Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“Just so. This prisoner doesn’t wish to be molested by her captor while she sleeps.”
“Don’t look for lust where none exists.” He returned to his side, giving me his back.
“Then don’t jab me with your erection.”
“Stop talking.”
“Do you always get hard when you truss up and spank rabid animals?”
“One more word, and I’ll gag your impudent mouth.”
Another threat. I was certain he would follow through on it and grow hard as a rock from the result. The man was in severe denial, which served me well. For now.
In the back of my mind, I understood the likelihood of this situation turning in a direction I dreaded.
Much to my dismay, being rescued by my vicious, relentless husband was my best option. But the odds weren’t in his favor. He couldn’t just sneak aboard a first-rate ship of the line and carry me off unnoticed. The approach of the smallest, fastest sloop under his command would be spotted.
The terrifying truth was I didn’t know how he would battle the heaviest armed warship in the high seas. I trusted that he would try with every breath in his body, but I couldn’t wager my life on his success.
Ashley intended to deliver me to England to stand trial, where I would be convicted and hanged. That was a fact.
But I held the power to change it.
As a healthy adult woman, I’d won many hearts accidentally.
I had a month to win Ashley’s heart intentionally.
I’d thought of this before I’d taken the plunge off Jade’s gunwale. Before I’d met the unsmiling, unfeeling commodore.
A heartless man couldn’t fall in love. But part of me hoped that a warm, squishy, sensitive organ beat beneath his cold veneer. If a heart was there, I could take it, turn it, and use it to escape.
But the logical part had already considered a third plan.
If I couldn’t reach the commodore’s heart, I could most definitely reach between his legs.
While I wasn’t skilled in fluttering demure eyelashes or wagging my hips like a coquette, I knew how to lace myself into a bosom-revealing gown and touch a man until his eyes crossed and his brain exploded.
A sweaty tumble beneath the blankets with Ashley Cutler wouldn’t convince him to free me. But if he believed I carried his babe in my womb, that would change everything.
He wouldn’t send me to the gallows.
Because he wouldn’t execute his own child.
Win his heart or conceive his baby.
For either of these plans to work, I needed to get close to him. Close enough to take his seed into my body.
As I stared at his beautifully sculpted back in the darkness, it shouldn’t have felt like such a hardship. He was a gorgeous man, and I’d done worse things to survive.
If I succeeded in bedding him, I would be betraying the husband who betrayed me. The thought made me sick because, God confound me, I still loved the king of libertines.
But if I did nothing, I would hang. I would die. It wasn’t the best option.
If Priest were here, I knew what he would say.
The crazy son of a bitch would tell me to lie, steal, cheat, maim, kill, or fuck whomever I needed to stay alive.
As I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep, I heard his growly Welsh accent in my ear.
Survive, my love. No matter what.
“Ow!” I yanked the needle from the pad of my finger and stuck the bleeding appendage in my mouth.
My frustration with sewing had been mounting all day, but I refrained from tossing the nearly finished garment off the balcony.
I’d woken this morning alone and hadn’t seen anyone except the young soldier who delivered my meals. Wherever Ashley spent his waking hours, it wasn’t here.
But he’d been ever-present in my mind.
As I measured, cut, and stitched in the chair at his tidy desk, I ruminated the art of intimacy. Touching, kissing, undressing, drawing him into my body… I imagined licentious scenarios in every combination of positions I’d seen performed in cities, gutters, and taverns.
Of course, I had my own experiences with Priest and others to draw on, but I was rusty. And after Priest’s betrayal, I lacked the confidence I once had.
Was I still desirable? If I were, would Priest have strayed?
I powered through the negative thoughts and conceived a fantasy where Ashley devoted himself to the service of a lady pirate, where he wanted me beyond all else and became my professed lover. As my fingers worked the sewing needle, my mind erected illusions of us naked, entangled, licking, whispering, caressing, and rutting day and night.
Immersed in my carnal imagination for hours, I allowed myself to feel every reaction—fear, trepidation, doubt, denial, acceptance, hunger, pleasure—until I became…not jaded. I could never become hardened to a man’s touch, and when it happened with Ashley, I would experience all these feelings again. But I mentally prepared myself for it as best as I could.