicted upon her while she modestly tried to keep her dress closed with one hand and clutched at the back of her leg with the other.

Understanding that she'd been injured elsewhere, he gently turned her around and knelt behind her to lift her skirt and examine the small gash on her leg. The wound would need a few stitches, that was true, but Barbossa made a greater show of inspecting her injury than was really needed, thankful to have the excuse to inspect her legs as well. Her thigh was smooth and warm, and he had all he could do not to run his hands any higher than he already had.

He tore a strip of cloth to bind her wound for the moment, finding it satisfying to tear the fabric away from her hem. If it weren't for the fact that there was a dead pirate not ten feet from them, he would have been content to remove the rest of her shredded dress the same way, one tantalizing ribbon at a time…

--

And if it weren't for the fact that he had sailed for so many years with Starkey and Roberts, Barbossa would have shoved both of the drunken idiots out of the longboat and finished rowing back to the ship himself. Less inebriated than most of the pirates on the beach, but still heavily intoxicated, the two of them were all but rowing in circles as they sang drinking limericks inappropriate for mixed company and sniggered drunkenly when one or the other of them fouled up the words.

"Smarten up and row straight," he snarled at them, barely refraining from calling them whoreson maggots in front of his female passenger. "The lady is injured and needs tendin' to."

Starkey elbowed Roberts, missing a stroke of his oar and causing them to veer off course again. "Cap'n's plannin' on tendin' to the lady hisself, I wager," he said, winking blatantly at Roberts. "Going to play doctor wiv the doctor, are yeh, Cap'n?"

Barbossa said nothing but fastened a menacing stare on Starkey, and even as drunk as he was, Starkey knew better than to cross his captain when he looked like that. He shut up and went back to rowing as straight as he could manage.

Which wasn't very straight, and Barbossa drummed his nails impatiently on the gunwale, trying to keep cool. What Starkey and Roberts didn't understand was that the young lady wrapped in his frockcoat and sitting next to him had just informed him that she preferred his company to Bellamy's, and from the way she'd tried to kiss him on the beach just now before Turk had interrupted, he'd gotten the impression that he'd be able to get a lot of mileage from the gratitude she felt toward him for saving her life.

In other words, he was nearly certain that he was about to get laid.

Once they finally managed to come alongside the ship, what felt like an eternity later, Barbossa had helped Madeline to the ladder first, but took a moment to whack Roberts in the back of the head when the oarsman had craned his neck in an effort to look up her dress as she climbed.

Barbossa watched her struggle up the ladder, hindered because of the laceration on her leg, and he became increasingly concerned as she limped up, hauling herself along the rungs. Was she in a lot of pain? And just as important at the moment, was she in too much pain to have sex?

Was there such a thing? he wondered, climbing up the ladder after her and hoping never to find out.

The whole time he was rummaging though the surgeon's chest, looking for what he needed to repair her laceration, he fretted about how he was going to manage to get her into his bed without making it seem like he was a selfish, uncaring bastard who was only interested in one thing.

True, he was a selfish, (mostly) uncaring bastard, but who could blame him for focusing on that one thing when there was this (probably) willing little blonde thing, who was all curves and golden hair and eager (hopefully) to show her undying gratitude to him. With any luck at all (please, God!) she'd show him a lot more than her gratitude within the hour.

Not that she had much choice at the moment, with the condition her dress was in. The ragged garment was revealing a lot more of her front than she probably wanted, and a lot less of it (a lot less!) than he wanted. He realized that there was no way she was going to be able to hold her dress closed and suture the laceration at the same time, and that meant one of two things: either she was going to have to ignore the fact that most of her chest was going to be on display while she sutured, or she was going to have to hold it closed and hike her skirt and let him handle her injury.

Oh, and how he wanted to handle the rest of her!

Barbossa hesitated at the cabin entrance long enough to compose himself, so that he wouldn't look like a hungry fox about to raid the henhouse, and opened the door.

She came toward him with a shy smile and he held out the medical supplies, trying his best not to break into a wolfish grin as she took them from him; evidently she'd decided on suturing her own laceration, which was going to leave him free to sit and watch as she bared a lot more of her legs to do so. He fought not to let his eyes wander too obviously to her exposed cleavage as she took the materials from him, and then scowled sharply as he realized she was walking away.

Damn! She had gone behind the privacy screen, ruining the lovely scenario that'd been playing out in his mind of sitting and enjoying the way her shredded dress kept falling open as she bared those fine legs in front of him. Such a lovely, enticing little prelude it would have been.

Disappointed but not defeated by a long shot, Barbossa poured two measures of rum, (getting more alcohol into her under the guise of an attempt to dull her pain certainly couldn't hurt!) and he sat down to answer her questions of how he'd been injured by the falling mast years ago, biding his time while she sutured and he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Long moments crept by, and after he'd finished his tale and was still hearing a lot of rustling behind the screen, he began drumming his nails on the table.

What the fuck was she doing back there?

Was she done? Was she avoiding him?

A soft curse in French from behind the screen caused him to frown, puzzled by what she was doing, but when realization dawned as to what was happening, a sly smile spread slowly across his lips.

She couldn't reach her wound and was going to need his help!

Images of her tugging up her skirt and bending over before him swam tantalizingly into his thoughts. "May, are you alright?" he asked, doing his darnedest to sound concerned through his nearly giddy anticipation.

"Yes," came the hesitant reply. "Just having a bit of a tricky time…"

And you're going to have to ask for my help! He recalled how smooth her thighs had been when he'd inspected her wound in the woods, and he nearly skipped to the near side of the screen. "How are ye goin' about suturin' that, anyway?" he asked her on the other side.

Say you're not. Say you're not!

"I'm not, really," she admitted sheepishly from behind the screen.

Barbossa had to bite a knuckle for a moment to take the edge of lascivious glee out of his voice when he offered to help her. A couple shots of rum, a half-dozen sutures, and the remnants of her rag-tag dress and she would be parting company!

He crossed back to the table with a spring in his step and picked up more suture. "Step out here, the lightin' be better," he called softly, quickly downing another measure of rum in anticipatory celebration. He arranged his features into what he hoped was a suitably concerned expression, and determined to not let her see him look at her in anything akin to an inappropriate manner, he vowed he would not let his eyes drop to the little that was left of her shredded bodice.

Which would have worked out fine, if she'd been wearing said shredded bodice, but when he'd turned around to see her standing near the screen in nothing but his frockcoat, he couldn't help the involuntary double take he did, nor the way he blatantly let his eyes travel over her.

She stood there shyly, obviously self-conscious, and it was quite apparent that she was wearing nothing but his coat. Barbossa let his eyes travel down her exposed legs to her bare feet, deciding that he wouldn't have an issue with it if she remained in such attire for the duration of the voyage.

A second or two before the situation would have become quite awkward, Barbossa managed to close his gaping mouth, trying to appear composed. "Ye look a fair sight better in me coat than I do," he said, causing her to smile in that shy fetching way she had. He realized that the only way they were going to get to anything else was to get her injury taken care of, and as far as he was concerned, it couldn't be soon enough.

"Come here and turn about," he said, motioning for her to come closer as he sat down in the chair and gathered up needle and suture. Obviously placing her complete trust in him, she did as she was told as he tried to focus on the small laceration and not the creamy skin of her thighs, a difficult task since he already knew how soft and warm her flesh was under his hands.

Gritting his teeth to steady himself, he reached for her silken skin, wondering if she knew the temptation she had placed at his fingertips. If she had any idea that part of him was tempted to forgo the sutures in favor of foreplay, or that he had already resigned himself to the fact that one way or another his coat was coming off her body, even if he had to cut the fine Incan silver buttons off himself, she never would have stood so close, wearing so little.

That very thought of drawing his dagger and cutting the buttons off one by one in a tantalizing manner (he could sew the blasted things back on later!) sent a rush of heat to his groin, and he was thankful that she was facing the other way as the leviathan from the depths caught wind of the fact that there was a scantily clad female just inches away, and it suddenly raised its head.

Woman mine! it snarled possessively, deciding to venture forth from its lair.

Rolling his eyes at himself and the fact that he was fighting a losing battle with the beast, he mentally scolded it. 'Stand down! 'Tis not time yet!'

No?

'No!'

But the woman…

'Never ye mind just now!' Barbossa spat.

Fine. It retreated to pout.

Deciding that he should give Madeline some warning before jabbing her with a needle, he spoke softly to her. "Ready?"

Aye! Once again the serpent from the nether regions enthusiastically came forth.

'Not you!' Barbossa scolded.

No?

'No! I meant Madeline!'

Is she ready?

"Yes," Madeline said, bracing herself for the bite of the needle.

She's ready!

'Not for that! For suturin'!

Suturin? the disappointed reply came.

'Aye.'

Not for…

'No!' Barbossa snarled, getting exasperated.

Fine!

Banishing the beast again, Barbossa placed a hand against her leg, ineffectively stifling a tiny whimper of longing as his fingers met her smooth skin.

"Are you alright?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Aye, lass, just stuck meself with the needle," he lied smoothly. "Hold still."

To Barbossa's great delight, Madeline endured the repair of her wound without uttering a sound. Not that he enjoyed having to sew her laceration closed, or put her through such discomfort, but it bode well for her tolerating the injury enough to end up between the sheets with him tonight.

She said nothing as he finished gently wiping the dried blood from her leg, and he realized that it was now or never. Unable to resist the temptation of her warm skin any longer, he risked running his hand along her uninjured thigh, ever so gently.

When she held her ground and said nothing despite the impropriety, he knew she was all but his...

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A/N: I blame Belphegor's previous comments about the good captain's struggles with his unruly member for inspiring the agument that takes place between pirate and penis. ;)