Rescued by the Buccaneer (3 page)

“Kindly shut yer yap, or ye’ll be getting the worst of it.”

Humiliation coursed through her, and the cold air on her bottom reminded her that her bare ass was exposed to this man she barely knew. A rough, calloused hand scraped across the tender flesh of her ass, followed by a hard slap to her rear. The pain almost made her forget the humiliation. Almost.

She whimpered.

“I’ll have ye take yer punishment quietly or ye will earn double the strokes.”

Another smack, this one harder, landed on her cheeks.

She groaned.

“What did I tell ye?”
Thwack!
The next blow landed even harder, as if to drive his point home. This time she bit down a knuckle, hoping to muffle her cries.

“Better. This ass is getting mighty red,” he chuckled.

With each smack, she fought to hold back her cries. But her posterior stung, and water welled in her eyes.

“You’re doing better. Lie there and take your punishment like a good girl,” he crooned, swatting her ass again. And again.

Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, he stopped.

Though he loosened his grip on her, she was too wrung out to move.

“I’m the one who’s in charge here, girl.”

“You are, sir,” she mumbled, dazed.

“That’s right. I
own
you, pretty little slave.”

“Yes, sir.” It was as if her head were filled with clouds, and she was so relieved that he’d stopped swatting her she just wanted to stay there, in the strangely happy space where the spanking had taken place.

When he slid his hand up her inner thigh between her legs, her brain urged her to protest. A slight, “Umm” was all she could manage.

“What was that?” he asked in a taunting voice.

“Nothing, sir.” Frederica felt as though she were in an altered state. Deep inside, something told her she should stop him, but at the same time, she was curious about what he would do to her next.

“That’s a good girl.” He stroked the inside of her left thigh, then her right. “A smart girl.” Gently, he cupped her sex in his hand, and she sighed involuntarily.

His fingers explored the folds between her legs.

“Open yer legs, girl,” he ordered.

She obeyed, though she wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted to or because she feared the repercussions if she didn’t.

He caressed her pussy with broad strokes before entering her with one finger.

She squirmed under his grip.

“Be still!” he said in a menacing voice and slapped her bum hard.

She stopped struggling and began to relish the incredible sensations brought on by his ministrations. Her breath came faster and she noticed her hips bucking to meet his imposing fingers.

“I knew ye were a little whore, I did.” he said, removing his fingers and setting her upright. “Take off your clothes.”

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, disoriented by the surreal situation.

“You heard me!” he howled.

Frightened, Frederica began to unfasten her dress. She soon stood in her undergarments, staring at him as he retrieved a leather strap hanging on the wall.

“All of ‘em.” He smacked the strap on the edge of the bed, causing her to shriek with fear.

Hurriedly, she slipped off her petticoats and stood, naked and shaking in the middle of the floor.

“Lie down on the bed and hold still,” he said in a menacing tone.

Frederica lay on her back, certain he would rape her. She screwed her eyes shut tightly, preparing for the worst.

Whoosh!
She heard the strap before she felt it, then the hard leather struck her breasts. He flicked the torture implement over her torso with an expertise that told her he’d done this before, and the gleeful little sounds coming out of his mouth told her he enjoyed it.

He stopped once to grope her breasts; rough, awkward hands fondled them, flicking her nipples until they grew hard. Then he pinched the little nubs and pulled them away from her body, stretching them until she cried out in a mixture of pleasure and pain. To her dismay, she felt her pussy growing wet, and she wondered how her body could possibly respond to such a vile man.

“Open yer legs,” he commanded.

Too scared to disobey, she inched them apart.

“That won’t do, wench.” He forced her legs wide apart and brought the strap down on her swollen pussy lips.

“Ahhhhh!” Her body rose up in the bed and she screamed with all the air in her lungs.

“Ye can yell all ye like—there’s no one to save ye,” he chortled, and she felt as if the devil himself had taken hold of her. “I said hold still. If ye can’t do it, I’ll clap ye in irons again and keep ye in ‘em.”

“No, sir. I’ll be still,” she said, wishing her bottom lip would stop quivering.

“Such a pretty little cunt ye got there,” he crooned as he thrust his finger in and out of her wet opening, then brushed another over her delicate little button. She refused to give in to the pleasure that threatened to overtake her like an ocean swell. Biting her lip and clenching her fists, she hoped to shut out the delicious sensations that were making her squirm despite herself, but the more she tried to squash her arousal, the more it intensified. Writhing under the captain’s attentions, Frederica realized that she had no control over her body in this situation, none whatsoever. In a final effort to resist, she shut her eyes and tried to remain silent.

Soon her body tensed, her muscles coiling as tightly as a cobra preparing to strike. Then to her shame, she succumbed to the pleasure-filled waves that washed over her in a crescendo of sheer bliss, moaning in spite of herself as an orgasm racked her body for long moments. But while her climax had been physically satisfying, it made her furious that her captor could be the source of such enjoyment.

To her great horror, he climbed on top of her and thrust his lower half against her satiated pussy. She closed her eyes and prayed it would be over soon.

Humphrey grinded his pelvis hard over hers, his groans turning to curses before he finally climbed off her and threw the leather strap across the room. “Damn me. Blasted war wounds,” he mumbled to himself, then looked at Frederica scornfully. “If only I could, I’d give you the rutting you deserve, ye wicked temptress!”

She lay there, a sheen of perspiration atop her skin, completely confused over what had just transpired.

“Get dressed!” he barked.

She stood, her legs still shaky, and put on her clothes as quickly as possible.

Humphrey looked at her sternly and said, “Now, what do you have to say for yourself?”

She stared at him blankly.

“Ye will thank me for your punishment,” he snarled.

“Thank you, sir,” she parroted back.

He gave her bottom one last swat and said, “See that you do a better job in the future.” With that he got up and left the room before she could respond.

* * *

Late that night, Frederica sneaked away from the snoring captain and found her way onto the ship’s main deck. She needed to get out of the room she shared with the captain—so badly in fact, that she risked another punishment like the one she’d endured earlier in order to escape his presence, if only for an hour.

She was grateful the moonlight saved her from fumbling around in the pitch black. She knew where to find candles, but no one on the ship was permitted to use them after sundown. The pirates would not risk being seen by another vessel. Bradford had told her they used the element of surprise to their advantage when approaching unsuspecting victims like the passengers of the
Adelaide
. In fact, life onboard came to a screeching halt once the light disappeared and the men retired for the evening, under strict orders to keep silent. Humphrey liked his ship to maintain the ghostlike ability to magically appear and disappear whenever the mood struck him, so the ship moved through the water stealthily, camouflaged against the night sky.

Still trying to wrap her head around what Humphrey had done to her earlier that day, she stared into the black water and tried to make sense of it. The man had spanked her bare bottom for something she perceived as an imagined infraction. Frederica hadn’t been spanked since she was six years old, and certainly never by a grown man who was no relation to her.

In a large part, Frederica was outraged by Humphrey’s treatment of her. But she was his captive, and she had no choice but to swallow her pride and endure the humiliation and sore bottom. She was his slave, and from what she knew of how most pirates treated their prisoners, she considered herself lucky. She knew there was worse he could do to her.

But the way he’d toyed with her womanhood had made her climax… She resented the intrusion, but as she recalled his fingers in her pussy, pinching her nipples so hard, blood rushed to her quim, making her throb with need, and she was tempted to touch herself. She didn’t dare do it there on the ship’s deck because someone could come by… She couldn’t endure any more humiliation in one day.

Although shamed by her desire, Frederica had already determined that if the punishments she would suffer at the captain’s hands included such perverse pleasures, they might actually brighten her otherwise dour existence on this ship. At the same time, she suspected her thinking had become blurred by the loneliness of her imprisonment, and she began to wonder if she was losing her mind.

Staring into the dark of night, she thought of her mother. She missed her the most at night, still remembering the sweet lavender scent that surrounded her when she bent to kiss her forehead and tuck her into bed each night. Homesickness clenched at her heart, and she let a tear slip down her cheek. Usually she squashed any self-pity that threatened to rise up, but tonight she felt particularly vulnerable and allowed herself the luxury of emotions.

After she’d been captured by Captain Humphrey, her dreams for the future had diminished like a brilliant flame reduced to a flickering candle. Thinking back to her ill-fated voyage to the colonies, she wondered if she would ever see its fabled shores.

She stifled a yawn. The black sky had turned to grey, and soon it would shift into the misty haze of morning. She trudged back to the tiny room that served as her cell and quietly opened the door, moonbeams spotlighting Humphrey’s round face. In that light he appeared almost kind, slumber softening his rough features, and she smiled to herself. With that silvery beard, he looked more like Father Christmas than the marauding devil that he was.

She closed the door and lay down next to his slumbering frame on her pallet. Sleep overtook her the instant her head hit the hard ground.

Chapter Four

He opened his eyes, the sluicing of the ocean against his legs reminding the man where he was. He floated along in the ocean on a small raft he’d constructed from remnants of the rudder that had once belonged to his beloved ship, the
Ocean’s Knave
. The raft was large enough to keep him afloat but small enough that some parts of his body hung over into the water. He stretched his arms above his head and thought about how lucky he was not to be dead.

The day before, he and his men had engaged in a sea battle in which the
Ocean’s Knave
had been damaged. During the skirmish he had been forced to jump in the water to avoid canon fire, and in the midst of a battle, his crew had been unable to rescue him. While he’d hoped the
Ocean’s Knave
would search for him, he knew it was unlikely to occur as her steering would be impaired after losing her rudder. Gregarious by nature, he despised being alone and came to the realization that for him, the lack of companionship was the worst part of his predicament.

He’d grown accustomed to the ache in his belly, the hunger sending him into a strangely peaceful place. It was the wound in his arm that gnawed at him. During the battle that had separated him from his ship, the naval officer had sliced him up pretty good along the left bicep. The entry point still seeped blood, and while it might not have initially been a mortal strike, if the lesion started to fester, it could mean trouble.

The only possessions he had with him were a bottle of rum, his weapons, a compass, a handful of tools, and the clothes on his back. Had the rum been plentiful, he’d have cleaned the wound with it. Instead he decided to drink it; thirst would do him in before blood poisoning had the chance.

Gaston Galette wrapped his lips around the bottle of rum and felt them crack. He was tempted to lick them, but he knew better. Shaking the bottle, he concluded only two, maybe three slugs remained. Once that was gone, he’d be out of drink entirely and the unremitting, all-consuming thirst would set in. That’s when being surrounded by undrinkable water would become pure torture. He had endured that earthly hell before, and barring death by shark, he’d endure it again and soon.

When the sun went down that night, the sea breeze blew over his skin, covering his forearms with gooseflesh. Nights on shark watch were always the longest, his heart alternating between racing and threatening to stop whenever his fear gripped him the tightest. His perpetually flexed muscles poised on the edge of his makeshift raft, his well-honed fight or flight instinct was controlled by an itchy hair trigger, ready to go off at any moment.

In the morning when the demons slunk back to the deep, he collapsed from exhaustion. His body felt like it was made of rubber, his eyelids heavy as anvils. If he didn’t know he was close to the Jamaican isles, he’d have been more nervous, but he’d reviewed the charts two days prior. Years of navigation experience told him that he was drifting in some of the most well-traveled sea lanes in the Caribbean, and he was optimistic another ship would happen by.

He prayed it would be the right ship and that they would find him before the sharks got him. The night before he’d shivered all night as the creatures with the dead eyes danced gracefully around him, their protruding fins shining in the moonlight.

The sun’s rays had burned his flesh that first day, so he tried to cover the most singed areas with clothing to prevent blistering. No sense having more open sores to get infected. Gazing at the heavens, he observed there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, hence there would be no respite from the scorching ball of fire anytime soon. He settled on his stomach, covered his face, and dozed off.