A pirate's life is not for everyone. For some, such a life appeals to them, while others appeal to that life. So it would be with a lovely woman named Rose O'scarlett. On the run for more than three years, Rose has learned to live by her wits as she eludes the guns of the British Navy. Relentlessly pursued by British Governor Berkley, she flees in her battered ship, the Scarlet Dragon from port to port between raids of merchant shipping. Finally, and with the help of her good friend Captain Bugs Nailhall, she ends up in Port Royal and right under the Governor's nose, her ship crippled and her crew on the brink of mutiny. Desperate to elude capture and the gallows, she has a chance run-in with the biggest and most feared marauder of the new world: Captain Cannonflash Jones! While the pirate captain she is knows to steer clear of Jones, the woman within her defies better judgment and pursues this massive man in hopes of arranging an accord with him and using him and his massive ship, the Black Dragon to elude capture by the British. She knows nothing of this man, but womanly need is overwhelming. Alas, not all is as it appears. Captain Jones is a pirate, after all, and the reward that hovers over Rose is huge and tempting. But other forces are at work, forces she has no control over and her daily struggle to survive and elude capture plunges her neck deep in affairs she had never thought she would become a part of, and even as she struggles just to survive it all, she finds her heart captured by a man who could ultimately sell her to Governor Berkley and be the end of her life as a pirate forever.