The Smuggler's Captive (closed thread)

[dr_mabeuse]

The fog lay thick as curdled milk as Captain Inigo Swann’s little dinghy pulled silently across the ink-dark water of Barmouth harbor The light from the stern lanterns of his cutter The Black Bird had already disappeared into the murk, and he used his smuggler’s instincts to guide his little craft unerringly towards the faint glow on the shore that marked the Turk’s Head Inn. Whether in the open sea or the various smuggler’s harbors that dotted the coast, Swann knew these waters like he knew his own name, and his rendevous now was a disreputable but trustworthy place where he was to pick up his particular fare for the evening, a young lady so desperate to get to France that she was willing to pay a handsome fee to have him sneak her through the Royal Navy ships patrolling the Channel.

The war with Napoleon had been going on for almost two years now, and there was a handsome living to be made smuggling French wine and brandy into Britain, or in taking a noble French family to political safety across the Channel. Traffic went both ways, and Swann had smuggled people the other way as well, either English spies or French royalists trying to sneak back to recover some bits of their confiscated fortunes. This fare was special, though, a secretive young lady, and one of noble birth, he had no doubt. It was the first time he had ever had an unaccompanied woman as a passenger before—his prices weren’t cheap--and as he rowed easy, careful to avoid any splashing of oars, he turned the possibilities over in his mind. Who might she be, and how dangerous was this undertaking? Was there a chance he was being betrayed? Was there much to be gained by turning betrayer himself? Smuggling was a profitable occupation but a tricky one, and Inigo Swann hadn’t survived as loing as he had by taking things at face value.

The quay was close now, so close he could smell the wet stone and hear the creaking of the shrouds of the empty frigates and men-of-war as they rode gently at their moorings. Swann turned around briefly to get his bearings, looking for the stone steps that marked the end of Water Street. The street lanterns were lit, but their yellow glow barely penetrated the billowing clouds of damp fog, and even the buildings looked gray and insubstantial.

The dinghy kissed up against the steps with barely a sound, and Swann made fast, swung his boat around into the shadows, and tied off the stern sheet. He gathered his boat cloak around him, covering the cutlass and pistol he had stuffed into his belt, and placed his boot upon the stairs. He stopped to listen.

No sounds except the muffled bells of the can buoys and the soft lap of water on stone. He walked up the stairs, turned right along the quay and headed across the slick cobbles down to where the glow of the Turk’s Head penetrated the mists.

He pushed the door open and stepped into the tavern’s dim yellow light. There were only a few old salts sitting around over their mugs of ale or punch, and once they saw him they went back to their drinking. The air here was thick with a fog of its own: tobacco smoke and the cloying scent of opium a few old China hands must be smoking in a back room. Swann walked across the sawdust strewn floor and up to the bar, where Amos the barkeep was waiting for him, his face perfectly expressionless.

“Hell of an evening, eh Amos?” Swann asked.

The burly bartender leaned his thick forearms on the bar and gestured him over.

“The Fencibles ‘ave been up and down the quay tonight, Inigo,” he said in a low tone. “Some bold rascal nipped off with a fat armload of silver and jewels from Lord Farquahar’s estate over to Bellingham sometime last night, and they think they’ve traced him ‘ere to Barmouth. It’s expected he’ll be looking for passage across the channel directly, so they’ve got the swabbies watchin’ the ‘arbor. I’d keep an eye open, my friend. They know you ‘round here.”

Swann listened carefully and nodded. Farquahar had a lot of influence in Bellingham, though he wasn’t much loved by the citizens of Barmouth. Swann knew he could slip past the picket ships watching the harbor without much trouble. It was what he did. He made his living at it.

“Many thanks, Amos,” he said, sliding some coins across sthe bar. “I’ll bear it in mind. Now tell me: you’ve got something for me?”

The bartender just nodded his head towards the wooden stairs that led to the second floor. Swann smiled and flipped another coin to him and Amos caught it in mid-air, surprisingly fast for a big man.

There were four private rooms on the second floor but Swann headed for the Mermaid room, where he did all his private business. This room was in the front of the building, with large bay windows in the corner that projected right out over the water and gave an unobstructed view of the waterfront below. They also provided an efficient if hazardous means of speedy exit should it be needed.

Swann knocked on the wooden door: three, one, three, the usual signal, and saw the light under under the door suddenly wink out as the room’s occupant doused the light, He heard the bolt shoot free, and then the key turned in the big brass lock. The door swung open to show a dark room, and silhouetted against the grey light of the bay windows the form of a woman wearing a cape and hood.

“Thank God it’s you,” she said breathlessly, and Swann could feel her relax. “May we please leave now? I’m so anxious to go.”

Swann walked up to her and without as much as a by-your-leave, pulled her hood from her head. He hadn’t had time to really see her when they’d made the arrangements for her passage, and he wanted to see her now. He was very choosey about whom he risked his fortune and his neck for.

He found himself looking into the shadowed face of a beautiful women, frightened, but determined; a girl of obvious breeding and spirit, and so lovely there in the shadows that his breath caught momentarily in his throat.

Without conscious intent, Captain Inigo Swann immediately began to rethink his mission.

 

[shereads]

Lady Emma Finch-Hadden

“Female virtue has been held in suspicion from the beginning of the world, and ever will be.”

~ Napoleon Bonaparte

What if the captain knows?

Emma shivered and stepped away from the window, suppressing an icy thrill of panic, fueled with guilt. The thin curtains did nothing to block the draft, but she drew them closed for the dozenth time. She was exhausted from watching and waiting for him, but couldn’t seem to stop, despite the fog that had thickened to an almost impenetrable veil.

The girl raised the hood of her woolen wrap and crouched at the hearth, staring into the miniature hell of glowing coals. Little tongues of flame sputtered and mocked. Red as rubies, blue as the Farquahar Sapphire.

If he knows, it’s all been for nothing.

For a moment, the fear that had lain in her belly like a stone pulsed with heat and life, like a conscious entity that wanted to expand. To explode.

Of course, he would know. This man Swann was a smuggler, acquainted with every thief and miscreant from Barmouth to Brest.

Every thief but one.

The first, soft knock at the door nearly stopped her heart. There had been a code, but she could no more have remembered the sequence now than she could have sprouted wings and flown with the jewels back to Bellingham.

Keep a cool head, or this smuggler will be rich as Croesus and you’ll be flotsam washed up on a beach somewhere.

The knocking subsided and there was an expectant silence. The delicate figure shivering beside the hearth took a steadying breath, and stood. She was Lady Emma Finch-Hadden, not some desperate girl. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t be weak in the presence of this…this pirate.

She extinguished the lamp and willed herself to walk to the door. To open it. to face the man whose ignorance she needed for survival, as she needed air. If she’d been found out, she’d see it in his face.

Inigo Swann loomed in the doorway, larger than life and handsome as the devil. Grateful that her own face was in shadow, Emma searched his for signs of betrayal, of danger.

His eyes are honest, she thought. And instantly knew what a foolish thought it had been. The smuggler’s brown eyes gleamed with intelligence, wit, a survivor’s caution…and darker mysteries, best left unexplored.

But he didn't know about the jewels. There was danger in this face, but it had nothing to do with Emma’s crime. Which was all that mattered.

She felt relief like a third presence in the room. For the first time since Bellingham, clarity and purpose returned.

“Thank God it’s you,” she breathed. “May we please leave now? I’m so anxious to go.”

Then he reached for her.

Swann reached out his hand, the movement quick and confident as a cat’s, and pushed the hood from Emma’s face. The girl flinched and gasped, feeling inexplicably violated. Naked.

A tumble of red-gold waves framed the startled face, an oval of pale ivory, the cheeks flushed tearose-pink with surprise and indignation. The girl’s eyes were a turbulent gray-green, the color of a storm at sea.

Emma Finch-Hadden’s beauty had brought her nothing but trouble, and men’s stares had become an unwelcome intrusion. This man’s gaze was troubling in an unfamiliar way. She felt evaluated, like something he might purchase at a fair. Or might not.

“Don’t,” she whispered, and looked away, blushing. When she looked at him again, her eyes were downcast, half-hidden by a veil of black lashes.

“Please don’t look at me that way,” she said, her voice soft, but rich and smoky as incense. “I find it…disconcerting.”

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Disconcerting she might find it, but Swann found it difficult to pull his eyes away from her. This was no mere foolish young lady. This was a face that men would fight and die for: a true beauty of the realm, and for a moment Swann was struck dumb as a flush of raw desire burned the foggy chill from his bones. She turned from him and pulled her hood back in place with fingers that were long and delicate and free of any rings that might suggest she was betrothed to another.

His clients’ business was their own, but Swann knew these parts and knew of only one woman who was young and beautiful enough and of noble pedigree to be the woman he saw standing before him now. Still, he kept his surmises to himself.

“Beg your pardon, my lady, but I can’t afford the chance of taking anyone on sight unseen. Trust is essential in this undertaking.” He was surprised to find that her beauty had affected him so deeply. He took a deep breath now and said, “The tide is just on the make. We must leave directly. You have all you need?”

“Yes. Only this,” she said, gesturing to a largish carpetbag near the fire.

Swann bent to take it but she quickly snatched it up herself, even though its weight was an obvious challenge to her. He had been a smuggler too long not to know what this meant, and he frowned, knowing that her insistence on carrying the bag herself would only slow them down. Now was not the time to argue about it, however.

“Come,” he said, “the boat’s below.”

He led her outside and down the stairs, then out through the back door, and then around to the front of the inn, where he bade her stop so he could inspect the waterfront. He couldn’t help but notice the dull metallic clunk coming from her bag.

They made it down the steps and Swann stepped into the dinghy. This was the most dangerous part, for everyone knew there was only one sort of man who would take a boat out on a night like this.

He turned to give her his hand. “Give me the bag,” he said quickly.

She hesitated. She could not enter the boat holding on to her treasure, but she was loathe to let it go.

“Hurry!” he hissed. He reached up and took the bag from her hand and heaved it aboard, and from its heft and from the sound it made he knew immediately that it was silver: table service and plate, most likely. So this was the thief Amos had mentioned? He kept his face an impassive mask but his mind whirled now, wondering what would drive such a high-born lady to this lowly crime. She must be desperate. So desperate she’d do anything to avoid being caught. The lady lost her footing and stumbled into the boat, falling against him.

Suddenly there were voices from the quay and the beam of a lantern held high, shining feebly through the gloom. “Who goes there? Who’s there?” a voice cried out.

Swann pulled her down and took her in his arms, bent her back and pulled his cloak over them both, He pressed his lips against hers, holding her tight to keep her from struggling.

“Well, there,” A voice from the quay said, “Looks like someone’s got hisself a bit of luck tonight.”

Swann lifted his lips from hers long enough to growl, “Bugger off, eh?”

The man laughed. “Well get some for me too, mate, while you’re at it!”

The man shut the door of his lantern and moved off into the fog, chuckling to himself. Swann held her still, enjoying the feel of her plump breasts against his chest, her warm sweetness in the cold of the night. She was a bright girl and didn’t struggle after her first instinctive resistance, understanding exactly what he was doing. When he let go of her at last, she sat up, her face flushed.

He cast off, and took to the oars without a word of apology or explanation, and soon they were gliding over the still, silent water. To Swann it now seemed that there were four of them in the little boat: himself, the Lady, her bag of stolen goods, and something else, something that hovered about them and made him smile as he leaned on the oars.

“Ahoy the boat!” a voice called down in a loud whisper. “What ship is that?”

Swann turned his head as the lights of the big cutter emerged from the gloom. “Black Bird,” his whispered back. “Make fast there.”

The dinghy bumped up against the wooden side of the ship and there were Cringle and Lewis, leaning out over the chains to give them a hand. Swann helped her up the ladder to the deck, then handed up her bag, slyly taking a moment to run his hands over the bulges. Yes, no doubt. Candlesticks, silverware, and a box that probably contained jewelry. “Look alive there,” he said. “Here’s the lady’s dunnage.”

As soon as his feet made the deck he took her arm and led her below to the rear of the ship. This was where he had his cabin, a broad room that ran the width of the ship, with seven large windows that looked out the stern to the foggy waters below. Just forward of this grand gallery were two smaller cabins, one on each side, also his, though one had been equipped with a bed for the lady.

He pushed open the door to her cabin, and held a lantern high so that she might see her accommodations. It was small and cramped and most of it taken up with the large bed that, unlike his own hanging cot, was bolted to the floor. It was made up neatly, but in a no- nonsense seaman’s manner. Her headboard was the inner hull of the ship, and her eyes fell on the sturdy iron ringbolts affixed to it.
They were suddenly acutely aware of each other’s presence, standing so close to each other, both aware that they were in his world now, where he was absolute lord and master. Her safety and well-being depended entirely upon him. She was aware that he was just standing there, waiting for this knowledge to sink in.

He dropped her bag and it fell with an ostentatious clatter, leaving no doubt now as to what was inside.

“Forgive me for not fully introducing myself,” he said. “I am Inigo Swann, captain of the Black Bird, to which I bid you welcome. And I daresay you would be Lady Emma Finch-Hadden.” He held up his hand to silence her protests. “Who you are is your concern, my Lady, and your secret is safe with me. I suggest you make yourself comfortable. I must see to putting out of the harbor. I’ll have my boy bring your some refreshment as soon as we’re underway, and then I think we may have some business to discuss.”

 

[shereads]

Emma

How could she have been so foolish?

The silver had given her away, as she had feared it would.

Emma had meant to take only the Farquahar Sapphire, the one thing on earth that Lord Cedric valued enough that he might bargain with her. The rest, she had taken on impulse, her judgement eclipsed by hatred.

If only she had kept to her plan.

The sapphire was easy enough to hide on her person - and it was easily worth a hundred times more than the contents of the carpet bag.

It was worth a king's ransom - or a foolish girl's. Yet it wouldn't buy her a moment of freedom if this man Swann decided otherwise. For that matter, if he knew about the sapphire, she might not live to see the other side of the Channel.

Emma stood with her back against the door of her cabin, heart pounding, and worked to stay calm. She had risked prison or even hanging, on the chance that she might trade Lord Cedric's prized possession for her freedom. And now she had placed herself at the mercy of another, more dangerous man.

Yes, Swann was more dangerous than she had imagined; dangerous in ways that Emma could scarcely fathom. On the dock a few minutes ago, only a heartbeat from being caught by the authorities, he had been enjoying himself. He had liked being on top of her in the dinghy! He had more than liked kissing her, even though he had probably kissed dozens - hundreds - of women.

It had been Emma's first kiss. And it had left her shaken, for a confusion of reasons. Not all of which had to do with the other dangers she had faced this night.

There was a knock at the door, but her visitors didn't wait for Lady Emma to bid them enter. A cabin boy, bearing hot water for the wash bowl, trailed behind a thuggish older man who set down a plate of food and a mug of ale. The two left without a word, the boy blushing furiously as if he'd never been in a lady's quarters before - and the older one casting a sly, insinuating glance at Emma before pulling the door closed behind him.

~ ~ ~

She had bathed as well as she could, eaten bread and cheese and a bit of cold chicken, and sat at the edge of the bed to wait for Captain Swann's return. At least an hour had passed, and the Black Bird must be well out of Barmouth Harbour, before she had fallen asleep - unwillingly, struggling not to give in to exhaustion until she had confronted the man who held her fate in his hands.

She had dozed for a while sitting up, but it was a fitfull rest. Finally, she had lain on the bed, curled up in a ball against the cold, with her wool cape draped across her legs. As frightened as she was, she was too tired to resist sleep.

When Captain Swann knocked, Emma didn't hear him.

But she had made the room ready for him.

She had emptied the contents of the carpet bag, which lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed. Silver, gleaming in the lantern light, was spread out in a stunning display on the planked floor. There were heavy sterling silver trays, dinner plates and goblets, all engraved with the Farquahar crest.

On an ornate platter, closest to the door, were the Farquahar jewels.

All but one. The sapphire, set in a rope of diamonds meant to be worn as a mutli-layered necklace, Lady Emma wore around her waist. It was hidden beneath a deceptively plain dress of a more ordinary blue.

She was awakened by a sense of his presence, without the captain having said a word since he entered. He had shut the door behind him, and was standing just inside, taking in the display of treasure laid at his feet.

She felt his power, and was instantly awake. Storm-gray eyes glittered, seeking his brown ones, and the small figure sat up, kneeling on the bed.

"The silver is yours, Captain," she said. "I would have needed your help getting rid of it, anyway, in France...The question is, do you intend to take the rest as well?"

Inigo Swann had seen a pistol or two, and knew what she held in her hands even before he held the lantern high to get a better look.

"I won't lose my only chance at freedom, Captain Swann. I'll kill you first."

Her voice was trembling now, like her hands. She had never held a loaded pistol, much less threatened anyone.

In the roughening sea, the Black Bird gave a sudden lurch. Losing her balance, Emma grabbed for one of the iron rings attached to the hull at the head of the bed.

When the pistol fired, she screamed and all but threw the thing to the floor, where it clattered into the pile of silver plate.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It was all she could do to hold the heavy pistol, and when it went off, Swann instinctively ducked to his left. The shot parted his shirt at his right shoulder and left a blaze of fire on his skin, but the heavy ball missed him and sent splinters flying from the oak planking behind him. Without losing a step he straightened and launched himself at her, catching her across his right shoulder and bearing her back onto the bed.

She fell kicking and for a moment he lost her in a confusion of skirts and petticoats. The shot had terrified her and she fought him with the strength of her fear, thinking that he would never believe that the gun had gone off accidentally that her life must now surely be forfeit.

She felt her wrists taken in an iron grip and raised over her head. She reached up to bite him, such was her fear, but he grabbed her face in his other hand and pinned her to the bed, his hand over her mouth but out of the reach of her teeth, the weight of his hard body holding her down, impossible to move

“Captain? Captain?”

There were voices outside the cabin, banging on the oak door.

Swann looked into her eyes, eyes full of fire and fear in the wildly swinging lantern light. He looked back at the floor of the cabin and saw the silver plate set out as if for his inspection. By the door were what could only be the Farquahar jewels. All the famous Farquahar jewels. All but one.

“It’s all right,” he called. “Back to your stations. We just had an accident by someone who should have known better. Everything’s all right.”

She heard the men turn and walk away muttering, their boots thudding on the stairs, The ship continued its wild buffeting, pitching up and back as it shouldered aside the cross seas at the mouth of the harbor, and each lurch sent his weight upon her. He seemed in no hurry to get off.

Cautiously, he lifted his hand from her mouth and she knew enough to remain quiet. He still held her wrists down, and their eyes remained locked together as he dragged his hand from her face, down her throat, and down across her exposed bosom.

“Lie still, my beauty,” he said, “And let’s see what other surprises you have upon your person.”

“Let go of me, damn you!” she hissed.

He smiled at her but his eyes never left hers as his hand spread over the dome of her breast. Boldly, with unspeakable effrontery, his fingers spread out and encompassed the rich mound of flesh, then closed on her, feeling her weight and her yielding softness.

“How dare you! I…”

“You’ve attacked the captain of a vessel, Lady Emma,” he said sharply, cutting her off. “And by rights I could have you cast overboard into the channel or hung from the yardarm as a murderess, whichever I prefer. Your life is entirely in my hands. I suggest you keep still.”

He continued to hold her down as he loosened his neck cloth and pulled it from his shirt. She thought he was goiong to bind his wonded shoulder, which was now showing a stain of blood, but instead he threw a couple of lashings around her wrists, tying them together. Once he had them tied snuggly together, he let her go. His body still pinned her down, and now she realized with unspeakable horror that his manhood was growing erect against her thigh. She thought she must swoon with shame and disgust.

Swann seemed to read her mind, or perhaps he saw her blush beneath the wan light of the lantern. He smiled, showing his teeth, wickedly white in his sun-tanned face, and he again held her wrists down over her head as his hand returned to her breast. But now as he touched her, his fingers dragged over her nipple, which was undeniably erect. His smile widened.

“Up, my Lady. Up,” he said. He rolled off her and got to his knees, pulled her into a sitting position and tied her wrists above her head to a ring bolt in the wall behind her. Emma cursed at him and twisted her hands, trying to pull her wrists free, but he was too expert a sailor not to have his knots hold fast. She was utterly helpless.

“I’ll scream, so help me! I’ll scream if you…”

“One more outburst out of you and you’ll swim to France, my Lady,” he said with sudden sternness. “You can swim, I trust? No? Then more’s the pity.”

She bit back her reply, entirely convinced that he meant what he said. Still, she couldn’t keep her eyes from going to his crotch, to the tight breeches he wore. The sight of his bulge there caused the blood to rush hotly to her face again. The man was huge: obscenely large, and the fact that he had gotten that way from the presence of her body made her flush with unexpected heat. Then she saw the rip in his shirt, directly above the cap of his shoulder. The shot had just grazed him. The tear was blackened from the powder and now tinged with the red of his blood.

Swann ignored it. “Now let’s just see what we have here, shall we?” he asked pleasantly.

The boat took on a driving lurch as they came up into the wind and headed east southeast to cross the channel towards Calais, their agreed destinatioon. Swann seemed not to notice it, standing easily against the roll and jerk of the deck beneath his feet. He gazed around him at the silver plate on the floor, gleaming in the yellow light of the hnaging lantern. He picked up a tray and turned it over to examine the bottom.

“Yes. Lord Farquahr’s sterling if I do not mistake. No doubt a going-away present, Lady Emma? No doubt he’s fully aware of this trip you’re taking?” Again that predatory smile. The man was insufferable.

He tossed the tray onto the bed and knelt down in front of her, his eyes on her heaving bosom. Emma gasped as he reached out and touched her, putting his hands on her breasts.

“There’s a sapphire too, isn’t there, Lady Emma?” he said, his thumbs gliding over her breasts, pressing against her nipples. “A great huge thing; worth a King’s ransome, they say. You wouldn’t have taken that too, would you now my dear? And put it where a gentleman would never find it? Where a gentleman would blush to look?”

His hands slipped down below her breasts to her ribs, and lower still to where she had the stone tied about her waist. His hands lingered there—surely they lingered there, feeling the cold rope of diamonds. Or did she imagine it? No. He had found it. When he finished exploring her and stood up, his face had a cold, calculating look. He knew.

“They’ll hang you, lady Emma.” he said calmly. “They’ll catch you and hang you for sure. That was an exceedingly foolish thing to do, and I’m afraid you’re already a dead woman. What a waste.”

Emma set her lips and tossed her hair back in defiance. She wasn't beaten yet,. Perhaps she wasn’t the most worldly woman in the kingdom, but she sensed that Swann wan’t going to turn her in.

No. There was something he wanted. Something he would be willing to take in return.

And surely, beneath that outlaw’s exterior, he was a gentleman at heart. Surely she could come to some understanding with him. Surely he was a reasonable man.

 

[shereads]

Emma

"Lord Cedric doesn't want me hanged. He wants - "

Emma stared at the widening crimson stain on the smuggler's white shirt, her eyes widening the way they had at the sight of his...male part. She worried her lower lip with her perfect little teeth, a childhood gesture of guilt, confusion and concern.

She hadn't meant to hurt him. And she had used the most appalling language.

Inigo Swann must think her the lowest sort of strumpet. No wonder he had felt free to handle her in such a private way. Emma was nineteen, and until today her only contact with men had been in the strict confines of propriety. That this man had reason to call her "Lady" with contempt in his voice was more troubling than it ought to have been. Considering her current circumstances.

Emma sat up straighter, trying to regain what little dignity was available to a girl with bound wrists and strangely hard nipples.

"Your wound needs tending, Captain."

Her smoky voice was soft again, low and controlled. It was still a bit breathless, because she was scared to death and terribly ashamed of the sharp little points protruding from her bodice. But it was a lady's voice at least.

"You were less concerned with my health when you were armed, my lady."

"I know you won't believe this, but I didn't mean to shoot you. How could I, when you're my only means of escape?"

The captain responded with an ironic little laugh, but Emma continued, "I didn't mean for you to be hurt - and I never curse! Which still doesn't excuse the way you touched my..."

Her face was suddenly as red as his wound, and her eyes looked straight forward, evidently studying her outstretched feet with avid interest. Emma hoped he hadn't noticed her repeated glances at the beastly presence that strained against the fabric at his crotch.

What on earth could a man do with a thing of such size? Were there women that large? Was she supposed to be large?

Forcing herself to look him in the face, she tried to sound as stern and unruffled as her old governess. "Captain Swann, you really must untie my wrists so that we can talk about this like adults...I cannot lose the sapphire. Yet we both know I can't stop you from taking it, and I have nothing with which to negotiate."

 

[dr_mabeuse]

"Captain Swann, you really must untie my wrists so that we can talk about this like adults...I cannot lose the sapphire. Yet we both know I can't stop you from taking it, and I have nothing with which to negotiate."

Swann looked into her eyes, gazing her courage, looking to see if she was bluffing. In the quiet of the cabin they could hear the working of the ship: the creak of the rigging and the soft but steady whisper of water along her side, the distant voices of the men on deck. The ship pitched more gently now, and the swinging lantern cast moving shadows on Lady Emma’s form. The motion the deck and the rocking of her body made it appear as though she were writhing in her bonds, and Swann found the sight quite arousing. He could see the shadows cast by her peaked nipples, and he wondered if they were due to fear or to something else.

For a moment he allowed himself an image of her naked, wrists tied to a ring bolt overhead as he used a whip on her fair flesh. It would be delightful to break a woman as spirited as she would be. Even now he could see the fire inside.

He got up and went to the Cabin door, opened it and yelled down the passageway. “Mr. Becker!”

In a moment his first lieutenant appeared, raising his knuckle to his forehead in a lazy immitation of a sailor’s salute. Swann ran an easy ship, but he did insist on a certain amount of protocol. “Sir?”

“You have the watch Mr. Becker? Then see that I’m not disturbed.”

Becker kept his eyes squarely on his Captain, willing himself to ignore Emma, bound on the bed. “Very good, sir.”

Swann locked the door after him and returned to his captive, whose upper body was still swaying with the motion of the ship.

Swann reached out and placed the palm of his hand against her cheek. She was soft and warm, fluished with excitement. She watched him nervously.

“So you have a proposition for me?” he asked. “That’s good.” His hand trailed down the side of her neck and then across her bare bosom. Her bodice was held closed with a row of buttons down the front, and Swann kept his eyes on hers as he popped the first one open, then the second, until the more than just the tops of her breasts were exposed.

“Now why don’t you tell me why I shouldn’t just take everything from you?” he asked as his finger dipped inside her bodice and found her breasts within. “Why don’t you convince me to take just anything I want?”

 

[dr_mabeuse]

"Captain Swann, you really must untie my wrists so that we can talk about this like adults...I cannot lose the sapphire. Yet we both know I can't stop you from taking it, and I have nothing with which to negotiate."

Swann looked into her eyes, gazing her courage, looking to see if she was bluffing. In the quiet of the cabin they could hear the working of the ship: the creak of the rigging and the soft but steady whisper of water along her side, the distant voices of the men on deck. The ship pitched more gently now, and the swinging lantern cast moving shadows on Lady Emma’s form. The motion the deck and the rocking of her body made it appear as though she were writhing in her bonds, and Swann found the sight quite arousing. He could see the shadows cast by her peaked nipples, and he wondered if they were due to fear or to something else.

For a moment he allowed himself an image of her naked, wrists tied to a ring bolt overhead as he used a whip on her fair flesh. It would be delightful to break a woman as spirited as she would be. Even now he could see the fire inside.

He got up and went to the Cabin door, opened it and yelled down the passageway. “Mr. Becker!”

In a moment his first lieutenant appeared, raising his knuckle to his forehead in a lazy immitation of a sailor’s salute. Swann ran an easy ship, but he did insist on a certain amount of protocol. “Sir?”

“You have the watch Mr. Becker? Then see that I’m not disturbed.”

Becker kept his eyes squarely on his Captain, willing himself to ignore Emma, bound on the bed. “Very good, sir.”

Swann locked the door after him and returned to his captive, whose upper body was still swaying with the motion of the ship.

Swann reached out and placed the palm of his hand against her cheek. She was soft and warm, fluished with excitement. She watched him nervously.

“So you have a proposition for me?” he asked. “That’s good.” His hand trailed down the side of her neck and then across her bare bosom. Her bodice was held closed with a row of buttons down the front, and Swann kept his eyes on hers as he popped the first one open, then the second, until the more than just the tops of her breasts were exposed.

“Now why don’t you tell me why I shouldn’t just take everything from you?” he asked as his fingers dipped inside her bodice and found her breasts within. “Why don’t you convince me to not take just anything I want?”

 

[shereads]

deleted double post

 

[shereads]

Emma

“So you have a proposition for me?” he asked. “That’s good.” His hand trailed down the side of her neck and then across her bare bosom. Her bodice was held closed with a row of buttons down the front, and Swann kept his eyes on hers as he popped the first one open, then the second, until the more than just the tops of her breasts were exposed.

“Now why don’t you tell me why I shouldn’t just take everything from you?” he asked as his fingers dipped inside her bodice and found her breasts within. “Why don’t you convince me to not take just anything I want?”

His hands are on me.

From the first gentle touch of Swann's hand against her cheek, Emma went quite still. Her lips parted slightly, and the tip of her pink little tongue flicked out to moisten them, but she was otherwise as motionless as a doe scenting danger.

The wolf had already pounced, and there was nowhere to run.

His fingers trailed downward with teasing slowness, barely skimming her throat. Swann had shamed her with his grasping hands just minutes ago, but that had been in the heat of battle. This was different. This man, these hands, were skilled and deliberate and -

He was unfastening her clothing.

His fingers reached inside her bodice - a pirate's fingers, delving into treasure, preparing to scoop it up by the fistful. Work-roughened fingertips met silken flesh that no man had ever touched.

His hands were on her there.

She remembered to breathe. Emma gasped, drinking air as if fueling up for a fight, and the look of wonder in her gray-green eyes darkened to a brewing storm. Her heart raced, and her blood went hot. And cold. And hot. A white-hot torrent of anger and fear.

Or was it fear?

"Don't! Don't do that!" The girl's arms jerked against the knotted scarf that bound her wrists to the iron ring above her head, and Swann prepared for a struggle, shifting his weight onto her skirts to prevent a kick. Nevertheless, his hands continued to move with delicious slowness in the forbidden place inside Lady Emma's half-unbuttoned bodice. He had seen that earlier look - the look of mingled caution and wonder - on pretty faces before. The real battle, this time, would be Emma's battle with herself.

"Don't do that," she pleaded, frustrated with her helplessness - but no longer struggling. Emma felt her body come to life beneath the persuasive hands and knowing gaze of this masterful man. He could take her, he could do whatever he wanted. Why was he making her want more of this wicked touching?

"Negotiate, my lady." His voice was a husky whisper now. "Offer me something in return for the sapphire, or you will force me to search you for it." His words and manner teased, but there was nothing teasing in Inigo Swann's eyes. What she saw there made Emma quiver...made her melt.

She felt suddenly limp and boneless, as insubstantial as warm butter. The captain took each nipple between a thumb and forefinger, squeezing them a little...

"Oh," she whispered, her voice barely audible. Her eyes followed his to the shocking sight of thick, sun-darkened fingers gripping coral-pink nubbins of taut flesh.

He was squeezing them a little...Squeezing them a lot! And pinching.

"Ooh!" Emma's eyes closed, and she arched her back, unknowingly lifting her breasts like an offering, given in return for a gift she hadn't known existed. The gift of pleasure-pain.

"It hurts. It...Oh god..." Her words disappeared beneath a flood of sensation. Emma's hands gripped the iron circle that held her prisoner, and seemed to massage the cold metal.

"Please," she breathed. Her captor read her meaning, though Emma herself didn't know what she asked for. His fingers didn't tighten on her nipples, but neither did he relieve the pressure. Slowly, guaging her response by the look of confusion, fear and anticipation on her face, he began to pull, to twist, to lift...

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Even with the creaking of the rigging and the sound of the water running down the side of the ship, he could hear Lady Emma’s heated, shallow breathing as he squeezed her nipples between his fingers. The tension was thick as fog in the cabin as she knelt there, her arms over her head, fingers growing white as she squeezed the iron ring to which her wrists were bound. It was the tension of feverish desire aching to be unmasked: Lady Emma’s desire to be taken; Swann’s desires to learn what kind of woman was hiding in this girl’s body.

He already suspected. He could read the anguished longing on her face, see her fighting to conceal her arousal as his fingers violated the sanctity of her virginal body. He’d been reading the excitement on her face ever since she came on the ship: an excitement that went beyond her delight in getting away with her thievish escapades. He had ideas about young Lady Emma Finch-Hadden, about what sort of woman she was, about what she was really about.

He removed his hands from her person, and she dared open her eyes and look at him. If she were going to scream, she would do it now, but what he saw in her eyes wasn't outrage, but a seething confusion of emotions, and a plea. A plea that he not touch her again; that he leave her this shred of dignity, this idea of herself as a virtuous woman, albeit it a thieving one.

No doubt she had her reasons for this theft, and no doubt these were virtuous as well; but she had crossed over into his world now. Her deed had made her subject to his laws and customs, and it was a much different world than the one she knew.

Slowly he extended his hand and ran his fingers through her hair, against her scalp. He closed his hand, grabbing a thick handful of her lustrous hair and yanked her head back, exposing her pale and lovely throat. She gasped, but didn’t dare move. She stared at him like a frightened animal as he brought his face close to hers, and she saw in his eyes a lust and desire so pure and intense as to make her stomach flutter like a trapped bird within her body. She had to close her eyes against his gaze, close her eyes in soft surrender as his lips came down upon her own.

For an long moment she surrendered to his kiss, the first she had ever known as a woman. Heat burned through her body, the heat of Swann’s desire. She could still feel the echo of his hands on her body, and now she could feel his desire for her in his kiss, and it drove her down, down into the depths of her own anxious and confused needs, and then she panicked. She opened her eyes and tried to twist away, realizing she was losing control of herself, that something was rising inside her, rising towards his callous use of her body, and it was something she didn’t want to see. She twisted her face away from his kiss despite the grip he maintained on her hair, and she tugged wildly but futilely at her bound wrists.

Swann smiled. He knew that the die had been cast, and that one way or another Lady Emma would be his tonight. Whether by hook or crook he would be between those thighs and know the secrets of her sex before this very watch was out. There was no turning back now.

He took his free hand and placed it inside the bodice of her gown, and with one mighty tug, ripped the bodice open, scattering buttons around the cabin like birdshot.

Lady Emma gasped. All that was between her naked flesh and her assailant was her thin chemise, and Swann was at that next. One savage tug, and the garment tore open, spilling her heaving breasts out into the dim light of the cabin.

Lady Emma was no fool. She knew there was no point in crying out. No one would come to her rescue, not on this ship. There was no escaping Swann’s gaze, and she realized with a sinking feeling that her nipples were erect, as if eager to be seen, as if begging for the touch of his hands, the rough feel of his kiss.

The Black Bird came about, taking the wind on her quarter, and the rough chop of the channel sent packets of water splashing against the large stern windows as Swann bent his head to her naked, exposed breasts. Lady Emma clenched her eyes shut and whined in protest as his lips closed over her ruby-like nipple and he sucked it tenderly into his mouth. She could feel his rough tongue circling her areola, teasing it, getting ready to attack, but she was helpless to do anything. He let go of her hair and his hand slid down over her face, feeling the softness of her skin, over her eyes, her cheek. His thumb found her lips and he dragged it over them, until Lady Emma opened her mouth and tried to bite him. He snatched his hand away and she could feel him smile as he toyed with her breas. Her hatred and loathing knew no bounds.

First one breast and then the other, tormenting her, torturing her, making sport of her, and all the while he could feel her reserve starting to slip. She was breathing hard, and it wasn’t from her struggles. Not any more. He took a nipple between his teeth and bore down, softly at first, but with increasing firmness, until she cried out and pressed her chest against his mouth in some perverse instinct, seeking out his abuse.

He smiled again when he felt that. He recognized her body’s betrayal. He knew her now. He was sure of it.

Swann was no stranger to the dark shadows of human desire. He knew of the Barmouth birching houses that catered to the perverse desires of the local gentry, and he knew that they were not patronized exclusively by men. There were women too who found their deepest pleasure in the kiss of the lash and the embrace of the rope. It seemed, in fact, to be something uniquely British and invariably upper class, and unless he was very wrong, Lady Emma was of this type, a type that suited his own tastes perfectly.

He removed his mouth from her breast and sat back, taking her tits in his hands and pressing them together. Lady Emma only closed her eyes and moaned, her shame and humiliation past bearing. Swann’s thumbs slid around the saliva-slick skin of her nipples, then thrummed the nubs up and down, studying her beautiful face as she fought to maintain some semblance of composure.

From a locker beneath the bed he withdrew a small wooden chest, and opening the chest revealed a collection of woman’s jewelry taken from variety of sources. He found two large pearl earrings, intended to be clipped to the wearer’s ears. He held them up now against Lady Emma’s breasts, gauging whether her turgid and erect nipples would fit inside the clamps. They would.

“The sapphire, my Lady,” he said, running the large, dangling pearl over her pale breast. “Tell me where it is.”

 

[shereads]

From a locker beneath the bed he withdrew a small wooden chest, and opening the chest revealed a collection of woman’s jewelry taken from variety of sources. He found two large pearl earrings, intended to be clipped to the wearer’s ears. He held them up now against Lady Emma’s breasts, gauging whether her turgid and erect nipples would fit inside the clamps. They would.

Earrings?

Emma stared for a moment, confused, but when her captor held the gold clamps against her erect nipples - studying, comparing - her eyes grew wide with fear and disbelief.

She looked up at him, with a bewildered plea in her eyes where defiance had been.

"What are you - you can't mean to - to - "

He smiled, a wicked smile tinged with the promise of unspeakable things to come. He trailed a cool pearl across the quivering skin of an exposed breast, and her moist lips parted in an expression of disbelief. The sight of the pearl, a symbol of perfect purity, against her nakedness, made her gasp - as did other sensations.

“The sapphire, my Lady,” he said, running the large, dangling pearl over her pale breast. “Tell me where it is.”

She hardly comprehended Swann's words, but her body understood the restrained excitement in his voice. Her nipples seemed, impossibly, to grow even tighter and sharper, as if his teeth and fingers still pinched and bit them. Most appalling, her sex released a rivulet of hot liquid.

She moaned and bit her lip as the captain captured a breast in his hand and applied the clamp, tightening the screw just enough to secure the earring. Then he removed his hands and examined his handiwork, with a harsh little laugh of approval.

"Lovely," he said. "A perfect fit."

Emma couldn't take her eyes from the sight of the object dangling from her nipple. It squeezed a bit, but the pain was less than she had feared.

"Take it off, " she whispered, "It's obscene."

Swann reached for the clamp and Emma relaxed just a little. He wasn't a complete villain after all, he was -

"No, don't!" He was tightening the screw! He gave it a single twist, then two, and the sting seemed unbearable for a few seconds before a tingling numbness began to set in. Unbelievably, Emma felt a fresh flood of wetness between her legs. Where before she had felt an uncomfortable moisture, the crotch of her silk drawers must be soaked through! A musky scent was evident, and with a rush of shame she knew it as the smell of her own arousal.

"We mustn't neglect the twin." The devil took her other breast in his hand, and gave its nipple a rough pinch as if to make quite sure that it was stiff enough to stand for this punishment. The he began to apply the clamp.

The flesh between her thighs had begun to throb, as if receiving the punishment itself. But it was a restless feeling, as if her body craved something more. What was wrong with her?

Swann turned the screw with mocking delicacy until it pinched enough to elicit a pained whimper. As he gave it one more cruel twist, Emma's body betrayed her fully: her hips twitched and jerked, thrusting forward a little of their own accord, and the girl's face went scarlet. This man would know better than she what her body was signalling.

"Take the sapphire. Take it all, but don't do this!" She fought back tears, and her breath came in sobs. Helpless, Emma awaited his will.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Swann took his captive by her bound wrists and unclipped her from the ringbolt to which she was bound. He stood and pulled her to her feet so swiftly that she cried out in surprise, and just as quickly clipped her wrists to an iron ring in one of the timbers over her head. The lurching of the The Black Bird threw her off balance and she grabbed at the ring to steady herself, even as the heavy pearl earrings clipped to her nipples tugged and swung from the motion of the ship, filling the girl with lewd, wracking sensation. But those sensations were nothing compared to the hot chills she felt now that she realized that Swann intended to take her sexually and that there was nothing she could do about it.

She’d been a fool to attempt what she had, and double the fool to think she could trust a man as unprincipled as Inigo Swann. He had her by right and by law, and she realized now that she had put herself in exactly the one place where she was powerless against him. The ruby tied around her waist felt like a bar of iron pulling her down.

Swann was on her at once, his fingers finding the buttons on her gown and deftly opening them. She tried to use her body against him, swinging her hips at him to try and push him away, but the man felt like he was made of oak, bolted to the deck. He didn’t budge, and every move she made caused the earrings to swing from her nipples, sending spears of pleasure/pain coursing through her body till they stabbed into the wet ache between her legs. As if her fear and horror at what was happening weren’t enough, now she felt the hot blush of shame as she realized that her body had turned traitor, that his hands felt good on her.

“No,” she said, “Take the sapphire! It’s around my waist! See! Just take it if that’s what you want!”

He could hardly miss it as her gown slid to her feet leaving her only in her silk underthings” her torn chemise and panties and white silk stockings.

“No, my sweet,” he whispered into her ear. “I’ve got something far better than any sapphire. Something much warmer, too, I’d wager!”

Lady Emma moaned as Swann stepped behind her. One of his big hands closed on her breast while the other traveled down over the slick silk and found its way between her legs. Lady Emma gave one convulsive jerk and then seemed to melt, all her strength leaving her. She felt his fingers work there way beneath her panties and felt herself gush helplessly into his hand, as if she’d just been waiting for him to touch her there before giving him her lascivious discharge.

His fingers parted her. His lips nibbled the soft skin behind her ear as he touched her where no one had ever touched her before and she felt her own traitorous body burn with shameful desire.

He stopped. She felt his fingers untying the cloth that held the stone, and he removed it from her. He looked at the massive jewel as if it were something of moderate interest, then flung it casually upon the bed and returned to his exploration of her body.

“Tell me you want me, Lady Emma,” he whispered into her ear as his finger found her special nub of pleasure and circled her there, swimming in a swamp of her own wetness. “I’m a shy boy at heart. I want to know that I’m wanted.”

“Never, damn you! Never!” she spat, her anger giving her strength. “You’ll have to rape me like a barbarian!”

“Hot little bitch!” he said. “Don’t think I won’t”

He came around in front of her, in the lamp light, and took off his coat. He opened his shirt and took that off, throwing it on the bed, and she looked at his massive chest. Though it was cold outside, the hanging stove made it very warm in his cabin, and Swann was filmed with a sheen of perspiration. Lady Emma’s nervous gaze traveled down his chest to his tight-fitting breeches, to the imposing bulge she saw there, so long that she expected to see the tip of it peeking over his waist band. the thought that he would soon use that on her made her weak. The thought that she had caused him such excitement filled her with a perverse pride that she tried desperately to force down.

She tried to focus on her anger, her sense of outrage, but it was all too much. The heavy pearls tugging gently on her erect nipples, the sexual lift and thrust of the ship beneath her feet, her own bound helplessness and naked vulnerability beneath his eyes. The way Swann looked at her, as if his gaze could set fire to her very soul, thrilled her in a way she couldn’t understand.

And then he was behind her again, and his lips were at her throat and his hands surrounding her aching breasts. She felt his urgent hardness pressing against her hip, felt the life in it, the need for her. She felt his desire in his hands, in his lips, in the very air he exhaled. Never had she imagined a man capable of such ferocity of passion. All the fight went out of her, all resistance. She knew she was no match for this kind of need. She’d might as well go on deck and bid the tempest blow no more. He overwhelmed her with his desire, and she couldn’t fight against it.

She barely resisted when he took her down from the ring and carried her to the bed. He climbed between her legs and ripped her panties from her body, then stood and almost tore his own breeches from his body, and Emma saw his cock standing tall and rampant from his loins, proud as any stallion.

“No, please,” she murmured, but her words were lost in the storm of lust that possessed him. He got on his knees between her legs, took his cock in one hand, and in one movement pierced her to the core.

 

[shereads]

He can't! I can't!

He was huge. Surely such a thing would tear her apart. He would see that she was too small. He wouldn't put it inside her...

Swann poised himself between her legs, his face a mask of furious need. No sooner had she felt the thick, alien roundness nudging at her entrance -

"No - "

- than he grunted and thrust foward.

"Ngghhh!" Emma bit back a scream.

The pain was wrenching. She felt torn, invaded, pinned to the bed like a fluttering butterfly. She closed her eyes against the sting of tears and panted. She raised her hands, still bound at the wrists by the scarf, and pushed weakly against her tormenter's hot, sweat-slicked chest. She could no more have moved this muscular beast than she could have lifted a horse.

Mercifully, he had stopped moving anyway.

Emma opened her eyes and found Inigo Swann's night-dark ones looking back at her. He, too, was breathing hard, and the tension evident in his face and body told her that he was restraining himself with great effort.

"That was the worst of it, girl." His voice was a rough whisper. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. "My God, you feel good inside."

The searing pain had diminished a little, as her body seemed to soften inside to accommodate his massive penis. She looked down between their bodies, suddenly curious about how they must look - and was horrified to see that there was still more of him!

"Yes. You can take it," he panted. "You will." She felt his body vibrate with the effort not to move. She knew he must be aching to give it all to her, his whole great length - because she was aching, too, in an unexpected way. Her body was beginning to echo his need.

"I - I don't think I can," she said softly. But there was no panic in her voice this time, only a question, and the remnant of fear. Stretched beyond imagining, her inner muscles fighting to reject the invader, she nevertheless felt a strange and shameful wanting.

She felt Swann's heart pounding beneath her hands, and realized with a start that she had stopped pushing him away, and had in fact been exploring the feel of his hard-muscled chest, her splayed fingers and palms almost caressing him.

Swann gave a low laugh - an almost gentle laugh - and she looked up into his handsome face again. The lust she saw there was still frightening. But suddenly, it was also arousing.

Lust. The thing that had been so repulsive in Lord Cedric's eyes was altogether different now. Inigo Swann's lust was calling out to something primitive and careless in sheltered Lady Emma, and her torn and plundered sex was answering. She felt her lower body twitch and quiver...and felt a fresh trickle of wetness between her legs. Her virgin's blood, perhaps. But more than blood, there was a rich, warm cream; her body's way of welcoming him and preparing itself. Preparing to accept another inch of thick, relentless muscle.

She felt the hard cock-flesh trembling, hardening even further in response to the honey-cream that signaled her readiness. Swann was straining to be patient; his huge cock throbbed.

"I can feel your pulse," the girl whispered, her eyes alight with discovery as she stared down, both horrified and intrigued by the animal joining of their bodies. A man - a stranger - was inside her! Her insulted flesh, still stinging terribly, gripping him like a row of eager little fists...Her mind recoiled, but her body was all buttery-softness now. It wanted. She wanted.

"Yes," she whispered. "I can take more."

Emma placed her bound hands behind her head in an instinctive posture of surrender.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It had been so long and his need had been so great, greater than he could bear. He hadn’t meant for this to happen, at least not consciously, not when he’d taken her aboard, but when he’d learned of her thievery and realized that her foolishness had put his career, his ship, and even his neck into peril, an anger had risen inside him, and as he’d looked at that innocent face, that ripe, virginal body, almost foolishly voluptuous, that anger had turned to lust and Swann had seen no reason to contest what he felt. He had merely stepped out of the way of his own feelings and given his desire its free rein. If it was rape, then so be it. This girl had meddled in a very grown-up theft and deception, and it was only fair that she pay the grown-up price.

But no, he couldn’t fool himself. He might not have thought consciously about having her, but there was always something inherently sexual about his life as a smuggler: the late night meetings and disguises, the whispers and secrets, the way he operated outside the law. Every meeting was like a sexual liaison and the delicious threat of sexual union was always present, only this one had come to fruition.

He flexed his aching cock inside her clinging heat and moaned, "My God, you feel good inside," speaking to himself as much as to her.

Lady Emma gave a kind of stifled moan. She might be a virgin but she was no fool, and once she’d seen his intention in his eyes she had put up no more than token resistance. What else could she do? Now that he had himself halfway inside her virginal cunt he held himself back, allowing her a moment to adjust. Her bound hands were against his chest, now she raised her head to look down the front of her body to where they were joined and he felt her shudder at the deliciously lewd sight of his hard stalk impaling her and spreading her open.

She murmured some sort of plea, begging him to be gentle.

"Yes. You can take it," he panted. "You will."

He felt her stiffen instinctively in resistance, but there was no stopping him now. Below him she was all yielding womanly softness and she was powerless to keep him out. Nature had been against her from the beginning. There was nothing she could do now but let him have his way with her.

Swann pushed into her, feeling her most intimate flesh yielding before the surging prow of his cock. He saw her eyes go wide with disbelief, then stare sightlessly at the deck above her head as he shoved the last of himself into her trembling pussy, filling her to the hilt. Her hands which had been pushing futilely at his chest now spread wide across his hard muscles and her nails dug into him with the confused intensity of her feelings.

Swann flexed himself again and felt her body go limp beneath him. Her hands fell back over her head in helpless surrender as her eyes softly closed in acceptance. He could see the furious concentration on her face as she took stock of herself, adjusting to this new sensation of fullness and pressure inside her.

The deed was done. He was in her, and her virginity was gone. It was time to show her what it was to be fucked by a man.

Swann levered himself up on his strong arms so he could look down at his conquest. She was naked, her chest and face flushed with the hot blood of her shame, though he could detect her incipient arousal in the way her pulse beat in her throat and the way her chest heaved with her ragged breathing. Her tender nipples were still in the grip of the heavy pearl earrings which trembled with every shuddering breath she took. His loins were mashed flat against hers, and he could feel the trickle of her hot, virginal blood bathing his prick in an obscene baptism.

Swann drew his hips back and watched her lovely face as he pushed in again, making a home for himself inside her. Lady Emma gasped, but this time the pain was less, and the friction of his cock inside her made her bite her lip to keep from moaning or crying out. She would endure his depredation of his body, but she would not enjoy it. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.

But Swann was not concerned with her pleasure. It was his own burning need he concentrated on, and the tight way her sheath gripped him as if reluctant to let him go. It was her helplessness that aroused him so, her own mute acceptance of taking his aching hardness inside her. He reached over her head and held her wrists down on the bed with one hand, while his other closed on the wanton fullness of her breast. He drew his hips back again and once more slid up into her tight and juice-filled tunnel, and this time a moan of salacious pleasure escaped her parted lips.

His lips drew back into a grin and his eyes burned into her face as he studied her features, watched her battle with her body’s own rising pleasure. Her dignity and self-respect was at stake, but just as he’d suspected there was a wildly sexual woman within that polite and decorous exterior, a woman that Lady Emma now fought to hold down and repress. Her innocence and her moral superiority were on the line and she dare not show what she was feeling as he began to piston his thick shaft in and out of her sodden cunt.

“Oh! Ohhh!” she groaned as he battered into her limp body. He squeezed her breast, lowered his mouth and took the earring between his teeth and tugged on it, distorting her already peaked and turgid nipple, and now Lady Emma’s body seemed to come alive with a life of its own, responding to the pain and the delicious feeling of his member sluicing through her gates.

His lips came down on hers and her eyes flew open in alarm, as if she’d suddenly been startled awake from a sound sleep and woken up to find that she was fucking him back, doing things she never imagined before. Her hips cocked up at him, opening herself up to his powerful thrusts. She arched her back, bore down on him to better feel the sensation of his male hardness thrusting into her with such implacable strength.

Swann had been prepared to fuck her as he might fuck some whore unconscious with drink, but now there was no mistaking the signs that she was responding to him, and he realized that he might be able to conquer her soul as well as her body, make her his and forever own this remarkable beauty. The thought inflamed him, and he thrust into her with every ounce of strength in his powerful body, desperate to make her feel his own burning desire for her. He let go of her breast and tangled his hand in her hair so as to pull her face to his where he raped her mouth with his tongue and teeth, biting, coaxing, all the while holding her bound wrists down on the bed in a symbol of her helplessness and subservience.

The harder and rougher he was with her, the more she seemed to respond, as if his own savagery brought forth her own. She raised her slim legs and embraced his sweating body, locking her ankles around him as if she could slow his punishing pace, but it was like trying to ride a wild bull now that the rage of his lust was upon him. Her mouth opened helplessly to his and he let go of her hair, returning to her breast where he fondled her nipple, pinching it even harder than the grip of the earring so that the gem fell off and rolled across the lurching deck as he squeezed her own ruby jewel between his fingers.

The heaving of the ship added its own motion to the ancient rhythm of sex so that his cock touched her in every place inside, setting off nervous explosions in her lust-wracked body that made her moan slavishly up into his mouth. She marveled at his strength, at his desperate urgency to possess her. She had never suspected that sex could be so primal, so deliriously bestial, that such savage emotions of her own would surge over her even as the waves of the angry sea clawed at the windows of the cabin.

She felt him stiffen, felt his strength increase and heard him groan deeply in her ear, a sound that gave her chills as she realized that he was about to find his ultimate pleasure in her body. She felt him pull out from her, and her sudden emptiness made her frantic. Swann got up on his knees, his face a mask of furious lust and she saw him take his cock in his hand, pink with her virginal blood and shining with her own sexual secretions. He pumped it once, twice, and Emma held her breath as she saw it lurch and jump like a spitting cobra, and saw the very juice of his lust shoot angrily from the tip and splatter against the bottom of her naked breasts, once, twice, as Swann knelt over her like a Greek God in his wrath, pouring his seed onto her body.

 

[shereads]

He drew his hips back again and once more slid up into her tight and juice-filled tunnel, and this time a moan of salacious pleasure escaped her parted lips.

His lips drew back into a grin and his eyes burned into her face as he studied her features, watched her battle with her body’s own rising pleasure.

Blood for blood.

As the warm liquid of mingled blood and arousal was squeezed from her body and dripped onto the bedclothes, Emma remembered the gunshot that had grazed Swann's shoulder and marveled that his sexual will had overcome the pain.

Then his mouth found hers and the moment of private reverie was over. His kiss stunned her.

How was it possible that her captor's plundering tongue and nipping teeth seemed so intimate when he had already taken her virginity?

It was the taste of him. She loved the taste of his tongue as it took her mouth. Loved the way its rhythmic thrusts mimicked the motion of their mating.

Theirs now, not his. They mated. They fucked. The gently bred girl, her innocence gambled and lost this day in more ways than one; the dark master, his scruples shoved aside by fierce desire. Their bodies were coated in oily sweat, and the cabin was redolent with the musky smells of primitive, animal mating. Emma writhed and whimpered, so caught up in the race toward an unknown goal, that only her trapped wrists remained motionless.

Her legs were spread wide to accommodate the man's big powerful hips, and the muscles of her inner thighs had begun to burn and throb from the strain. Her nipples stung. Swann's hand on her breast squeezed and kneaded tender flesh. Her entire body hurt - but deep inside, something delicious had begun to happen. Emma's every sense was focused now on the strange, building fullness deep inside her torn and battered sex...

Something is happening - closer now - so close close CLOSE and -

She was empty! Swann left her body as suddenly as he had plunged into it, and Emma bit her lip in frustration - then watched in bewilderment as her pirate knelt over her, displaying his engorged penis in all its lewd glory. The monstrous thing glistened wetly in the lantern light, its bulbous head wearing a thick coating of viscous, blood-tinged cream.

Emma's eyes were already wide with shameful fascination when the most shocking thing happened: with a snarl of triumph, Swann gave the angry-looking organ a jerk of his hand and it erupted! Bursts of thick milk exploded from a tiny opening at the tip, and Emma gasped at the sight of her breasts receiving one hot splatter of liquid after another. Swann's semen pumped forth for what seemed forever, marking the satin smoothness of her breasts like a wild beast marking its territory. She gave an outraged little cry and turned her face away from the insult too late.

Emma struggled weakly against his grip on her wrists. She felt more than insulted - she felt robbed. But robbed of what? Her ripped pussy felt scalded, and pink juice had formed an uncomfortable dampless on the bedcovers beneath her naked bottom. Her exhausted body trembled. She felt awful, from toes to fingertips. Yet there had been something, something marvelous, just out of reach. And she had been so close.

"Why did you do that?" Emma sobbed. The tears this time were not of fear, but of anger at having been denied the mysterious sensual treasure that Swann had allowed her to merely glimpse. For most of her life, Lady Emma had been denied nothing. Then her father had died, and Lord Cedric had come - and now she was a thief and the whore of this - this pirate - and she had behaved like the lowest trollop and she had liked it!

"You're a brutish animal," she muttered, yanking her bound wrists from Swann's loosened grasp and turning onto her side, unwilling to face him as she lied. "I hated that. I hated all of it...I swear I did."

She had briefly been an excellent thief, but Emma had never been a good liar.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

He was getting cold now, but soon it would be eight bells, midnight, and with the changing of the watch he could go below again. The light had gone on in his cabin at seven bells, and he’d sent in his steward with some food and wine for Lady Emma, and she’d eaten, rather ravenously he thought as he’d watched her through the cabin skylight. Apparently his recent assault hadn’t curbed her appetite, and she had dug into the food with the appetite of a healthy young animal. He’d watched her constantly as she slept and she’d been totally unaware of it. Since it was so dark on deck, she’d never thought to look up and even notice the skylight, just as she was unaware now of his prsence above her.

It had felt good to come up into the fresh air after the closeness of the cabin, and any remorse he’d felt about what he’d done had been washed away in the chilly air. The surgeon had bandaged his seared shoulder—only a scratch, really—and after he’d seen to his ship he’d taken the watch as he puzzled out his own feelings at what had occurred and mulled over what he should do next. The thieving young noblewoman had ignited something in him, something he’d thought long dead. The look on her face. He knew something about women, but he’d rarely seen that look on a wench’s face: that look that told him he was taking her somewhere she’d never been, but somewhere she was willing to go, in spite of herself. It was a place he took great pride I taking her to.

Just as he was taking her someplace in this dark and blowy night. The coast of France was near, and in a couple of hours he would have to shorten sail and wait for sunrise to begin creeping in to the place he’d promised to set her ashore. But things had changed now. Their bargain was no longer valid, and as eight bells rang out, he finally made up his mind.

“Set a course north notheast,” he told the helmsmen. “Parallel the coast. Keep her there until I say.”

“North northeast it is, sir,” the helmsman said. “Till you give the word.”

He swung down the companionway and walked to the cabin. He had posted two old and trusted shipmates there and he nodded to them now.

“Need your help, boys.” he said. “Her Ladyship has been holding out on us. I’m going to give her a taste of the Spanish treatment, understand? When I open the door, grab her and seize her up to the starboard ringbolts, aye?”

“Aye, sir.” “Aye. Give the word.”

Swann opened the door and the two old salts rushed in. Lady Emma, who’d been picking at a gooseleg, just5 had time to throw the bone at them, before they quickly grabbed her and dragged her from the bed and tied her wrists to the the iron bolts that were affixed to the wall at shoulder height. Lady Emma cried out and kicked at them, but they were twice her size and many times her strength and it was useless. In less time than it takes to tell they had tied her wrists with a couple of neat reef knots, leaving her helpless.

“Very good, mates. That’ll be all. Pass the word I’m not to be disturbed.” Then remembering the skylight, he added, “No one’s to be on the quartdeck. See to it.”

The old seamen knew what was what, but they just nodded, touched their knuckles to their foreheads and shuffled out, keeping their heads down to hide their knowing smiles.

Lady Emma stood with her back to the cabin wall, her hands at shoulder height. She had arranged her ripped clothes as best she could for dinner, but they had all come untucked during the brief fracas, and now offered scant protection. She watched Swann with a mixture of fear and anger as he approached.

“What more do you want?” she asked him angrily. “You’ve already taken everything I have.”

“Have I?” he asked innocently. “Indeed I wonder.”

He reached out and carressed her cheek and Lady Emma turned her face to the side in denial. Swann saw that she had managed to tuck the ends of her thin chemise in over her breasts, but the ripped bodice hung loosely, and he could see her nipple through the thin fabric of her undergarment. It was peaked again, although it was warm enough in the cabin.

Just looking at the fullness of her breast made his loins ache as he recalled the softness in his hand, the feel of her between his lips and the way she’d gasped when he’d used his teeth on her. More than that he recalled the sinuous curves of her bare legs and how she had raised her knees for him, the coral hue of her treasure waiting for him, the way her young body had arched up to him as he penetrated her.

He put his arm over her head so that he was leaning over her, his face inches from hers, studying her flawless skin.

“Did you know that there are women who find this arousing?” he asked her. “Did you know that there are women who will pay to be treated this way, and pay well?”

He looked down at her face but it was impossible to read in the shadows of the hanging lantern. He could se the pulse beating in the base of her throat though, beating faster than it should have been.

Swann reached down and found her breast. He easily opened the fabric of her chemise and let the wispy silk fall open. He took one finger and slowly circled it around her nipple, watching her face. Around and around he went, three times, four, feeling the skin crinkle and draw tight. Finally she gave a soft mewl of protest and pulled at her bonds.

That seemed to be the signal for Swann to lower his head to her perfumed skin and draw her nipple into his mouth.

 

[shereads]

His needless cruelty mystified her. Could she have misread the man so completely? Had she imagined the odd connection she'd felt with Inigo Swann, when she had first looked into those unfathomable eyes, just hours ago in his room above the tavern?

Emma slept in fits and starts, awakening now and again to relive her ravishment at the hands of the man she had paid to aid her escape. She went crimson, remembering the excitement she had felt in response to his taunting manner and crude handling of her body.

And the invasion itself - painful as it had been, without a thought for her inexperience - had revealed as much about herself as it had about the man. Had she actually regretted it when he left her?

One of the sullen crew brought a plate of food, and Emma was surprised to find she had an appetite. She pushed away humiliating questions about Swann's men, and what they knew, and tore into the supper as if arming herself for battle.

She would be in France soon. She tried not to think that Swann would set her ashore penniless. He had placed her stolen treasure back in the carpetbag and removed it to his own cabin - all of it, to the last silver spoon. The priceless Farquahar Sapphire on its diamond-laden chain had been tossed into the bag with the rest. But surely he planned to give her something to sell, some trinket to exchange for food and shelter. Swann might be greedy, as one would expect of a privateer, but until he had torn the clothes from her body, she had not thought him cruel.

It's you. You make him cruel.

It was an insane thought, but Emma couldn't seem to be rid of it.

He sees something in you that wants to be tested. Something that seeks a master.

The door of the cabin exploded inward, and two great thugs were on Emma before she had the presence of mind to scream. Were they going to rape her? Had Swann given her to his men?

It was no lady the seamen struggled with, but a lioness, all claws and teeth. She was no match for the big brutes, though, and in less than a minute they had stood her up with her back to the wall, and bound her wrists to a pair of iron bolts, just higher than Emma's shoulders.

Panting with fear and rage, Emma braced herself for what must come next. She almost collapsed with relief when the two men abruptly left.

Then Inigo Swann closed the door after them, and swaggered toward his trembling prisoner. Emma didn't know what she felt now. But she knew it wasn't relief.

She drew back her shoulders and summoned what courage she could. Swann stood close, looming over her, and Emma fought the urge to cower.

“What more do you want? You’ve already taken everything I have.”

“Have I?” he asked. “Indeed I wonder.”

He traced Emma's profile with the softest touch of his fingertip, and Emma caught her breath as a burst of liquid heat shot through her body. His hand peeled back the torn fabric of her silk chemise, and instantly Emma's traitorous nipples hardened to sharp pink points.

Then his finger was circling one of the wanton little things, and unwelcome arousal radiated from the teased nipple, downward, until it throbbed powerfully between her legs. Those few inches of exquisitely tender flesh became the center of all feeling, for the second time tonight.

Emma felt herself softening, inside and out. Her anger was gone. There was still fear, but of what? The teasing smile, the heated gaze? Surely there was nothing to fear in the slow, circling finger of a man admiring a rosy nipple.

He's melting me, like butter set down near a stove.

Emma quivered in anticipation as Swann lowered his mouth to her exposed breast. Every nerve in her body remembered the pulsing hunger, the delicious fullness of those last, wild moments before Swann had taken away his cock, that amazing instrument of pleasure and pain. Every part of Emma demanded to know what her body had been reaching for and had been denied.

Would he show her now?

The woman, no longer a girl, moaned and arched her back, offering her breast to her captor's lips as if expecting him to feed from her. His mouth enveloped her nipple with an eager slurping sound. The moist heat of his tongue was answered with a generous spill of juice from Lady Emma's cunt.

Emma writhed in her bonds and brought her thighs tightly together, unconsciously contracting and relaxing the muscles there in an effort to recall the sensation of his hands on her. So focused was she on the sweetness of his suckling mouth that Emma didn't realize she had begun to flex and circle her hips, in an unpracticed imitation of fucking.

Inigo Swann felt the rapid beat of her pulse in Emma's breast as his mouth closed on her more tightly. He sensed, rather than saw, the movement of her body below the waist - the female animal seeking its mate. He sucked her harder, and began to bear down on the tender nipple with his teeth, applying steadily sharper pressure as he supported the weight of the soft, round breast in his palm.

With his other hand, he easily ripped away the tattered blue dress and thin chemise, until nothing remained but a pool of fabric around her feet.

Emma was lost in the burning pleasure-pain of his teeth on her captive nipple, and hardly noticed that she was naked - until she felt him there. A calloused hand was cupping her mons; a thick finger was parting the nest of red-gold curls that hid a whore's dripping wetness.

"Ah god, sweet god," she cried, cocking her hips to welcome him.

He lifted his mouth from her breast and whispered, "Open your legs. Spread them."

Emma complied, though her legs felt so weak she wondered that they could support her weight. Her small hands gripped the iron bolts to which she was bound, and she closed her eyes in bliss as Swann gently parted her labia and pressed upward with the pads of two fingertips. Her erect clitoris pulsed with need.

Then he was gone.

Emma's eyes snapped open as Swann took his hand from between her legs, and the other from her breast, and stepped away from her.

"What - what are you - "

"Stand still, just like that. Don't dare close your legs."

Bereft and humiliated, Emma stared in silence as the big man sat on the bed, legs splayed, and opened his clothing to reveal an angry erection. Her gray-green eyes were glazed with lust, her moist lips parted slightly in a bewildered pout, and she could only watch helplessly as Swann began to stroke the thick rod of meat and muscle with one hand as he leaned back on the other.

He found a slow rhythm that seemed to please him, and settled into it, his wicked eyes studying Emma's response.

"Why are you doing this?"

"It pleases me...I told you not to move."

Emma had relaxed her stance for a moment, forgetting his command. Obediently - without even thinking why she should obey - she parted her legs exactly as they had been. She blushed, knowing the lantern light must show the rivulet of thick cream dripping down her inner thigh.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Swann slid his fist slowly up and down his big, vengeful cock, caressing himself as he might caress a mastiff before turning it loose on some hapless prey. His eyes were locked on Emma, and hers in turn were locked on his prick, opened wide with horrified fascination. Her lips were parted, her pupils dilated. She had never seen a man’s cock like this, nor seen anyone handle themselves the way Swann was doing, with open pleasure and male arrogance, and the sense of power and menace that radiated from him bore down against her like something palpable, like a physical weight.

Swann noticed how she’d unconsciousnly spread her thighs, how her hips seemed to reach for him as if with a mind of their own. Her body was betraying her: pleading with him, beseeching him, and he realized with a deep thrill that Lady Emma might be the one. She just might be the one woman in a thousand he’d been looking for, a truly sexual animal whose attitudes towards sex had not been twisted and corrupted by the dictates of a repressed society. The thought that she might be the woman he;d been searching for was so profoundly arousing that it sent a small surge of anticipatory lubricant seeping from the tip of his cock to collect in a large dew-drop on the head. Everytime his bag hand slid up his shaft the dew-drop grew, as if he were pumping up more from a resevoir inside.

Emma had never seen anything like it. She didn’t know what it was--there was so much she didn’t know about men, and about herself—but that drop of lubricant drew her eyes like a magnet, and when it finally broke and spilled from the head of his cock and dribbled down over his slowly pumping knuckles, she almost groaned aloud at the terrible waste, and as if in reply she felt a drop of their mingled sexual fluids run from her own pulsing sex and slide warmly down the inside of her thigh.

Swann saw it too, and the sight was more than he could bear in his state of high arousal. He got up and crossed the small cabin in two powerful steps. Emma was still mesmerized, and it wasn't until he reached her that she was able to shake off the powerful enchantment of his prick and focus her eyes on his face, dark and angry with the fury of his lust. He took her head in his hands and pressed his mouth to hers, and she opened her lips with a whimper of fear.

His kiss was more than just savage now. Before he had kissed her for his own pleasure with no regard for her at all, but now he seemed to be trying to draw something out of her, coaxing her, insisting that she follow him. She felt his knees working between her legs, pushing her thighs apart, and she tried to resist, but she was no match for him. Her knees parted on either side of his and she leaned back against the bulkhead of the cabin.

His kiss was like the fury of the ocean waves beating against her shore, fierce and irresistible, and at first she tried to fight him off, shocked by the fury of his desire, but then he felt her begin to yield. She kissed him back, defensively at first, but then caught up in the maelstrom of his need for her with an urgency of her own His hand went down to the belt of his breeches, and she felt the garment slide past her legs as they fell. She made a noise in her throat, but he couldn’t tell if it was one of protest or surrender. Swann felt the softness of her thighs on his own legs, and his hips began to move as he searched for her with his cock between her legs.

“Oh! Ohh!” Emma cried, turning her head from his lips. He found her center with his angry prick, and he slid along her opening, forced her apart, plowing a furrow between her lips with the velvet-covered steel of the head of his cock.

Swann had his knees bent and the muscles in his thighs stood out like steel bands as he worked himself against her, sliding his cock up and back in her wet slit. He held her head in both his hands as he raped her mouth with his tongue and meanwhile his cock slid along the lips of Emma’s wet and swollen crease, working her open and bathing in her wet female warmth. He didn’t enter her, though his prick bumped up against her entrance several times, rather he sawed the shaft against her, letting her feel his adamantine hardness, stoking her fires, grinding his pubic bone against hers and filling her with the overflow of his own eager desire.

Yes, he could feel her respond now. Her kisses took on an eager life of their own. She still fought him, trying to drive his lips away from hers, but then responding as the head of his cock hit her bud of pleasure and slid along it, pushing it this way and that, and Lady Emma suddenly bit at his lips and sought out his tongue, encouraging him, beseeching him. Her hands twisted in the bonds as she she kissed him back and her hips moved against his, trying to find him and capture him and bring him inside her. She was like two different beasts, kissing him and pleading with him on top, while her body sought out its own selfish satisfaction below her waist.

He reached down and took her naked buttock in one hand, filling his fingers with her young reslient flesh as his other hand embraced her breast, his fingers finding her tortured nipple once again. Lady Emma mewled with lewd pleasure at the feel of his hands on her, possessing her, but instinctively she pushed her body against him, trying to push him away. he was close to breaking her now, and this last piece of resistence frustrated him deeply. Swann pulled his hand back and slapped her briskly on her bottom.

This sudden violation of her person brought a yelp of outrage from Emma’s lips. She had already been raped and degraded by this man, but this was too much: to be spanked like a child. She thought she’d fallen as low as she could go, but this was yet another indignity, almost worse than the others.

He spanked her again and again she yelped, but this time when he brought his lips to her she fairly leaped out at him, surprising them both, grinding her pelvis against him, opening her mouth and shoving her tongue into his mouth.

Inside, Swann would have smiled had he not been so delirious with lust. She was the one, he knew. The spanking excited her, just as the nipple clamps had excited her. He half-turned her from the wall, bent his legs to keep the stalk of his cock firmlyu pressed against her now-dripping sex, and began to rain blows upon her firm backside as she shuddered in her bonds.

 

[shereads]

Emma was beyond thought, and past even knowing what to feel.

He had slapped her bottom!

"No! Don't you dare!"

Another slap followed, loud as a gunshot and stinging-hard. The brute was spanking her! It was an outrage. It was not to be borne.

slap - slap

"Don't. Don't!"

The stinging blows landed at a steady pace - slap - slap - slapp! - and a familiar one. Emma's body recognized the rhythm with which the pirate had stroked his proud cock...

slap - slap

Her frustrated pussy recalled the insistent movements of his tongue as he had thrust it in and out of her mouth.

slap - slap!

The blows to her wriggling bottom matched the steady pace of his penis moving beneath her sex. Back and forth and back again, pressing upward, he masturbated his length against her swollen entrance.

slap!

A spreading heat soon obscured the pain. Emma imagined she could feel the color red on her fevered flesh. She could feel the way her skin looked as Swann admired the imprint of his open hand on each pale buttock. She closed her eyes and rocked against him, riding him when he allowed it, and sobbing in protest each time he removed his hardness from her reach.

Her fists gripped the iron bolts so hard, her hands trembled. She used the leverage to thrust her hips back toward him, signaling her need like any female animal submitting to its mate. Their two bodies performed a contorted dance, his promising and taking away; hers following, as graceless and determined as a newborn colt.

slap

"Please." She would go mad if he didn't fill her.

slap

"No. Please!"

Emma struggled as frantically as she had when his men had grabbed her, but she was no longer struggling to evade her fate. She was begging for it, in every way except with words.

How could she put into words the unspeakable thing she craved?

slapp! The sound of his palm on her bottom was punctuated now with the lewd, liquid noises made by her open slit, kissing and grasping at the skin of his shaft as Emma struggled to mount him.

To mount him! What was happening to her?

It didn't matter anymore. She was desperate. Minutes ago, the joining of their mouths had been the most luscious sin. She could have eaten him up, swallowed him whole, and only a shred of pride had held her back from total surrender. Pride couldn't end this torment. Maybe nothing could!

slap - slap -

Lady Emma Finch-Hadden had been a lady long enough.

"Holy jesusmaryandjoseph, will you please put it inside me?!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

"Holy jesusmaryandjoseph, will you please put it inside me?!”

Swann heard her words and felt his spirit leap in his chest. She was the one, all right. She was the one. The one who could take all his lust had to give and find pleasure in it, find her own excitement. He reached down and grabbed her buttocks in his hands, squeezed them and felt their red heat from the blows he’d given her, felt her muscles clenching as she awkwardly tried to capture his cock between her legs and somehow force him up inside her. He bent his head down and kissed her, and she opened her lips to him. Her mouth was a caldera of urgent heat, trembling and pitifully needy, and the feel of her surrender to his sexual demands made his cock swell even more, made the powerful muscles of his arms and shoulders swell with hot, excited blood.

He reached down and lifted her thigh, pulling her knee up against his ribs. “Hold onto the rings,” he said. Then he took her other thigh and lifted that too so that she swayed like a hammock between his grip on her legs and the ringbolts in the wall of the cabin. He shifted his grip to her ass and held her buttocks in the palms of his hands. He felt her rubbing her oily sex against him, looking for relief, looking to be penetrated, and it was a simple matter to pull his hips back and wait till she was in the right spot…

“Oh God!” she wailed, arching her back and shoving her quim against him, taking him all the way inside her in one thrust. She hung there trembling with pleasure as she felt him tighten his grip on the moons of her ass, taking possession of her again. She tried to grip him with her quaking knees, but she had no strength in her legs, all her attention taken up with the feel of his hardness inside her again, stretching her, claiming her again.

Swann shoved hard against her, holding her up and pushing his prick into her as far as it would go, until part of her weight was taken by her soft pussy hanging on the iron spike of his cock. he leaned forward for a kiss and she attacked him with her mouth. She was like a tigress now, biting him and licking him, moaning and sobbing into his mouth, overwhelmed with her own excitement at what he’d just done to her and was doing to her still.

Her kiss made his head spin and he began to fuck her, pulling his cock halfway out and then slamming it in again and driving her ass against the bulkhead of the ship. He ground himself against her, scrubbing her little clit with his curly pubic hair and making her gasp and shudder as she hung from her bonds as limp as a sack of wheat, all the strength in her arms gone. She locked her ankles around his back in a desperate attempt to hold on and pull him close, but he just fucked through her, too powerful to control.

Suddenly she seemed to gain new life, pulling her trunk up by her arms and pushing her pussy out at him. Swann looked at her face just in time to see her mouth open in a silent scream and her eyes roll back into her head. She screamed incoherently and tried to lift herself off his cock, and he felt her buttocks clenching spasmodically in his hands as he realized she was coming, coming hard. He shoved deep and held her there, spearing her with his prick, feeling the deep grip of her clenching pussy sucking at him, urging him to spill his seed into her. But he was determined to hold out.

He waited till the worst of her convulsions were over, then he mustered all his self-control and pulled out of her. Emma collapsed limply in her bonds, her legs unable to bear her weight. Swann quickly untied her wrists and picked her up bodily and lay her on the bed.

Emma could only lie there and moan, but when he got between her legs she looked up at him in something like astonishment. He wasn't done? He hadn’t finished with her? She didn’t know if she could take anymore at this point. She was sore between her legs, and all her muscles had turned to seawater.

Swann seemed not to care. His dark, powerful body loomed over her as he lifted her knees and pushed them apart. To Emma’s eyes he looked huge, like some brooking demon from hell, his shoulders a yard wide, his arms as thick as her thighs. She felt like a doll beneath him, and his cock looked enormous. She couldn’t believe he had had it inside her, and she knew she couldn’t take it again.

But she did take it, with no more than a moan of protest. She felt his huge rod sliding back up inside her as the force of his hips drove her ass into the bed. He seemed like a man possessed now, and she whimpered as he began to fuck her with long, hard strokes, battering into her, making her take it. His lust was overpowering, she had no way to fight it, no way to slow him down, and soon, sooner than she’d thought possible, her body began to respond to him again, and her own lust rose to meet his.

He fucked her out of a fury to possess her, to make her his. Her beauty and vulnerability drove him wild, and out of his need to own and control her and make her yield he grabbed her wrists and lifted them over her head, pressing them into the thin mattress.

This act of possession stirred them both. Lady Emma felt her own helplessness under this man’s implacable strength, the brutal force of his loins. She let herself go, and felt another orgasm welling up inside of her. She tried to deny it, tried to hold it off, but his big cock wouldn’t let her hide, left her no place to go.

“Please… Not again,” she gasped. “No more! I can’t… I…”

And then Swann gave a terrible growl, an animal sound. His grip tightened on her wrists and she felt him swell inside her, stuffing her with his moving hardness. He thrust deep, so deep that she cried out in alarm. And then she felt him burst inside her, felt his molten seed pour out into her body. He thrust and hung shuddering against her, his entire body rigid, all that strength concentrated on those little pulses of white heat inside the secret darkness of her body.

He gave her more this time than before, and Emma lay there moaning as she felt him throb again and again inside her, felt his male heat pouring iinto her. She turned her head and saw his big hand on her wrist, his skin dark against hers, and the sight of his strong hand holding hers down set something off inside her, and she too burst into a million shattered pieces or lewd and wonderful pleasure.
* * *

"I've changed our plans," he told her. "I'm not letting you go ashore where we agreed. A young woman like you would be picked up immediately by one of the patrols, and you have no way to defend yourself. I have a secluded estate in Brittainy, and we're headed there. You'll be safe from the French there. I pay handsomely for my privacy there.
"Besides, I'm not finished with you yet. There's still some things I have to find out about you. The sorts of things I can only find out in private."

 

[shereads]

Lady Emma Finch-Hadden

"I'm not finished with you yet. There's still some things I have to find out about you. The sorts of things I can only find out in private."

He wasn't going to let her go! She had risked the gallows to escape from the clutches of a nobleman, and lost everything by trusting a pirate.

When Swann left the cabin, Emma tore it apart, indulging in the only tantrum of her life. She ripped the linens from the bed, tore open the feather pillow, and threw a pewter tankard. Looking desperately for something else to throw and finding nothing that wasn't battened down, she picked up the tankard and threw it again. When her fury was exhausted, she sat on the edge of the bed and tried to clear her head. How had she come to this?

In the weak morning light through the porthole, she saw purple bruises on her waist and thighs, and especially her tender breasts. The sight shocked her, and replaced some of her anger with an icy twist of fear. With a shiver, she gathered what was left of her ruined gown and chemise, and curled up on the bed, clutching the cloth to her breast.

She tried not to remember the pleasure. Maybe she had gone briefly mad; maybe she had survived by convincing herself and the pirate that she enjoyed his unspeakable attentions.

There was a soft knock at the door. Emma almost laughed at the absurdity of it. "Go away," she said, more to herself than in the hope of averting another intrusion.

The door opened cautiously, by inches only, and she made out the profile of the cabin boy who had brought the water for her bath when they boarded. He was careful not to see anything he shouldn't, as he slid a little package inside the door. Then he closed it softly, not bothering with the latch, and left.

There were clothes. Not ladies' clothes, but a white linen shirt and trowsers. The pants most likely belonged to the boy, but were still overlarge for Emma, who had to roll up the cuffs to keep from tripping over the ends. The waist was loose, too, so she secured it by using Swann's silk scarf as a sash.

He bound my wrists with this. He took my virginity, he hurt me, and I liked it.

She pushed away thoughts of last night and willed herself to be calm. She must not allow anything to cloud her thinking when they went ashore. If there was any chance at escape, she would have to keep her wits about her or she'd miss it.

And if she allowed herself to be locked up again...What more might he do? What might she beg him to do?

It was full daylight when the boy knocked again, this time to tell Emma she had the captain's permission to come on deck.

If not for her wool cloak, the barbarian would force a lady to parade before his men in trousers! Emma pulled the cloak over the tangled mass of red-gold waves, and followed the boy onto the busy deck, where he disappeared to tend to other duties and left her to wander freely among Swann's crew. There were stares and a couple of quiet catcalls, but no one accosted their leader's unwilling guest as she made her way to the deck rail. After a few trials and errors, she found a place where she could stand without being in anyone's way as the crew of the Black Bird prepared to anchor.

The coast they approached was barren, but for a few modest cottages visible atop the cliffs.

"I have a small estate," he had said. Now he had the Farquahar Jewels; the legendary Sapphire alone could buy half of Brittany, and a fleet of ships like the Black Bird. She would reason with the captain, convince him to let her take her leave, with a few of the lesser jewels to buy her safety.

In the bright daylight, reasoning with Inago Swann seemed almost possible. He would let her go. Kidnapping young ladies was something one did in the darkness belowdecks, not in broad daylight. He would regret what he had done, and he would -

"Oh!" The hand at her elbow made her jump. Emma turned and looked up, too startled to hide her reaction to the astonishing handsomeness of the man. Swann had been too good-looking for his own good, in the wet gray evening when they had met. By lantern-light in a tossing sea, the harsh planes of his face had made her think of Lucifer, cast into hell - and taking her with him, his willing thrall. Now, with the wind ruffling his dark curls and the sun bathing his classic features, he looked like a Roman emperor on the face of an antique coin.

Then he smiled, and the gleam of white teeth against tan skin and dark beard drew Emma's attention to the sensuous curve of his lips. She felt herself blushing, and yanked her arm from the casual hold of his big hand.

Was he laughing at her? Had he perceived her thoughts? Emma's face was hot with embarrassment, and her temper flared to match.

"You will keep your low-born hands off of me. I demand it!"

The noisy deck was suddenly silent. Even the wind stilled.

She could feel the eyes of the entire crew on them, staring at their captain and the slip of a girl who had commanded him. But she saw no one but Swann. He was still smiling, and his expression betrayed nothing. But his eyes gleamed with something infinitely dangerous. They were mesmerizing. A cobra about to strike.

Emma took an instinctive half-step back, and could go no farther. The rail was at her back. The wind took the hood of her cloak, and her long hair whipped her face as she gripped the rail, fighting the urge to cringe in the face of his anger.

Swann stepped closer, so that the much smaller woman had to lean bank to meet his gaze. He leaned in, trapping her with his arms on either side of her, and his enormous hands covering her delicate, pale ones.

When he spoke, after too many moments of silence, his voice was as soft and seductive as a lover's caress:

"If you ever challenge me again in the presence of my men, I will let the whole lot of them teach you a better use for that sharp tongue."

He was threatening her, but with what? A new use for her tongue...Emma's brow knit in confusion, and Swann threw back his head and laughed.

"Good god. You can't be that ignorant." He stood straight, freeing the girl from the trap of his arms, and began to turn away. The men were suddenly busy again, their relief as palpable as Emma's own, and the deck was noisy with renewed activity when Swann added, "I look forward to correcting this gap in your education, my lady." He was grinning when he walked away.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The Black Bird’s anchor splashed down in the sheltered cove, protected from prying eyes by the high, sandy Brittany cliffs, and before the cable had played out, the Captain’s launch was aswim by the side ladder, the boat crew fending off against the moderate chop. The storm had rained itself out, leaving a bright, high and windy day, with masses of white cloud moving rapidly from the west which cast threatening shadows upon the glistening waters.

Swann helped Lady Emma down the ladder, gripping her arm so tightly that it left no doubt that if he wanted he could easily pick her up and drop her entirely into the sea. And if that message didn’t get through to her, he sat close by in the stern of the boat, and as he turned to ostensibly cast a casual look back at the Black Bird he said in a low voice, “Any more outbursts like that in front of my crew and I’ll see to it that they know exactly how you sounded last night when you came with my big prick thrust up into your cunt. My Lady.”

Lady Emma went red with fury and turned to him to find his eyes fixed placidly on the shore where a stone quay extended into the little harbor. Up a path from the quay, a large, blocky chateau of gray stone stood amidst a straggling and wind-blasted garden. It looked deserted

“Those who heard you last night are loyal to me and won’t say a word,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “Unless I tell them to, and then everyone will know all about you in half a glass.”

Emma bit back her rage and said, “And what do you intend to do with me now? More rape and perversions?”

“Oh? That eager are we? Well, we’ll see, we’ll see.”

The boat kissed the quay and the men made fast. Swann helped her out with the same iron grip, barked a few orders and walked her up the path to the decrepit old building.

Decrepit it might be on the outside, but inside it was crammed with the finest furnishings and carpets. Silver candelabras stood on the tables, and the walls were covered with art and tapestries to keep out the keen ocean wind, all the swag of Swann’s years of highly profitable smuggling and privateering. The men set about building a fire on the great central fireplace and brushing the dust from the furniture, and the one-legged cook immediately commandeered the ancient kitchen. By the time Swann took Emma up the stairs to the second floor, the old stones were already warming from the cheerful blaze and the place was losing its forlorn, abandoned atmosphere.

“Hants, Orso, give us a fire in here, and rouse up a trunk of those women’s clothes we took off the old Marseilles. They should still be fairly in style for the lady.”

He turned to her. “This will have to do for now. Once the fire starts drawing I think you’ll be comfortable enough here, at least for now. Until I decide what to do with you.”

Emma waited until the fire was blazing and the men had shuffled out, closing the door behind them, then she went to Swann, giving him her best, most innocent look.

“Captain Swann… Inago—I may call you by your Christian name, may I not? I beg of you. I’m of no earthly use to you now. You’ve taken everything I have, and good riddance to it, I say. I realize now how foolish I was, that I have no use for such treasure and indeed had no idea what to do with it. Surely now you can let me go.”

Swann looked down at her: that heartbreakingly beautiful face and the body that he was now coming to crave as if it were a drug. His desire for her made him physically weak, and he hated that, that sapping of his will, that ferocious desire he felt in the very pit of his stomach.

Right now he wasn't sure how to proceed. Lord Farquahar was a rich and powerful man. No telling what he would give to have the thief of his property returned, and Swann would of course keep the loot for himself, claiming she’d dropped the jewels overboard, or hid them beyond finding. Let Farquahar deal with her.

On the other hand, what would the French give to get their hands on her and arrange their own dealings with the British? Would Farquahar turn traitor to the French and exchange valuable information to recover his wealth? No doubt about that, and whichever country profited was of no interest to Swann.

But still, the thought of handing her over to either side was all but unthinkable at this point. His feelings for her went far beyond the sexual. She had some sort of hold on him that ached him like a sore tooth, a tooth he could not leave alone but kept toying with, if only to make himself wince. He knew he only had to reach out and take her breast in his hand, or part her torn skirt and reach up between her smooth legs and touch her, and she would fight him, fighting not him not so much as she would fight her own illicit craving for him, and he longed to feel that surrender from her again, the way she would melt against his body, cursing him, calling him names even as she would gush helplessly into his hand, thrilling him with the gift of her own helpless cravings.

Her histrionics affected him less than his own wild and savage desire for her, and he hid his uncertainty under a cruel barb. “And last night? When I ‘raped’ you? You’ll forget about that too? The way you responded?”

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes growing hard, almost abandoning her role.

“Perhaps I deserved it,” she said. “For throwing my lot in with the likes of you. And what did you expect me to do, Captain? Resist you? Fight you? Show you my real feelings, my outrage and revulsion? Had I shown my trye feelings you’d have slit my throat with no more compunction than you showed when you savaged my person.”

“So it was all an act?”

“Of course it was an act, sir,” she said archly, turning from him as if suddenly interested in the gleaming expanse sea outside her window. “What do you expect of a woman frightened for her very life?”

Swann saw her furious blush but held his smile in check.

If nothing else, she was far too fascinating a creature to be tossed to either side at this juncture.

The men could be heard as they lugged the trunk of the stairs, banging and cursing. They hauled it into the room and dropped it heavily on the carpeted floor. They saluted him in their lazy, knuckles-to-forehead way, and withdrew.

Swann snapped the locks and opened the lid, and Lady Emma glanced at the piles of silk and satin and lace, the clothes still wrapped in French tissue.

Swann dug through the trunk. “As far as I recall, there should be everything here, including underthings.” He looked up at her. “Those are optional, of course.” He smiled. “I have things to attend to. I suggest you rest and you’ll join me for dinner. We can discuss matters then.”

He stood up and went to the bed, a massive four-poster. “I’ll have Bulkely come up and rig some chains to the bed. I'm afraid that for now we must keep you locked up. For your own protection, of course. We can’t have you wandering off. By now half the local French gendarmerie will be scouring the coast for you. I pay them off, of course, but Farquahar has his agents too, and we wouldn’t want you being hauled off by one of his toadies. That would be such a waste.”

He stood up and took her chin in his hand and tilted her head up to look at him. “You are an extraordinary woman, Lady Emma. I don’t think you know how extraordinary you are, and stolen jewels have nothing to do with it. I have things to teach you, things you should know about yourself. I assure you on my word of honor, if that has any meaning to you, that this knowledge is worth more to you than any jewels you can possibly imagine.”

He let go of her and stepped to the door, leaving her standing befuddled in the middle of the room.

"Until tonight then, my dear."

 

[shereads]

She ought to be leaving Calais by now, Emma thought. She'd have located her "fence," as the smugglers say, and exchanged a few of the jewels for coin enough to hire a horse and driver. Or, if that had proved impractical, she might have bought a nag off someone. And then she would have...

What would she have done then?

Emma scowled, and sank deeper into the copper hip bath, allowing the luxury of hot water and lavendar-scented soap to distract her thoughts as it soothed her bruised and aching body. Her mind had run in half a dozen directions, all of them hopelessly frustrating, and none worse than the realization that her plan had been a poor one.

Better to let it go for a while. There was nothing to be done tonight, behind the locked door of a strange house, perched beside the clifffs of a coast so barren, a runaway Englishwoman would find not so much as a tree to hide behind.

Thank heaven for hot water, and the gift of her senses. Touch, sight, scent. Temporary salvation. Among the ladies' garments in the trunk Swann had offered her, she had found a box of perfumed soaps. Hoping that a bath would wash away the memories of last night, and at least postpone thoughts of her dilemma, Emma had declined dinner and charmed a couple of servants into hauling buckets of hot water upstairs.

There was a water closet, almost as modern as her own back home, but no modern bathtub and only cold running water. Having watched two boys labor to fill the hip bath with enough hot water for a soak, Emma was more than normally grateful for the luxury. Now she gave herself over to physical sensations: the fog of steam, rich with the half-wild fragrance of lavendar; her long hair floating on the surface of the water, weightless, dark as wet silk; the languid carress of water on her pale, soft skin, lapping at the tips of her breasts...

Damn Inago Swann.

Had it been just a day ago when she had thought he had "honest eyes?" She had even considered confiding in the captain of the Black Bird, once they had reached Calais. Not about everything, but enough to solicit his advice on the matter of selling some jewels.

She had known it wouldn't be easy for an Englishwoman to make her way alone. But her French was passable, and she'd been carrying enough treasure to bribe Napoleon himself if she must.

At any rate, there had been no choice, not when the alternative was enslavement to Lord Cedric Farquahar. He was a second cousin. Emma hadn't known of the man's existence until Papa died. Even her father's solicitors had been surprised when a male heir appeared, and had done what they could to disprove his claim. In the end, he'd inherited everything including Emma's legal guardianship, until she married or turned twenty-one. In other words, she had been his to command. He had decreed that they would marry.

Her cousin was cruel, vain, and so jealous, he made Emma a virtual prisoner almost from the moment he brought her to Bellingham. He could make her skin crawl by merely glancing at her breasts. She could scarecely imagine the perversions a wife would endure at the hands of a man like Cedric, when he all but raped her with only a sneering look. Desperate, she had planned her escape and -

- and been raped in fact, by another man. If one could call it rape when a man aroused sensations that turned a lady into a wanton. She had behaved like a trollop. She had begged him for more!

That train of thought was the least productive one of all.

The water had begun to cool. Emma stepped out of the hip bath and dried her body with thick Turkish towels, as nice as the ones at home. Her pirate had done well for himself. His daring life was written in the interior of this house, whose exotic treasures were tucked about in comfortable, manly disarray.

If one is going to be kidnapped by a blackguard, a successful smuggler is as good a choice as any. Especially one whose touch turns her into a pool of liquid heat...No, don't think about that. Don't think at all.

She rummaged through the trunk and found a nightrail of finest ivory silk. It had been made for a larger woman, and the sleeves belled inches below her fingertips. But the whisper-sheer fabric felt wonderful against her skin. For a robe, she chose a wrap of saffron-colored silk satin, embroided all over with Chinese needlework. Despite the dire circumstances, it felt good to be wearing beautiful things. Since the moment she had taken the Farquahar Jewels from the safe and dropped them into that carpetbag with trembling hands, Emma had half-believed she would never feel warm and comfortable again, or ever care if she felt pretty.

Barefoot, she padded across the thick Persian carpet and curled up in a crimson wingback chair near the hearth, where she began the slow process of combing the tangles from her waist-length hair. It would take at least an hour to dry this way. She should have waited until daytime, when she might dry it under the sun...

Would he allow her to go outdoors? She was Swann's prisoner, not his houseguest. Without his permission or a servant's cooperation, she might not see the sun.

Again, she tried to staunch the flow of unwelcome emotions: rage at Swann, anger at herself, fear of the future, and a deepening sense of shame. She couldn't stop thinking about last night, and her wanton response to the way her captor had used her.

Worse still, for it was indeed humiliating to acknowledge this, Emma could not deny feeling relieved to be here tonight. Instead of wandering the streets of Calais, with her life at stake should she let down her guard for an instant, she was warm and safe, wrapped in Chinese silk, with a goose-down mattress in her immediate future.

Safe? Far from it. It's insane to even think such a thing.

She had avoided contemplating Swann's options since the pre-dawn hours aboard the Black Bird, when he had announced he wasn't letting her go. But how much longer before she learned what he had planned for her? Would the French authorities burst in this door an hour from now? Would they be waiting downstairs in the morning?

Captain Swann could profit handsomely by turning her over to the French. But he'd do even better if he gave her over to Lord Farquahar's vengeance. Of course, that must be why Swann had brought her to Brittany instead of simply turning her over to the authorities in Calais.

Her head told her she was being indulged with a brief period of comfort, while Swann investigated her worth and made his choice: reward from the French, or ransom from Emma's betrothed? It made perfect sense, considering what he'd taught her about himself. But her heart couldn't bear to believe it. Inago Swann had brought her to ecstasy. If she closed her eyes, she could still see his face above hers, his expression naked at last, his dark eyes alight with a passion that fed her own. Could a man feel something so intense in a woman's bed, and throw her to the wolves when he was finished with her?

Maybe not; maybe the risk of going to the French or revealing himself to Farquahar wasn't worth the price of Emma's ransom. Maybe her imagination had gotten the better of her, and he had brought her here to keep her safe.

He had the jewels, which ought to be wealth enough for any man. But he would have to dispose of them cautiously, over time...He had the gold she had given him in payment for her passage, too. It had taken weeks for Emma to put her hands on so much coin, without arousing Farquahar's suspicion.

There was no way to know what a man like Inago Swann might do. Trying to predict it only raised the spectre of her fate, in the hands of the French or her cuckolded bridegroom. She would go to the gallows, or worse.

She pushed the horror away and thought how lovely it would be to sleep without dreams. Night had long since fallen; Emma wanted the bed, but it was lost in threatening shadows across an unfamiliar room. Only the fire offered comfort. Emma watched the dancing flames, and imagined herself kept safe by the circle of firelight.

She fell asleep where she sat, her hand upon her lap, still holding the tortoiseshell comb. Her damp hair fell about her shoulders, a curtain of red-gold silk against the embroidered saffron robe. Her feel were curled beneath her, and her head rested in the embrace of the big, dark velvet chair. For a long time, there were no dreams.

When dreams did come, they were like nothing she had dreamed as a girl back home. She dreamed of a roughly calloused hand, strangely tender, that stroked her hair back from her forhead, and of powerful arms that lifted and carried her. Cradled against this dream-man's chest, she could feel the heat of his skin and hear his steady heart beat. His chest hair felt springy beneath her cheek.

They were on the bed together, sinking into eiderdown and fine linen.

Emma lay curled up with her back to him, and allowed herself the pleasure of snuggling close. Wrapped in his strong arms, feeling the touch of his lips on her hair, she forgot why she had been angry and afraid. She had never felt safer.

As comfortable as she was exhausted, Emma mumbled a wordless complaint when her dream man whispered something, shifted his position, and turned her onto her back. Briefly, she was aware of something smooth and unfamiliar, encircling first one wrist, and then the other. Then all was still, and Emma lost herself in the warm depths of the featherbed, dreamless again...

Until she tried turning onto her side, and felt resistance. Her wrist. Something tugged at her wrist.

A chain. He said there would be chains.

"No!"

Emma awoke in a cold panic, struggling to sit up. Her wrists wore leather cuffs, and something held them apart and above her head. She fell back, and found herself looking into the eyes of the devil himself.

In the flickering light of a kerosene lantern, Inago Swann watched her.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

There was a moon and it was full, but it was beset and shadowed by the clouds racing across the channel across the black night sky, propelled by the wild March wind from the west. It filled the room with living shadows, and in this light she saw Swann looking down at her, his eyes alight, his nostrils flared.

His voice was a whisper. “Half of Brittany is out seeking you, Lady Finch-Hadden. The coast is alive with French patrols so keep very still. You should be thankful you’re under my protection, else you’d be on your way to one of Boney’s prisons at this very moment.”

Emma pulled at the chains that bound her wrists. They would not move. Outside, above the sound of the wind in the leafless trees she could hear the baying of hounds, not far from the sound of them. The sound made her blood run cold.

“Are you going to turn me over to them?” she asked bitterly. “Is that your plan?”

Swann smiled and stood up. He removed his boots and let them fall to the floor, then took off his sword and began to unbutton his shirt.

“You offend me, my Lady. Truly, to think me capable of such an act of perfidy.” He smiled wolfishly at her. “Did I not just say you were under my protection? As long as you co-operate with me and so as I say, so you shall remain. You’re worth far more to me here, chained in your bed, then ever you would be sold over for some fat prison-guard’s amusement.”

Emma stared at him in helpless anger as he unbuckled his belt and peeled his breeches down off his muscular legs. In the moon shadows that flew across the room he looked like something out of a perverse mythology: a satyr, a Priapus come to life in her very boudoir. He was fully erect and seemed not the least bit discomfited by the fact. She felt a lewd and shameful excitement in her stomach.

She jerked at the chains again, knowing what he intended to do, but it was hopeless. The bed was too sturdy, the chains that bound her too thick. Swann watched her with amusement, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. She turned her face to the wall to escape his eyes lest he see the tears of frustration there, as well as something else she feared was there.

She felt the bed sag as he climbed in next to her.

He didn’t warn her, didn’t even bother to ply her with sweet words or soothe or mollify her. He knew she dare not scream, not with the patrols practically right beneath their window. He pulled the quilt back and exposed her body in her thin gown, then stretched out next to her. He threw one leg over hers so that his obscenely erect penis pressed against her hip, and placed his hand boldly over her heaving breast as he leaned over her.

“You drive me wild, Emma,” he whispered in her ear as he kissed and nibbled at her neck. “All I think about is having my cock inside you, of feeling you beneath me, fucking you, holding you, tying you up and whipping you! How could I turn you over to anyone when you give me such maddening pleasure?”

“No!” Lady Emma cried out through clenched teeth. His words were obscene and yet how they excited her!

The feel of her breast in his hand, warm and compliant, seemed to inflame his lust and his touch became selfish and greedy. His fingers found her nipple, her traitorous betraying nipple, and he traced the areola through the soft silkiness of her gown, He knew he only had to squeeze, to bear down on that tender bit of flesh, and she would arch up, pressing herself into his punishing hand, and she would be helpless. She craved his punishment. Through some miracle he didn’t understand, his own rough male savagery excited her and made her helpless in his hands: all that beauty his to command

The chains held her snug. There was nothing she could do as Swann began to gather up her night dress, sliding the silky fabric over her bare thighs, raising the hem higher, higher. Lady Emma’s breasts began heaving as he drew the garment up over her hips, exposing her nakedness to his appreciative eyes as the cuffs on her ankles held her legs spread apart. She felt his warm fingers toying their way up the inside of her thigh and she clenched her teeth together, determined not to give in, but when he reached his goal all the strength seemed to leave her body. She realized that she was already shamefully wet.

She sought sudden refuge in the kiss he offered, as if she could hide herself there as his fingers opened her and spread her apart for his obscene manipulations, but there was no escape there either. His lips took possession of hers, and she felt his maddening leer of male triumph. But she soon forgot her outrage as his lips seemed to tell her about the most depraved and exciting things he wanted to do to her, teasing her, coaxing her. He licked her lips just as his fingers licked at her sex, and the double assault was more than she could bear.

“Lady Emma,” he whispered as he took his lips from her open, panting mouth. “Lady is it? I think not. Not in my bed you aren’t, and by God it drives me wild! Never has there been a woman like you, Emma, so beautiful, so eager, so utterly intoxicating!”

“No,” she said as he rolled over and climbed between her legs, opening her thighs with his knees. “No, please!”

But her hips were already cocked up towards him in offering, and he entered her easily, with a groan of deep relief, sinking into her softness as if he would never stop, seeking her out, reaching to touch her very soul, as if he could find her there and seize hold of what he so desperately wanted. Emma, chained to the bed like a slave, filled with his hardness and bearing the weight of his body atop hers, bit back the groans of salacious pleasure that threatened to spill from her lips. Again she sought the sweet brutality of his kiss, but this time there was no way she could contain the excitement that she felt.

Outside the searching wind battered the old windows, and the baying of the hounds could still be heard faintly in the distance. But inside the room it was warm in the embers of the dying fire as Swann kept his cock buried deep inside her, refusing to withdraw and begin the rhythm of his normal fucking. The bed creaked as he used the strength of his loins to push inside her, spreading her apart, grinding himself against her engorged clitoris as he throbbed angrily inside her. Emma tore her mouth from his and gasped for breath as raw pleasure as furious as the night surged through her body and made a mockery of all that she thought she was and pretended to be. She opened her eyes and hazarded a glance up at her conqueror and saw him poised on his strong arms above her, his face filmed with perspiration, his eyes glittering down at her as if he would tear her heart from her body. So intense was his lust for her that she could hardly bear to look at him. The anger in his face thrilled her to the core..

He took hold of her long hair and used it to pull her head back, back, forcing her to arch up at him and hurting her, but the pain was the pain of his possession and she welcomed it. The sight of her hands twisting helplessly in her chains excited him terribly, the feeling of her beauty, bound and offered to him in total surrender.

He had lied to her: she was a lady, always a lady, and that knowledge tore at him and made him ferocious with her, for he wanted what she had. He wanted that beauty, that heart-breaking grace and purity. He wanted it down where he could own it, where he could let it run through his fingers like gold, where he could immerse himself in it like the sea. It drove him mad, waking and sleeping, and brought out something savage and cruel, as if he could beat it out of her or hurt her into yielding it up to him. That’s what he tried to do to her now: hurt her with his love, drive his cock into her so deeply that she would surrender utterly to him, that she would become what he was when he was with her and ache for him with the same furious hunger with which he ached for her.

He knew she felt his passion, that it aroused her to the same heights of lust as it did himself. He could tell because she was already close now, as her harsh breathing and her little moans and half-strangled sobs told him. Had he not been so caught up in his own feelings of lust he might have smiled as he felt her hips begin to move against him as her own lusty greed for pleasure asserted itself.

He knew it. She was just like he was inside: she wanted it too, and the thought that she would soon surrender to her own desires for this obscene ecstasy brought a new savagery to his fucking. He began to pound her hard, showing her no mercy as the bed creaked and the mattress rocked beneath them. He sucked her breast into his mouth, lashed her nipple with his rough tongue, then found it with his teeth and bit down.

Lady Emma cried out. She threw her head back and her eyes opened and rolled up into her head, showing only white as her body fucked back at him with sudden fury, giving as good as she got, then stopped, trembling as every muscle on her slight frame grew tight and rigid, quivering with the strain of her impending orgasm.

He felt the sweet spasms of her release on his cock and knew that he had her, that she was giving him her climax, surrendering at last. And the knowledge that he was the cause of her pleasure was enough to cause a great moan to tear from his own throat. She wanted this. She wanted everything he did to her, and it drove her wild too, ripped her veil of propriety and reserve from her and exposed a woman as passionate as he was himself.

He thrust furiously inside of her and let himself go, bursting inside of her with shuddering explosions of his own ecstatic release, leaving him weak and drained and utterly at peace.

# # #

She awoke to find herself free of the chains but alone in the great bed, his spot next to her still warm. The fire was built up in the room, and Swann sat at the cloth-covered table, a decanter of Madeira by his side, his glass half empty. He was watching her.

Piled on the table next to him were the Farquahar jewels. She could see the great sapphire gleaming in the firelight. Even the chest they had been in when she’d taken them was there. Everything arranged, as if waiting to be counted.

“What is it?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

“We have come to a fork in the road,” he said softly. “I can no longer keep you on a leash like a trained bear.”

He took a sip of his wine. “Here are your jewels. You’re free to take them and go, if you choose. No one will stop you.”

Lady Emma sat up in bed and held the bed clothes to her chest, even though it was quite warm.

“What are you saying? The French would snap me up in an instant!”

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, and that would be most unfortunate. But I can no longer keep you prisoner like this, afraid to turn my back on you, tying you to your bed at night like an animal. I’m not a man like that. Of course you’d be safe with me, but still, I need for you to choose. I need to hear it from your own lips.”

“This…what we’ve been doing, ” he nodded towards the bed. “I need to know that it’s what you want as well. If you decide to stay with me, then you know what will happen. You’ll be safe from the police, but you know the kind of man I am now, what I need and what I want from you. You’ve been with me long enough now. I have to know that it’s what you want as well. Despite what you must think, I’m not a man who just takes and takes. I need to be given, too. I want you to think about it very carefully and then give me your answer in the morning.”

He finished his wine and stood up.

“That’s all I have to say.” She saw the wolfish grin return to his face. “Until tomorrow though, you’re still mine, still my unwilling prisoner.”

He came to the bed and she made room for him. He arranged the pillows, and then pulled her down, pulling her against his strong chest and putting his arm around her. He kissed her behind the ear, and then ran his lips down her neck. He cupped one breast in his hand and pulled her tightly against him.

Just like in her dream.