Ashley’s lip quivers, and she bites down on it to stop it or to hide it or both. It doesn’t work.
And then she opens her mouth.
Her arms are crossed over her ribs like a shield. “What were you looking for today? I heard you talking about a pearl in that shop.”
She is making conversation to try to save herself. Because she can feel it—the anger like electricity in the air. She’s a woman. Of course she feels it. Like I feel trouble on the sea. The way I felt my foster father arriving at the house he kept us in. Unfortunately for Ashley, this is not the distraction she means for it to be.
“We all have our treasures we hunt.”
Her eyes dart to the left, and then down. When she speaks again her voice is coiled around worry. “What if he doesn’t pay?”
Thick metal slams itself down in front of my heart, in front of every sick memory I’m constantly trying to forget and can’t. I can’t, because all those things are tied up in the neverending quest to find what’s missing from my life. When the gate comes down all that’s left is a pure hunger for release.
“Then maybe I’ll sell you to the highest bidder.” Ashley’s eyes meet mine, wide and afraid now. The way I like them. “There’s quite a hot market for beautiful young women like you.”
Fear hardens to a quick, clean anger in her eyes. “You wouldn’t do that.”
I lunge for her. There’s nowhere for her to run, no time for her to turn or fall or scream, so all she does when I get my hand around her throat is gasp, strangled and nearly silent.
For a second.
Then she gets her fists up, clawing for my wrist, my hand. She rakes her fingernails across my skin hard enough to draw blood, and I turn her around so that I’m between her and the door. Her mistake. Ashley was between me and the sea. There’s no more deadly place to be in the world. The backs of her knees hit the side of the bed and she tenses, staying upright for a few more seconds.
So the princess likes to be toyed with. She has to know she’s going to lose.
“You wouldn’t do that to me,” she says again, voice shaking like she wants to believe herself but can’t. “I won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me.”
Oh, but she can try. She throws herself against me with a howl, raining blows down on my chest, my shoulders, the top of my arm. I have her by the neck. None of her efforts loosen my grip on her slim throat. None of it hurts at all. She gets a hand up to my face and slashes at my cheekbone, cutting into the skin.
The new, surface-level pain hooks itself into old, raw bruises, and the last check on my control snaps. I take her backward onto the bed, stretch her out, move her across it while she struggles. Ashley swallows again and again under my hand, and it takes everything, everything, not to fuck her throat right now. Instead, I pin her there and reach for my belt.
When she realizes what I’m doing the tears finally spill over, running down her cheeks with nothing to stop them. Every touch is met with a terrified whimper. That makes me harder. I have wanted her all fucking day, every minute since I found her, and I’m done waiting. I’m done with everything except satisfying this single need like it will put things right again.
I let go of her throat so I can get her hands up and around the bedpost. So I can tie them there with the belt. The sick fuck part of me wants the leather to dig into her flesh. To leave more lasting marks. But I don’t do that. I don’t need to.
Her sundress is tangled around her thighs and I pull it tight in my fist to show her where it is, and then show her where it’s not. I push it up past her hips, exposing that smooth skin, and farther, above the tits I’ve been pretending not to notice all day, like a fucking gentleman.
I lean down and bite one of them.
Ashley screams but tries her best to swallow most of the sound. Her cheeks are painted a humiliated red but her nipples are peaked and tight. Sensitive. They have to be so fucking sensitive. I bite the other one.
She cries out again, so wounded and turned on that I find other places to bite. Her collarbone. Her shoulder. The side of her neck. If I ever do send her back to her father, I’ll do it with my teeth marks on her skin. Let him see what I did to his daughter. Let her feel me there for the rest of her life.
“Maybe I’ll sell you.” I bite down on her hip. “Or maybe I’ll keep you for myself. I’ll chain you to this bed and use your tight body whenever I want. You’d be useful to me. If I want to make a deal with someone, I can throw in the use of you for a night to sweeten the deal.”
“No,” she whispers. “Don’t do that.”
I kneel over her. She cannot help but be arched on my bed for me. I tied her that way. She can’t help but push out those tits with their aching nipples and bite marks. A knee between her thighs inches them open, and I put both my hands there and spread them wide.
Ashley fights me on this, too. Putting as much resistance against my hands as she can. Fresh color spills over her cheeks. Her gritted teeth don’t stop her tears.
She doesn’t spread her legs for me like a needy whore the way she did before, when I chained her, when I finger-fucked her. But when I have her cunt opened to me, no part of her kept secret, the end result is the same.
I push three fingers into her without any preamble, and her whole body curls around the invasion. “Too big,” she says through clenched teeth. “Too big.”
“You can lie to me all you want, princess. Your pussy doesn’t.” It has responded to me by getting wetter, tighter, by trying to get more of my fingers inside her. Who am I to say no to that? I twist them, finding the rough spot inside her that will embarrass her more. Ashley sobs out a moan.
“Don’t come,” I tell her. “We’re not done yet. Or, fuck it. Come as many times as you want. Show me how much you love this.”
“I don’t.” Her voice is high and thready, as if she can’t get enough air. “I don’t love it at all.”
I put a thumb to her clit. “Lie to me again.”
Two more fat tears slide down to her temples and into her hair. “I don’t love it.”
I press down, a glancing touch, a light one, and trace circles there. One. Two. Three.
She comes on the fifth one, crying through it. I pull my fingers out of her before she’s done coming and wipe them across her jaw.
And then I take a fistful of her sundress and push it into her mouth, tight against her tongue.
Her eyes fly open. No more tears. Ashley’s making sounds against the cloth, but no matter how she works her jaw, she can’t spit it out. I’m a horrible bastard that way.
“The gag is for you, princess. You don’t want the whole crew hearing your business, do you?”
She shakes her head before she can stop herself. It’s another lie. I’d bet my life on it. I’d bet she would get wetter if I lined them all up outside the door and made them watch. I circle her mouth with a fingertip, then undo my pants.
She’s tied up, gagged, humiliated, and her eyes move down over my body to the cock that’s about to fuck her.
I don’t think those eyes can get any wider.
Then she sees my piercing.
Ashley can’t stop looking at it, breathing hard through her gag.
The shell of her ear is too tempting not to bite, so I do it, the resulting shiver moving all the way down through her body. “Yes,” I tell her. One more graze of my teeth. “You’ll be able to feel it.”