by Amelia Wilde
I’m wound tight enough to break. To shatter. To get hit by a wave and dissolve into seafoam. I dig my teeth into her and give myself over to this primal, animal urge.
And finally, finally, my mind lets go of all the pain and anger. It throws itself into deep water.
I saw in and out of her for another long series of thrusts while my balls draw themselves up, while my cock gets tighter, while it reaches its limit and goes past.
My release hits when I’m balls-deep in her, grinding my hips to get in another inch. The hot splash of me against her sweetness soothes the rough edges of me. So does the way she’s trying to fuck me back through her tears. Her hips rise to meet me. They rise and rise and rise until Ashley comes again with a quiet cry and the last of her droplets gathering on her eyelashes.
I make her stay there in the gag and the belt while I go for a washcloth.
I make her wait while I pull my own pants on. And then I climb back on the bed and draw the cloth over her thighs and pussy. I don’t clean all the evidence of me away. Let her sleep with it.
The gag comes out first, but she doesn’t say anything while I undo the belt and help her up. She blinks, her eyes puffy, cheeks flushed. Ashley crawls to the pillows without another look at me and curls up on her side.
I turn out the lights.
She doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
Because.
I can’t.
Or I don’t want to.
Or the pull to her is so strong, so intense, that it’s like the sea.
Fuck pants. I shuck them off and crawl into the bed behind her. I’m not going to touch her. I don’t touch her. Not until the moment she presses her hips back toward me, needing.
I’m on her in the dark. “He never gave you enough, did he? He never gave you anything.”
She shakes her head, speechless.
One hand goes over her mouth, my other hand between her legs. She’s wet there, wanting, and she folds forward over my hand as a last sob shakes her body. How fucking awful to need this after I finished with her.
I stroke between her legs, gathering her juices up and over her clit, and rub hard. It’s too much. I know it by the way she opens her mouth and cries out against my palm the whole time it’s happening. The whole time her hips jerk against my hand. The whole time I twist her up with rough fingers and make her come in another burst that runs hot on the inside of her thighs.
When she’s done riding it out, I take my hand off her mouth and stay close. Not because I think she wants me there. Because sleep is closing in fast, in a way that it never, ever does. The sea rocks the ship, rocks both of us in it, and for once in my life, I let it have its way.
16
Ashley
Thudding footsteps in the hall yank me out of an exhausted sleep.
The blankets feel too heavy, holding me down to the bed, but it’s otherwise empty, and I throw them off and scramble out. Soreness from last night follows. The new clothes have spilled onto the floor and I dig through them with both hands. Whatever’s happening involves another set of shoes running heavily down the hall, and the shouting—it’s above me, on the deck, and it doesn’t sound good. The ship turns, faster than I’m used to, and I have to grab the bedpost to stay upright. It’s the one Poseidon used to trap my wrists. My arms ache from the position.
Panties. A tank top. A tunic the color of the ocean. Leggings. Soft shoes. I throw open the door and climb the stairs, my heart sprinting ahead of me.
I’m expecting chaos, and the deck is all noise and thunder. Men run from one end to the other, and there are guns. I haven’t seen guns here before, but I’ve been naïve. I watched Robbie get shot in the head, and I thought it was an anomaly. One of the men by the railing ducks, and a glint sails through the air.
They’re shooting at us.
I don’t know who they are or what happened, and my first instinct is to back up against the wall. Press myself flat. I can feel a distant panic low in my belly, but there’s not much room for it here and now. There are bullets in the air, and more people than I have ever seen up on deck. All this time, I have been surrounded by a crew that’s really a small army. No wonder Poseidon kept me in his own room.
He turns the corner, a round, metal sphere in his hands, and when he sees me, dark clouds roll through his eyes. Instantly, his body is in front of mine. Instantly, I can’t see anything but his perfect face, his deep-water eyes, his fall of dark hair. The angry set of his jaw. And underneath all of this, excitement. Part of him needs this. “Get below and fucking stay there.”
“Okay,” I lie. “Okay.”
Poseidon growls in pure frustration and wrenches himself away from me. He’s out of sight before I can lie to him again.
I’m not going back downstairs.
More bullets skim over the top of the ship, and I brace myself for death. For the inevitability of seeing another man die in a spray of blood and screams. But no one does. It’s almost as if the other people are firing warning shots. Trying to intimidate Poseidon and his crew. Who would try to do that?
Someone who knew about them.
Maybe someone who knows about me.
I peel myself off the wall and go left until I get to a shipping container up against the railing. It covers me long enough to see the other ship.
And when I do, I have to clap a hand over my mouth to keep myself from shrieking. With joy or relief or sadness or all of it.
It’s a Greenpeace ship. I recognize the white bird from one of the recruitment tables at college. These people care about saving the world. They’d have to care about a hostage too. They’d have to care about me. If I had the chance to explain, they would help me.
I jump before I have time to think about it. The ocean rushes up and pulls me under. Cold. Shit, it’s cold, cold, cold, but I know how to do this. I know how to not drown. I fight for the surface and I’m almost there when a dark line arrows through the water, leaving a trail of bubbles behind.
They’re shooting into the water.
There are no good choices right now, so I choose the least bad one and keep swimming for the surface. They can either shoot me down here or have a chance to see me. Their ship isn’t very far. I break the surface with both hands above my head and scream for help. I don’t think anyone hears it over the guns and the rest of the shouting, so I keep moving. Keep working my arms. Keep kicking. The closer I get, the easier it’ll be for them to see that I’m a woman. I need help. I’m not a pirate. I’m a captive. An escapee.
I’m twenty feet away, maybe less, when a sharp whistle tunnels through the air like a harpoon. The noise from Poseidon’s ship cuts out.
And then there’s the splash.
I don’t look back. It’s too precise a sound for it to be anything other than Poseidon jumping in after me.
“Help!” I shout at the ship. I see eyes now. Faces looking down at me. He’s coming after me, and if he reaches me first, then I won’t ever escape. Or we’ll both die. It will be bad. I put all the strength of my legs behind me. Every screaming breath. I spit out mouthfuls of ocean water and ignore the burn in my arms and go, go, go. “Help me!” I shout again, and this time they move. This time, someone tosses something overboard.
It’s a red-and-white buoy, attached to a thick rope.
It spirals down and hits the water in front of me with a slap. My stomach turns. I could be sick. I could be sick, right now, but if I spend my time throwing up in the ocean then Poseidon is going to catch me. It feels like hell. It feels like putting my hands in an electrical socket but I push myself the last few feet and wrap my arms around the buoy. “Please, hurry.”
Two of them are up on the deck of the ship, and one calls down at me to hold on.
His accent is rough.
It’s not what I expected.
I expected Americans because of that recruitment booth. One of the people at that tent talked about visiting Mexico. But that doesn’t mean anything. That’s a memory from a di
fferent life.
I’m clear of the surface and my body does the thing it always does, which is to act like the air is made of ice. My teeth chatter, shoulders shaking. No time to pay attention to that. I need to keep my legs under me so I don’t slam into the ship.
A shadow streaks through the water underneath me and Poseidon surfaces right next to the other ship. No bullets follow him. They’ve stopped shooting. Stopped shooting because I’m in the way. I’m midair, but I can see his face.
There’s a blank horror written there.
“Let go.” His voice is like an ocean swell. A wave hitting the shore. It’s distinct from the water but also of it. I’ll never hear ocean surf again without also hearing him.
“No,” I tell him through the shivers.
He means to let go of the buoy that’s lifting me into the air. He means to give in to the strain on my arms and drop back into the water. To come back to him. And why? The deep fear lurking behind the surface of his eyes can’t be about me. It has to be about the money he’s going to lose if I escape. The deal that’s collapsing right in front of him. I clench my teeth tight together and look away. The buoy slips in my arms. It would be much easier to let go, like he says, but then what? Then he sells me back to my father? Then he sells me to anyone he wants, when all I want is to be in his bed?
It’s so fucked up that I can’t look at him. If he’s going to keep me, then I want him to keep me. Not to sell me. But that’s not the sort of arrangement we’re in. I’m a commodity, and he’s in shipping. That’s all this is. Even if it hurts like the real thing.
Why does it hurt so much?
I’ll have time to think about it later. When this is over. And it’s almost over. I’m almost to the railing of the other ship. Two men stand in a narrow opening, their hands working on the rope, lifting me to freedom. They’ve stopped shooting for the moment, too. I’ve caused a scene, or at least a cease-fire. That can’t be all bad. Poseidon could swim back to his ship right now and go. The fight would be over. These men would live. The crew would live.
I’m going to live, and I’ll never see him again.
The thought makes my throat go tight and achy and tears pool in the corners of my eyes. I risk one more glance down at him. He’s got one hand on the side of the ship. Above him is that white Greenpeace bird.
It looks wrong from this angle. Not like the dove I saw at that recruitment booth. From here, it doesn’t look white at all. It looks like a faded arrow in another color, bleached by the sun.
Then I can’t see it anymore, because they’re pulling me over the side of the boat. One of the men wraps a big fist around my upper arm and pulls. The other one uses the buoy for leverage, and my feet make contact.
I’m saved.
I’m worn out from the swim. Struggling to stand. The first man gives me a push toward the center of the deck, and I go in that direction until I meet a stack of crates and sink down next to them.
Someone shouts in a language I don’t recognize, and a boom echoes over the ocean. Across from us, a hole opens in the side of Poseidon’s ship. I get to my knees and search the water for him, but the wind has changed. The waves are higher. I catch a glimpse of a shadow near the bow of the ship. It’s gone in a blink.
So is the rest of the crew.
The last one left is Nicholas, Poseidon’s first mate. He’s half hidden from view, a rifle across his chest. He’s stone-faced, stoic, and for a horrible moment, I think this must mean that Poseidon isn’t going back to the ship, that Nicholas is in charge, that I killed him somehow.
But there’s no blood in the water. Nicholas turns his head, and then he’s gone, somewhere I can’t see.
Another boom, and a matching hole opens in Poseidon’s ship. A cheer goes up among the men here, and it doesn’t sit right. Greenpeace doesn’t care about pirates. They care about the environment. But then maybe they’re against shipping now, too. Maybe they’re against individual companies and it doesn’t matter who they run into.
It’s not my problem anymore.
It doesn’t have to be my problem.
Another volley of bullets goes unanswered by Poseidon’s crew. Not a single person is visible on deck. The shouting here gets louder. The ship’s engine rumbles. It’s smaller than Poseidon’s, and it doesn’t take long for it to pick up speed.
Whatever Poseidon was going to do, he can’t do it now. I ruined his plan with my own survival. I gave these men the chance to get away.
I should feel proud of that.
I get one hand up on the crate and pull myself to standing. A thank-you is in order, and then I’m going to need to borrow a phone. Water drips off my clothes and onto the deck like rain. Rain would feel good right now. The world must know it, because there are clouds on the horizon. Clouds in the direction we’re going. That doesn’t bother me. Soon I’ll be on my way home.
I’m so lost in this fantasy, the one where I’m tended to in a private hospital and then sent home to recover, that I don’t notice the men gathering around.
I don’t notice what they look like.
These aren’t young Greenpeace recruits. There are no Greenpeace uniforms, no leader coming forward to greet me. Only a collection of men, muscled to the last one of them, like Poseidon’s crew.
Unlike Poseidon’s crew, they’re not treating me like it’s normal for me to be here.
They’re looking at me like they want to eat me.
Tongues run over teeth. Eyes shine. The man who helped me onboard strokes a thumb over the butt of his pistol.
This is not Greenpeace.
I am not saved.
I break into a run, one shoe missing, one shoe slipping on the deck. They let me get to the railing across the stern before one of them wraps my arm in his fists and squeezes tight enough to bruise. Poseidon’s ship is already small in the distance. I struggle against him, trying my best to jump. I don’t care about the propellers or the engine or anything else.
“Not for you,” the man says, gesturing to the ocean. And then he drags me backward, away from my last hope.
17
Poseidon
I must look insane, climbing onto the ship. I feel insane. I feel like a waterspout, a tornado over sea, whipping water into a high-velocity killing machine.
Nicholas’s expression confirms it. “Do you need—”
“Go after them.” The sea clings to me, trying to pull me back over the railing and into itself. It’s correct. With Ashley on that ship, that’s where I belong.
“They’re Somali pirates. You know we should fall back.”
“Fuck falling back.” Nicholas has a rifle in his hands, but his face is the one to go pale when I step closer, the sea streaming off me and enough acid fear in my veins to kill me. “Do you want to die today?”
He squares up with me, never mind the fact that he’s smaller and I will beat him in a fight. “I’m trying to keep us alive.”
Those words burrow themselves under my skin. I’ve said them before. I can feel the shape of them in my mouth. I had my reasons then, but I don’t have any now. Not when the pearl I want is on that ship. Not when this particular crew of Somali pirates has the pearl I’ve been searching for.
And Ashley.
“Is this you disobeying direct orders? Very fucking brave, Nicholas.”
“I just think—”
I grab his shirt above the rifle and slam him into the wall. “Don’t think, fucker. Run.”
Nicholas doesn’t think. He runs. I’m not even through the door on the way to the captain’s quarters when I feel the ship change position.
My first mate does deserve a limited amount of praise for keeping his head when I jumped in after Ashley. He was the one to get the crew to hold fire so they didn’t hit her in the water—or hit me. He was the one who sent them below deck when we couldn’t respond with return fire.
He is the one person on this ship who ever tries to disagree with me. That’s why he’s the first mate. He might’ve ended that
encounter with a mild concussion, but he went for it anyway. It takes stones, even when you’re holding a rifle.
The praise will have to be later, when I don’t feel this murderous.
My room doesn’t help this at all.
It’s a monument to what happened yesterday. Ashley’s new clothes are a colorful waterfall off the side of my bed and strewn across the floor. The sundress she wore yesterday is abandoned up near the pillow.
It smells like her. Like the sunscreen I bought her at one of those shops and a hint of the perfume of the first boutique and her skin, her skin.
I don’t know when I pressed it up to my face, don’t know how it got there, but the moment I discover the dress in my hands, I’m ripping it apart like I’m going to find her inside.
The remains of the fabric fall to the floor, and I cover them with my own wet clothes. The shower feels like punishment. I force myself, because the sea salt on my skin is doing its best to convince me to swim after her, like a fucking idiot. I have to face the paper bag from the Mexican pharmacy there by the sink when I get out. Ashley never touched the things inside.
I want to knock them onto the floor but settle for crushing the bag in my hand and shoving it under the sink.
There’s a noise in the bedroom.
I ignore it while I put on the first clothes that come to hand. A black T-shirt. Shorts. They’re not what I would normally wear on deck, and I can’t bring myself to care. But the sound doesn’t stop. It’s obnoxious enough that I go looking for it.
I find it in the waterlogged shorts hiding the corpse of Ashley’s sundress.
It’s my phone.
Ringing.
What the fuck.
It’s ringing when I take it out of my pocket. The damn things are indestructible. I thought this time it would finally give in, but no. No. Not only is the phone still alive, but my brother Zeus is using it to call me.