Now Poseidon speaks louder so that the crew members hanging by the railing can hear. “What I say goes on my ship. She disobeyed direct orders. If you keep standing there, you’ll be disobeying direct orders too.”
“I didn’t hear an order.”
This is a risk, and I know it is, because Poseidon already told him to move. My knees are jelly. My knees might never function as knees again. I don’t know. Droplets land on my skin, each of them a new reminder of my nakedness and how cold it is to be afraid and without clothes.
Poseidon doesn’t take the bait. “I order you to get out of my fucking way.”
The cook stands there for another beat. My heart aches for him. He’s trying to get Poseidon to fight him, and I get the sense this might have worked if it weren’t for this situation. If it weren’t for me.
Poseidon doesn’t fight. He waits, and I can feel the seconds ticking by. I’ve googled enough to know there are different rules at sea. That Poseidon would be justified in anything he chooses to do with a mutineer.
The cook looks at me. He lets me see his face, his sorrow. I want to tell him it’s okay, but it’s not.
He steps out of the way.
Poseidon moves me in front of the mast and presses me against it. It’s colder than the rain, and my belly tenses with the shock of it, but he doesn’t let me step back. He stands behind me and stretches my arms around it. I clasp my hands on the other side, and then there’s the tug and pull of rope around my wrists.
“It’s done.” Nicholas is in sight for a second, his eyes lowered to the deck, and then I can’t see him anymore.
“Not another step,” Poseidon announces. I can’t see where everyone is standing, but they must have been moving, must have been going somewhere. “Everyone stays on deck until this is finished. Even you, Cook.”
I twist my head around. It’s hard, tied like this, to get a view of anyone. Cook is off to Poseidon’s side, his eyes on the deck. He doesn’t lift them up to look back at me. Everyone I can see is doing the same thing. My heart pounds. They’re not moving, but they’re not looking, either. It’s the most privacy they can give me.
Poseidon holds out his hand.
It’s Nicholas who steps forward with a set jaw and spots of color on his cheeks.
It’s Nicholas who puts the whip in Poseidon’s hand.
The whip.
In Poseidon’s hand.
“No,” I say. “Don’t do this. Please, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.” The rope around my wrists doesn’t hurt but it doesn’t have any slack, either. I can’t get away.
Poseidon doesn’t answer. He steps to my side, testing the whip in his hand. That’s all it takes—that one motion, and I know with horrible certainty that he has done this before, that this is not the first time, and that he knows how to make it hurt.
Alongside that certainty, another feeling burns itself into being. I hate him, and he’s beautiful in the rain. It looks at home on him. I want him, and he hates me enough to do this. To tie me naked to a part of his ship and whip me in front of other people. I’m terrified. I’m fucking terrified. I have never been so scared, except for one other time, and it was earlier, on that ship with those men.
He gets closer and drags the whip across my skin, letting me feel it, and all that heated want crashes down underneath the weight of my fear. I’m afraid to suffer for him. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s already happening.
Poseidon takes a single step back. “Look forward.”
There’s nowhere to look but the mast. It’s mean, what he’s doing. It’s cruel. He’s making it so I can’t see when he draws his arm back.
“Please don’t,” I beg the mast. “Please don't hurt me. Please don’t, Poseidon. You don’t have to do this. You can stop. I’m sorry. I won’t leave again, I won’t—”
It turns out I don’t need to see him.
The whip makes a sound when it moves through the air, almost a whistling, and then it makes first contact.
There’s nothing, and then there’s everything, a lightning line of pain across the curve of my shoulders. The scream wrestles its way out of me before I can stop it. It becomes a begging plea. “Don't do it!” I scream at him. “Don't.”
Another blow, this one lower. The rain makes it worse somehow. I don’t think any more drops are falling, but the lingering wetness on my skin forces me to feel everything. “Please.”
Again. My head snaps back, body trying to arch away from the whip, but of course it’s too late. It will always be too late by the time I react. I can’t hear my own screams, but I’m sure I’m screaming. It’s too loud, too much to process along with the pain. Every individual line is fire, it’s fire. I hate it, and it’s not killing me. It’s killing me, but I’m not dead. This is the real force of his anger, this is the consequence of putting people’s lives in danger. He’s doing it for them. He’s doing it for th—
Another stripe lands, this one across my ass, and it’s so intense that I’m howling when the next one comes. I was cold before. Now I’m burning up. Feverish with pain and the most fucked-up desire I have ever felt. I want him to forgive me. I want him to carry me back to his bed. Maybe that’s what I’m begging for. Not for this to stop but for the other things to happen. To please, please, look at me the way he did before. Please.
Distantly, I can hear murmurs from the rest of the crew. Nobody dares to try to stop him, not one of them, and I get it. I get it now. It would be like begging the tides to stay in place. It can’t be done. It’s a waste of breath. One more. Two. The rest of the world blanks out. My voice gives, breaking along itself, and I’m abruptly hoarse but I can’t stop talking to him. Can’t stop begging. Can’t stop wanting. It’s clarifying, this pain. It shows me exactly what I want. And what I want is to hate him back.
I want to hate him back.
I’m past it, really, past screaming, past hoping that it will work. It’s a reflex. Can’t be stopped. Let the body surrender to it. That’s the way through. If there is another side, this is how I get there.
I open my mouth to scream again anyway.
No sound comes out, only silent breath in the shape of his name.
21
Poseidon
The hand holding the whip is not my hand.
It doesn’t feel like part of my body. Not the hand, not the arm, not the shoulder that flexes to bring it back or the feet planted on deck. It’s not my fury that comes down over me like a fine rain. It wasn’t mine in the beginning, and it’s not mine now. I don’t want it to be mine, but it is. This body is the one that keeps moving. That keeps hurting Ashley.
She’s reaching the limit of what she can take, and I know it, and instead of stopping, I put another red line across her back. Her ass. The tops of her thighs. She writhes against the mast. Begs it for mercy. Tries to press herself into it, to hide. There is no hiding from this. From me.
I know she doesn’t see me anymore. I know she doesn’t feel anything but thin, searing strips of pain that expand after impact until they’re covering her from head to toe. I know how unfair it feels, how the whip leaves narrow cuts that seem to touch every part of you, even the parts that you think are safe. I know she can feel it in the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands. The whip can’t reach them. That doesn’t matter.