Sea of Ruin

by Pam Godwin

  Then he blinked. His fingers flew to the ties on his breeches, one hand stroking his bulge through the fabric, as he attempted to free it.

  “I wouldn’t do that.” I lowered my arm.

  “You want to stop me from touching myself? Shackle my hands, you heartless minx. I dare you.”

  “No shackles needed. You see, there are two kinds of people in the world. Those who can eat oranges.” I pulled off my shirt and stood before him, naked. “And those who can’t touch them.”

  His palms were already blistering like the sores of syphilis. Except his ailment wasn’t contagious. It was strange.

  Honestly, I didn’t know anyone who could break out in a rash of itchy red spots just from touching nectar. Although, I had a man on my gun crew once who fell violently ill when he ate tree nuts.

  Priest looked at the sticky residue on my chest and back at his hands, his complexion paling as he made the connection.

  “You bathed yourself in oranges.” He glanced down, running his gaze over his bare chest, searching for invisible traces of the toxic pulp. Then his eyes widened in horror, and he raised his fingers toward his face.

  “Don’t touch your mouth.” My pulse kicked up. “You haven’t ingested it. Yet.”

  If he swallowed even a whiff of the fruit, those blisters would swell in his throat, close his airway, and kill him. At least, that was Ipswich’s conclusion when we told him about the peculiar affliction three years ago. I never wanted to test the theory.

  “Only your hands came in contact with the juice. I spread it here.” I gestured at my nude torso. “Just…don’t touch your face. Or anything else.”

  I directed my eyes at his groin.

  If he put his contaminated hands in his breeches and tried to stroke himself, it would inflame so severely he would lose his arousal. That was the reason I went to all this trouble.

  No masturbation. No orgasms. Not until I allowed him to scrub his hands.

  Physical and mental torture.

  “Give me the water.” He glowered at the wash bucket, knowing relief was well out of his reach.

  “Give me the compass.”

  Determination fortified my spine as I eased back onto the barrel, spread my legs, and resumed my erotic self-stimulation. “Tell me where you hid the compass, Mr. Farrell, and I’ll wash every inch of your body myself.”

  Priest balled his blistered hands on his thighs and set his jaw.

  “It’s easy, darling.” Naked from end to end, I let my head fall on my shoulders, arched my back, and worked my fingers between my legs. “Just tell me where it is, and I’ll give you relief.”

  “If I give you the compass, I’ll lose you.” His voice grated, thick with agony and dangerous hunger. “You’ll put me ashore on the next desolate beach, and I can’t… I will not spend another day without you.”

  “You already lost me.” I twisted my hand, sliding it through my slickness. “If you don’t give me the compass, I’ll finish myself off. Then I’ll call your brother down here and let him fill me over and over until I finish again.”

  His low menacing growl brought my head up.

  He captured my eyes. “It doesn’t matter how far we fall, how much pain we inflict, or how dark it becomes in the ruin. I’m going to be with you, waiting for you, loving you, forgiving you. I’m never letting go, Bennett. Never.”

  My fingers faltered with the hitch of my breath.

  When he said things like that, I wanted so badly to believe him. But no words—no matter how achingly profound—could change the past.

  “You hurt me.” My voice splintered. “Unforgivably.”

  His chin descended to his chest, magnifying the slopes of his proud shoulders as he regarded me from beneath the intensity of his brow.

  I was losing my nerve, my arousal, the desire to torture him.

  My thoughts had never been so contorted, my tongue so knotted. Dear lord, it was a good thing none of my crew bore witness to my lapse in cruelty. They wouldn’t understand.

  “Give me her name.” Needles stung the backs of my eyes.

  “No.”

  My heart galloped fiercely, but I would not cry.

  When it came to secrets, Priest was an impenetrable steel cage. He’d kept his mouth shut about our marriage, and despite my threats, he continued to protect his anonymous lover. He would never break his silence.

  “Tell me about the burn scars on your leg,” I said.

  “No. Don’t ask again.”

  Another secret.

  I closed my eyes and curled my fingers, cupping the heat in the valley of my thighs, teetering on the verge of giving up. Sitting here, completely exposed with my legs open… I felt sick.

  This wasn’t me. I tortured evil men. Killed monsters without hesitation or regret. But I’d never been a tease. When I offered myself, I followed through on that promise. Anything less was weak.

  “Bennett.” His Welsh cadence caressed my bare skin, making me shiver. “Look at me.”

  My lashes felt too heavy to lift, but I opened my eyes, not surprised to find the churning storm in his.

  How foolish was I to underestimate him? There were no answers in his intractable gaze, no hint of surrender beyond the next thought. There was only this moment and an offer of punishment and pleasure.

  “Hurt me.” His eyes gleamed with the command. “Touch yourself. Do it knowing I would die to be your hands, to slide through all that wetness, to experience the heat of your orgasm, to feel it gripping and sucking for more.” He wet his lips. “To hold me at arm’s length and deny me your love… It’s the worst torture.”

  “Worse than watching me with another man?”

  “Same thing.” He let his gaze drift downward, absorbing every curve and indentation of my body, lingering so long in places I could have sworn my skin caught fire. “Whether you’re alone or with another, the result is the same. You’re not with me.”

  Silence fell around us, shutting out the world and suspending us in a volatile cocoon.

  He remained on his knees, head down, watching me through his lashes. His fists squeezed on his thighs, the inflammation turning his fingers dark red and swollen.

  “Go on,” he breathed into the hush. “Punish me. Finger that beautiful cunt. Show me what you think I lost.”

  It wasn’t his words that stirred my hand into motion. It was the turbulent look in his eyes. The challenge. Did I have it in me to touch myself without touching him? Could he sit there and watch without losing control?

  I went for it. Spreading my legs, my fingers digging into my flesh, I drove my strokes up inside, using him—the glorious view of his body, the memory of our lovemaking, the pained look on his face. I used him for my own pleasure. He was the muse that inspired the languorous burning in my veins, the uncontrollable trembling in my thighs, and the moans singing past my lips.

  Sinews tensed in his neck. Muscles bounced in his jaw. His mouth opened on the surge of his breaths, but otherwise, he remained still. Behaving himself.

  His self-restraint only further aroused me, and when I finally reached that peak of venereal excitement, I cried out, twitching from head to toe and squirting all over my hand.

  I caught myself before I toppled off the cask and sucked in great gulps of air.

  His breaths continued to hiss past gnashed teeth, his hands white-knuckled on his lap, and his full attention locked on my dripping swollen cunt.

  As the tingling remnants of orgasm faded, the crushing need to feel him inside me didn’t abate. Nothing would ever compare to what I’d once had with Priest Farrell.

  My legs wobbled as I stepped to the water bucket and washed my hands and thighs. He didn’t speak, but I felt his gaze caressing the lines of my back.

  Snatching the shirt from the floor, I pulled it over my head and started toward the ladder.

  “What if the compass isn’t the map?” His gravelly voice brought me to a halt.

  He never cared about the treasure. Never once expressed an int
erest in being wealthy. He had the dominating disposition to command his own ship, and he did that now and then. But he never kept the vessels he seized. He just…gave them away.

  Priest was a slave to his carnal desires, a worshiper of the standing prick between his legs. He would follow it before anything else.

  “Why do you care?” I turned to face him.

  “Because you do. What if the map is inside the instrument?”

  “You think I haven’t considered that? There’s no keyhole. No openings.” My head pounded as irritation threaded through my tone. “It doesn’t open.”

  “I located the inventor who crafted it.”

  “You say?” My face numbed, and a ringing sound erupted in my ears.

  “During my exhaustive search for you, I found some old acquaintances of Edric Sharp. One fellow knew another fellow and so on. I followed the trail. The man who designed your compass died years ago, but I had an interesting conversation with his son. The lad didn’t take up his father’s skill, but he remembered some of the unusual techniques.”

  My heart hammered so hard I thought it might burst from my chest. “Did you tell him about my compass?”

  “No, I would never risk that. But he mentioned that all his father’s instruments required two things. One, a physical key.” His gaze shifted to my throat.

  My hand leaped to the jade stone I wore there, my fingers tracing the serrated cuts on the surface. Shaped like a thumb and half as narrow, it resembled a key. I always thought it could be the key, but it didn’t fit anywhere on the compass.

  “No keyhole, remember?” I dropped my hand, taking my hopes with it.

  “The notch will reveal itself if given the correct combination of movements. That’s the second requirement. Every instrument was built with a key and a list of verbal instructions. Something to hide on your body and something to hide in your mind. The lad’s words.”

  When my father had given me the instrument, he’d said, Start and end north.

  The devil knew how many times I tried that combination of movements over the years, rotating the compass over and over. Nothing had happened.

  “Did he teach you any songs?” Priest asked.

  Yes. A lot of songs. Most of them chants that narrated the maritime tasks of sailors. I couldn’t possibly remember them all. If the answer was in one of those, how could my father have expected me to know which verse held a secret meaning?

  He wouldn’t have.

  What if this was just another of Priest’s manipulations? With my body buzzing from orgasm and the flavor of his lips upon my tongue, what better way to distract me from torture than to tease me with hope about my compass?

  I’d come down here to learn the truth, and he didn’t want me to leave. Leaving meant I would return with another man.

  He was smart enough to steal my compass and earn passage aboard my ship. Cunning enough to hold it hostage as a guaranteed ticket to remain on board. Persuasive enough to send me out of here less satisfied, less certain, every damn time.

  He was always ten steps ahead of me.

  I couldn’t dismiss the information he’d shared about the compass, but there was naught I could do about it until I held it in my possession again.

  “I’ll be back with Reynolds.” I didn’t spare him or his blistered hands another glance as I climbed the ladder and pushed open the hatch.

  The moment it lifted, an outstretched arm greeted me. Long fingers, black skin, white scars… What the devil was Jobah doing down here?

  He grabbed my arm and lifted me out too quickly for this to be a social call.

  My rising panic exploded when I glimpsed the turmoil on his face. “What happened?”

  He kicked the hatch closed and started dragging stores of food and water over the top of it. “Sails on our aft, stealing our wind and closing in fast.”

  I stood motionless, momentarily stunned, as he hauled and shuffled casks. There was only one reason he would conceal the entrance to the bilge.

  He was preparing for boarders.

  That meant the ship on our aft was fast enough, heavy enough, armed enough to overtake us and search our holds.

  “Royal Navy?” My voice quivered.

  “I’m afraid so, Captain.”

  Priest and I were two of the most wanted pirates on this side of the world.

  It was possible our British pursuers didn’t have an accurate description of my identity. I always went ashore incognito, making it difficult for my enemies to recognize me. But Priest never tried to hide who he was or what he looked like. His face was sketched in newspapers all over the West Indies.

  If the king’s men found him, they would hang him.

  I jumped in to help Jobah, my hands shaking as I shoved the heavy containers. “How many guns?”

  “More than we carry. You should hide in the hold with your husband.”

  I flung him a glare that would’ve shriveled the testicles on a lesser man.

  “Yes, I know. You’d rather hang.” He sighed. “It’s your neck.”

  It would be every neck on my crew if I lost command of this ship.

  “What are we dealing with?” I heaved another barrel.

  “We believe she’s a one-hundred-gun ship of the line.”

  “A warship? What the—?”

  “That’s confirmed!” Reynolds scrambled down the companionway behind me. “Captain! Topside, now!”

  “I’ll finish here.” Jobah gave me a push. “Go.”

  My heart rate blew up as I chased Reynolds to the top, scaling ladders, sprinting through passageways, and shouting, “All hands on deck and man the guns!”

  “Thirty-two-pounders. I count twenty-eight of them.” Reynolds stood beside me on the upper deck, his knuckles blanching as he passed me the spyglass.

  I raised it to my eye and swallowed a gasp. The salt-smeared telescope brought the full-rigged warship into focus. The finest ever built at Woolwich Dockyard, if I were a day old. And she prowled just forty yards to starboard, maneuvering to fire from her broadside.

  “Fifty-six demi-cannons and culverins split between the middle and upper gundecks.” My stomach buckled as I continued to scan the armament. “Twelve six-pounders on the quarterdeck.”

  “Four more on the forecastle.” A heavy sigh. “We’re outgunned, Captain.”

  One hundred guns made to sink galleons in the war against Spain. Hell, the demi-cannons alone boasted enough firepower to blow every vessel west of England out of the water. Including mine.

  As I glared through the glass, the warship hummed with organized activity. Lines of uniformed officers gestured and shouted. Seamen ran along the gangways and swarmed the shrouds. Soldiers stood at the stern near a swaying jolly boat, ready to cross at the captain’s command.

  They can try.

  My gunners were prepared to fire the moment that jolly hit the water with rowers. As long as I breathed, the king’s navy would not board my ship.

  But the flutter of fear I’d carried from the bilge was careening into a tumult. Whatever happened in the next few minutes could end my life and the lives of my men. If we fled, the warship would open fire. If we fired first, we would be blown to hell.

  Our fate rested in the hands of one man.

  High above the belly of His Majesty’s Ship, the navy captain stood at the rail with his lieutenants, watching me through his spyglass as I watched him.

  He was easy to identify in his dark blue frock coat and pristine white breeches and hose. Gold embroidery banded the wide cuffs and standing collar and edged the jeweled buttons that glinted down the front closure—all meant to signify wealth and status.

  “Who is he and what is he doing in the West Indies?” Heart racing, I lowered the glass and glanced at Reynolds. “That ship was designed for naval tactic. Why isn’t he in the Mediterranean fighting Spain over territories?”

  “The war must have ended. If that’s true, he’s here on another mission.”

  “Pirate hunter.” I gnashed my
teeth and returned to the spyglass.

  Fringed with white feathers, the captain’s three-cornered hat matched the blue of his coat. I wished the wind would rip it off his head, so I could analyze his facial features. Was he young? Inexperienced? Just another spoiled, listless aristocrat looking for adventure?

  I would love to show him a good time. With a firepot of broken wine bottles, saltpeter, resin, and rotten fish hurled at his rigging. The stink alone would cause the contents of his stomach to empty all over his gold-trimmed finery.

  But in my seven years of pirating, I’d never fired upon a British warship. Because I didn’t have a wish for death.

  The captain shifted away, ambling to the quarterdeck rail and peering down into the waist of the warship. Hundreds of sailors stopped what they were doing on gangways and shrouds, and every head turned toward him as if awaiting his command.

  Gripping the rail with all the power his rank awarded him, he spoke words I couldn’t hear. Long minutes passed. Then all at once, the seamen resumed their tasks.

  “I loathe them and everything they represent.” Reynolds glared at the warship. “All those pompous guns, the uniformed soldiers, the elaborate figurehead with a gaping maw of teeth… Like we’re supposed to tremble in fear of the king’s almighty will.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Tremble?” He shrugged. “That depends on you. What’s your plan?”

  With a final look at the navy captain, I handed off the glass. “I’m going to make his arsehole clench.”

  “It’s about time.” Reynolds tossed me a speaking trumpet.

  I jumped up onto the gunwale, balancing on the narrow ledge, and raised the funnel-like instrument to my mouth.

  “What business do you have in my waters, Captain?” I shouted across the restive waves.

  He strode to the stern and gripped the tafferel. His lieutenants scrambled around him, and a moment later, a trumpet appeared in his hand. He raised it to his mouth.

  “I’m Lord Ashley Cutler.” His voice vaulted the distance, strong and deep. “The commodore of HMS Blitz.”

  Commodore? Above captain and below admiral. What a smug little lord.