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.
The air smelled like mint and cedar and cleanliness. Every breath I took was too intimate, too masculine, too him. Where did he expect me to sleep?
My gaze flitted to the bed and jerked away.
As much as I needed to collapse, I chose to stand. “How did you recognize me?”
“I didn’t.” He set the knife on the small table beside me.
I sagged beneath the throbbing accumulation of the day’s injuries with no desire to look at the knife and even less desire to use it.
“If you set that there to test my intelligence, I’m offended.” I gave the hilt a hard flick and left it spinning like a wheel on the table as I strolled away. “On a good day I can wield a blade against armies of men twice my size. You should also know I’m a dead shot with a pistol. But today’s not a good day.”
His face, too smooth and polished to require a barber’s razor, gave no reaction.
“Can I be frank with you, Ashley?” I wandered through his private space, touching everything from blankets and clothing to furniture and trinkets just to annoy him.
“I expect nothing less.”
“After being thrown off a ship twice in one day, only to end the night with a ruthless spanking on my lady parts—”
“The night isn’t over.”
I flung a glare at him. “I cannot simply forget these things occurred. You can trust that when I fall asleep, I’ll dream of my hands throttling your throat until your lips turn blue, and your eyes pop from your face like corks. But…” I held up a finger without looking at him. “I’m not foolish enough to retaliate. When I make mistakes, I learn from them.”
I turned and pointed at my swollen jaw, just one of the many aches he’d inflicted in the past few hours.
“I’m pleased to hear that you understand my expectations.” He braced his boots in a noble stance and raised his squared jaw, staring down his nose at me.
“God’s teeth, Commodore.” I squinted up at him. “Do you ever grow tired of maintaining that stiff upper lip?”
“Do you ever grow tired of mocking the great and the good?” “No. Positively never.”
He stood like a statue for a minute or twenty. At length, he dragged a palm down his face, over his mouth, and let his shoulder drop against the wall.
Better? His cocked eyebrow asked. The stiff lip was impossibly stiffer.
I shook my head. “Lord Ashley Cutler. All suited and booted and looking polished enough to hold the king’s cock while he pisses.”
“Your mouth is appalling.” His gaze slid to the object of his gall.
“Is that your appalled expression? It looks the same as all your others, so I can’t be sure. But honestly, Ashley, if my mouth disturbs you, why do you stare at it so?”
His eyes returned to mine. Deep blue gemstone eyes, thickly lashed and sensually hooded. Oh, how they must grow weary of watching females swoon in his path.
Flickering lantern light gilded his sculpted features and cast shadows over his perfectly combed, inky black hair. So shiny and lush, that hair. It was hard to believe it had ever been exposed to sun or salty air.
He was magnificent to behold, a distinguished officer in his prime who had just won a war and sailed across an ocean to capture Madwulf
MacNally and the daughter of Edric Sharp. He would be the envy of his peers upon his return.
How long had he been at sea? Was he in a hurry to sail home? I was wildly curious to know what he was thinking as he answered my shameless appraisement with a calmer, more detached reserve.
“Do you have a lady in England you’re anxious to reunite with?” I crossed my arms, standing a foot away.
“No.”
No surprise there. When it came to women, he put more effort into spanking a clitoris than wooing a heart.
As I understood the situation, I would have a month to scrape information from his brain. Right now I had only so much energy left before my face planted itself onto the floor. The remainder of my questions would have to wait. Except one.
“How did you find me?”
“I was hunting another pirate, and he led me to you.”
Priest? It wasn’t possible. No one outside our circle of trust knew our connection.
My head pounded with panic and fatigue, but I kept my voice neutral. “Who?”
“Charles Vane.”
“Ah.” Grief collided with relief. I showed neither on my face. “Convenient for you.”
“Abundantly. With Vane dead, you were my next target. But, by the time I learned of your arrival in Jamaica, you already weighed anchor and set sail. Rather suddenly, wasn’t it?”
“You’re not the only one hunting me.”
“But I’m the only one who apprehended you.”
Arrogant fool. If he only knew that Priest Farrell had nabbed me first. Oh, how I wanted to tell him he could’ve captured Edric Sharp’s daughter and the Feral Priest if he hadn’t fallen for my ruse.
But my marriage was my most guarded secret and greatest hope for escape.
“If you didn’t recognize me,” I said, “how did you find me?”
“No one could accurately describe your image. You did well keeping that unknown. Until now. But I didn’t need to know what you looked like. I studied your behavior, your track worn in the sea, and lore that follows you.
Your affiliation with Charles Vane. The galleon you commanded, which boasts no flags, figureheads, or markings. And your penchant for freeing slaves.”
I closed my eyes, released a slow breath, and glared at him. “You found the sunken slave ship.”
“I received word of it when dead seamen and burned timber washed ashore west St. Christopher. The attack had your stamp of ownership all over it. ‘Twas easy to track you from there.”
My hands clenched, but I couldn’t regret that raid. We’d saved two young African men that day. Besides, with Ashley on my trail since Jamaica, he would’ve caught me eventually. Just like Priest had.
He straightened from the wall and breezed past me, headed to the armoire. From a drawer within, he removed a blue three-cornered hat trimmed in feathers and jammed it on his head. From another drawer, he pulled out a long swath of linsey-woolsey and splayed it on the mattress.
A gentleman’s loose nightgown.
Priest had never worn a stitch of clothing to bed. I preferred nudity, as well. But not here.
“Is that for me?” I lifted the hem, rubbing the coarse cloth between my fingers, relieved it wasn’t transparent.
“Yes.” He flicked a finger toward the privacy screen. “Wash yourself before retiring.”
He pivoted and strode toward the dining cabin, dressed in full uniform as if he were going somewhere.
“Ashley?” I waited until I had his eyes. “Where do I sleep?”
“There.” He thrust his steely chin at the bed behind me and resumed walking.
“Where are you sleeping?” At his silence, I hurried after him. “Where are you going?”
The click of the exterior door sounded his exit.
A growl of frustration vibrated in my chest. I raced past the desk in the day cabin, around the table in the dining cabin, and swung open the door.
Ashley stood on the other side, boots spread apart, hands clasped behind him, and blue eyes narrowed on mine. Expecting me.
My breath came up short. “You said I could wander freely.”
“Not dressed like that.” He shifted to the side and motioned at the two lieutenants behind him.
The men bustled in, carrying piles of mismatched fabric. They dumped the tattered garments on the table, along with a platter of sewing supplies, and swept out of the cabin.
“There’s enough cloth there,” he said. “You will fashion a proper wardrobe for yourself before you leave these quarters.”
“I don’t know how to sew.” I folded my arms over my chest.
He bent toward me and put his nose inches from mine. “Your upbringing says otherwise.”
I blinked, searching for the best retort. It was true that Lady Abigail Leighton had taught me how to work with a needle and thread. But the only sewing I’d done in the past seven years involved open wounds and bleeding flesh.
Another man stepped into the room, carrying a small medicine chest that rattled with glass vials.
“Madam.” The blond man glanced at my raw wrists, bloody shirt, and throbbing jaw. “I’m Lieutenant Flemming, the ship’s surgeon. Let’s look at your injuries, shall we?”
Shocked, I watched the wardroom warrant officer stride toward the day cabin. Behind him trailed a younger uniformed man holding a tray of fruit, meats, and biscuits.
After everything Ashley had unleashed on me today, never in a thousand lifetimes would I have expected this level of decency. There must be a catch.
When I turned back to the doorway, Ashley was gone.
