by Maren Smith
"You may not cum," he reminded her, when his squeeze elicited another full-bodied quiver.
She couldn't help but ask. "What happens if I do?"
He chuckled. "Do you really want to know?"
Yes, though she already knew she would fight with every over-stimulated nerve of her being not to. Not until he deemed her his good girl once more.
His. She tightened her hands in the folds of her skirts, tiny goosebumps popping out all over everywhere. He brought another bite of curry to her lips but she turned away, looking back at him over her shoulder instead. "Is this how you punish all your girls back at the Castle?"
He ate the curry she had snubbed, but something in the way he averted his eyes suggested he did so only to avoid the question. "No," he eventually confessed. "Little girls misbehave at the Castle so they can be spanked. Were I home right now, were you anyone but who you are, I would have an entire dungeon at my disposal—canes, floggers, hoists from which to suspend you for daring to try my patience. Being forbidden to cum may not feel like much of a punishment now, but I have been gentle with you, Maddy. I have not pushed your body to its very ends. I have not made you shake, sweat, scream. But I could… if you wanted me to. If you needed me to."
His hand beneath her skirt squeezed, pinching in around her clit. Maddy gripped the edge of the table to keep from grabbing his arm.
"I could strip you naked right here, tie you to this table, force your body to ride the waves of pleasure, bring you to brink after brink, not once or twice, but dozens of times, over and over and over again, without ever granting your release. I could do that. I have done it. I could tickle you with feathers, fuck you with ice, cover every inch of your body in clamps and rip them all off again. There have been times when I have orchestrated gangbangs, letting man after man, cock after cock, ride my assigned submissive until all she—or he—could do was beg and plead for the privilege of an orgasm. Not for a few minutes or hours, but for days, and I've still denied it. But then, I've always been a game to them. Am I a game to you, Maddy?"
Now it was her turn to avoid the question. Her fingertips played along the table's edge, aimlessly tracing the woodgrain.
"Sure," she lied, knowing she had to say something. But this didn't feel like a game. It didn't even feel like a vacation fling anymore—something to be enjoyed and then forgotten on the flight home. Heat burned her face. She doubted if she'd ever be able to forget him. "What else could it be?"
"Real," he countered without pause. "The real you interacting with the real me in ways neither of us are comfortable doing."
Maddy tried to laugh, but it didn't come out right. "I don't know you, Dominick. You don't know me—"
"No, I don't." He dropped his fork and reached for his drink. "Tell me about yourself then. Tell me about the man who made you cry on the plane."
A sudden cheer from the bar provided her with something far less dangerous than that to focus on. One of the 'officers' had seized a tavern wench by the arm and, though she struggled, her reluctance was a lie. She was smiling even as she resisted, giving him all the coy consent he needed as he dragged her to the nearest table. A sweep of his arm cleared the dishes and electric candles from the top, then he threw her down.
"Bonds!" he called to a man behind the bar, and a raucous cheer erupted from his fellow soldiers.
"All these stupid floor shows," Maddy said with far more disgust than she actually felt.
"They need the practice," Dominick replied, his dark gaze refusing to leave hers. "You may not enjoy them, but paying guests will expect it."
The tavern wench's shriek was more laughter as three men happily centered her on that newly cleared table, tossing up her skirts to gain access to her ankles and catching at her wrists. The fourth, the soldier who had grabbed her in the first place, took the manacle restraints handed to him by the barkeep and fastened her down. The wench wasn't wearing underwear. Maddy didn't want to notice that, but from how she was positioned and from where Maddy was sitting in the back of the tavern, it was impossible not to.
"Would…" Her breath felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with her silver and white-striped corset. "Would you want to do that to me?"
Beneath her skirt, Dominick relaxed his squeezing hand. He fondled, the caress of his fingertips having no difficulty locating her already pulsing clit. "No." He caught her there, the jolt of so intimate a grip making her sit upright upon his knee. "No, I wouldn't. Considering how you reacted when Emil and Tessa saw you unclothed, I don't believe you'd enjoy being 'forced' to take multiple lovers."
He rolled the tip of his finger around the sensitive head of her, her body providing all the moisture he needed to turn that caress slippery with her own weeping oils.
Unable to help it, needing to see him instead of the show taking place ahead, she looked back over her shoulder again. "Is that the only reason?"
What made her ask, she didn't know, but the answer she saw in the dark storm of his hungry eyes made her breath catch all over again.
"No," he confessed, staring back at her with the most naked combination of reluctance and desire she had ever seen. "No, it's not."
Suddenly, he let her go.
"Chain!" the soldier in the front of the tavern cheered as Dominick stood, throwing Maddy up onto her own unsteady feet. When he took her arm, she offered less resistance than the tavern wench had given her soldier. Despite what he had threatened, he did not bend her over the table. He drew her deeper into the back of the tavern shadows, retreating behind a wooden post, where drapes of red velvet blocked the dim flickering of the candlelight further. It cast them into near darkness and blocked the unwelcome intrusion of anyone who might care to watch.
Not that anyone was watching. Every eye in that place was on the woman on the table, on the pull of her limbs as she tested her bonds, on the way her back arched as the front of her blouse was torn open and the bare swells of her breasts popped free of her costumed corset. Her nipples pebbled, even before the first of her accosters bent to take one in his mouth.
Maddy caught the post with both hands, the velvet drapes absorbing her gasp as Dominick pushed her up to it belly first. His hard body held her there. The heat of his mouth, nipping the back of her neck and then soothing with a suckling kiss, made her nipples swell. She could feel the drawing pulls of his mouth in the ache that filled both tips. The roughness of velvet-shrouded wood wasn't what she wanted beneath her fingers, and yet when she reached back, Dominick seized her wrists. He pinned both to the post above her head. One impatient yank at a time, he waged war on her skirts, fighting to get both gown and shift out from between them and pinning them in the press of his stomach against her back. A chill brush of air swept up the back of her thighs, kissing goosebumps over the swells of her naked buttocks before the bulge of Dominick's trousers scrubbed the contrasting roughness of fabric across them.
"No reluctance here," laughed a soldier as he groped between the tavern wench's legs. His hand came away glistening in the candlelight. "I doubt we'll need much lubrication."
And yet, a pot of lubrication was exactly what the fourth soldier took from the barkeep, as well as a length of thick chain which clattered loudly when he placed it on the table between the woman's quivering thighs. Greasing it liberally, he gave the man at her breast a smack on the head, dislodging him with a pop of broken suction so loud that Maddy could hear it all the way across the room.
The soldier bent over his wench then, looking down into her eyes, brushing a gentle caress across her forehead. What he said to her was too soft for anyone but the lovers—as Maddy in that instant knew them to be—to hear, but it stole her breath when she saw the woman smile and nod.
Or maybe it was Dominick who stole it when Maddy felt the jostling yank that finally forced his trousers open. His ragged breath burned her shoulder. She heard the tear of a plastic condom packet before he nudged her feet wider apart. Whether the egg fell out of her or whether he pulled it free, Maddy couldn't tell. All
she knew was that the touch of that soldier, as he began inserting the chain, link by cool link, into the tavern wench, was far, far gentler than Dominick's invading thrust.
Maddy and the wench both gasped, pleasure in stereo as both were filled. Her eyes closed, blocking out the floor show and locking in the hunger of Dominick's possession as he took her. It could have been a punishment, but the clutch of his hand as he cupped her pussy, forcing her hips back into his pounding rhythm felt anything but guilt-ridden or unpleasant. His breath was in her ear; his moan as she arched to meet him, more erotic than anything this place had to offer.
"Say my name," he growled.
Did he even know what that growl did to her? Her belly tightened, sheer delight radiating through her. "Dominick."
His teeth nipped the shell of her ear. His thrusts turned aggressive. "Say it!"
"Dominick!" she both whispered and cried.
"Master," he corrected, releasing her wrists to catch her breast instead. He tore at the corset ribbons, winning the battle for access.
"Dominick." It was nothing less than heady, the burning heat of his bare skin on hers. When he pinched, that minute torment only made the heated pain that much more exquisite.
"God."
"No." She seized the post with both hands, her fingers twisting in the crimson folds of velvet draping, arching her back to meet him thrust after heady thrust. "You're Dominick. Just Dominick." His groan broke her answering laugh into fractured pants as she felt those first rippling spasms seize her. "My Dominick… mine… mine…"
Her body locked.
"Cum!" he growled and, as if his permission were all she needed, she did. And he did. And that woman across the tavern did, arching and shrieking, wailing out both passion and loss as the soldier yanked the chain from her body, amplifying the intensity of her orgasm and her scream.
Maddy felt the shock of both all the way across the room. She felt it in the ecstasy of that woman's squirting orgasm. She felt it in herself, like an explosion of a thousand dancing stars that started in him and ripped through her. It was in the jerking thrusts of his hips as he rode the waves of both their pleasure. It was in the liquid gush that poured from her. Not a lot, just tickles and trickles that overflowed the palm of his hand and dribbled down, pattering like soft rain upon the floor between their feet.
The rasp of his labored breath burned her shoulder. His kiss, as his diminishing cock slipped back out of her, trembled through her like another orgasm.
"Again," he ordered, his forehead sinking to rest on her shoulder. "Tell me again."
"Mine," she whispered. Her hands slipping from the velvet curtains to grip his hands, the one on her breast, the other on her sex. Helping him tighten his hold.
She'd never felt so owned.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"Ready for this?" Emil called out.
They stood like sheep in a corral, all of them gathered in the courtyard of the governor's manor. Sprawling gardens in full flower spread out to either side of a well-manicured cobblestone street that trailed back down the hillside, winding its way through Fleetwater to the wharf. Over the rooftops, they could see the white canvas sails of the Poxy Strumpet, with its starkly contrasting black pirate flag snapping in the brisk seaside wind. No simple skull and crossbones design, the flag depicted a bone crossed with a sword and a grinning patch-eyed pirate biting down upon the blade.
"This is so scary," a woman behind Maddy whispered. "My heart is racing."
Maddy wasn't afraid, but nor was she immune to the tremor of excitement that visibly rippled through the group. Even knowing it was all fake, watching as a horde of fifty or so bellowing pirates came running up through the middle of town directly toward them, swords in hands, was having its intended effect.
"Those aren't real swords, are they?" a man to her left asked.
They sure looked real. Maddy couldn't take her eyes off the marauding pack, now halfway up the hill. Female employees on the streets in town had begun screaming, amplifying the audio realism of it. Maddy still wasn't scared, but the effort to keep her trembling legs from bolting was taking its toll on her nerves.
"What happens if they fall or run into one another?" another man asked.
"Or one of the guests," the first man continued, heavy disapproval weighing in his tone.
"They'll bend the plastic," Emil supplied, sparing neither insurance agent so much as a glance.
From his place at Emil's side, burly arms folded across his equally burly chest, a striking figure in his dark blue soldier's uniform, Dominick watched them come with a critical eye. "Get rid of the swords," he finally said. "Guests will be just as excited if the pirates come running at them with whips, chains and floggers."
Maddy caught her breath as the pirate mob suddenly crested the end of the governor's driveway, clothing as tattered as if they truly did make their way by hard sea life and frequent battle. Goosebumps peppered her arms, trailing like a lover's fingertips down her back. She looked to Dominick and for the first time that morning, caught him looking back. In the time it took the corner of his mouth to twitch into the barest of smiles, a world of unspoken conversation passed between them. Master had to go to work. Have fun today, even when he couldn't be with her. He winked, and her silly heart soared.
He left them to it without another word. Sauntering down the road, he passed unaffected right through that mass of shouting, fake sword-wielding pirates because no one 'kidnapped' a Master of the Castle. He'd meet them on the ship.
"What if we don't want to go?" one of the attending lawyers asked.
"Resort guests can take refuge at any time within any building," Emil replied. "Only those caught out in the streets will be kidnapped. We, however, are all going because this is part of the tour. So, motion sickness patches on, everybody. Let's go."
It was a very sedate kidnapping, all things considered. The pirates, somewhat winded from having to charge all the way up the hill, exchanged their weapons for the shackles hanging from their belts. As if by unspoken arrangement, they paired off, each pirate coming to take a single prisoner. The one who came at Maddy was Colden, the same young man who had brought her luggage that first day. He grinned, his teeth strikingly white against the backdrop of his sun-tanned face.
"Arr," he menaced with a sultry growl, brandishing his shackles.
"Very smooth." Doing her best not to laugh, she obligingly held out her hands.
"Thanks." He clapped them on her wrists, taking care not to pinch her skin. "It's my first kidnapping."
"I'll never tell," she assured him, falling into line beside him as he drew her out of the group and towards the pirates. The two women directly behind her were giggling, flirting with one another as much as they were flirting with the female pirate taking charge of them.
"Oh come on," Maddy heard Mark exclaim from somewhere behind the lawyers and insurance agents. "This is supposed to be fun."
"Fuck you," Tessa replied, every bit as short and terse as she had been since… well, yesterday.
Glancing over her shoulder, Maddy stole a peek at the irritated redhead and her frowning boyfriend. Holding his hands out so he could be taken captive, Mark shrugged. "Keep this up, babe, and I'm going to leave your ass and find someone who actually enjoys being here."
Whipping around on her heel, Tessa stuck her face into his and hissed, "Who's asking you to stick around?"
"Fine," he snapped.
"Fine!" she snapped back. She yanked away from the pirate trying to slip manacles on her wrists. "Don't touch me!"
The pirate took an immediate step back, holding up both hands in surrender. Shoving past him, Tessa stormed between the two no longer giggling women and walked away. Her angry gaze met Maddy's, but though it looked as if she wanted to say something, she didn't.
Backing up, Maddy gave her plenty of space.
"I want another play partner," Mark said loudly, practically calling that parting shot after her.
Tessa's back stiffened, but she
kept walking. Not back toward the compound, which Maddy half expected, but following instead in Dominick's wake. Fists clenched at her sides, she stomped down the long hill toward the wharf. No one said a word until the buildings of Fleetwater swallowed her from sight.
"This is going to be a fun trip," Colden said cheerfully.
Maddy snorted. "You have no idea."
"No," Mark muttered. "You have no idea."
One of the marauding pirates offered him a sympathetic smack on the back. "Women."
"All right, everybody." The unpleasantness of the scene now over, another pirate (dressed in the slightly fancier coat and feather-plumed hat of a captain) took charge of the group. "Welcome to the pirate portion of today's adventure. My name is Captain Jack Rackham, and I'm your friendly, neighborhood kidnapper for the evening. By now, Emil should have explained how all this works. Because you stayed in the streets, you each have given consent to be captured and may now consider yourself the property of your very own pirate guide. Since it's my ship, I'll be giving the tour once we're all on board. However, at the Cove, it's your guide who will show you around the amenities our part of the resort has to offer, including the dungeons and the different programs our guests will be able to sample. If you want to play pirate, simply sign on with any recruiting officer. Want to be held for ransom? It'll be prison life unlike anything you've ever read about. Want to be a pirate's bitch for the night? I promise, we've got ravaging, pillaging and plundering down to an art. Want to change your mind and stay in the Colony? We have safewords for a reason, and we do pay attention when you use them. At any time, you may change your mind. It doesn't matter if we've only just taken you prisoner, or we're back on the ship, or have sailed all fifty miles back to Pirate Cove. It's our job to make sure you have the time of your life, and if we can't do that or you don't want us to try, then we'll happily return you to the Colony. It's as simple as that." Pirate Jack clapped his hands, rubbing them briskly together. "Is everyone ready to get started? If you get seasick, now's the time to slap those patches on."
