deserved to hang. I wish I would’ve been there to witness it.”
My arm moved on its own, swinging swiftly, furiously, careening knuckles across his nose with a wet, blood-spewing crack.
He blinked, and I found myself looking up into a face that was too relaxed to be bleeding. But his hot blue eyes told a different story, one I didn’t register until his fist crashed into my jaw.
The strike hit hard enough to send me flying backward. My arms and legs whirled to remain vertical as hair tumbled into my face. Gasping, choking for air, I crumpled over my knees. By the time I righted again, the throb in my cheek had spread into my entire skull.
Outrage, exhilaration, and pure, unadulterated joy rushed through me. Nothing made my blood sing like a man who wasn’t afraid to fight a woman.
With a high-pitched shrill, I charged. He met me mid-air, our fists crashing into flesh. We hit and kicked with the force of lightning, losing our footing, and wrestling each other to the floor.
The pain wouldn’t surface until later. For now, all that existed was the ferocity to hurt him until he understood that no man used my father as an insult.
His muscled forearm connected with my throat. I threw a leg, an elbow, spluttering for air, and cursing him through each strike.
There was a lot more movement and effort on my end. Meanwhile, he seemed to be deflecting, redirecting, and flowing punches like a trained fighter with the veins in the backs of his hands and arms standing out like blue rivers.
He wasn’t going easy on me. He just didn’t have to try as hard, for he had the advantage of weight and brawn. But he couldn’t match my determination.
If he needed proof of that, it came in the form of my foot in his groin. I kicked him with all the strength I could gather and waited for his roar.
But I was only met with silence. I wasn’t sure he was breathing. Then he did.
In a breath that arrived in a blur, he slammed me onto my back and collared my neck with steel fingers.
“Oh, darling.” He ran the tip of his nose along my throbbing jaw and whispered in my ear, “You’re going to regret that.”
His other hand wrapped around my tangled curls, and he dragged me across the floor by my hair. I kicked and spat and thrashed into the legs of passing furniture as he hauled me aft through the length of his private quarters.
“What are you doing?” I clawed at the fist in my hair, my eyes watering from the agony of the strands ripping from my scalp. “Let me go!”
He dumped me onto an outdoor balcony that overlooked the endless black ocean. Before I could scramble away, his knee came down onto my throat. The other landed across my thighs, effectively pinning me to the planks.
A thick length of rope appeared in his hands, the end of which he efficiently tied around my wrists. I fought him, demanding answers, and cursing him to hell and back.
He didn’t give me his gaze until he’d perfected the knot around my arms. Then he lifted his head.
Blue eyes blazed down at me, and God help me, those gorgeous, hypnotizing features… He had not one feeling among them. He didn’t blink. Didn’t scowl. Didn’t smile.
I’d been captured by an inhuman, unfeeling non-smiler.
Tailwind blew off the warship’s wake, rustling his black hair and crusting my wheezing inhales with salt.
He lifted me in his arms and stepped to the balcony rail. “Do you know what happens right before the world starts spinning?”
My pulse went wild.
“No.” With my wrists tied and the waves crashing beyond the rail, I definitely did not want to know.
“You fall.”
“No!” My heart stopped as I grappled him with bound hands. But it was no use.
He raised me over the edge and hurled me into the sea.
The rope caught, cutting off my scream and yanking the wind from my lungs.
As I continued to spiral toward the moonlit sea, the tension in the line wrenched my arms over my head and thankfully, blessedly, slowed my descent.
Too bad my heart didn’t slow. The panicked thing galloped dangerously, shaking in my chest and making me dizzy.
The fall seemed to last as long as the one I’d taken earlier from the gunwale of Jade. But this time, darkness shrouded the waves below.
No sane person went willingly into the ocean at night. Not with the deadly undercurrents, venomous creatures with soft bodies and