All Anya could see now was the scar and the deep furrow across the upper lip, as if an invisible thread were drawn tight across it, leaving the right side of the lip contused, swollen like a pale pink berry. A finger touched her cheek and Anya shuddered, for it traced the line, in mirror and on Anya's cheek, of the woman's scar, down to the upper lip. Then the lip was lifted. The finger ran along the line of Anya's perfect teeth. The face moved closer, the lips descending as if to kiss. Anya gasped and pulled away. Then there was a stifled murmur from the mast. From the corner of her eye Anya could see a movement. Suddenly, she remembered - the naked women tied to the masts; one, it seemed, had been left in place and she was gagged.
'Ah, Niri,' Travix said. 'Turn the Princess, let her look.' Travix stepped back. 'Niri does not fear the gag; for her, it is no obstacle to explanation, for she does not speak our tongue.' Anya stared up at the young girl bound to the mast. She had never before seen a person who spoke in ciphers. Niri was small, her body was perfectly proportioned and her skin was golden. She had unusually wide eyes, which were black. 'Niri is my favourite. It is better that she sees.'
But favourite or not, Anya could tell that Niri was being treated very cruelly. Her mouth was gagged with a broad leather band. Her arms were drawn tightly back, and fastened high above her head. Her breasts pushed out strongly. A heavy rope, wound only round the mast and not the girl, pressed into her back above her waist, forcing it to curve. Her belly arched tightly. Her knees were drawn sharply upwards and fastened, exposing the flesh between her thighs. And that flesh had been partly shaved: the outer purse was prominent and bare, but with a flare of carefully manicured short brown hair brushed back from the point of the hood, as if the pressure in her overfull purse had somehow leaked, spraying colour from the tip. As Niri tried and failed to ease the straining tension in her arms, her belly arched more tightly, her breasts moved, her belly rotated, and the purse pulsed softly. With every pulse, the sparse triangle of colour sank, then lifted sharply and appeared to spread, as if it might have sprayed.
'See how she struggles; she is jealous of these small attentions. She does not understand that we must investigate our newfound prize.' Travix's hand reached.
'No ...' Anya murmured again as the fingers moving down her cheek were now complemented by the other hand. As one set of fingers lay against the thick vein in her neck, the other set quickly forced each large brass jacket button through its eye in the wet material, then opened out the jacket. Anya could feel her heartbeat throbbing faster against the fingertips at her neck. But Travix looked only into Anya's face while she touched her breasts and nipples. 'Lift her arms,' she said. She touched the wet warm hair in Anya's underarms; then her fingers returned to touch the nipples - which were hard. And still the gaze would not release Anya, still those other fingers tasted Anya's heartbeat in her throat. Anya could have tried to struggle, as she'd done against the men; she could have cried out, spat; but she could not deny the hardness of her nipples, nor the effect of the light fingertip pressure upon the heartbeat in her throat. 'Hold her still ... Push her belly out. It must be pushed out - hard and rounded to the touch.' And now her heart was bursting. A large hand pushed flat against the base of her spine, pushing her bottom forwards, arching her belly, forcing her legs wider apart, offering her sex for those fingers now to touch while the pulse at her neck cried out the feelings that this deliciously tentative touching brought.
The fingertips teased the wet curls aside, unbound the lips; only when each individual curl was lifted, when the warm lips were completely bare, did the fingers open Anya's living flesh, spread it like a warm wet beating heart, and touch within that heartbeat. Only then was Anya permitted to close her eyes. She heard another murmur from the mast. But the fingers at her belly were unhasty. 'Black lips, black nipples ... You are beautiful, Princess.' Anya heard those words but distantly. She was trapped between the warm round pressure of the hand against her back and the fingers, slipped between her legs, moving gently in her heart. She wanted those fingertips, oiled with her body-wet, to search deeper, very gently against the pressure, while she closed her flesh around them tightly, while she squeezed them to her heart. Travix's voice came very softly, so Anya heard her faintly, above the sea sounds of the warm deck breeze that brushed across her ears:
'There ... Enjoy ... For throughout this voyage into pleasure, my Princess, your wantonness will be evoked. We shall teach you many ways. But your lust will be tempered always with longing, delicious pleasure shall be pricked with pain. Your satisfaction shall be delivered slowly, beautiful one, against the sweetness of your shame.'
The hand slid very gently from Anya's body, then slowly wiped the oily moisture upon her bush of copper curls while the soft distended lips of her sex gradually closed. Anya opened her eyes; her breathing would not steady. Travix smiled, then carefully straightened Anya's jacket, but left it unbuttoned, with the two sides barely touching together down the middle. 'Release her hair,' she said. Now Anya could move her head, but the men still held her thighs locked open and straddled across their arms. And the ordeal was not over. Travix stepped forward again, very close, so she stood between Anya's legs. 'Remember - slowly, beautiful one,' she repeated. Anya felt a slow weight sinking to her belly.
The hem of Travix's tunic brushed the bare skin of Anya's inner thighs. Travix lifted aside the jacket, touched the breasts again, tested the velvet tips. Anya shuddered. The fingertips of two hands followed that shudder down the belly, below the curls, touched the silky outer skin of the soft warm weighted lips, then closed about the purse as if it were a swollen sun-warmed fruit that might split or bruise. Four soft pressure points to each side tested those lips, made their inner surfaces kiss together and slip; alternate movements drew pleasure slowly, to make a pressure sugar-sweet like wine until, trapped between the pads of each forefinger was no longer soft flesh, but a small hot round bone sleeved within the slippy silk. And all the while the blue eyes held her. The fingertips coaxed warm nectar into that fruit, lifting it to test its weight within the palm, then returning to rub the sides. The fruit swelled to make the pressure of sweetness an ache, the delicious ache that comes before the soft split of deliverance.
But there was no deliverance, just the very gentle rubbing, drawing the fluid ever down into her flesh until it seemed that flesh could take no more. It was as if Travix would rub and coax it until the fruit burst of its own accord. Was it pleasure? Was it cruel? It was both. Anya gasped as Travix tapped the weighted fruit; she wanted her to draw the skin back fully, search within the pulp and nip the hot round bone. The fingertips gently pressed against her once again where the fruit was joined to her body, then took the bursting fruit and very gently pulled it. Anya moaned. She wanted it to burst; she knew that Travix would never let it happen. The hand closed round her. The fingertips quickly nipped the flesh about her nub of pleasure, then released it. Too late, she tried to thrust her belly to meet that nip. The blue eyes looked on impassively and the back of the hand stroked against the swollen seam of her sex lips. When she pushed again, it pulled away. Travix gave an instruction to the men. Anya's knees were lifted, bent and pressed together. The black-lipped purse pushed out between her thighs like an overripe plum. Like a plum that the small birds had pricked with their beaks and sipped, it slowly seeped. Small droplets of Anya's honeydew swelled from the swollen seam. Travix pressed her fingertips against that fruit once more. The honeyed droplets welled and merged into a continuous seam of syrup. The fingertips touched the thin sleeve of skin that sheltered the hard little bone. Anya tried to thrust again. 'Lower her knees. Press her thighs together - tight!' Anya whimpered as the pressure surged; her pleasure almost came. 'Open her quickly. Keep her legs apart.'
Travix approached very closely again. The jacket brushed against Anya's thighs. The eyes fixed her. It began all over again - the fingertips touching her breasts, closing around the nipples, then the shudder coming and the fingers moving down, touching the curls, moving in, closing very softly about the lips, with the pressure from the fluid filling up her flesh lips unto bursting, yet the bursting not being allowed. It was crueller than before. But was it still pleasure? Yes. She wanted the bursting to come, but if that were to be denied, she did not want the fingertip touch to stop.
'Mister Travix!' The sudden shout freed Anya from the thrall of the woman's gaze, and though she was confused by the strange mode of address, her attention was taken fully now by the figure in red, high above them, behind the quarterdeck rail.
'Captain?' Travix cried.
'You have the prisoner?' With that reference, delivered so casually, all the sweetness of those feelings in Anya's belly was swept away on a new tide of her fears.
'Sir ...' Travix stepped aside. Anya was turned to face the man in the long red velvet coat and tricorn hat who was walking down the stairs, his left hand behind his back and his right hand slowly gliding down the rail. The men supporting Anya tensed as he approached, and that made her feel more afraid. The captain came to a halt at the foot of the stairs, several feet away. He was very tall - taller by a head than Travix - and much older, yet his dark hair showed no hint of grey. None of his movements seemed hurried. The fingers of his right hand drummed the balustrade. He looked out to sea, then his gaze worked slowly round the ship. A few men had been working close by, but they had disappeared as soon as the captain had shouted. His gaze seemed to pass through Anya as if she were not there and settled instead on Travix. Anya watched him now in profile. He had thick, bushy eyebrows, a large curved nose - long, soft earlobes, Anya noticed - and a prominent chin. His voice was resonant.
'You have set the course that I requested?'
'Aye, Captain. South, sir,' Travix replied, then added after a short delay, But they try to follow.' Her voice had carried a hint of criticism. The captain pursed his lips and looked out again to sea. Encouraged now, Travix continued, speaking quickly through her teeth. 'We should have fixed them - flayed them, then burned their ship and let them fry or drown like rats.' Anya was horrified by those words. Her belly tightened to a knot against the memory of what she had allowed a woman such as this to do to her.
But the captain did not need to raise his voice. There was a soft irony in his tone: 'But they are men, Mister Travix.' Travix's look was venom. 'You would not put good men to the torch for fighting for their ship?' He paused. She did not answer. He continued with the measured, resonant castigation. 'And surely you would not be so foolhardy as to kill a Prince?' He did not wait for an answer, but looked at Anya. 'And who is better placed to raise the ransom for his Princess?'
Travix was nettled. Her jaw was set, her eyes were half closed, but to no effect, for the captain would not condescend to look at her. 'Then why did we not take him when we had the chance?' she snapped. 'And claim double ransom?'
He smiled, then turned to face her: 'Or none - should it suit his successors not to pay.'
As Travix fell silent beneath the captain's steady gaze, Anya tried to analyse these words. She knew they boded ill for her. Even the Prince would have great difficulty in raising a ransom for her. She had many enemies in the castle; they had tried repeatedly to forestall her betrothal. And so far they had succeeded, for even yet, she was not in truth the Princess. Probably, she never would be - she could see herself a prisoner here forever aboard this ship, at the merciless whim of Travix and these heartless pirates. And now, still held, her arms pinned back, she could not even wipe away the tears that welled to blind her. They trickled slowly down her cheek, ran along the ridge of her upper lip and seeped into her mouth. Suddenly, the men beside her tensed again. Her head was drawn back sharply. The captain stood before her.
He was looking down into her tearstained face. Anya's lip trembled; with her head pulled back, she could not swallow properly; her vision swam. All she could see were the strong nose, the dark bushy eyebrows and the eyes of bright, liquid green. All she could hear was the deep resonance of his voice. Had he spoken to her? She did not know. But again she felt the large hand at her back, low down, warm against her bare skin, pushing her hips forward, as it had done for Travix, but further forward this time, spreading her thighs until they ached, lifting her until her sex, still swollen hard, was exposed, until she felt the tension across her creases, until the pressure throbbed deeply behind the sticky-sealed fleshy join. But it seemed the captain wanted more. Her knees were crooked up tightly until her bottom was lifted in the air and the cheeks of her buttocks were spread.
Suddenly, he held his left hand up. There was a flash of light. She screamed. It was a hook, a double one, glinting in the sun. Two vicious steel arcs, curving the same way from a stump, almost touched at their points to form a vee. The hook moved; she screamed again. The guard clapped a hand over her mouth but the muffled screams continued through her nose. The captain's expression was unchanged by Anya's terror; he was intent about his purpose, which was now to use the hook to lift the jacket gently aside, to expose each full and black-tipped breast, which trembled as her belly shook, while he placed against her matt black sex lips the long cold fingers of his one good hand. The fingers pressed; she gasped against the hand across her mouth, then shuddered and the warm fruit burst; the shudder grew deep inside her; the fingers opened out the warm moist beating heart. Her flesh was left thus - exposed to his gaze - while he touched the uplifted velvet black mouth of her bottom with his thumb. The shudder came again, much deeper. Though it was not a release from pleasure, it was a deliverance of a kind, for it drew within her belly, drew within her bottom, touched her nubbin from inside.