Under the Lash (11 page)

Now she was stuck on the idea that she needed to find some way to relieve him of that key – once they were in a port somewhere, of course, and the ship had presumably become largely emptied by the crew who were off on shore leave, or whatever the correct nautical term was for going into town and getting stinking drunk. That had been the entirety of her experience with sailors in the short time that she had spent on San Miguel.

But she had decided, during the course of the past few days, that she wanted to tell him as little about herself as possible, especially since the person she had been when she set foot on this ship was no longer who she was at all. Cassandra Solange Constance Mary Winthrop–Sutton, the daughter of the ninth Earl of Sutton, had been long since buried under the weight of her own mortification. There was virtually no way for her to go back to the life she had led – even on the Duque’s remote island.

Once she stepped off this ship again – and she was bound and determined to do that – she would become, out of necessity, someone else. She wasn’t exactly sure yet just who, but she’d work that out when the opportunity presented itself.

Although she was doing her best to maintain her anonymity, she also tried to stick to the truth as much as possible, so as to have fewer lies to deal with. “Tutors, Sir.”

Anjel grunted in reply as he ousted her from his seat, only to haul her back onto his lap. She was an enigma, this one, and he hated puzzles. Although she answered the questions he asked her about herself without hesitation, he had a strong sense that she was holding a lot back, and that, in and of itself, was very contrary to his own experience of women. Most of the females he’d had any kind of knowledge of were more likely to the ears off him and anyone else within shouting range, but not Cassie.

She was almost eerily quiet and surprisingly self contained.

And she read for pleasure. How interesting. He knew more highborn ladies than not who detested reading. Oh they had been educated, but they used only what they needed to get by. Their lives were filled with fashion, food, and flowers, it seemed, and not much else.

“What did you think of it?” he asked, busily divesting her of the ruined shift and dress she donned every time he left.

“What?”

“The story.” He tugged down the top of the garments she had managed to fix only slightly one day, when she had begged him for a needle and thread to do just that. Now they were sewn together only in an obscenely small line down the middle that gave her only the slightest modicum of comfort at being at least somewhat covered while he was gone, although he almost always divested her of them as soon as he came into the room. But this time he only worked them down just enough to capture her elbows tightly against her body, so that she couldn’t move her arms, leaving those beautiful breasts of hers entirely open to his delectation.

Cassandra snorted in a most unladylike fashion, causing him to divert his eyes from the way his hands were about to lay claim to her charms to meet her clear hazel eyes instead with an inquisitive look that prompted her to expound on her rude exclamation. “It was all right. Definitely not my experience of pirates, however,
Sir
.”

Occasionally her inflection when she called him that was deliberately snide, but she had obviously forgotten where she was. The fingers that had been almost gently tugging at nipples that he was glad to see were nearly always peaked and eager for him, began to pinch them terribly hard while twisting at the same time.

With those tender buds in his cruel hands and her arms bound to her sides by her own dress, there was precious little she could do to alleviate the pain he was causing.

Panting heavily at the discomfort he was causing, she tried to be proactive to get him to stop hurting her. “I’m sorry, Sir,” she offered, her voice breathy and thin.

Those fingers closed even tighter, making tears stream down her cheeks as he watched her with an alarmingly detached air.

“And what are you sorry about, little Cassie?”

Sitting like this with him, splayed wide over his legs, the ruined dress revealing much more of her body than it concealed, so that she might as well have been completely naked, the chair more than four times her size easily and him at least two, and usually having been chastised in the most childish of ways multiple times before she ended up here
did
make her feel quite small, physically and emotionally.

“My less than respectful tone, Sir.”

No inflection, no sarcasm at all, and said with her eyes staunchly focused on his. “As well you should be. Fetch me my belt.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to try to protest – or more smartly, try to talk him out of it somehow, but the look on his face did not welcome negotiation of any sort. Anjel rose and took one of the straight backed dining chairs and put it in the middle of the room. When she had handed him the thick leather instrument, he put his hand on the back of her head and guided her over the back of the chair.

“Take a hold of the seat. You’re going to need it to remind you not to reach back,” he said, his tone frighteningly devoid of expression.

The captain positioned himself behind her and to one side, fiddling with the belt until he got it into the shape he wanted it – buckle well in his palm and most of the rest of it wrapped around his big fist, but a good eight inches or so left with which to kiss her bottom.

“Fifty strokes, Cassie. I’m sick of hearing that insulting undertone in your voice. I will
not
have it.”

Her feet began to dance just at the thought of him bringing that horrible thing down on her backside, even just once! It was one of her least favorite implements – not that she really had a favorite. All of them were pretty horrid, especially in his more than capable hands, but some were worse than others, and this was one of the worst, right up there just below the quirt, in her estimation.

“And you’re going to count them, every one, loud and clear, and say please with each number. And if you’re too slow in the count, I’m just going to start blistering away until you come to your senses and begin the count again.” Anjel moved towards her head, lifting her chin almost gently with his finger, so that she had to meet his eyes. “And you don’t want to even consider what will happen if you lose count all together, believe me.”

When he’d reclaimed his former stance, well positioned as he was to deliver good, hard strokes, he said but one word. “Begin.”

There were few instances when Cassie truly had a bone deep reluctance to say something, but this was definitely one of those. She did
not
want to begin the count, but feared his retribution even more if she didn’t. “One, please, Sir.”

If she could have fallen to the floor she would have, but there was no place for her to go. The chair caught her at her upper midsection, and she was holding so tightly to the seat that she couldn’t feel her fingers.

But she most certainly could feel her bum once that leather kissed it and set her to howling. She couldn’t really let her anguish out, though, because she had to ask for the next stroke before he decided she had taken too long to do so.

“Two, please, Sir.”

That one caught the descending swell of her cheeks, delivered almost as an uppercut expressly so it would land in exactly that area. Tears were already rolling down her cheek and onto the seat below her face.

“Three, please, Sir.”

He was relentless. “You’ll have to ask louder than that, Cassie, to avoid a second stroke.”

Anjel placed two in a row in exactly the same spot, making her dance in place and give such a mournful cry that it was fit almost to crack his own impenetrable façade.

But not quite.

In all, he gave her more like sixty–five strokes, considering that her voice quickly became hoarse from her cries and therefore she was given two in a row many times because she wasn’t asking loudly enough for his tastes.

And then there were the times that she took too long to ask, by his standard – whatever that was – and found herself on the receiving end of a flurry of vicious snaps that had her trying to cringe away from them as best she could while crying out the count at the same time through her tears.

When he was through with her, he threw her onto the bed and mounted her, amazed as always to find her more than ready for him, and took her for the first time entirely for his own pleasure, trapping her wrists at her head and heaving himself into her, fucking her as hard and fast as he could, although it always seemed to him to be an alarmingly short amount of time, although, thankfully for his ego, that wasn’t something she would know to note.

Just as he cried out and lost himself within her, there came a sharp rap at the door. “It’s Tommy, Sir. Swearengen in the crow’s nest spied a ship.”

He was up and off her in a second, pulling up the pants he hadn’t even bothered to remove and out the door practically before she knew what was happening.

But she did know one thing: in his haste to leave, he had
not
locked the door.

Chapter Eight

The first thing Cassie did when she realized that pertinent fact was get up and try to repair her dress – again – as best she could. It wasn’t really proper in the least, even when she finished with it, but it was the best she could do with what little she had.

Then she looked around for something to use as a weapon, seeing and then immediately dismissing his hairbrush. She wasn’t going to be able to spank her way to safety. The only thing she could find was an old, dull knife in the top drawer of his dresser, but she tucked it into her chemise anyway. Something was better than nothing, and she had no idea what or who she was going to encounter when she went topside.

Hell, she wasn’t even sure how to get topside, but she was going to make it there if it killed her, and it just might.

The waiting was the worst thing, though. She couldn’t follow right out behind him; she’d end up right back where she was. So she had to wait for a while, until she thought he’d had sufficient time not to have been standing right outside the door ready to trap her in some elaborate ruse meant to earn her another lengthy punishment. But she could tell that something was definitely going on; she could hear the shouts from above, as well as multiple feet tromping loudly up and down stairs.

When the tromping stopped, Cassie figured she might be more alone down here that usual, with everyone up top fighting to get aboard whatever hapless ship they had come across. She opened the door a sliver and peeked out, seeing that the hallway was completely empty. Cassie scurried out, closing the door carefully behind her so no one looking casually down here would see that it was open and send up an alarm.

She saw a ladder at the end of the hallway, and put her foot on the bottom rung, but no sooner had she done that then she heard – and felt – several massive explosions in a row that knocked her back down onto her bottom. She got up as soon as the massive booms stopped and hauled herself up the ladder in record time, not wanting to be caught midway again when another big explosion happened.

Once she was on deck, every sense she owned was violently assailed. There were deafening explosions to the left, right and front of her, the smell of gunpowder and death thick in her nostrils, and so much blood on the decks that her cheap shoes squished wetly with every tentative step she took.

She could see that to one side there was another huge ship, at least the size of this one or even bigger, and it was what she – a landlubber – would have estimated to be dangerously close to them. But she also saw that the closeness was actually a good thing – if one was on the pirates’ side – because it allowed them to throw their grappling hooks and extend their gangplanks to the other ship to aid in boarding her, although Cassie could also hear the screams above her, as men with knives in their mouths who were also simply swinging across – from this ship and, she noted with alarm, from the other – on ropes.

The gangplanks looked like a possibility at first, that was at least until she saw several men pushed, shot or just plain clumsily fall from them, and that didn’t include those who had them pulled right out from under them so that they dropped into what was surely shark infested waters below.

And as she looked up at those crazy men flying above her on nothing but a thread of rope, a spot of red, white and blue caught her eye, and she saw the Union Jack flying high and proud – on the other ship. She found herself drawn towards it like a lodestone, until she was clinging to the side of the ship, trying to scream across the way at the men who were fighting for their lives and paying absolutely no attention to her, no matter how she jumped and waved and cried, completely ignoring the sounds of gunfire and blasts of cannon flying all around her. Nor did she acknowledge the clanking of sword against sword as the battled raged on right next to her, as well as in front of her.

When she realized that nothing was going to help her achieve her goal, she began to cry while she berated herself for having done so, and turned away from the sight only to have her eyes land on the bodies of several British soldiers who were lying dead and wounded all over the deck – along with, of course, several pirates.

Her first thought was that she should try to talk to one of the British men, but the first three she tried were already dead, and the rest were unconscious or unable to speak. She was rapidly beginning to think that she needed to do something to help the injured men rather than worrying about her own, seemingly hopeless situation. She wasn’t in imminent danger of dying, unlike everyone around her seemed to be. The last man she found in a British uniform died in her arms once she rolled him over, and considering the condition he was in, that was a blessing.

The deck was littered with other men groaning and alternately crying for their mothers and cursing the British who had done this to them, looking for any kind of help they could get, the majority of whom seemed to be no older than she was. And no one seemed to be assisting them in the least.