Who has never wanted a Pirates of the Caribbean in an MM version? Good news: MM pirate romance exists. And not just one or two books. I have gathered my best reads on the subject here, and I will admit this is a theme that takes me travelling like almost nothing else does.
Forced proximity, enemies to lovers, survival: ingredients that spice up a romance, and sometimes a forbidden one. A ship is a closed world with a hierarchy, a captain, and nowhere to walk away to, which is why the trope keeps working.
Seventeen books below, sorted by where they sail, because half of these pirates never go near the sea. I’m French, I blog about MM romance in French, and I read most of these in English, so expect the occasional turn of phrase that gives me away.
🎵 Before you start, I strongly recommend setting the mood: put on the Pirates of the Caribbean theme. Once that is playing, you can dive into this selection, matelot.
What Book for Your Mood, and What You’re Looking For
If you already know what you are after, start here.
You want captive and captor, no magic
You want Our Flag Means Death energy
You want politics, revolution and Black Sails
You want a curse and a race against time
You want merfolk under the pirates
You want dark, and a prince held for ransom
You want Hook and Pan, all grown up
You want an empire, a court and a huge series
You want an airship and dragons
You want a pirate who never sees the sea
You want to laugh the whole way through
You want it gentler, nothing explicit
This is only the shortcut, and it leaves plenty out. Scroll on for the full list, with covers, what each book is actually about, and what I thought of it.
What’s on this page
A Star to Sail By
Lieutenant Crispin Merrick has always dreamed of commanding a ship in the Royal Navy. Kidnapped by pirates, he is determined to escape and reclaim his life of duty and honour, and to forget the man assigned to watch him. Billy has found a kind of freedom as a pirate, and a naval officer aboard reminds him how easily it could be taken away. Forced to share a cramped cabin, mistrust gives way to uneasy understanding, and then to something far more dangerous.
On a Lee Shore
Beached after losing his ship and crew, and with England finally at peace, Lt Christopher Penrose takes whatever work he can get. Escorting an elderly diplomat to the Leeward Islands as a valet looks easy enough, until pirates board. Forced aboard their ship, Kit has to juggle his honour against staying alive among the crew, and against the alarming captain known as La Griffe. The further they plunder across the Caribbean, the more he finds to admire in a freedom he is supposed to deplore.
Pirate’s Parole
Lieutenant Charles Thomas is a rising star in the Royal Navy, newly made third lieutenant under Captain Wickerham aboard HMS Courage. When a band of desperate pirates tries to take the ship, everything goes wrong very fast, and Thomas ends up stranded alone on an island with one mission: reach the rest of his surviving men. His only companion is a peculiar, voiceless young pirate.
Rears & Vices
Everard is a disgraced Royal Navy officer who ends up aboard with Vitya Gray, a notorious pirate fleet captain and anti-colonial arms smuggler that at least three crowns want dead. The world owes a clear debt to Black Sails and to Hamilton: revolution, colonial politics, philosophical arguments, a jailbreak, and a great deal of nautical detail.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Gerald Poole and the Pirates
Gerald Poole is a young Englishman, thoroughly miserable at being sent abroad aboard a naval vessel and reluctantly attended by the cold, put-upon Lieutenant Jack Wicks. Their tense arrangement is interrupted, and considerably complicated, when the two of them are kidnapped by pirates. A novella of adventure and queerness in the late eighteenth century Mediterranean.
Taken From the Passenger Deck
Three men who were never sailors at all. A gentleman on his way to a marriage he does not want, a manservant protecting other people’s children, a nobleman who does not fit anywhere on land. None of them has a career to lose, so the question is not honour, it is what kind of life they choose once someone finally offers them one.
Kidnapped by the Pirate
Nathaniel Bainbridge has spent his life hiding things: his struggle with reading, and his desire for men. Under his father’s thumb, he is sailing to the young colony of Primrose Isle to be handed into a respectable marriage that will fix the family finances. Then pirates take the ship, and Nathaniel is carried off for ransom by the Sea Hawk, a legend of the New World and a man twice his age.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
The Pirate Captain’s Bargain
Will has spent his whole life in service to others, and the Davenport children are the closest thing he has to family. When their ship is taken in the Caribbean by a notoriously cutthroat captain, he strikes a deal: information worth a fortune, in exchange for the children returned to their father untouched. Damon expected cargo worth stealing. Instead he finds a manservant standing between his crew and his charges with a carving knife and a spine of steel. Most men beg for mercy. Will negotiates.
A Prince Among Pirates
Kit Davenport does not fit anywhere in British high society, and ends up aboard the ship of the charismatic Captain Reggie Sharpe more or less by accident. Pirates, a bit of royalty, and a romance under the stars. The comparison the publisher reaches for is Our Flag Means Death, and it is a fair one.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Enjoying the historical corner? My age gap list is half historical too, and the two share a book, because Found at Sea sits comfortably in both.
Fantasy Pirate Romance: Seas That Never Existed
Seven books on oceans nobody can find on a map. Curses, merfolk, invented empires, one very famous island. Fantasy solves the problem the historical books have to work around: on an invented sea, two men together are not automatically a hanging offence, so the danger is free to come from somewhere more interesting.
Found at Sea (Tales of Fate, Book 1)
They call Kellan Flynn the demon of the sea, a captain so cruel that not even death will claim him, and they are not wrong. He is cursed, and the curse will consume him unless he finds the key to breaking it. Fletcher has an ordinary life and a longing for adventure, right up until pirates walk into his tavern one night and press-gang him onto the most feared ship on the water. The cold stare Kellan gives everyone else softens when it lands on him.
Stealing the Wind (Mermen of Ea, Book 1)
Taren has known nothing but life as a slave. When a pirate captain kidnaps him, he expects more captivity and gets something closer to freedom instead: three years of labour aboard in exchange for his release. Then a storm takes him overboard, and he is pulled out of the water by Ian Dunaidh, the strangely ageless captain of a rival ship. Ian’s people are Ea, shape-shifting merfolk, and so, it turns out, is Taren.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
The Pirate of Fathoms Deep (Tales of the High Court, Book 2)
High Commander Lesto Arseni is the most feared man in the Harken Empire. Nobody but the High King risks his temper, except a pirate who once punched him in the middle of the imperial pavilion, then took him somewhere quieter, then vanished. Shemal wants to leave his pirating behind and be taken seriously, which is difficult when two idiots turn up asking for help with a nobleman they have kidnapped, and the nobleman is Lesto.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
In Deeper Waters
Prince Tal has spent most of his life behind palace walls learning to keep his forbidden magic secret, and his coming-of-age tour is the first time he sees his family kingdom. Two days in, the crew finds a prisoner aboard a burning derelict. Tal is put in charge of watching him, feels an immediate pull towards the roguish Athlen, and then watches him go over the side and vanish into open water. Days later Athlen turns up on dry land, very much alive and no more forthcoming than before.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Running Close to the Wind
Avra Helvaci has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world, and the only place to run with something that big is the open sea. To find a buyer he has to ask his on-again off-again ex, the pirate Captain Teveri az-Haffar, who is far from delighted to see him. The plan is simple: carry the secret to the pirate republic of the Isles of Lost Souls, fence it, get rich. In the way are a calculating ambassador, a beautiful new crew member with an inconvenient vow of celibacy, and sea serpent breeding season.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Crossbones
Prince Caspian De’Vero is not the Crown Prince, thank God, but he carries the weight of a corrupt kingdom anyway, and he has spent years quietly siphoning gold from the royal treasury to fund a haven for the refugees his father displaced. Captain James Blackwell, the Stormbreaker, captures what he thinks is an ordinary De’Vero noble and plans to ransom him. The man turns out to be nothing he expected, and the treasure they both need may not exist at all.
Far From Neverland (Far From, Book 1)
Fourteen years after Peter Pan disappeared, Hook goes looking for him. He finds him grown, with no memory of anything they were to each other, and infuriatingly attractive. To save Neverland the two of them have to pick up where they left off, which would be easier if either of them could admit what that was.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Pirates Who Never Touch the Water
Two books that keep everything about the trope except the water. Both of them fly, and both call themselves pirate romance without blinking. It turns out the thing we actually want from the genre is not salt water at all: it is a crew, a captain, a stolen thing worth dying for, and a life that puts you outside the law before the romance even starts.
A Blazing Fury
Captain Jayce Hawkins runs a crew of fire scroungers, and they need a dragoner: a dragon specialist willing to do the bloody work of scavenging carcasses after a natural death and collecting the liquid fire everyone in Hargos wants. Harlow Prince has just graduated from the university of Dragonest and has his own reasons for going. He finds the captain infuriating and the idea of living on a pirate ship held up by a hot-air balloon frankly terrifying, and he signs on anyway.
The Sky Pirate’s Stowaway (The Black Wraith, Book 1)
Three rules for surviving aboard The Black Wraith: never challenge the captain, never reveal your magic, and absolutely do not fall in love with the first mate. Kaspar Ward is running from the law and wakes up in the cargo hold of the most notorious airship in the sky. Maximus Blackwood, called the Reaper by everyone else, keeps the crew in line through sheer reputation and has no time for a stowaway with secrets and an irritating talent for seeing straight through him.
More Black Wraith
The series continues with The Sky Pirate’s Rebel, so this is a start rather than a standalone.
My Top 3 MM Pirate Romance Books
All seventeen are here because I enjoyed them. But if someone asked me for three and nothing more, these are the ones. Two of the three are books where the man taken aboard was never a sailor at all, which I did not plan and which probably tells you what I am really here for.
The Pirate Captain’s Bargain, by Amy Padilla
The one where the captive negotiates instead of begging, and wins. Will steps aboard thinking he has bought the children’s safety with his own servitude, and Damon spends the book working out that he has accidentally handed a man his freedom. Everything good about the trope is in that misunderstanding.
Running Close to the Wind, by Alexandra Rowland
The funniest thing on this page and the one that surprised me most. A stolen secret, an ex who is not pleased to see him, a pirate republic, and sea serpent breeding season. It plays the whole genre for comedy without ever sneering at it, and it is not a tidy two-man romance, which I liked more than I expected to.
Kidnapped by the Pirate, by Keira Andrews
The most classic setup here, done properly. A young man on his way to a marriage he does not want, a captain with a score to settle against his father, and a sea that keeps the rest of the world out. Keira Andrews writes first times with real tenderness, which is what lifts it above the premise.
MM Pirate Romance: Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with MM pirate romance?
Kidnapped by the Pirate if you want the classic version done well, and A Prince Among Pirates if you want something warmer and lighter. Both are historical, both work as a first book, and neither asks you to learn a fantasy world first.
Are these historical or fantasy?
Both, and that is why this page is sorted the way it is. Eight are set in the real eighteenth century, seven happen on invented seas with curses, merfolk or empires, and two keep the pirate structure with no sea at all. If historical accuracy matters to you, stay in the first two sections.
Why do so many of these use captive and captor?
Because a ship is the perfect closed room. Nobody can leave, the captain holds all the power, and the person taken aboard has to work out how to survive rather than how to escape. It is forced proximity with the stakes turned up, which is also why several of these books carry content warnings. The good ones treat the imbalance as a real problem instead of scenery.
Which ones are standalones?
Most of them. Crossbones, Far From Neverland, A Blazing Fury, Running Close to the Wind, In Deeper Waters, On a Lee Shore, A Star to Sail By, Pirate’s Parole, Gerald Poole and the Pirates and The Pirate Captain’s Bargain all stand alone. Stealing the Wind opens a trilogy, The Sky Pirate’s Stowaway opens a series, and The Pirate of Fathoms Deep is book two of a long series but follows its own couple.
Is there anything for someone who wants Our Flag Means Death?
A Prince Among Pirates is the closest, and its own publisher makes the comparison. If what you liked about the show was the politics and the grit rather than the sweetness, Rears & Vices is the other direction, closer to Black Sails.
Why is it always a navy officer and a pirate?
Because the setup does everything at once. One man has a career, a uniform and a set of rules he believes in, the other has none of that and is freer for it, and the ship forces them into the same few square metres. Five books on this page use it, and the interesting question is never whether the officer falls, it is what he decides he wants instead. If you would rather skip the template, the second section is for men who were never sailors at all.
Do sky pirates count as pirates?
I think so, and having read them I am fairly convinced the sea was never the point. A crew, a captain, plunder and life outside the law is the whole recipe, and A Blazing Fury and The Sky Pirate’s Stowaway have all of it several thousand feet up.
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Before You Go
Thank you for reading! Pirate romance is a small corner of the genre and I have read most of what exists in it, so if you know one I have missed, please tell me. I will read anything with a ship in it.
New to the genre? Start with the map.
