Sea of Ruin

by Pam Godwin

  He shook and panted and rocked his hips, his backside clenching drum-tight in my hands. “Slow down, damn you.”

  Not a chance. I held him to me, pouring every ounce of experience and instinct I had into bringing him to his knees.

  “I won’t last.” Sweat broke out on his brow, and his mouth hung open to accommodate labored breaths. “The sheer agony, woman. I can’t take it.”

  I grinned around his girth, flicking my tongue. Then I fisted his root with both hands and stroked, sucking him hard, harder, hungrier, making him sway. His sounds grew louder, wilder, alerting me that he was close. His toes curled against planks. His fingers dug into my scalp, and the thrust of his hips lost rhythm.

  I pulled back, letting him pop from the seal of my lips.

  He released a furious growl and tried to yank me back. I ducked low and scrambled out of his reach.

  “Get your arse back here.” He squeezed the base of his cock, glaring at me.

  “I think…” I leaped to my feet and backed away. “I haven’t forgiven you.”

  “Bennett.” A low warning snarl. “We’re not finished.”

  Heart racing, I took off and fled the sleeping chamber.

  Footsteps charged after me. I would’ve been disappointed if they hadn’t.

  Veering past the desk and into the dining cabin, I made a full circuit around the table before the long reach of his arm hooked my waist. My feet left the floor, and he twisted me, wrangling my body until I was pressed against him, chest to chest.

  “Caught you.” He held me tight, his mouth a kiss away.

  “Let you.” I wrapped my arms and legs around the tall column of his physique and wriggled my hips, taunting him.

  He gripped his cock, where it throbbed beneath my thigh, and set the tip at my slick opening. “You forgive me.”

  “Only if you use the other hole this time. And you better make it good, Ashley Cutler.”

  His mouth crashed onto mine, and he pushed himself inside.

  I whimpered at the stretching intrusion, gasping uncontrollably by the time he wedged all that thickness to the hilt. Oh, the floating fullness, the bursting stars, the ultimate state of bliss… I might have heard angels singing.

  He groaned. I shivered, and his arms tightened around me, eyes fixated on mine. Our lips pulled apart but stayed close, hovering in an almost-kiss.

  He drew back his hips and slowly thrust again, digging all the way in. I felt him pulsing and heating against my walls, and it brought another glorious shiver, another wave of tingles swarming through my limbs.

  Our foreheads drifted together, our bodies locked in the most intimate way. Beyond the quaking and heavy breathing, neither of us moved. Something held us in its mist. Something big and profound and terrifyingly monumental. I couldn’t see it, but it was glaring, deafening, thudding in my ears.

  Instinct was said to be blind. The same was true of love. Both were upon us, and though the end wasn’t understood, I comprehended the connection and knew it was extraordinary.

  “What are you doing to me?” he breathed against my mouth.

  “Same thing you’re doing to me.”

  “You feel this.” He nudged his pelvis tight against mine. “I’m inside you, madam. Deeply. Completely.” His voice rasped, hoarse with need. “Are you well?”

  No, I wasn’t well or good or fine at all, and that was perfect. This was perfect. He was doing it right, taking care, showing me respect, and looking at me in the eyes.

  “Fuck me, my lord.” I skimmed my fingers along his stony jaw. “I’m ready for your unseemly manners.”

  “Good because you feel entirely too pleasing for me to carry on like a gentleman. I do hope you’re not tired.”

  “Would that stop you?”

  “Not in the least.” Feet planted and back straight, he began the rhythm of times long past, sliding his cock in and out, moving naturally, impulsively, driven by that which underlies the heart of every man. Sexual hunger.

  Standing as he was, he didn’t stagger or flag with fatigue, attesting to the graceful mastery of a seaman accustomed to using his strength and balance on the rolling decks of a warship.

  And the man could move. Thrusting at a sensual pace, he rotated his hips and worked my body in measured strokes. Breathless gasps tumbled from my lips, and he fed on them, kissing me, watching me, and setting me afire.

  Gradually, our passion built into a roaring flame. My hands clawed at his back, my nails sinking into muscled flesh as I clung to him, biting and groaning with my legs clamped fiercely around his waist.

  He fucked into me harder, deeper, heightening my need for completion. I arched to meet him, holding his gaze as my insides convulsed with a violence that shook me to the core. He was right there with me, his kisses losing precision and careening into the wilds of madness.

  When his legs began to shake, he spun, and my back hit the nearest bulkhead, jarring an oomph past my lips. His hand flattened on the wall, and he used the leverage of that hard surface to tunnel inside me with unrestrained savagery.

  Senses heightened. Fingers clawed. Gazes held, and we exploded into urgency, possessed by passion, grinding and gripping, lips reaching and missing.

  My vision clouded, and a primal noise wrenched from my throat.

  “I’m going to come.” I bore down on his cock, trying to slow the detonation.

  “I’m with you. Jesus Christ, Bennett. I’m… Goddamn—” He jerked, lost his breath.

  I peaked. He followed, and I kept coming and coming, hurling my screams loud and wide as I chanted his name and stared into his eyes.

  Watching him fall apart was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. Throaty male groans hissed past clenched teeth, his head thrown back and cords stretching along his throat.

  I felt him releasing—the intense throbbing of his shaft against my muscles and the molten wash of fluid spurting deep within. He held my gaze and clutched me hard in the flex of his arms, rocking into my body as if trying to milk his pleasure to the last drop.

  Then he expelled the low humming breath of an exhausted, thoroughly satisfied man.

  “Incredible.” He slid a hand into my hair and kissed me lazily, deeply, sweeping his tongue through my mouth. “Nothing compares, Bennett. Nothing.”

  Hard to argue. I felt so peacefully content. There was no room for regret. Not even thoughts of Priest could wreck the moment.

  Ashley continued to hold me against the wall, his hands roaming around my face and along the curves of my body.

  “I daresay…” He kicked his hips, still full and very hard inside me. “You’ll be enduring my unseemly manners for another round. And a few more after that.”

  He wasn’t jesting.

  As he carried me toward the sleeping chamber, he stopped in the day cabin and fucked me on the desk. Afterward, when I crawled onto the bed, he grabbed my hips and took me from behind.

  Following several more orgasms, my hearing went fuzzy, and my muscles lost coordination. Any limits my body might have imposed had been eradicated by the endless stamina of a commodore thirteen years my elder.

  His strained male gasps of exertion couldn’t be trusted. Just when I thought he’d worn himself out, he broke me all over again.

  As the sun crested the rail of the balcony, yellow-pink fingers of light crept over our tangled, sweaty limbs. We lay naked on our sides, face to face, waning in the softness of a new day.

  He twisted a coil of my hair around his finger, regarding me with the grin of a sated wolf.

  It made my heart dance, and I couldn’t stop myself from touching that curved mouth. “So this is what you look like when you smile.”

  “I haven’t…experienced this in a long time.”

  “Smiling?”

  “Feeling. You make me feel again.”

  “Why ever did you stop?”

  “Titles. Ranks. Responsibility.” His gaze roamed my face. “But you…with your unrehearsed words, bold touches, fierce eye contact, raw, unta
med beauty… God help me, everything about you is such a welcome freedom from the tedious, rigid order of my life.”

  “Then change it.”

  “Change…?”

  “Your life. Remove the things that confine you. You can do anything you want.”

  “Like your mother did?” he asked gently. “She was the daughter of an earl, and one time, she ignored the rules and followed her heart. How did that work out for her?”

  My stomach hardened. In fourteen years, I’d never once seen her smile. She’d been utterly and completely miserable. Because of her mistake. Because of me.

  I hooked my leg over his hip. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “I’m betrothed.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a sensible contract. Business. Love is unneeded, and frankly, unwanted.”

  “You’re a fool.”

  His eyebrows formed an angry V. “Careful…”

  “Surely you see the gross stupidity in forsaking your happiness for that which is perceived as sensible. Nobility as a notion is objective and impersonal. What a horrible doctrine to live by. From where I stand, aristocrats rob the world of pleasure.”

  “Says the woman who chose a dangerous career that put her constantly on the run. Tell me, Bennett. In your life beyond the reaches of laws and social constraints, have you been happy?”

  I’d been happy for a year. In the arms of a libertine.

  “No.” I sighed, feeling the press of exhaustion. “But at least I’m free to love who I want.”

  But I wasn’t free.

  I was a prisoner, facing an uncertain end.

  As if he read my mind, he tucked my head beneath his chin and stroked my hair. “You need to sleep.”

  “I can’t.”

  “All right.” He released a slow breath. “Then I’ll tell you a true story.” He leaned back and ran a knuckle along my jaw. “I met your father once.”

  “What?” My eyes widened, my pulse hammering. “When?”

  “I was around your age so… Thirteen years ago. I was a sergeant then, taking a short leave in Nassau with some mates.” His thumb rested against my neck, softly caressing. “He was in a brothel.”

  My throat convulsed.

  “It was attached to a tavern, and that’s where I saw him—sitting alone, staring into a tankard of ale, while his crew of scoundrels spent their coin on painted women.”

  “Did you know who he was?”

  “Indeed. Everyone knew. The island was more or less overrun by pirates at the time, and I was but one English soldier among dozens of rogues in that tavern.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I sat beside him at the bar.” His lips twitched. “And he bought me a drink.”

  My heart swelled, and a tingling burn rose to my eyes. “Did you talk to him?”

  “No. We sat in silence, just two sailors enjoying their drinks.” He brushed a curl from my face. “Women approached him, doxies and ladies alike, and he turned them all away. He wasn’t there for that.”

  “He loved my mother.”

  “And his daughter.” He kissed my forehead, my nose, my lips. “Time to close your eyes.”

  As I drifted to sleep, his sensual smile was the last thing I saw.

  When I woke later that afternoon, it was the first thing that filled my vision. He lay beside me in the position, as if he’d never moved.

  “What are you doing?” I yawned, stretching my lovingly abused body.

  “My second favorite activity.”

  “Watching me sleep?”

  “Yes.” The delicious curve of his lips deepened as he rolled on top of me, both of us nude, and wedged my legs open with his hips.

  “What’s your first favorite activity?”

  He reached between us and parted the dampening folds between my thighs with the head of his erection. Then he slowly sank inside, showing me what he favored above all else.

  We didn’t leave his private quarters for the next two days. We ate, bathed, slept. And fucked. Made love. Hard and soft, sluggish and rabid, lazy and impassioned. In every position, bottom and top, fore and aft. In the bed, on the chairs, over the rail, against the walls, on the floor—if the surface was strong enough to support us, we broke it in.

  We were so caught up in each other, we lost time, lost our bearings, lost our sense of the end. In the back of my mind, I knew it was coming. New Providence couldn’t have been more than a day’s journey away.

  I’d been on this ship for twelve days. Long enough for Priest to seize a fast sloop, take over its command, and catch up to HMS Blitz.

  I knew in my bones that he was close. I also knew it was time to press Ashley about what needed to happen next. Whatever that was. I didn’t have a plan, and that terrified me.

  We’d begrudgingly dressed that morning, knowing a third day secluded away in his private quarters would raise suspicion.

  Sitting on his lap, I finished a quiet breakfast with him, my belly filled with clam fritters and sour milk biscuits with blackberry preserves. I set down my napkin and pulled in a bracing breath.

  “Ashley…” I shifted on his hard thighs and met his stunning eyes. “We need to…”

  His lips twitched, his gaze dipping. “You have…some…” He slid a finger along the corner of my mouth. “Preserves.” The finger went into his mouth, and he licked it clean, casting me an innocent grin. “What?”

  I was going to say something, something important, but my brain broke.

  “Sugary sweet.” He was still staring at my lips. “Addictive.”

  Then he put his grin there and kissed me senseless. I twined my fingers in his hair and yielded beneath his irresistible mouth. How could I do otherwise? I’d been collecting his smiles for two days. Smiles he gave to me and no one else. Each one made me feel like anything was possible.

  Until an urgent knock pounded on the door.

  “Lord Cutler?” Sergeant Smithley called from the other side. “Lieutenant Wallers is here with urgent news.”

  My pulse exploded. Was it news of an approaching sloop? Had Priest been spotted?

  Ashley stood abruptly, holding onto my waist until I found my feet. He gave my gown a quick inspection, ran a hand through his hair, and turned toward the door.

  Shoulders squared, hands folded at his back, feet braced apart, expression blank—the transformation of his demeanor completely rebuilt him from top to bottom in less than a second. I’d forgotten what this fine-mannered commodore looked like. And felt like. His severe presence choked the air.

  “Enter, Lieutenant.” His aristocratic voice made me shudder.

  An older man in a white periwig stepped in and clapped a hand to his wrinkled brow. “Good morning, my lord.”

  “Good morning, Lieutenant. What news do you bring?”

  “A ship approaches off the larboard bow.”

  I drew in a quick, silent breath and gripped the top rail of the chair beside me.

  “One of ours.” Wallers lowered his hand. “A command flag flies at the fore-topgallant masthead.”

  “Which command flag?”

  “Admiral of the White Squadron, my lord.”

  “Sir John Dycker.” Ashley’s fingers twitched at his side.

  “Who?” I asked quietly.

  He pretended not to hear me as he collected his blue frock and shrugged it on. “Prepare to receive him and his lieutenants.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Wallers stepped out, closing the door behind him.

  “Who is John Dycker?” I gripped Ashley’s arm, startled by the tension in his muscles.

  “Admiral of HMS Ludwig. My superior.” He pulled away and grabbed his hat, his tone calm, void of emotion. “Play-time is over.”

  He headed toward the exit.

  “Ashley.” My heart ached as I waited for him to turn. When our eyes connected, I stood taller, my voice fierce. “Change your course and set me free. This is our happiness. Yours and mine. Take it.”

  “I ca
nnot.” He opened the door and swept out in a blear of royal blue. “Sergeant, escort Miss Sharp topside if you please.”

  He vanished around the corner, without a backward glance at my fractured expression.

  There were three things certain in life—disappointment, death, and the pompous presentation of English admiralty.

  Sir John Dycker strutted his important self across the upper deck of HMS Blitz, paying no attention to the rolling drums, strident pipes, and booming cannons that lit up the overcast sky in his honor.

  His superior rank allowed him to walk among these men as if he were the king himself. Adorned in rich silks, brocades, and embroideries of gold and blue, he reeked of wealth and status.

  Lines of soldiers stood in perfect formation around me, regarding the admiral with unconcealed awe and great fear.

  As the sailors had escorted me topside, I’d heard their whisperings about the sort of discipline Sir Dycker meted out. One sergeant claimed that the admiral carried a rattan cane so that he could whack slow-moving crewmen across the head. Another said Dycker was known to make his lowest-ranked man run the gauntlet, forcing him to walk naked between parallel lines of soldiers while everyone flogged his back with knotted cat-o’-nine tails.

  Ashley would have a better idea than most as to how his admiral governed men, but his expression gave nothing away. He stood off to my right at the end of the line with a row of lieutenants separating us. I’d been shuffled toward the back as if my presence put a moral stain on the proceedings.

  I watched Ashley in my periphery, only glancing in his direction when I was certain no one noticed. But he never met my eyes or acknowledged my existence in any way. I reminded myself he was the commodore of this ship, and this was his mask. The veneer he wore among his men.

  Deep down, however, I didn’t believe that was all this was. Something had changed between us the instant that knock had sounded on his door.

  That something had to do with HMS Ludwig.

  The admiral’s flagship made an impressive sight where she was braced onto the opposite tack. Beneath a cloud-stuffed sky, her stately masts towered protectively over the sea, her gunports open to breathe in the lazy breeze.