Siren Ch. 07

"You don't want to hurt me," she stated as if it were something new.

"Yes, Kenna, we have spoken on that subject before."

"You lied," she said, nearly cutting the end of his sentence off.

He glared at her. "I have never caused you injury, Kenna. And my intentions are as I stated them in that regard."

"About your parents," she said again speaking over him. This brought him to a halt, though the same could not be said for her. "You said that there were no lasting lessons learned from the story of your patronage, that the civil contract is nonsense because nothing was learned, wrongs were simply acts that had their consequences and required no response from you or anyone else who had suffered these natural occurrences and indeed reacting to these ills with a sense of injury would lead to their own demise."

He longed to snap back at her to get to the point but he bit his tongue against sounding petulant.

"But it isn't true. You care if I'm hurt because you have a sense of what is right and wrong, feeble though it may be. You are indeed concerned with not repeating the sins of your father." Her eyes were alight and he found no beauty in it. "You spoke as if you harbored no ill will because that would lead you down the same path as Captain Dougray but there has been some effect, some consequence." She was intelligent enough not to mention his mother. He discovered his hands clenched in fists and released them.

"Your premise is flawed," he said, face and tone set against her again. He would not entertain this further. "The connection between injury to your body and the actions of my father is presuming a great deal that you do not know." She opened her mouth but he continued. "What is more, my argument remains sound. There is no justice, divine, civil or otherwise. Pursuing it is folly; there is no reparation to palliate the damaged party, and anyone trying to do so will likely find they have only compounded their own tragedy."

He shifted to walk towards her. "And that is exactly the point; this is your tragedy, not mine. The world does not care either way. And so your fantasy about court sentences for those who have wronged you is only distracting you from the very act of survival because you eschew acceptance."

"For some of us, fantasies of escape are the only things that keep us alive." It was clear she was no longer speaking of him. He watched her shoulders curl a bit and the somber lines of her face draw downwards. She crossed her arms, and turned away from him.

There was a moment he wanted to reach out, but he had to consider the position he had only just regained after her prodding into his past. He turned his back, intent on the door.

"Don't leave on my account." The tone in her voice was the same, unwavering from her initial line of questioning. He looked over his shoulder. "Second watch isn't for at least an hour so you can't expect me to accept that you are leaving to attend to some pressing matter."

He turned, arm over arm over chest and stood his ground. Perhaps foolishly so, but leaving her in such a state was distasteful. "And what would you like me to occupy my time with here?" He ran his eyes up and down her form, another challenge to her.

"Answer me one question."

He tipped his lip up on one side. "I don't see why I should entertain one who is clearly in such bad humor."

"I will answer one of yours, truthfully and completely." Now that was something.

"Very well, Kenna, ask your question."

She took him in before she began. "When you requested The Changeling of St. Ann, did you know that Yanno's words would remind you of your father?"

She'd done it. After weeks of trying to sound like him, she'd managed to speak her supposition with the firmness of her conviction. He was impressed, or he would have been if the question hadn't surprised him so. The uncomfortable feeling, which had been insidious earlier when she'd begun, threaded itself fully beneath his ribs. It was one he had long buried, one that had no place here, on his ship.

Her body was too small to represent an obstacle. The crew could be allayed with his abrupt choice by simply admitting she was a siren all along and had returned to the sea after she promised to spare the crew. Hell, it could even solve Abbott's little intended uprising. She and the feeling would be gone, swallowed by the waves, never to trouble him again.

"No, I did not," he said instead.

She nodded, her severity breaking. "Thank you," she breathed. The relief in her face betrayed her assumption that he would not have answered her.

The clawing feeling inside him did not abate as her tension seemed to. Part of him howled for revenge on her, another wanted to seek distraction fully seated inside her cunt. It occurred to him that there was no reason he could not do both. There was some breach in her defenses now and he would be a fool to pass this up.

"On the bed, Kenna," he said in a low voice, hiding darker tones that would only serve to terrify her. He wanted to rip her apart, but there was more than one way to do that.

*

Kenna moved towards the berth without balking at his command. He'd answered her, and she felt some duty to uphold her end of the bargain. What was more, she had shoved her fingers into the eye of a sleeping beast and he had not taken her hand as payment.

She sat back on her hands, her legs bent, thighs meeting though not pressed together. He looked at her with an expression she did not fully recognize, but he had revealed something of himself at her design and not his own. It was a first and Kenna knew the swell of true victory.

He removed his shirt in time with his first step towards her. The quality of his approach was unfamiliar. The predatory gleam was tainted somehow, darker, and the slice of fear up the back of her neck reminded her it was not long ago she'd thought to forsake that fear.

"On your stomach." The command came hard and again she felt the blade at her back again.

She turned stiffly as he came to stand over her, muscles coiling in anticipation of whatever retribution he intended. She cursed herself again, for her feelings in that moment after his answer, the distinct lack of righteousness when the one who wronged her admitted his own past injuries. Relief had been followed too closely by gratitude and something she might have described as affection. And here she was, a foolish idiot, face down with a monster at her back.

Kenna tried to steady her breathing but fear kept her control from her. His boots fell against the deck and the sound of his belt loosening made her flinch. Dread curled inside her as she fought to keep herself in position. He promised he wouldn't hurt her. But that was not true. He'd only said he had no interest, not that he'd never employ those methods.

The berth dipped as he took his place behind her, his bare legs caging her own, a hand pressing in next to her back. There was no quarter for her. Even before he touched her she felt as though each inch of skin was alight with the potential of feeling. Panic melted into something else; her body begging to press into him, to spread her wet thighs and show him how his claiming effected it so.

When his lips brushed over her scars she gasped harshly, the fear of worse ebbing as it had before. He rested his hand in the small of her back, the muscles beneath it knotted and quaking. He did not comfort her, but continued his kisses across the raised flesh. The feeling was both odd and soothing in the lack of violence. The arousal her fear had somehow stirred up took over and her next gasp was softer as the tip of his tongue met the end of the scar at the curve of her lower ribs.

Sensation in her scars was more sensitive and somehow less precise at the same time. She felt the tip of his tongue run across the ridge of another and she gasped. It was strange but arousing all the same. His hand on her back slid up, skimming softly over her skin.

Her mind swirled in confusion. It felt good, too good. She had not imagined this reaction to her question, as there was something menacing in his intention as he came at her. And yet he'd never touched her so gently before. Her body sang for her surrender under his mouth and fingers, begging her to end the constant strain of resisting what she knew he could give her and could so easily be confused with true affection and feeling.

She wanted to fight the pleasure radiating across her skin, her complacency in his attention to her disfigurements, to keep him from igniting sensations from the last place he should be able to. But it felt so right, and embracing it such sweet relief.

Kenna realized she was leaning into his touch. The feeling of his slow caresses and precise kisses was oddly exciting. He lavished attention, sweet and unhurried, on her greatest source of shame. The light touch over the alternating levels of feeling she had in her back and the way his tongue dragged along the furrows left by the cane made her shudder.

"Roland," she gasped. He never paused as he worked his way down, each line of skin getting equal attention from his mouth and fingers. Kenna tried to push herself into him, to increase the contact and answer the coiling desire inside her. Her shame faded, the anticipation and arousal potent when combined with the seductive draw of release from all she'd borne since the day her husband had struck her for the first time.

For the first time since he'd claimed her she let her mind agree with her body, to accept what he offered without fear or opposition.

His tongue skimmed the lowest scar, peppering light kisses across the puffy skin. She wriggled as much as she dared, though his hand still kept her mostly pinned to the bed.

"Tell me what you want, Kenna." His voice rolled over her skin; his kisses continued down the small of her back.

This order should have stopped her; he was giving her a moment to let her wishes be known. She should have considered her response, reeled in her senses and answered him with a demand for what she most desired; to be free from him. She should not have allowed his moment of truthfulness to burrow its way inside her, permitting her to reveal something deeper, something she could not admit to herself.

She whimpered and twisted, trying to get closer to his mouth. He held her tighter and his mouth drifted across the swell of one creamy buttock leaving a trail of soft kisses in its wake. He licked her right where her leg began making her jump as arousal shot from the sensitive skin up to her heated core.

"Oh, please," she whispered, words tumbling without thought, without calculus. Kenna was gone; the pieces she had so tightly constructed, layer after layer of disguise, crumbled beneath their own weight as he picked his way towards those hidden corners of her mind.

"Say it," he said, his voice tight as he gripped her, pulling her onto her knees. Kenna raised herself up on her arms to follow.

There was no thought left to stop her, no preformed barrier to hold her back. Her body had submitted, and her fight had crushed itself under its own weight.

She tried to push back but he held her still. "Please, Roland! I want you," she confessed, mindless and deaf to her own words.

She felt, rather than heard, his growl. His teeth pressed lightly into the swell of her buttock, his lips tracing a fiery trail down to her weeping slit. She called out as his tongue crept between her nether lips, the sensation strange and wonderful in this position. He slid his tongue into her channel which clamped down immediately, a flood of arousal running through her. Her soft sounds were getting louder as he lowered himself further, still holding her still, and his tongue curled around her pulsating nub. She called out in earnest then, her arms shaking as she tried to hold her body up from the bed. It did her no good.

When he closed his lips over that pearl of pleasure she was lost, the orgasm ripping through her body entirely unhampered for the first time. Her arms collapsed and her upper body fell forward. She rested her forehead on her hands as he sucked and nibbled her sensitive flesh until she thought she might die if her peak lasted any longer. He released her as she started to shake, whimpering as the overly-sensitive folds begged for reprieve.

She felt him rise up above her, and despite the languid feeling that suffused her, shifted her hips, allowing her heat to come up against his hard flesh.

He groaned, rubbing his length against the slick offerings of her sex. She gasped again, feeling the turgid steel against her softness. "Kenna." Her name rolled from his chest, the arousal in his voice both surprised and exhilarated her. His hand smoothed up her back, tangling in her hair and pulling on it just enough to bring her head back and make her groan.

"Oh god, please, Roland." She shoved herself back towards him, completely out of control. The senseless release was too tempting in this state, a drug against everything that weighed her down. He released her hair and clasped her hips tightly and she felt his heated skin pull away. And then he thrust into her, filling her greedy hole in one powerful move. Kenna screamed into the mattress as he began to pound her from behind. He felt immense inside her and the stretch was nearly painful but it did nothing to diminish her need for more.

His hands gripped her, pulling her back even as he pushed forward, the impact jarred her, her skin alight with the impacts of his own. "Oh god, oh yes." She gripped the sheets under her fingers, her body tensing once again. A great wave of pleasure rose up deep inside her, rolling through her in uncontrollable surges as muscle, skin and bone were buffeted in the storm of his creation. She was adrift, the terror of losing her tether to herself should have grounded her but it pushed her higher, farther than she could have thought to go. Her body shook beneath his fingers and she called out his name as her peak crashed over her.

He brought his hands up her side, slowing his pace ever so slightly. She found herself dragged back and up so her back was pressed against his chest, his knees keeping her legs wide, his shaft buried deep inside her. He buried his head in the crook of her neck, his mouth latching onto her skin there as he began to move in and out of her again, the position finding previously unexplored places inside her.

She lost the ability to define his touches and simply felt him everywhere.

He took full advantage of her newly exposed breast, kneading the mounds and catching her nipples between his fingers making her moan louder. He used his hold on her to move her into him as he pushed his hips forward, burying himself over and over between her stretched thighs. Kenna pushed back as well, her gasps and moans filling the room as he worked his mouth across her shoulder. One of his hands grasped hers and slid it down between her thighs. Their fingers intertwined and he forced hers to rub her clit, his larger hand controlling their movement.

Her head fell back, resting on his shoulder, her neck bared to his devouring lips. The fingers pressing roughly on her clit sent the heated pleasure spinning out of control once more. Roland never ceased moving against her; she felt so full of him. She screamed into his clasping hand as she came, never having felt him anticipate her release. His fingers were tight against her cheek and he moved faster. She could feel his shaft disappearing into her at the tips of her fingers, her body impaled over and over again. The air she sucked through her nose was not enough for her pleasure-drunk body and black spots danced over her already-cloudy vision. She did not care. Nothing existed for these moments, no past, no pain, nothing but two bodies pressed together, seeking their own mutual ruin. He groaned her name in her ear as he came, his fluid movements coming undone as he jerked inside her.

The pair fell forward, though he held her tightly around the waist and caught himself from falling on top of her with a hand braced against the bed.

Kenna felt lightheaded and boneless. She was breathing hard, matching his breaths as he remained above her, hovering over her prone form. He let her slide to the mattress on her front. Before today it would have been unnatural for her to lie this way, her back exposed to his gaze. But now she did not consider moving, she could not think of anything so mechanical.

The oblivion she sought took her quickly, before her mind cleared of all he'd done, of what she'd felt and confessed aloud. There would be reckoning when she awoke and examined her actions. The question he had yet to ask loomed at the edge of her awareness; another chance for him to delve deeper, to pry past her defenses he had so resoundingly shattered. But in that moment, lying on her front, her muscles long since past use, her mind's troubles drowned by thought-destroying pleasure, she felt peace and it was enough.

Roland watched her eyes close, heavy lashes coming to rest against flushed cheeks. He moved off the berth and away from her, his heart still pounding in his chest, the beast inside howling in victory. He could not join the revelry, settling on grim satisfaction for having finally gotten true submission from her. There was work to be done.

He pulled his clothing back on, turning his mind away from dwelling on the sound of his name on her lips, the push of her hips back towards him. Despite the distractions, he had heard the bell for the next watch sound out during their coupling, and the work above deck was more important than this.

He did not look back at her before quitting the room, the temptation no longer of interest. He made his way above deck, the cool humid air whipping around him as he emerged topside. Up on the forecastle, Luke Stephens waited for him, spyglass in hand.

He nodded to Roland and handed it over. "You were right about the rudder, Toby says likely by tomorrow."

Roland nodded, "Have Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Butler sent to help. I think Toby could use a few more hands."

Luke betrayed a little surprise at the choice of two specific men but he didn't question it. "Aye, Captain." He turned to stern and looked out at the churning grey sea below them. "You might keep an eye out for Dooley, he's been prowling around muttering since you sent them on their merry way."

"I will take it under advisement." There was some leftover irritation from the events of the past few hours and Roland was distracted enough to let it slip. Stephens cast an eye over him.

"Berth too small for two, Captain?" the man asked with a laugh in his voice.

"I don't know what you mean, Stephens." Roland reverted back to his good natured front. It had not taken him long to discover he needn't share any truth about himself for the men to feel like he was open with them. Though deflecting their questions without them noticing was easier when the mention of his bed didn't bring to mind the form of the one currently sleeping on it.

The man chuckled. "Never did find myself with the same weakness for fire tops as Dougray and I'm not surprised one of them ended up being his end, especially not one so fine." Roland arranged his face into a blank sentiment of pleasantness. "Voice like an angel as well. You keeping her aboard once we hit Nassau? She's been a right asset for morale."

Roland braced his hands on the gunwale, eyes fixed on the far horizon where grey clouds gave way to the ever-receding blue as they sailed further along the edge of the storm. "Anything to keep them from their dice," he said grimly. The fate of Mrs. Bell was not one he contemplated aloud.

"Aye, but we've had all sorts on board to keep them entertained. Remember that piper we got off that schooner with the tobacco? Kept him for a good while." Stephens grinned. "Granted he weren't so pretty or so skilled, but after a month the men didn't want to hear him more than once a week if that. Your girl runs all over the ship with stories and songs all day and it takes a heart of stone like Abbott not to enjoy it."