by Louisa Trent
"Are you asking me to prove your investment in me is wise?"
He laughed. "Mrs. Smith, I already know this investment isn't wise. But is it sound business? Will I receive a good return on my outlay of cash? More importantly, does the investment have merit, value?"
"You mean ... do I have merit and value."
"Exactly. And what is your merit and value?"
"I will provide you with pleasure, that is my merit and value."
"So difficult to gauge ephemeral qualities. I need a perceptible standard, something more concrete, something the senses might appreciate."
"What precisely would you like me to do to prove my worth, Captain Kane?"
Josh could tell that Harry was quickly losing her composure; to please him, she would need to curb her flashes of tempestuousness to suit him, not the occasion. Such as when he was between her thighs; then her fiery responsiveness would suit him just fine.
"I never make acquisitions without first making a full investigation. You may start by displaying the merchandise that is for sale. Remove your clothing, Mrs. Smith."
Her features sharpened. "Fine," she said tight-lipped. "If it gives you pleasure, then of course I must bow to your whim."
"It does give me pleasure, and not ephemerally," he admitted, before catching himself. His feelings for Harry were hardly short-lived; they had begun when she was born, and had lasted with a surprising intensity through a seven-year separation. He doubted she could say the same. How many lovers had she had since she had almost, but not quite, had him?
Too many to count, he idly wagered.
"I will need the agreed upon sum by summer's end," she negotiated.
"Why wait? You will have the full amount on the morrow." He held up the cheroot. "May I?"
A nod. Then the unwed widow said, "I prefer to earn a portion of the money first. I would see you have good return on your investment."
How could a woman selling herself, a thief, be so damned honorable? Joshua wondered, lighting up and taking a puff of tobacco.
He didn't often smoke, only when he needed something to occupy his restless hands. If he didn't give his idle fingers something to do now, he feared he would jump up out of his comfortable chair, rip that incredibly homely bonnet from Harry's head, capture her scalp, and savage that glorious red hair between his teeth. How long was it? he mused. Down to her bottom, tickling the crack, he hoped.
What was a man, without his dreams?
Only half-alive, he answered, feeling that long-dead part of himself spring to reluctant life. Very painful it was too, all that blood rushing directly to his cock. He had been semi-hard before; he was hurting hard now.
"Where shall I remove my clothing?" she asked, placing her gloves aside and gaining her feet. She looked to him for instruction.
"Over there." He motioned to the window facing the street. The curtains were open and he had no intention of drawing them. It was half past seven on yet another stormy evening. If someone should happen to walk by--an unlikely possibility at this hour on such a wet night--and look into his study, they would see a prostitute disrobing, a common enough sight in New Bedford, though perhaps not in this tony part of town. And that's why he wanted her there before the glass. It was the element of risk, the danger that someone might actually look in and see her naked in the window, that excited him to the slippery brink of orgasm. Unless he held himself in strict control, he'd go over the edge. Never before had he behaved so irresponsibly. The outrageousness of that irresponsibility caused him to violently shudder.
And what of her? How did she feel about him showing her off?
He decided he didn't give a shit how she felt. Too bad if someone, a passerby, saw her framed naked in the glass window, like a beautiful and untouchable object d'art! For years, he had worked hard on a stinking whaler for her. Everything he had done had all been done for her, and it was high time she returned the favor.
Sexual servitude, complete carnal subjugation ... blind and unquestioning erotic obedience ... those were his requirements. Harry owed him, and he expected her to pay up, starting immediately.
"Closer to the glass," he said, thinking that Harry's red hair would brighten even those depressing dark skies.
He nearly laughed when her shoulders squared, and she stomped to the window. The years hadn't changed Harry as much as it would seem.
"Shall I disrobe fast or slow?" she asked haughtily, chin at an arrogant tilt.
Fast! Fast! Please fast!
"Slow, I should think. Entertain me," he said, throwing out the challenge.
"Shall I face forward or away?"
"First facing, then away."
She met the challenge, besting him with each sad article of apparel deliberately dropped to the carpet. The sturdy boots were the first to go, the unsightly thick gray hose followed. She reached under the gown to the ribbons at her waist.
He interceded. "Drawers last." Save the best for last.
"Hat next." He could delay gratification with a vengeance.
"Then, any jewels. Stripped bare."
"Certainly."
She attacked the black ribbons under her chin, that stubborn, obstinate, willful chin. A chin that stuck out at him in defiance, as she dropped the ugly bonnet to the polished floor.
She hates that hat too! he decided, and resolved to buy her a new one, a pretty one. Nothing too flamboyant, but something that better suited her age--still young at five and twenty--and patrician bone structure.
That jaw! Good Lord. That elegant long white throat. Her face would still be gorgeous into old age. And no vanity about her either. Harry was no narcissist. Neither was she a fool. She would make her looks work for her, but as a tool like any other tool. She was no slave to the looking glass.
But she would be a slave to him. And what a strange thing that was for him to think! He detested slavery. No man may own another.
And yet he would own her.
When she withdrew the drop jet earrings, he wanted to laugh with glee and relish, victory too. At long last, Harry was doing what she was told! And to think it had only taken the threat of imprisonment, and the outlay of a small fortune.
"Undo you hair," he ordered.
With the removal of a few pins, she had earned the price he had paid for her. Triple the price he had paid for her. The red masses unfurled around her shoulders, and fell under its substantial weight to her hips. And the sight did indeed light up the dark and dreary night.
Joshua allowed the light to shine for as long as he could bear it, and then intentionally snuffed it out. He mustn't ever make this what it was not--it was business, not romance. So too, he mustn't ever forget that Harry took money from men, strangers, in exchange for her body, thereby becoming the very thing he wished to save her from, the very thing he despised. Why? He had left her enough money to support herself for all the years he was gone, and more besides. Why, dear Lord, why had she sold herself? There had been no need!
Maybe need hadn't entered into it. Some women, like his mother, enjoyed it. Not so much the physical aspect, but rather the control. A talented whore could bring a man to his knees. Was Harry that type of woman?
If she were, she would soon discover she would not get that from him. No whore would bring him to his knees ... well, perhaps for cunnilingus, but that was his choice. He knew too much about whores to ever fall for any of their games.
Harry was down to her cotton drawers and chemise; her petticoat and gown created a wrinkled hillock on the floor. No one would ever accuse Harry of neatness, he concluded with an inward chuckle, very much like a proud much-older brother.
Though Mr. Clark had treated him like a son, though as a seaport whore, his mother had serviced many men, and though Joshua's own feelings for the winsome little hellion had started off tenderly, Harry was not his half-sister; Joshua's dark skin nullified any question of incest. He had many questions about his paternity, resentments too over the blend of different nations that had gone into his making. But fo
r once, he was grateful of his mixed heritage, because it eased his mind about a possible blood relation between them.
"Should you please me, we will continue on in public as employer and employee, thus saving the tattered shreds of your reputation, while maintaining the whole cloth of my own. What we do in private will remain private," he offered, magnanimously. "To prevent any missteps, even behind closed doors, I will refer to you as I would my housekeeper."
"Refer to me as you will. Call me what I am."
"Thief?"
"Yes."
"Whore?"
"If that is how you mean for me to serve you--why not?"
"It is."
She shrugged. "Then I will answer to whore."
"Madam will suffice. And I will be Captain Kane to you." He was a gentleman now, wealthy beyond the scope of his boyhood dreams, an up-and-coming citizen of New Bedford, despite his less than advantageous beginnings. The mixed-race bastard son of a whore had made good through hard work and ambition; Josh had no intention of committing any blunder that might ruin his reputation. Flaunting an immoral relationship in the faces of those moralistic Quaker men, with whom he must do business, defied established convention. He could not afford to sink into decadence.
At least not publicly. Privately was a different matter once again. Privately, he planned on sinking deeply into the decadence of her.
"You will continue on with your invented background, maintain your widow's pose, call yourself Mrs. Smith. But you will burn the dreadful gowns you have worn here this past week, the one you wore tonight included."
"It is my best."
"I will replenish your wardrobe. No blacks or grays. Mauves and silver-blues. Rich fabrics I will enjoy seeing and touching--that is, when I allow you to wear anything at all."
He looked at her sideways. "You will wear no corset in private."
She shrugged, her prominent breasts rising with the action. "Very well."
"Nor will you wear a chemise," he added, while she pulled hers off over her head and her full breasts bounced deliciously. "I would see the outline of your nipples through your gowns," he told her, though he need not tell her anything. Not a thing. He had paid to take, not to give, and that included explanations.
"Naturally, there will be speculation about the true nature of our relationship, but no untoward comment will be made. At least, not to my face." He laughed. "That is the beauty of having wealth. In society, no one dares insult a rich man to his face, if he at least makes an effort to remain circumspect. I will put on a good show for the high and mighty and hypocritical gentlemen and ladies who visit here."
A ferocious swell of possessiveness was filling him. She was his! Of all the acquisitions he had made through the years, Harry was by far the finest. That shocking thought took him completely unaware.
More shocking still, owning her, another human being, was eminently satisfying. He intended to exercise his authority over her. She would need to obey him, not as a wife obeys her husband, but as a love-slave obeys her master. Wild child Harry would finally have to toe the line.
Revenge was indeed very sweet.
The sweetness soured when she untied her frayed petticoat, and his eyes were drawn to her hands.
It was said the true predictor of a lady's means was the state of her hands, not her address. Never had that old adage seemed truer than now. Hers were not the hands of a pampered lady or even a whore; her hands showed the ravages of chilblain. Harry's hands were servant's hands. Prior to this, he had noticed their condition, but the incongruity, the significance, had no impact until right now, right this very moment. What was a whore doing with work-roughened hands?
This made no sense! It was his understanding she had lived all these years as a kept woman, maintained by a series of wealthy male protectors, cosseted from the harsher realities of outright prostitution. Why then were her hands so rough and chapped, inflamed from chronic exposure to moist cold, as though she had been washing dishes as an ordinary housekeeper would do?
Quite frankly, he didn't know which thought repulsed him more, the image of her whoring, or the image of her toiling away in a cold and dank kitchen. Both possibilities filled him with loathing.
However, he let the circumstance go unquestioned, save to say, "Henceforth, you will take better care of your hands."
"Yes, sir."
He nodded, everything under control. "You may proceed."
Her petticoat puddled on the floor.
Why had he told her to go slow? The wait was killing him. Harry was killing him. Like a stevedore working the docks, he drew on the cheroot. Only to snuff the cigar out less than a minute later, when he lost sight of her in the cloud of billowing smoke. It would never do to have his vision of her obscured.
By temperament, whaling captains are a reticent bunch. A good thing too, for gone to sea for years at time, listening to the same stories, the same jests, eating the same food day in and day out, nerves tend to fray. In stormy weather, in close quarters, amidst the stink of whale entrails and unwashed male bodies, he had never once lost his patience with any of his men. He made a decision, and he stuck to it; anything less than decisiveness, and his crew would lose respect for his authority. And here he was losing his patience, his decisiveness ... his very mind ... over this slip of a female. Why wouldn't she fucking hurry?
Finally, the thin cotton of her chemise was undone enough to see cleavage. Deep cleavage it was too.
"Push up a tit so I can see it," he drawled lazily, though inside he was as excited as a lad with a new toy.
He could no longer wait to see a nipple. They looked enormous under the thin cotton!
"Your choice which one," he added.
"Your generosity leaves me breathless," the saucy wench retorted, shelving a hand beneath a perfect round globe and lifting until the breast spilled over the cotton neckline.
Just as he had suspected, the nipple was reddening, growing hard and pointed.
There was that stark contrast again, this time between the reddening nipple and nearly translucent white skin, between softly round breast and sharply pointed nipple. But the most telling contrast of all was between her work-roughened hands and the perception he wished to have of her, as a pampered bird in a gilded cage. The disparity caused him some unease.
"Remove that godawful chemise," he growled in consternation. Why did she taunt him? And why was a kept woman's undergarment so threadbare, he could almost see through it?
"You did tell me to go slow, sir."
The vixen! She had bested him and knew it. His expression--a starved wolf drooling at a steakbone--had given too much away.
Once she was free of the undergarment, Joshua perused those extravagant nipples at his leisure, taking in their distention, a good inch out from the pale globes now. Amazingly, for breasts so full, they were amazingly firm, with absolutely no sag. And the color of the areola had gone from red to bright red in her excitement.
Harry was aroused, and like any female animal, her body showed its receptiveness to be mated. How would she look below?
"Drop those drawers," he said curtly.
"Fast or slow?"
His mouth gave a feral twist. "I have paid good coin to see your flaming bush, and I will see it now!" For years, he had dreamt of red curls. Hot, wet dreams. Fiery, silky curls. He would wake up shamed, not because the linens were sticky, but because even in sleep, she'd had the power to control him.
No more. Once carnality became commerce and money changed hands, romance ended. She was a whore, paid to please. How she must enjoy watching poor wretches squirm before dispensing her favors ... for a price. Mercenary shrew.
He frowned. But if she received payment for her body, how to explain the threadbare chemise, the reddened hands, the badly dyed mourning gown, the aura of poverty she wore like a proud banner.
A shrewd ploy. To up the price.
He tapped his fingers. "Well? Where is the burning bush?"
"I am afraid you will be disappo
inted, sir," she said. With a shimmy, her plain cotton drawers slid down her hips to the floor.
His gaze fell, his mouth agape.
She was bald as a newborn.
"You don't care for it?" she asked innocently.
"I loathe it. Detest it. It is, in short, an abomination!" He pointed a finger at her privates; his voice shook like sails during a gale. "You will let your curls grow back." There, before his very eyes, was proof that she was indeed a whore, not a housekeeper, and he couldn't bear to look truth in the cunt.
"Full bush!" he ordered, almost shouting the improper directive.
"Aye, aye, Captain." She gave him a saucy salute.
He answered with a salute of his own, one hopefully she could not detect because of the cut of his coat. The slit was fully exposed, right there out in the open. It couldn't possibly be anywhere as narrow as it looked. Certainly not as narrow as it had been before, he thought, remembering, remembering, always remembering how it had been. After all the men she'd had, she should be able to take him with little difficulty.
And this time when she took him, he vowed to please her as he had failed to please her before.
CHAPTER FOUTEEN
"Touch yourself," Captain Kane ordered, her patron just full of commands this evening.
"There are many places a woman may touch herself to elicit a pleasurable sensation in both herself and her voyeur. Where would you like me to begin?"
"Your breasts."
"Very well." Her left palm went underneath the left breast again, in presentation fashion.
"That is not touching, Mrs. Smith. If you are aware of voyeurism, surely you must also know the difference between cupping and touching."
Naturally, during her stay at Ruby's place, she had been trained to self-gratify; she had also been trained to put on a show for a male audience. Both had left her feeling remarkably unmoved. Never had she derived any real benefit from either activity. Nevertheless, Harry pulled at the nipple, and surprisingly, the tip began to tingle.