by Amelia Wilde
“Don’t even think about it.”
“I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“You know I would catch you.”
I do know this. He’s not any less fast or strong on land. I take a step toward him so there’s no tension between us—so he’s not holding me in place. I’m not poised to run.
He holds on for several heartbeats longer—heartbeats that get faster with every thud. I’m not sure it’s about running, that wild energy. Or the skeletons. It’s my own body working against me. Or with him. I don’t know.
Poseidon takes his hand away, but doesn’t give me any more space. “Clothes first.”
A shop midway down the first block turns out to be a low-ceilinged boutique with a blue plaster front and an interior that reminds me, weirdly, of Poseidon’s quarters on his ship. The knotted wood here is a backdrop for dresses and tunics and a shelf full of the softest black leggings I’ve ever felt. I can’t stop touching them. Can’t stop running my hands over the fabrics and tugging the dresses to hear the way the hangers click against the racks. It slows my heart rate. Releases my mind from a pressure I didn’t know was there. It’s some time before I become aware of the voices.
Poseidon speaks with the shop owner in Spanish. She’s tall and beautiful, and when I finally surface from my shopping haze, embarrassed to be so taken with this thing he’s doing, I see for the first time that she doesn’t seem afraid of him.
It’s like they know each other. Or have met before. I pull out a dress from a rack, a light, floaty thing that reminds me of the sundress I’m wearing, and try to ignore the strange jealousy burrowing at the base of my throat. It makes a certain kind of sense. I should be jealous of her. I’m a pirate’s captive, and she owns her own store.
But that’s not what it is.
Shamefully, that is not what this is.
I’m jealous that she can speak to him in this language I don’t know, that I’ve never bothered to know because I’ve never traveled alone in any meaningful way. I’m jealous that he knows it, and I didn’t know that about him.
It’s ridiculous. Mortifying. I’m his hostage, for God’s sake. I shouldn’t be dying to know things about him.
He makes a joke. Her laugh is musical, easy. Then she makes a joke. And he laughs.
I turn away, going to the far corner of the shop, wrestling down this childish jealousy. It’s not nearly far enough, and of course he sees.
Of course he’s there, the cool-water presence of him surrounding me, cornering me. “Your pick of anything in here, princess.”
I turn to face him, putting a smile on as I do. “Did she give you a good deal?”
That same sharp grin transforms him. “I didn’t ask for a deal.”
“You flirted with her for no reason, then.”
He lets a beat go by. My cheeks burn up, and I pretend to become absorbed in a tunic the color of cherries.
Poseidon plucks it from its hanger and puts it in my hands. “You don’t shop here without chatting. Nothing to be jealous over.”
I make a sound that’s supposed to be a laugh but misses the mark. “I’m not jealous.”
“Good. Because I paid her enough to buy out the whole place. We’ll leave some for the next customer, but choose what you want. I have other places to visit.”
We leave half an hour later with a canvas bag overflowing with outfits and a pair of soft shoes on my feet. Poseidon curls the straps of the bag in his hand and shakes his head. There are three more shops on this block to visit. One is a pharmacy, where he buys several bottles of something with labels in Spanish, some sunscreen, and some combination shampoo/conditioner.
“Three bottles of medicine?” I ask him.
“Tylenol,” he says on the way out. The Tylenol goes into the bag with my clothes, and he hands the sunscreen to me.
“Are you running low?”
“Not on Tylenol. Just information.”
“About what?”
He doesn’t answer. I wish I had more time to bother Nicholas about this. Another tiny boutique carries women’s undergarments, which is as much a relief as the dress shop. Poseidon wasn’t lying—he chats with this shop owner, too. Makes her laugh. I never see the exchange of money, which I’m beginning to think is the point. I want to ask him why he’s so at ease in places like this. I don’t.
On the next block, he makes three more stops, buying small items at each place. A brush for me. New chapstick. A cardboard strip with elastics for my hair. The chatting makes curiosity into an itch that can’t be scratched. I try my best to ignore it.
The morning stretches to the afternoon. He buys me lunch at a restaurant the width of an alley, with a window looking out over the street. The kitchen inside is loud and hot, and Poseidon doesn’t ask me what I want. He orders, then tips the folded paper into my hands. Two tamales, both of them so good I could cry. We eat them on our way through a series of turns that lets us out at Poseidon’s next destination.
It looks like a jewelry store, but as soon as we’re inside, I realize the jewelry is for the front displays. The rest is a pawn shop. Poseidon leans over the counter in the back and calls to someone hidden behind a beaded curtain—a man who comes hurrying out, brushing his hands together, a big smile on his face.
Poseidon launches into his questions, which have to do, I think, with a pearl. La perla. Like the one I found in his chest? Does he need more?
I don’t interrupt to ask, and neither man looks my way.
Poseidon puts a hand flat on the back counter as if he wants to lean in, but he doesn’t. He keeps himself upright and apart until the other man shakes his head. Frowns. Rubs a hand over his mouth. And then, quickly, quietly, he says one more thing.
He doesn’t put anything on the counter, but there’s money in Poseidon’s hand, and then it’s hidden in a handshake and then we’re leaving.
At the end of the street, before I can work up the courage to tell him I was eavesdropping, he pulls me into one more shop.
In this one, he buys a sweater for me that’s as soft as everything else in the bag from the first boutique. Softer. Thicker. I could wear it at night on deck, if I was cold. I could wear it at sea.
It’s perfect.
The rest of my questions fall away into an easy, foolish bliss. Easy, because it’s warm and beautiful on the water. Foolish for every obvious reason. But a person can’t spend all their time being afraid, trying to figure out a way to escape. I’ve done that for days. For this moment, I’m going to enjoy the walk back to the dock and the ride back to the ship. The sea breeze plays with my hair and the hem of my sundress. Poseidon watches.
I like the heat in his eyes.
God help me.
It’s not God who carries the new things he’s bought up to the railing and lifts us over. It’s not God who gives orders for the dinghy to be brought in and for the cook to start on dinner. It's not God who takes me back to his quarters and tips the bag over his bed so I can look through the new things.
It’s Poseidon.
My heart swells with gratitude, heightened by the sun and the food and the shopping trip.
I’m about to thank him for it—thank this man who is holding me hostage—when his phone rings.
His eyes are like lightning over the water as he pulls it from his pocket. All that warm, fuzzy gratitude freezes up and splinters.
“You waited too long to make your transaction, Joseph,” says Poseidon, his eyes on mine. My stomach drops. I was so warm, almost content, and now the only thing keeping me together is willpower. I don’t have much of it left. The sundress seems like less than nothing now.
I can’t hear what my father is saying. Poseidon’s mouth twists. “Yes, I know you’ll pay,” he says. “Unfortunately for you, the price to get her back just doubled.”
15
Poseidon
Tears fill Ashley’s big, blue eyes, but she doesn’t let them fall. She watches me hang up on her father and toss the phone into a corner of the r
oom. I don’t care if it breaks.
I hate those tears.
I hate them as much, if not more, than I hate her pathetic asshole of a father. He has enough money to send an army after her, and he hesitated.
Now he’ll face the consequences.
Rage runs through my veins like acid. It’s dangerous to feel it. For me. For anyone else in my line of sight. It burns along the punched holes of old hurts and digs in like rusted nails. Like a pair of hands around my neck and a boot in my back. Hollow anger rushes in at the banks of me. It’s a shallower feeling than the rage, but depth doesn’t matter with things like that. A person can drown in an inch of water. A person can drown fifteen feet from the shore.
Joseph Donnelly’s voice makes me crave a rampage.
He’s not here.
His daughter is, with tears in her eyes and a sundress that doesn’t hide her tits.
I put her in it to humiliate her, and it didn’t work. She walked around town all day like she was on cloud fucking nine. As if everyone who caught her in the right light didn’t get a full view of her nipples. She gave them a show. I gave her one. Just like her piece-of-shit boyfriend would have done, but he would have haggled, he’d have counted his trust fund pennies and made her pay half.
Ashley’s lip quivers, and she bites down on it to stop it or to hide it or both. It doesn’t work.
And then she opens her mouth.
Her arms are crossed over her ribs like a shield. “What were you looking for today? I heard you talking about a pearl in that shop.”
She is making conversation to try to save herself. Because she can feel it—the anger like electricity in the air. She’s a woman. Of course she feels it. Like I feel trouble on the sea. The way I felt my foster father arriving at the house he kept us in. Unfortunately for Ashley, this is not the distraction she means for it to be.
“We all have our treasures we hunt.”
Her eyes dart to the left, and then down. When she speaks again her voice is coiled around worry. “What if he doesn’t pay?”
Thick metal slams itself down in front of my heart, in front of every sick memory I’m constantly trying to forget and can’t. I can’t, because all those things are tied up in the neverending quest to find what’s missing from my life. When the gate comes down all that’s left is a pure hunger for release.
“Then maybe I’ll sell you to the highest bidder.” Ashley’s eyes meet mine, wide and afraid now. The way I like them. “There’s quite a hot market for beautiful young women like you.”
Fear hardens to a quick, clean anger in her eyes. “You wouldn’t do that.”
I lunge for her. There’s nowhere for her to run, no time for her to turn or fall or scream, so all she does when I get my hand around her throat is gasp, strangled and nearly silent.
For a second.
Then she gets her fists up, clawing for my wrist, my hand. She rakes her fingernails across my skin hard enough to draw blood, and I turn her around so that I’m between her and the door. Her mistake. Ashley was between me and the sea. There’s no more deadly place to be in the world. The backs of her knees hit the side of the bed and she tenses, staying upright for a few more seconds.
So the princess likes to be toyed with. She has to know she’s going to lose.
“You wouldn’t do that to me,” she says again, voice shaking like she wants to believe herself but can’t. “I won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me.”
Oh, but she can try. She throws herself against me with a howl, raining blows down on my chest, my shoulders, the top of my arm. I have her by the neck. None of her efforts loosen my grip on her slim throat. None of it hurts at all. She gets a hand up to my face and slashes at my cheekbone, cutting into the skin.
The new, surface-level pain hooks itself into old, raw bruises, and the last check on my control snaps. I take her backward onto the bed, stretch her out, move her across it while she struggles. Ashley swallows again and again under my hand, and it takes everything, everything, not to fuck her throat right now. Instead, I pin her there and reach for my belt.
When she realizes what I’m doing the tears finally spill over, running down her cheeks with nothing to stop them. Every touch is met with a terrified whimper. That makes me harder. I have wanted her all fucking day, every minute since I found her, and I’m done waiting. I’m done with everything except satisfying this single need like it will put things right again.
I let go of her throat so I can get her hands up and around the bedpost. So I can tie them there with the belt. The sick fuck part of me wants the leather to dig into her flesh. To leave more lasting marks. But I don’t do that. I don’t need to.
Her sundress is tangled around her thighs and I pull it tight in my fist to show her where it is, and then show her where it’s not. I push it up past her hips, exposing that smooth skin, and farther, above the tits I’ve been pretending not to notice all day, like a fucking gentleman.
I lean down and bite one of them.
Ashley screams but tries her best to swallow most of the sound. Her cheeks are painted a humiliated red but her nipples are peaked and tight. Sensitive. They have to be so fucking sensitive. I bite the other one.
She cries out again, so wounded and turned on that I find other places to bite. Her collarbone. Her shoulder. The side of her neck. If I ever do send her back to her father, I’ll do it with my teeth marks on her skin. Let him see what I did to his daughter. Let her feel me there for the rest of her life.
“Maybe I’ll sell you.” I bite down on her hip. “Or maybe I’ll keep you for myself. I’ll chain you to this bed and use your tight body whenever I want. You’d be useful to me. If I want to make a deal with someone, I can throw in the use of you for a night to sweeten the deal.”
“No,” she whispers. “Don’t do that.”
I kneel over her. She cannot help but be arched on my bed for me. I tied her that way. She can’t help but push out those tits with their aching nipples and bite marks. A knee between her thighs inches them open, and I put both my hands there and spread them wide.
Ashley fights me on this, too. Putting as much resistance against my hands as she can. Fresh color spills over her cheeks. Her gritted teeth don’t stop her tears.
She doesn’t spread her legs for me like a needy whore the way she did before, when I chained her, when I finger-fucked her. But when I have her cunt opened to me, no part of her kept secret, the end result is the same.
I push three fingers into her without any preamble, and her whole body curls around the invasion. “Too big,” she says through clenched teeth. “Too big.”
“You can lie to me all you want, princess. Your pussy doesn’t.” It has responded to me by getting wetter, tighter, by trying to get more of my fingers inside her. Who am I to say no to that? I twist them, finding the rough spot inside her that will embarrass her more. Ashley sobs out a moan.
“Don’t come,” I tell her. “We’re not done yet. Or, fuck it. Come as many times as you want. Show me how much you love this.”
“I don’t.” Her voice is high and thready, as if she can’t get enough air. “I don’t love it at all.”
I put a thumb to her clit. “Lie to me again.”
Two more fat tears slide down to her temples and into her hair. “I don’t love it.”
I press down, a glancing touch, a light one, and trace circles there. One. Two. Three.
She comes on the fifth one, crying through it. I pull my fingers out of her before she’s done coming and wipe them across her jaw.
And then I take a fistful of her sundress and push it into her mouth, tight against her tongue.
Her eyes fly open. No more tears. Ashley’s making sounds against the cloth, but no matter how she works her jaw, she can’t spit it out. I’m a horrible bastard that way.
“The gag is for you, princess. You don’t want the whole crew hearing your business, do you?”
She shakes her head before she can stop herself. It’s
another lie. I’d bet my life on it. I’d bet she would get wetter if I lined them all up outside the door and made them watch. I circle her mouth with a fingertip, then undo my pants.
She’s tied up, gagged, humiliated, and her eyes move down over my body to the cock that’s about to fuck her.
I don’t think those eyes can get any wider.
Then she sees my piercing.
Ashley can’t stop looking at it, breathing hard through her gag.
The shell of her ear is too tempting not to bite, so I do it, the resulting shiver moving all the way down through her body. “Yes,” I tell her. One more graze of my teeth. “You’ll be able to feel it.”
I’m finished waiting.
Back between her legs, I push her thighs open harder than is strictly necessary and notch myself to her swollen opening.
Lean forward.
Drive myself home.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Her eyelashes flutter, and she makes a little whine against the gag, but it turns into a desperate moan at the back of her throat. More color races to her cheeks with every thrust. I brace a hand on the bedpost, where she can see it, and fuck her without consideration, without mercy.
Ashley’s cunt likes this very much.
It doesn’t want to let my cock go.
Not even a little.
From this position, she has no leverage, but her pussy creates it with another orgasm. There’s nothing sweeter than the ragged noises she’s making. Than the shame in her cheeks. Her body clings to the pleasure, keeping it trapped between her legs for as long as she can. Her hips roll with it, again and again and again, an endless wheel, like the waves.
I lean down and kiss the side of her mouth. Her gag is soaking through, what with all the noise, but I don’t take it out. I’m not going to until I’m finished fucking her. Maybe longer. “This part,” I say into her ear, as if I’m not being dragged down into her body. I cannot swim parallel to this tide. I want her to drown me. “This part is for me. So I can describe your hot little cunt to the buyers. So I can tell them what they’ll be getting for their money. It would be wrong…” I punctuate this with a vicious thrust and she tosses her head back against the bed, showing me her throat. “It would be wrong to sell something I wouldn’t personally recommend.”