by Pam Godwin
If and when I hit that water, there would be no rescue boat this time. I would become part of the food chain.
All of this flashed through my mind as I plunged with agonizing slowness. I fixated on the cable, tracing the length where it connected from my wrists to the ominous end that led up, up, up… Where did it go? Was Ashley holding it? Was it tied to something on the balcony? Whatever secured my lifeline was letting it out inch by inch, easing my fall but not stopping it.
My hands clawed at the knot that bound them, my fingers clamping around the rope. I couldn’t see through the blackness to the balcony, didn’t know why Ashley had tethered me before throwing me over. But somewhere overhead, the cable snapped tautly.
I bounced to a halt, my wrists snapping in the restraint as my weight jerked and swung in the tailwind.
Dangling just above the crashing wake behind HMS Blitz, I swayed close enough to taste salt water. The warship groaned as her hull carved a deep black swath in the sea, spraying my legs in a warm mist and saturating Priest’s shirt.
Priest…
I wildly scanned the nebulous landscape, straining to see the horizon. Are you out there?
Now would be a good time for my feral huntsman to do something terrifying. But it was too soon. It would take him weeks to thieve a sloop, woo the new crew, and hunt down this ship. I was on my own.
The rope quavered. And the winds. The tides. The world narrowed to the drum and the whoosh and the dark, the dark, the dark… My heart cried.
“Ashley Cutlerrrrrrrr!” Waves spat at my legs in coughing fits, spinning me round and round. “You miserable little cock! Pull me in, damn you!”
I tried kicking, building momentum to launch myself upward to climb. But with my hands so tightly bound, there was no way to grip. I would’ve had better success if I were armless.
“Cutler! A pox on your blood! A pox on your king! A pox on your whole damn navy!” I screamed again and again until my voice bled and broke.
There was nothing to do but wait. And wait. I waited so long I knew he’d left me here to die.
Why would he do that? At any moment, a giant shark could leap out of the water and swallow me whole. Then he would have no lady pirate parts to deliver to England.
Why hadn’t he just left me in the hold? At least then, he would still have my head.
Needles prickled my hands until they grew cold. Numb. Wet hair stuck to my face and coiled around my throat. Wuthering gusts of briny air carried away my tears and turned my mouth into a desert. Eventually, exhaustion set in, shoving me past the point of weeping.
I kept my eyes on the water as it blurred away in sparkling moonlit billows. Staying awake seemed crucial for some reason, but it proved more difficult with each passing minute. The wind and the strain of hanging flogged the energy from my body, and my eyelids began to sag.
As I started to drift, I felt a vibration. Movement quivered down the line. Seconds pulsed by before I realized the distance between my feet and the water was stretching, lengthening. The rope was being pulled in.
My chest surged with the tumult of my breaths, waking my bones with violent tremors. Higher and higher I rose until the balcony came into view, and just beyond it, the cold sapphire eyes of my captor.
He knotted the rope around the rail, leaving me swinging just out of reach.
“Ashley…” I followed the length of the cable up and around an overhead beam, which supported a jutting roof. “Pull me in.”
With nothing but air and sea beneath my feet, I squirmed in limbo, uncertain and stricken with panic.
Why wasn’t he bringing me over the rail? I tried to extend a leg toward it, but I could only brush my toe against the balustrade.
Just out of reach, he reclined a shoulder against the open door to the cabin, wearing his white shirt and breeches and holding a knife at his side. He watched me impassively, as if hanging a half-naked woman outside his balcony was a nightly ritual.
Perhaps it was.
I wanted to kill him. The impulse to scream vivid details of how he would die clawed at my tongue. But I trapped the rant behind pinched lips.
The man had just plunged me toward the ocean like bait on a hook and suspended me there for nearly an hour. Now he casually held a knife too close to the cable that might very well drop me for the last time.
My heart told me I wouldn’t die tonight. Ashley Cutler had a role yet to play in my life. For good or for evil. Whichever way that went, enraging him wouldn’t keep me alive.
“Are you frightened now?” He tapped the blade against his thigh.
“I was frightened before.”
“Not nearly enough.” He grabbed an apple from the table behind him and set the knife to it, slicing off a bite-size piece. “I’d rather not return you to the hold. You might not be tender or fragile, but a month in a cage with forty beasts feeding upon you…” He popped the wedge of apple into his mouth and chewed. “I don’t wish that on any woman.”
Brutal, uncontrollable shaking wracked my body. The weight of my wet hair hung in my face, my neck too weak to hold up my head. I couldn’t even muster the strength to beg or complain about the agony in my hands.
His gaze swept over me, taking in my ragged, shivering appearance. “You’re sufficiently exhausted.”
Was that what he called this? I was living a nightmare. My muscles had long ago given out. My stomach knotted with hunger pangs, and my shoulders felt as though they’d pulled from the sockets.
He balanced the apple on the rail off to the side. Then he put the knife between his teeth, the serrated edge angled outward, and stepped toward me.
I tensed as he let out more rope, lowering me until I hung at chest level with the rail. With a hand on my bound wrists, he hauled me in, hooking an arm beneath the backs of my thighs.
Lacking the energy to move, I let him lift me up and drape my legs over the balcony. The position seated me on the rail with my arms stretched overhead and his hips between my knees.
The warmth of his proximity breathed against me, his face hovering just inches from mine as he straightened Priest’s shirt over my thighs.
The knife between his lips served as a lethal barrier. One forward thrust of his head and the sharp edge would do some gruesome damage to my face.
I waited for him to cut the rope, but he didn’t. He straightened, reached for the apple, and removed the steel from his teeth to carve another wedge.
The tension in the cable pulled my upper body backward, requiring me to focus all my strength on my knees, where they hooked over the balcony rail. I could only sit there, clinging at an awkward angle, vulnerable, drained, and entirely at his mercy.
“Now…” He stabbed a piece of apple with the blade and held the juicy fruit to my mouth. “What shall we talk about?”
My stomach caved in.
Ashley wanted to talk instead of untying me? The devil fetch him!
With his eyes locked on mine, he waited, his head tilting deliberately as if to distract me from whatever emotion he guarded. He seemed to believe he was untouchable, impenetrable, especially holding that knife. But if he meant to cut me, he would’ve done so by now.
I’d punched him earlier. Hell, I’d landed a few good hits across that pretty face. Yet there wasn’t a trace of blood on his person.
“Your shirt.” I parted my lips and bit the wedge of apple off his blade, chewing lazily.
“Go on.” His disinterested tone grated as he carved another piece.
“You removed it, the frock, and those ridiculous shoes before we fought.” I opened my mouth and accepted the next slice while considering my bloody shirt. “You knew I would attack you and didn’t want your precious clothing to get ruined like mine. Since you’re wearing the shirt again, you must believe there will be no more bloodshed between us.”
Something lit in his eyes. Appreciation. I hadn’t missed it that time. He liked that I had a brain and knew how to use it.
Well, it wasn’t difficult to guess that
he prided himself on his appearance. He reeked of vanity.
“What you said about my father…” I pressed my lips together, refusing the next cut of apple. “You were purposefully baiting my temper.”
“And you fell for it. Literally.”
He pivoted, leaving me suspended on the rail to amble through his sleeping quarters. The apple core and knife went on a small table. From an armoire, he removed another dark blue frock and shrugged it on. Black leather boots came next. He took his time lacing them over his wool stockings before returning to me. On his way, he passed a sea chest, where he grabbed a large glass bottle.
Uncorking it, he brought the drink to my lips. The syrupy, toasted sugar flavor of rum burst across my tongue. I gulped it down, taking long, greedy swills until my chest burned.
I coughed, wanting more, my eyes locked on the bottle. Instead of taking it away, he drifted closer, all of him, with his nose at my throat, inhaling.
“Stop smelling me.” My insides cringed.
I tried to close my legs, but his hips prevented the attempt.
“I’ve never met a female like you.” He dragged his nose through the wind-blown curls of my hair and returned to my neck. “You smell like the sea.”
Masculine heat pressed into the juncture of my thighs, which was a great degree less deceptive than the implication in his soft voice or the lazy indifference in his half-mast eyes.
“Look at you.” His gaze roved from my legs to my face, lingering on my mouth. “How can something so small rouse such widespread fear in the king’s navy?”
“I’m a magical witch.” I squirmed and bucked, trying to dislodge him.
He patronized me with the click of his tongue and set aside the rum. Then he pushed closer, making me horrifyingly aware that my futile wriggling had hardened the flesh in his tight breeches, extending that swollen girth down his thigh.
“It seems, my lord, that you’re unable to hide every reaction.” I attempted to kick free of the iron grip on my knees. “Untie me at once.”
He made a scoffing sound. “You’re a snarling, immodest, uncouth creature. I knew better than to tie you up. When an animal is rabid, you don’t put a leash on it. You put it out of its misery.”
“Call me whatever you please. It doesn’t change the bulging want between your legs.”
“You have no idea what I want.” He caught my throat in a bruising fist, immobilizing me. “If you did, you would curl into yourself and tremble for mercy.”
I wanted to tell him I didn’t curl up or tremble for anyone. But I was doing both now, hunching and shaking and gasping for breath in the painful collar of his hand.
Bending over me, he pressed every inch of his body against every inch of mine. His impressive height and latitude of shoulders consumed my field of view and suffocated my senses. And his scent… Dear lord, he smelled clean. The soap he used to bathe, the aromatic mint on his lips, the cedar oil on his skin—the concoction was an aphrodisiac flooding what little air trickled in through my nose.
The sight of his powerful physique before without a shirt had struck me with sizzling awareness of his beauty. And now, with the blue coat stretching across the solid expanse of his chest, his nearness had the same effect.
I bit down on my tongue, but I couldn’t quell my shaking.
How many times had I faced down a cruel, attractive man and came out on top? I was more brazen than any titled lady, physically stronger than the average woman. Priest was the only person who’d managed to knock my knees out from under me. Because I’d let him. And I’d learned.
But I was no match for a man who dangled me over the bellowing sea without a hint of pity or slack. As tightly as he was squeezing my airway, his face should have been on fire with fury. Yet he maintained his usual phlegmatic expression. Chillingly calm. Self-possessed.
“Ashley…” My lips moved without sound or breath. Please, release me.
He shifted, trapping one of my knees between the rail and his hips. Maintaining his hold on my neck, he lifted my other leg and tossed it off the balcony.
Panic surged, and I flailed, trying to adjust my weight to straddle the balustrade. But the rope didn’t reach, and he allowed me no space to move. The position suspended me in the air with one leg hooked over the rail and the other kicking into the darkness.
Fighting gravity and fatigue, I couldn’t close my thighs. I twisted uselessly, spread wide open with the warm wind smiting my feminine flesh. “Ashley, stop! What are you—?”
He slammed his palm between my legs with unholy force.
Pain exploded, and I cried out soundlessly, gulping and flinching through a stunned spasm. He loosened his grip on my throat as if he wanted to hear me scream. Then he struck my cunt again, forcefully, brutally, with his open hand, unleashing hell on my tender nub of nerves.
The shirt blocked his view of my nudity, but his strokes aimed true. He hit me over and over, bending into each blow and targeting my clitoris.
His breathing shortened into bursts of grunts, and his pelvis smashed against my trapped leg, grinding his erection as he swung.
My screams came unbidden as I rotated my bound hands, desperate to be freed, buzzing from the agonizing sensory stimulation. And something else.
The fiery heat of his hand made me throb. His touch never lingered, but every time it landed, I anticipated the next strike, the stinging burn, and the deep pulsations that I refused to accept.
Priest used to torment me so beautifully this way. His spanking, choking, biting proclivities had a wicked effect on my desire for him. But that had been in a willing, loving environment. This was not that.
This was wrong.
I didn’t have to battle my body’s reaction to the sensual pain. My brain took over, shutting down pleasure centers, stiffening my joints, and tensing the muscles between my legs.
As if Ashley detected my mental retreat, he pulled back, his hand hovering in the air. Blue eyes smoldered beneath feathery black lashes, sparking as he took my measure.
“You can fight it.” He straightened and cleared the rasp in his voice. “But your body is still a whore.”
“So is yours.” I directed my gaze at the sizable bulge in his skin-tight breeches.
The corner of his mouth rose. The tiniest twist.
“Why?” Goddammit, I hurt. Everything pulsed and scorched as if doused in liquid fire. “Why hit me there?”
“Because I can.” He drew in a lung-filling breath and shouted, “Sergeant Smithley!”
My eyes widened, and my pulse raged. “Don’t send me back down there. I can be reasonable.”
“You’re incapable of being reasonable or civilized. But while you’re on my ship, you will meet the minimum standards of courtesy.”
He stepped back, capturing my swinging leg and hooking it over the rail. Once again, I sat on the balustrade at a backward angle. I immediately squeezed my thighs together.
At the sound of the exterior door opening, he folded his hands behind him and tipped his head, his eyes trained on mine.
Two chambers away, beyond his broad frame, a silhouette appeared in the dining cabin. The movement inched into the day cabin, and a shaft of moonlight illuminated Sergeant Smithley’s blank face.
He paused there as if he weren’t allowed to enter the sleeping chamber. “Yes, my lord?”
“Should something happen to me…” Ashley kept his back to the soldier and his gaze pinned on mine. “If I fall ill, become injured, or perish, what have you been ordered to do with Miss Sharp?”
“Return her to the hold, my lord. She shall be transported to England with or without you.”
“Very good, Sergeant. That will be all.”
The soldier slipped out of view without a glance in my direction. When the click of the door sounded his departure, Ashley picked up the knife.
My heart rate spun as I tried to piece together what was happening. If he meant to kill me, he wouldn’t have called in his sergeant to prove a point.
; Dangling me in front of Madwulf MacNally, baiting me into a fistfight, hanging me over the sea, and summoning his sergeant—every action had been calculated.
He was establishing boundaries.
Stepping into me, he pushed his hips against my clenched knees and positioned the knife at the knot on my wrists. “Open your legs.”
In one tingling swoop, the command heated me with arousal and chilled me with dread. I couldn’t fight him on this. If he intended to sever the rope and not my hands, he needed a closer angle.
I spread my legs.
“Good girl.” He straightened the shirt over my knees without looking and stretched over my inclined body. “Grab hold of me.”
He cut the knot.
As it unraveled from my arms, he didn’t touch me or try to prevent me from falling. He gripped the rail on either side of my hips, forcing me to reach for him. And reach I did. Clinging with arms and legs, I wrapped myself around the formidable pillar of his rock-hard frame.
“Remember this, Bennett.” He turned his head, feathering his lips against my ear. “I am the only thing standing between you and Madwulf. Turn a weapon on me, and your time on this ship will be spent on your back beneath the hunger of forty unwashed men.”
The wind grabbed my hair and tried to wrench me out to the sea. I dug my fingers into his muscled back and pressed my face against his chest, absorbing his words and cleaving to his strength.
He didn’t need to keep me in restraints. Didn’t need to guard his weapons. Didn’t need his soldiers to thwart my actions. He imprisoned me with a solid, genuine threat.
“You can wander freely.” His mouth moved against my cheek. “I’ve been very clear about what will happen if you attack me or any man on this ship.”
My stomach hardened.
He gripped my arm and pulled me down from the rail. My legs wobbled as I stepped into his sleeping chamber, looking for a place to sit.
A privacy screen concealed the washbasin and chamber pot. A chair sat beside the armoire. Within the wall across from that was a vaulted chamber made to enclose the overstuffed mattress on three sides.