by Eris Adderly
Captain Blackburn, as he’d strapped her, had been a man separated from reason. He’d been neither calm nor deliberate. It was as if her very breath stirred him to ever increasing heights of passionate fury. This was not a side of the man she’d seen before, and Hannah had yet to figure out how best to avoid seeing it again.
He’d been gripped with the idea of gratitude, and to the extent that he’d mentioned it once when they were alone, and again when Till had stumbled into the thick of things. Again, Hannah harrumphed at the idea that she ought to thank him for bringing her back to this particular disaster.
But perhaps you should be grateful, hopeless woman. There is still a chance for you to make it away from this ship with your life.
Grateful … but what if …
Perhaps such an outlook might be useful. Only not for the reason with which her mind had first surrounded it.
She remembered stealing through the alleyways of Nassau, her mind rushing with ideas of how she might buy her passage aboard another ship, and the nature of the coin she’d finally admitted she’d be willing to trade.
There might be a trade to make now, albeit for a different privilege. Blackburn seemed to retain anger the way metal retained heat after being thrust into a forge, and primarily over the one thing she was unwilling to give. If she were to present him with a display of gratitude, perhaps go to her knees in thanks … Her lip curled in reaction to the thought. But she’d done it before, and even then, Hannah had enjoyed the act for the power it conferred.
It could give her control again, only over a different facet of the man. Over his anger instead of his pleasure. A trip to her knees, some time on her back, a veneer of humility. A purse handed over to buy her a reprieve from the belt, from accusations and hurtful words until they made it to Boston.
Hannah had put up a façade for four years in upholding her end of a farcical marriage. Had spread her legs then when it had meant very little, if only to keep up appearances. She could do it again now for a mere matter of weeks, or however long it would take them to reach the next port.
The actual challenge would not be in the deed itself, but in making her actions convincing to him, while not falling so far overboard that she managed to convince herself with the lies her own body would need to tell. One only became proficient at lying, she reminded herself, when one was thoroughly familiar with what the truth tasted like. And Hannah’s flesh had tasted the truth aboard this ship enough times to know.
It would not be easy, but it must be done.
* * * *
He’d taken his time making his rounds on the ship, checking in with the current watch with more care and interest than his usual cursory passes. Edmund knew his crew was competent in their duties, but tonight he used it as an excuse to let the fires of his recent interaction with the widow die down.
There was comfort in routines. A matter of predictability in rote action, which required so much less effort than wading through the sucking mire of emotions he’d escaped from in the stateroom. He’d even climbed up to the bloody crow’s nest, something he hadn’t done in quite some time, to check on Hawke and ask the startled young sailor a question or two.
At a certain point, though, the nagging thoughts forced Edmund admit to himself he was simply putting off returning to his cabin for the night because he wasn’t sure what state his “guest” would be in, nor of how he would behave around her.
A decent strapping usually put errant crew members right back in line with what he expected of them, but Hannah was no sailor, nor was she accustomed to that sort of discipline. Edmund had very little precedent on which to rely that would tell him how the woman might react, given time alone to think.
Now you think rationally about it.
Yes, here was another thought that plagued him. It was always best to mete out a punishment with a cool head, and that was not what had happened in his stateroom at all. He’d been furious when he brought the belt down over her flesh and, what was worse, the sight of her pink cheeks and the way her body jerked under his strokes had sent the blood rushing to places it should never have been at a time like that.
If he couldn’t have his wits about him in the presence of a single female, then how could he expect himself to command a ship? Perhaps she was simply unfamiliar territory, he allowed, and he did not yet know how to navigate with an incomplete map.
He did want to return to her, though, despite his misgivings, and his boots were carrying him in that direction. It appeared some portion of him had already made the decision.
She was sitting in there right now, alone, clad only in his spare shirt if she’d done as he suggested. Warmth spread over his chest at the thought of her body, thinly covered, accessible, willing.
You may have butchered that last one, Blackburn.
The steps down into the council chamber were under his feet as he gave a rueful shake of his head at that final, bitter thought. There would be no avoiding her for the entire remainder of the voyage. He might as well see where he stood now.
* * * *
She was sitting in his chair when he entered the stateroom, arms folded over her chest and ankles crossed, still managing to look as though she maintained the upper hand despite the vulnerability implied by her borrowed attire.
“Mrs Collingwood,” he said, moving into the room, “how do you fare?” He’d see where she stood before choosing his own footing. The widow uncrossed her legs and came to her feet, straightening his shirt over her form as though it were the most proper gown.
“Captain,” she said, lacing her fingers together and letting them hang at her waist, “I believe it was wise of you to allow me the time alone. I’ve had time to consider a great many things.”
Edmund’s brows raised in response to her unforeseen reasonable tone. He waited for her to continue.
“I’ve come to see that it was indeed not the wisest choice for me to have run from you in at the inn. I was—am—quite upset, yes, but the port was an entire realm of unknowns, and just as you warned, I found my way into danger. I was not thinking clearly.”
Was it possible she’d seen reason? He cleared his throat, dragging his attention away from the way the linen of his shirt hung from her breasts. The majority of the plans he’d made in advance, anticipating the variety of angry, tearful, or sullen dispositions in which he might find her, blew away on a gust of wind. Now he would have to react in the moment, the very thing that had sent him storming out of the room in the first place.
“We did not come running to find you,” he said, venturing a cautious step in her direction, “merely because of the ties to your uncle, Hannah.”
Edmund thought he saw something in her face flinch at that remark, but it had been so fleeting he assigned it to the realm of his imagination. He’d been prepared to encounter opposition. Perhaps he was jumping at shadows.
“I … see that now. Edmund.” Her tone had dropped out of formality, and she took her own step to reduce the distance between them. The wide neck of his shirt, never intended for a frame of her size, nearly hung off her shoulder on one side, displaying fair skin and a line of collar bone.
Again, he swallowed. Why could he not keep his mouth from drying out in her presence?
She may have taken the final step, or it could have been him, he wasn’t certain, but in his next breath they were standing with mere inches between them, the fabric of their garments already whispering together. Her hand came up in a tentative brush to rest, feather light, on the wool of his coat, and her eyes were fixed on his mouth.
“Perhaps we could …” She trailed off with a small line of worry at her brow, but drew closer still, letting her curves press in against him.
Edmund was only barely in control of his breath now at the feel, the scent of her. “What could we?” He nudged her to finish her thought, afraid to grasp her about the middle with both hands as he desperately wanted.
Careful.
“We could …” She pulled at her lower lip with her
teeth before tilting her chin up to bring her lips a hair’s breadth from his.
“… have things as they were …”
She grazed her mouth against his, prickling the skin of his arms and the back of his neck.
“… for just a bit longer.”
This time he couldn’t stop himself as she offered her kiss, and his arms were around her, crushing them together. She didn’t pull back or cringe at the embrace but, as they tasted each other amid low noises of relief, she slid her fingers under the edges of his coat to splay over his chest, the warmth of her touch surprising him through the fabric.
His palms slid down her back, stopping just short of gathering up twin handfuls of her bottom.
Slow. Slow this time, Edmund.
The kiss melted apart in its own delicious time, and the widow angled her shoulders back from him while keeping their bodies still firmly pressed together at the hip. It would be impossible for her not to feel what she did to him.
Now her eyes wandered up to meet his, her lips larger, pinker from their efforts. Her drawing back seemed to be only temporary, though, a moment to take him in as much as he did the same with her, before she leaned in again, lids lowered.
“Let me show you, Edmund.” She spoke the words against his mouth as his hands inched lower, drawn by temptation.
“Show me what?” He took up a share of plump, lazy kisses from the pliant woman in his arms before she managed to answer.
“Gratitude,” she breathed, and moved her lips beneath his jaw.
One of her hands was descending, fingertips pointed at the floor, over his abdomen and …
Edmund hissed through his teeth when her dainty palm cupped the firm heat he’d been rubbing against her through layers of intervening fabric. He loosed the grip he’d had with his hands, dropping back to see what she intended.
The widow nipped at his throat while her fingers worked apart the ties of his breeches. Heat all but poured from him once she’d pushed the material low on his hips and brought him out into the open. His heart raced at her boldness, and her eyes caught his again, demanding he watch.
She sank to her knees with deliberate slowness, never releasing his gaze, and trailed a hand down in her wake, wrapping her fingers around him when her caress arrived at its destination to make the first direct contact with his blazing flesh. He made some noise in his throat and watched the tip of her tongue peek out to moisten her lips.
Too good to be true. Too good to be true.
A small, far away voice nagged at him, a lonely cry into the wind from across a shipyard.
The rush of blood humming between his ears and into his cock was louder, though, by far.
The flat of her tongue painted a decadent rasp from swollen base to sensitive tip and caution was scattered like so many ashes. Blue eyes burned into his as she took the head into her mouth, tongue and palate pressing in, a flood of sensation top and bottom.
Ohhh Edmund. It’s been far too long.
She slid him between her lips, the wet heat of her mouth alternating with the cool air of the cabin, as he was first within her and then without, once, twice, and again. Circled fingers stroked over his length as she went, but before long, the widow came to a stop. His need still filled her mouth, but her palms moved up the backs of his thighs now, coming to rest on his backside. She pushed him further inside with a suggestive nudge from behind, making her offer clear.
The lovely Hannah Collingwood wanted him to take her mouth.
His knees nearly gave way at the thought, but he shored himself up and set about accepting her gift.
At first, he simply pumped himself between her lips, settling into the first natural motion that occurred to him. The short strokes felt satisfying over the sensitive head, and her jaw was slack with willing acceptance. He soon wanted more, though, and began to press his cock more fully into her throat, his fingers lacing into the silk of her hair.
Her eyes had drifted shut as she’d given over control of the act, but they opened and moved up to his now, when she realised his intentions. Each time he slid in further and held his position longer than the last. His kneeling widow began to panic when he buried himself to the hilt as her body was tricked into believing its air supply had been cut off. She really was lovely, he thought, as he looked down on her widening eyes, small sounds of uncertainty vibrating from her throat up over his shaft.
Edmund pulled out before she managed to gag and gave her a three-count to catch her breath before plunging back in to repeat the process. His own eyes rolled up to the ceiling as he found a promising rhythm, the soft mewling sounds of encouragement floating up from around his demanding cock.
She squirmed under the press of his hips each time he parted her jaws, his grip in her hair holding her in place while he twitched at the back of her throat.
He looked down again, wanting to enjoy her muffled noises and the way her lips looked stretched around him. What he saw on her face, however, made him stop cold.
Edmund knew that look of tolerance well. He’d seen it on the faces of whores who’d endured his lustful acts for the promise of coin. Gratitude indeed! They’d been engaged in a transaction without him even being aware of it.
“Ugh! I knew it!” He spat out his thought aloud as he pulled himself from her throat in a single motion, his unfulfilled need bobbing wetly in front of her in accusation. “Do you take me for a fool?”
Perhaps you were a fool.
To a starving man, everything began to look like food, and Edmund’s hunger for the widow and her acceptance of him had blotted out all else. Again he’d ignored the buzzing warnings in his head that her demeanour was too good to be true.
She stared up at him in surprise now at his sudden withdrawal, wiping at her mouth with the back of a hand, eyes wide with dread, which had most definitely not been there while he’d been buying into her act.
This was not what he wanted at all. A pretence? A ruse to render him complacent? No. Unacceptable.
Did she not understand what she did to him? How he’d suffered at the idea of her being lost to him? He would make her understand, or at the very least, make her squeal and be as confused as he was about the conflicting desires that chased each other in circles in his head.
“Get up,” he said, the heat of anger building in low in his gut. When she blinked at him in shock at his change of direction, he grabbed her by the wrist, taking care to choose the uninjured one, and dragged her to her feet, impatient with her slow response.
In a quick series of sharp tugs, he had her borrowed shirt over her head and tossed aside on the floor. The sight of her bare curves filled him with a renewed surge of determination. She would feel for him.
He propelled her toward the bed and shoved her onto her back when they arrived, her legs dangling at the knees over the edge. The abrupt shift in the flavour of their interaction had confused her too much to resist him in any meaningful way. The only response he had out of her at all was a disoriented slip of his name.
“Edmund …”
It was impossible to tell if she meant it as a protest or something else, but it did nothing to sway him from his intentions either way.
Her legs were easy enough to hoist up by the knees and he spread her body out before him. She did flinch under his touch, however, when he drew his fingertips through her exposed folds.
“You’re wet, Hannah,” he pointed out, and watched her turn her head to the side and whimper again in denial of the physical reactions she couldn’t control. If the pantomime on her knees had been meant for show, then why this sign of arousal?
“Will you deny everything you’ve felt in this bed?” His voice was demanding as he lowered his upper body between her thighs, pinning her knees even further back. The smooth skin at her sides was calling for his mouth and he bent his neck to set his lips there, sinking his teeth lightly into her flesh, the heat of her core a cruel reminder of loss against his chest.
She whimpered under his boiling urgency and sque
ezed her eyes shut against the sight of him wedging her open. Edmund growled at her, furious that she could or would still attempt to renounce him this way.
“Tell me you felt nothing!” He gripped her by the waist and jostled her, wanting to rouse her from her attempts to shut him out.
His last goad achieved its goal and she jerked her head up to scorch him with her stare, coming up on her elbows to really look at him as if he’d taken leave of sanity completely.
“Have you gone mad?” she hissed. “I felt all too much, you arrogant bastard! You knew what you were playing at the whole time! You knew exactly what you did to me!”
“Which one of us was playing Hannah?” He reminded her again of the lie he’d just caught her in. Why did her words incense him so? He bent his face to her again, moving lower, wanting to chew past her mistaken judgement of him and taste the pure sentiment that had been there before. The widow bucked in an attempt to throw him off, but his weight and will were too much for her. “Does this feel like a game to you?”
Without warning, Edmund set upon her most vulnerable flesh with a savage will, determined to lap away whatever illusions she still had about him. She tasted like luxuries withheld and he ate in a fever, whether to convince her or himself that he wasn’t an embodiment of the Father of Lies, he wasn’t certain.
“Edmund, don’t. Don’t!”
The widow’s hands were at his shoulders, desperate now to push him away, all pretence of acceptance or ‘gratitude’ gone. Her heels drummed at his shoulder blades, but he ignored them, his attention focused on the hot, delicate flesh he was pulling between his lips, parting with his tongue. She would know his sincerity. She would feel it straight from his own mouth.
The marks he’d painted on the backs of her thighs hours earlier pillowed under his thumbs as his bruising grip kept her legs from closing him out. And though she tried to tilt her hips away from his insistent feasting, there was simply nowhere for her to go and he worked at devouring her denials one by one.