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)
Sirens were carnal, sensual, beautiful beings. How could he possibly compare me to…? Wait. Sirens weren’t even real.
I glanced at his snug-fitting breeches, the only thing he still wore. My stomach flipped. “Why did you remove your clothes?”
“I know things. I know them before anyone else. What I don’t know, I figure out.”
What an evasive, baffling response. And what did he know exactly?
Did he know about Priest? Or my plan to escape? Or my father’s compass? No, he didn’t know the important things.
My gaze snagged on the bowl of apples on the table, prompting my stomach to growl. I should have eaten the orange I’d rubbed on my chest this morning.
Mother of God, that seemed like so long ago. Even longer since I’d had a meal.
“So…” I leaned against the wall behind me, attempting a casual pose. “What do you know, Cutler?”
“You were born in the colonies, but England is in your blood.”
My breath hitched. “Lots of people are English.”
“Perhaps. But the blood that flows in your veins is beau monde. It’s in your speech, your bone structure, the regal beauty you try so hard to conceal beneath sun-freckled skin and a wild mane of uncombed hair.” He bent over the opposite side of the table, hands braced on the surface, head cocked, studying me too closely. “Nobility has been trained into your bearing, the way you hold your shoulders, your spine…” His gaze centered on my mouth before dipping just beneath it. “The lift of your chin.”
I forced my expression to remain as blank as his, despite the panic pounding beneath my skin.
“As a twenty-year-old lady of breeding,” he said, “you understand the importance of addressing me by my military rank and ennobled title.”
“I’m twenty and one.” I squinted at him. “And I’ll call your thirty-year-old arse whatever I damn well please.”
“I’m four years past thirty.” He regarded the large fit of Priest’s shirt on my body. “You have a husband.”
Ice hit my veins. He guessed this by what I wore? Or had someone exposed my secret?
“Wrong.” My throat constricted and relaxed.
“A lover, then.”
“I have many.”
“Whore.” He spat the word while somehow maintaining his stoic mien.
“Don’t shame me for being liberated. I’m a sexually transgressive woman, doing just as a man does. It’s my prerogative to do it with whomever I like as often as I like.”
That used to be my habit. Then I met Priest. After two lonely dry years, it was about time I started enjoying life again. But not here, and not with Lord Prude.
“Where I come from,” he said, “you’re a ruined woman.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Have you ever sheathed yourself inside a woman?”
His eyes screwed down to slits, and from across the table, I felt the heat of them on my lips. Veins throbbed in his temples and throat. Not in outrage. His body language remained calm. But he was positively trying to shield a reaction. While thinking about sheathing himself in a woman? Who? Certainly not me.
“Yes.” He licked his lips. “I’ve shared my bed.”
“Whore.” I gasped in mock displeasure. “I mean, if you were a woman, of course. You would be an embarrassment to your family. Scandalized. Exiled. Ruined.”
“If you have a point, make it.”
I released an exasperated breath. “You seem like an intelligent fellow, Ashley. Surely, you see the hypocrisy in your social traditions.”
“I don’t make the rules.”
“You just follow them. Marvelous. Because I have some rules of my own.” I rounded the table, stopped beside him, and leaned a hip against the edge. “My enjoyment in carnal relations doesn’t mean I welcome it with everyone. Would you like to know what happened to the first lord who greeted me with his unwelcome prick?”
“Enlighten me.”
“In hindsight, I should have castrated him before I gutted him. But I was only fourteen. Such a shy maiden, that poor girl.”
“I doubt you were ever shy.”
“Just so. I hadn’t yet learned the art in creative, prolonged torture. Did you know a man can still maintain an erection when the skin is flayed from his genitals?”
“You’re a vile creature.”
“Thank you.” I smiled sweetly.
It was true that I’d skinned a man who had made a habit of violating women. Only once, though. I didn’t have the stomach to attempt it again.
“A woman…” His gaze slid to my lips. “Commanding a fifty-gun galleon. When did the gates of hell break open?”
“I think I liked you better when you didn’t speak.” I snapped my fingers in front of his unblinking eyes. “Stop looking at my mouth.”
“I can’t seem to make sense of you.”
“It’s easy, Commodore. Just think of the smartest man you know, remove all the hauteur and bigotry, and add a larger pair of testicles.”
“Disturbing.”
“The world is disturbing.”
I swore I saw the shadow of a smile on his starched face. But in the next breath, I was certain I hadn’t. The gunmetal jaw that was level with the top of my head went rigid, and his entire body hardened as if preparing for battle.