Over the past seven years, I’d been beaten violently by enemies and spanked sensually by lovers. Ashley’s strikes slammed through those extremes, erased the line between pain and pleasure, and crashed straight into war.
Most of the blows landed so hard I couldn’t squeak out a breath. Others caused my body to brutally flinch beneath the agony as a ballad of vulgarity roared from the back of my throat.
Fewer were the hits that teased stings of pleasure. Those were the ones that made me hate myself for responding as though I were made for his touch.
I didn’t want him, but I needed to give him a glimpse of the possibility. I needed to embed the seed in his mind and make him wonder what intimacy with me might feel like.
It wasn’t an easy ledge to balance on, but it was easy to close my eyes and forget whose hand punished my flesh.
Because he hit like Priest.
The more I thought about that, the deeper I sank into the terrible, wicked intensity of the pleasure-pain. Gradually, my ear-splitting protests melted into raspy whimpers and moans. But even those sounds spluttered with curses at the way I yielded to his imperious discipline.
I was wet. Not from the pain. My body felt as though it were immersed in hellfire, and I wasn’t into that.
What aroused me was his undivided attention. For a man of his stature and self-control to gaze upon me like I was his sun, moon, and sea, even if
only for a fleeting moment, it made me feel alive. Hungry and hot and vigorously alive.
That was motivation enough to hold my position beneath his strikes.
Aching everywhere, I rocked against the edge of the table. As another open-handed smack collided with my sore bottom, I gasped, shudders seizing me anew. I felt the ridges of my swelling skin as profoundly as I felt the trembling in his palm as he slowed his swings.
Then he stopped.
My mouth opened and closed on an air-sucking gulp. The action pushed my cheek through a puddle of moisture that had leaked from my eyes. I hadn’t cried. Not consciously. But I wanted to. God almighty, the pain was all consuming.
“Don’t move.” His voice shook with the pummel of his breaths.
I couldn’t have moved if I tried. My arms felt like water stretched above me. My lower half hung off the side of the table, buckling my knees. I lay there, my eyes drifting shut, as his footsteps treaded aft toward his sleeping quarters.
Then he was standing behind me again, staring at my naked backside. His breaths issued in broken clusters of air, coming hard and fast as an effect of whatever internal force he was fighting.
If he were any other man, I would cover myself in fear of being rutted against my will. But Ashley Cutler hadn’t yet reached that level of desperation. Perhaps he was capable of it, of forcing himself on me in a moment of weakness. But I suspected it would take a great deal more than a spanking for him to snap.
I licked my parched lips. “Are you hard?”
Silence extended an eternity before he responded. “Yes. It’s an involuntary response to a perfectly red backside.” He cleared the scratch in his voice. “It helps that yours isn’t covered in hair.”
“You see a lot of furry arses?”
“With over four hundred men on this ship, I can say with confidence that yours is the smoothest. And the reddest.” He stepped closer and stooped low, crouching behind me. “You’re also the first prisoner I’ve punished who leaked something other than urine down the thighs.”
“Don’t look for lust where none exists,” I said, echoing his words. “It’s an involuntary response to a perfectly delivered spanking.”
He made a sound in his throat, something between a grunt and a snort.
Setting a small jar he’d retrieved from the sleeping chamber beside my hip, he rose to his feet and rested a finger on my tailbone. I shivered as the touch glided downward, following the cleft of my bottom. He didn’t push into the crease, instead keeping the caress agonizing, slow and light as a feather.
“As a liberated woman, I shall presume you’ve had all your territories occupied.” His finger paused directly over my arsehole without sinking between my clenched cheeks. “Tell me, Bennett. Has this domain been pillaged?”
Only a man who was interested in the act would inquire about such a thing. Priest had demanded it dozens of times before he broke down my resolve and introduced me to the sin of Sodom.
To this day, he was the only one who had taken me fore and aft, and he’d done so with a skill that made me crave it relentlessly, thereby damning me for all eternity.
“Yes.” I craned my neck and locked onto hooded blue eyes. “I’ve been plundered forward and backward, with my consent, and only by a libertine who knew what he was doing.”
“Does this libertine have a name?”
“I don’t recall.” I fought the urge to swallow. “How about you?” At his silence, I clarified. “Do you know what you’re doing, Ashley?”
“I should flog you every time you disrespectfully address me without my title. Except you love my punishments.”
“And you love when I call you Ashley.” I squinted. “You’re evading my question.”
His mouth curved up at the corners. It wasn’t a smile, for there were no traces of softness or humor in it. It was the mien of cruelty, and it hit my veins in splinters of ice.
Eyes bolted to mine, he dipped long fingers into the jar and scooped out an oily substance.
Lubrication? To grease a hole I gave him no license to penetrate?
I choked on a spike of fear and pushed up from the table. Until a heavy hand clamped onto my hip, shoving me back down.
“Do. Not. Move.” His lubricated palm went to my thigh, gliding upward, unhesitating along my abused flesh.
Cool, refreshing balm penetrated my searing skin, instantly soothing the pain and perfuming the air with the fragrance of garden herbs.
He was treating my wounds? Dear God, would he never stop deviating from the expectations I’d built up around him? I couldn’t read him, predict his actions, or figure out a way to circumvent him. He was an anomaly.
Releasing his grip on my hip, he surrounded my backside with his hands, kneading my aching flesh, rubbing the salve into the burn, and coursing relief and sudden desolation through my limbs.
How long had it been since I’d been cared for this way? Since I felt the attention of a lover’s caress upon my body?
I tried not to think about Priest as Ashley worked me into a thrumming, molten puddle of bliss. Talented fingers roved along my hips, waist, and thighs, learning my shape before returning to my bottom.
The friction of skin, even the barest touch, sizzled honeyed pleasure up my legs and into my core. When his thumb hovered over the hidden hole at my aft, rich shivers invaded the muscles there, clenching deep inside.
It was his gentleness that seduced me, his teasing fingers, the tenderness in every diabolical touch as though he trickled thick, hot syrup along my spine and dribbled it down my crack and into the needy gap between my legs.
It wasn’t nearly enough. I lifted my hips, urging him to keep stroking, blindsided by the madness of my need. I wanted more than the delirium of his expert petting. I ached to feel his lips mate with mine.
My whimpers found voice as he caressed the arch of my back. His hand tangled in my hair and turned my head. Eyes, so commanding that Satan himself would do his bidding, sucked me in like dark whirlwinds, threatening to swallow me whole.
“Siren.” The word came forth like gravel from his mouth, a beautifully shaped mouth befitting the devil, which I stared at quite fixedly.
His features seemed too relaxed to be affected by lust. But I knew better than to trust that handsome face.
I gasped as his weight came down atop my back. He was hard as stone in his breeches, the swollen heat of him intoxicating my blood as if I’d imbibed a cask of rum. I couldn’t breathe.
With hair as black as night and eyes bluer than the sea, he smelled like a midnight storm, the kind that infused the air with woodsy loam and turned everything it touched inside out. My mouth watered. My heart shivered.
He gripped the side of my face and tilted my chin up to meet his. Our lips hovered an inch away.
Did he find me pretty? Desirable? Worthy enough to kiss?
To be wanted by a man whose heart didn’t belong to another… I would never admit such a vulnerable desire aloud. The desperate, wild hope that fluttered from my thoughts equally mortified and excited me. Oh, how I hated this need to be wanted by him, but it was there, a hunger so deep it clamped down on my lungs.
Kiss me, Ashley.
He trailed a finger along my jaw and traced my quivering lower lip. His mouth parted, inviting mine to edge closer.
I arched my neck, pressing into the hand on my cheek. My nerves buzzed with drunken anticipation as he dipped his head. Closer. Closer. The nearness of his mouth teased mine, trembling, groaning, heating…
Gone.
A chill swept in. Then I saw it.
The curved lips. The humorless non-smile. Eyes as mean as the devil’s own.
“You’re a pirate whore, Bennett Sharp. Nothing more.” He shoved off my body, his tone cutting. “You will hang for the crimes you’ve committed against the crown.”
