blank canvas for the brilliant blue of his eyes. But I found myself focusing instead on his shapely chiseled mouth. The pinkish lips added an alluring contrast to his impeccable English complexion.
And when those lips moved, every man on the ship stopped breathing to listen.
“Put the pirate in the hold.” He flicked a finger against the front of his coat, giving an invisible speck more attention than he gave his captive.
Multiple hands fell upon me, restraining my arms behind my back. No sense in fighting. I was outnumbered four-hundred men to one. Besides, when I’d designed this plan, I expected to spend weeks, if not months, in irons.
As Lord Cutler strode toward the gangway ladder, the lieutenants pulled me along behind him. With my arms shackled by immovable fists, my attention narrowed on the snug coat that draped the commodore’s impressive shoulders and hinted at a hard, tight arse. Long legs flexed in tailored white breeches. Defined calves stretched the wool of his pristine stockings.
The man was immaculately dressed, accentuating all his best assets. But he had dreadful taste in footwear. The buckles on his square-toed shoes were made of pure gold with embedded jewels. I didn’t care how fashionable they were. If he did any sort of work on this ship, they wouldn’t last a day.
I focused on those ridiculous shoes because the rest of him was just too compelling. His physical beauty defied the laws of nature, and I wanted nothing to do with that. My opinion of him needed to ferment in the back of my throat until all I tasted was repulsion.
Down the companionway and along the windowless passages, he stopped at the door to his private quarters. The lieutenants kept moving, shoving me onward to the ladder beyond.
“What do I call you?” I twisted my neck, finding his ice-blue eyes over my shoulder. “Commodore Prick? Lord Sweet Lips? My favorite arsehole?”
His expression remained empty, his carriage rigid.
“You’re clenching it, aren’t you?” I glanced at the vicinity of his arse and cocked a brow.
He didn’t respond.
Stoic to a fault.
Nerves of steel.
I pursed my lips and blew him a kiss. “I’ll see you soon, darling.”
He’d just captured the notorious daughter of Edric Sharp. Curiosity and arrogance would bring him slithering into my lap before nightfall.
Just so, he didn’t acknowledge any of this as he vanished into his cabin.
Several hatchways later, my escorts dragged me through the lowest level of the warship. Weaving around coils of cables, live chickens and geese, and water stores, we had to stoop beneath the low rafters. Near the center of the ship, the crawlspace opened into a large area with more headroom.
As we turned the corner, the dank air perspired with the stench of too many unwashed bodies crammed together in close quarters.
Then I saw them.
Confined in one large hold behind an iron gate, sweaty men stood shoulder to shoulder, coughing, stinking, and spreading disease. I took in the shadowed landscape of unkempt beards, gold earrings, jackboots, distrusting glares…
Captured pirates.
Lord Cutler was a pirate hunter. Of course, I wasn’t his only prize. But twenty…thirty…forty of my kind? It was horrifying.
Worse, he meant to imprison me with the animals. I was one of them, after all, driven by the thrill of raiding, killing, and raising hell on the high seas.
With one distinct difference.
Dozens of eyes slid in my direction. Hungry, predatory eyes that saw only a female, a body to rut, and nothing more. I wouldn’t survive a night in that cage.
The lieutenants shoved me toward the gate.
My heart slammed in my throat. “How long have they been in there?”
“Some of them a month or longer.” One of the officers jabbed a key into the lock.
The clicking sound drove my pulse too hard, too fast, terrorizing my veins. Memories flooded, transporting me back into the body of a fourteen-year-old girl fighting for her virtue beneath the brutality of the Marquess of Grisdale.
My skin shuddered, tightening and pulling away from my bones. I refused to be violated like that again. Not by a marquess. Not by forty pirates. Not by any man.
But what if I didn’t have a choice?
A scream wavered on the end of my tongue, urging me to call for the commodore and beg him for mercy. But he’d ordered me down here, knowing exactly what awaited. He would grant no quarter, and my useless demands for special treatment would only reveal my crippling fear.
One thing I could not do was enter that enclosure showing weakness. The pirates would scent it, feed