The Acquisition

by Louisa Trent

  And she would give him whatever he wished, without him having to resort to lying, so why bother with the trouble of dishonesty. But fishing? That was quite the tale to swallow.

  She had no choice but to swallow it, as she had swallowed him on the carriage ride home from Boston. She'd had no choice in climaxing, when, in reciprocation, he had put his mouth to her loins and pleasured her in return.

  She had screamed her release to the carriage ceiling.

  It wasn't right! It wasn't fair. But it was the way it was. She loved him.

  A week into his latest absence, seeing she was miserable without him, Peggy divulged the sea captain was due back in port the following day.

  Regardless of his instructions for her to stay put, Harry intended to meet him on the pier. She was sick and tired of him taking off and leaving her, and it was about time she did something about it!

  Harry arrived at the wharf while it was still dark outside, just a little after four in the morning. Josh's fishing schooner had already docked and the crew had departed--save for Josh and the lady he was bidding adieu.

  An assignation, she decided, watching as Joshua bent and respectfully kissed his companion's cheek under the half-light of the moon.

  She was a Quaker, dressed plain and simply, beautiful in a quiet and elegant way, a lady an affluent gentleman would proudly wed. They were not lovers yet: Joshua would never bed a virtuous lady without vows.

  A hand clutched to her belly, Harry waited for the Quaker lady to walk down the plank, then made her way down the pier to the schooner.

  * * * *

  One end of the cloth in his mouth, Joshua tied off the new bandage on his upper arm, the first one having soaked through. The injury, the slash of a bounty hunter's knife not dodged quickly enough, was not too deep, but staunching the flow of blood had proved difficult. After the rousing success of their mission, he had dismissed his crew to celebrate their accomplishment at the local taverns, so he could doctor himself alone. Appearing weak before his men was something a sea captain learns early on not to do.

  While struggling into his white cotton shirt before the portal, he spied a lad, who looked an awful lot like the Harry of old, climb up the gangplank, a basket slung over a slender arm.

  Tight-lipped and grim, he waited for her arrival.

  "I have brought you something to break the fast," his little whore announced, as she trounced into his captain's cabin without so much as a tap on wood.

  The basket she carried was raised for his inspection.

  "So you have, but I left you strict instructions to seclude yourself in the house while I was gone. You have deliberately disobeyed me. Again."

  "I did obey you. Until today. Where have you been? And do not tell me fishing off the Grand Banks either, for I shan't believe you! "

  Though he trusted Harry--perhaps not with the silverware, but most certainly with his life--he was not in a position to confide in her. For the sake of her safety and for the sake of others who depended upon his silence, he could not talk freely. "I was off adding treasures to my collection," he said evasively; it was not fully the truth but not fully a lie either. At any rate, it was the best he could do.

  Her arms crossed under her bosom, the voluptuous shift of breasts told him she was naked under the shirt. "Seeing another woman, from what I could see," she snipped.

  So. Jealousy had instigated this visit. But how much had she really seen?

  "I beg your pardon?" he asked, trying to see how much she knew. He had docked under the cover of night for a reason--how long after anchoring had she arrived? Had she seen his cargo slip quietly down the plank and into the covered wagon?

  "I saw you kiss that Quaker lady!"

  "So?"

  "You must have taken her sailing with you. But you aren't lovers yet; I could tell. Do you intend to ask for her hand in marriage before taking her to bed?"

  He said precisely, "If I choose to see other women, that is my prerogative. You are my whore, not my wife." Let Harry think what she would; a clandestine tryst served as the perfect cover.

  Unless Harry discovered the identity of the Quaker lady, and linked her name with his.

  Harry's curiosity would not only endanger the lady, but would also jeopardize everything he had worked for all these years.

  "Harry," he said sternly, as a captain of a whaler would say to an unruly seaman. "Come here to me."

  Even in her rough shirt and breeches, up close, there was no mistaking Harry for a lad. She glided to him, hips undulating, a sensual, ungovernable, unmanageable temptress. "You must not gossip about what you saw here tonight, particularly not to your brother." Ben was a drunkard, and when he was in his cups, he talked too loudly and too much.

  "I will tell whomever I please."

  "No, you most decidedly will not. Not if you wish our present arrangement to continue. My private life must remain private. I have my reputation and the lady's reputation to consider. You would know nothing about that, a good reputation being amongst the things you sold long ago."

  "I can give you what she cannot," she said defiantly. "That good Quaker lady will never know how to satisfy you in bed."

  "And you do, I suppose."

  She removed her wool cap, shook out her red hair. "I was a bad little girl, Joshie. I disobeyed you. Don't you think I need to be punished?"

  "Actually, yes I do. How do you propose I do that?"

  She smiled coquettishly. "As a captain, how do you ordinarily punish a seaman who breaks a rule on board a whaler?"

  Josh took a steadying breath. "The penalty for going against a direct order is lashing."

  "Then, that is what I deserve. You are a man of principle. You shouldn't let my sex sway you from the righteous course of action."

  She was taunting him, and for that reason alone she deserved a whipping. But she was right--her chronic disobedience had demanded discipline long ago. He had never carried through on any punishment, because his soft feelings for her had always swayed him from the proper and just course of action.

  He could not back down, not this time. He needed Harry to make him a promise not to tell what she had seen tonight, and he would do what he must to wrench her word out of her. A jealous female is a dangerous female, and in her spite, Harry could bring trouble to a good woman's door. This he would not allow.

  "The whipping will be administered with a rattan across the buttocks. Five strokes."

  She smiled. "Fair enough."

  "I am glad we are in agreement," he said dryly. Thinking she would back down when she got a gander of what was used for a seaman's punishment, Josh went to get the switch.

  When he turned back around, she was already naked, down to her bare feet. The tart!

  A seaman removes his shirt for the sting of the cat-o'nine-tails, for the lash of the leather whip, for the welt-raising bite of the rattan. To treat a female the same made him ill. But Harry was a whore, and whores were not known for their discretion. He needed her word, dammit!

  "My private life must remain private, Harry."

  "Then you should take more care not to kiss in public. I can hardly wait to tell Ben what I saw."

  The rattan Josh gripped in his hand was a flexible bamboo reed soaked in water and bent into a handle on top, split at the striking end to form two tongues. From the same cabinet, he had also taken out three lengths of hemp. Onboard ship, the miscreant was lashed before the mast, in full view of the assembled crew. Many times, the humiliation of the public spectacle, the ignominy of being tied, acted as more of a deterrent against additional mischief than did the pain itself.

  Why would she not back down? Apologize for disobeying him? Swear to him she would keep what she saw a secret?

  He gazed upwards. "That gear hook-and-eye will do for your arms." His eyes fell. "The cot on one side and the chest of drawers on the other will hold your feet in place."

  He flicked his wrist and the rattan bounced, cut a swath in the air. If she moved, turned, the supple bamboo might
very well miss its intended target, perhaps wrapping instead around her hip to sear her belly or go higher and score an unprotected breast. A female's nipples were sensitive, he knew; Harry's would be unusually so because of their enormous size. A misplaced stroke would cut into that tender flesh. Could she not see the danger here?

  Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  Onboard ship, as was his responsibility as captain, he carried out discipline, but whipping was not a directive Joshua gave easily. All those previous occasions dimmed in comparison to this horror.

  Yet without her promise, he would mete out judgment, a punishment that would sting, that would cause her to wear raised welts on her posterior for several days afterwards.

  Harry clapped her hands together. "Well, let's get on with this, shall we? Afterwards, we can dig into that lovely breakfast I brought. You must be quite starved after your assignation. Unrequited lust does that to a man," she said cheerfully, going to stand under the gear hook. "But you will work out your tension and satisfy your appetites on me, will you not?" She held out her wrists to him.

  In a daze, he looped her wrists together with the cord and applied a nautical knot. He threaded the end of the hemp through the eye and pulled the cord, thereby forcibly raising Harry's long, slender arms overhead until they were stretched taut at the shoulder; her red underarm hair no longer hidden from view. Another pull on the cord and the gentle scoop of the underarm leveled out to a plain. Once more he yanked on the rope, and this time large breasts lifted to an exaggerated height. If he tightened the cord any more, Harry would hang suspended in mid-air.

  A great black swell of violence rose in him tonight, feelings of impotence bringing those dark stirrings to the surface. A reward-hungry bounty hunter had found him out, wounded him, and in the ensuing fight Josh had very nearly lost his cargo. Luckily his face had not been detected, so he could continue his campaign, but now he had Harry to worry over, another name added to his list of concerns.

  Joshua made sure Harry's feet remained solidly fixed. He didn't want her suspended, didn't want her feet to dangle, didn't want to force her onto her toes. He wanted her body taut so when he flexed his wrist and let the rattan go, the bamboo would strike the flesh brightly and snap immediately back without lingering and causing secondary damage. A clean whipping, no accidental tears in the flesh, no misdirected strokes, no permanent scars.

  Permanent scars! Good Lord! Was he actually going through with this? Would he actually take a rattan to Harry's flesh?

  Yes, for he had no other choice. She had not backed down, and neither would he.

  So that her upper torso would not shift, Joshua tied the cord off around the metal hook. And then squatting, he tied one well-turned ankle to the bottom of his bunk, the other to the base of his stacked chest so that her limbs were split.

  He could have tied her ankles together. He needn't have spread her open. Ankles together is a far more dignified pose for a woman.

  He tightened the cord until her thighs were as far apart as he could make them; humiliation was a deterrent, especially to the female sex.

  At the arms draped, at the foot bound, spread-eagled in a standing position, she was secured.

  Only an arrogant man would fail to make sure.

  To test the restraints, Josh drew a shaky hand from her ankles up the outside of her legs, then back down. Her body remained taut.

  Still, so as not to neglect duty, he repeated the same motion on the inside of her legs, his eyes lifting moodily to the juncture of her body, to those sprightly red pubic curls. The separated folds no longer hid anything. The clitoris, plump and rosy pink, was right there for him to see, nestled at the top of the notch.

  Harry was no longer an innocent, no longer pure. And Josh wouldn't lie to himself, he hated she had sold the temple of her body to paying customers. He had wanted to be the only one to worship within. He had coveted that moist passage, dreamt about it, spilled his seed while masturbating to the memory of it. He had hungered for that tight, wet slit for seven damnable years. The lusty passion of her pussy--he'd wanted it to be his, and his alone. Exclusively. Why had she given what should have been his to countless other men?

  Flattened to her belly, he rubbed his sleepless, haggard face downward, until his cheekbone nested in her pubic hair. Wishing things might have been different between them, he wound his fingers into her soft curls and pulled upwards, until the lips of her sex met his mouth.

  He kissed it. Kissed her cunt deep and hard, sent his tongue up into it, found her clitoris and gave the nub his teeth. Cupping her pelvis with a palm, he spanned her womanhood, the opening to her body under the heel of his hand, his fingers encompassing the pudendum.

  She moaned, full out, a woman stretched to the limit of her endurance, a woman about to come.

  His cock lanced.

  Wet from his kiss, saturated with her own wanton juices, creamy with excitement, the lips of her sex already separated, he pushed a finger up and in, all the way in, as far as he could reach. He added two more digits, all the way in, as far as they would go. Three fingers in, the heel of his hand rubbing the opening, the thumb stroking the clitoris.

  Bound by the ropes, she started to writhe. Jaw raised, arms pulling against the overhead restraint, she was beautiful. Irresistible. He wanted to fuck her 'til she screamed.

  Withdrawing his touch from her vagina, he knelt behind her at eye-level with her seductive bottom. His man's temptation. Her ass. He drew his finger down the crevice, delved the crack, found the delicate hole, fingered the rim.

  "Oh, yes," she groaned, and her body snapped against the restraining ropes. "Do me just like that. I know that's what you need, what you want. You will never get it from your Quaker lady like you may have it from me."

  "Cease," he cautioned her, his erection hammering for release.

  He gave the puckering his attention. Mouth first--a deep kiss--followed by a finger penetration.

  "Mmm," she purred.

  "I will need to get your hair out of the way of the rattan," he told her softly.

  Her red mass of hair had been stuffed under her woolen cap and now it was tousled and disarrayed, hanging well past her bottom. He started to collect the strands, curling tendril by curling tendril, the ache in his groin turned to a hot spike of agony that burned the length of his cock. Gone from her this last time a week, the time before that the same, his manhood had suffered the absence of sex, the emptiness of being without her. He had to have her now!

  Still, he persevered, doing what he must do, what must be done.

  Blasphemy to catch even a strand of that beautiful red hair in the switch! The rattan would slice through, severing the lock. What would it do to her flesh?

  Christ! Would Harry forever be his hell on earth?

  Swallowing again, harder this time, he collected the hair into two sections and brought them forward to drop over her shoulders in front. Now cleared of her woman's glory, his fingertips lingered on her nape, his gaze drifting lower.

  Her back! The elegant serpentine curves encased in the palest of silk, skin so much lighter and more finely textured than his. Had she never noticed the difference in color gradations between her translucent white skin and the opaque dark cast of his?

  Within him beat the blood of another continent, some bright hot land quite apart from the cooler clime of her ancestral origins. There was more than one heritage in his background. Did she not notice? Wonder?

  The time was not right for that discussion. Too caught up in primitive urges, the call to mate, the need to protect, the terrifying prospect of exacting punishment, he smoothed his palm downward over her spine, over to the womanly flare of hip; how he loved her curvaceous shape.

  Harry the thief. Harry the whore. Harry the feisty wench from the wharves. Front hole. Back hole. Both were his punishment. Both were his pleasure. She was the beginning and the end ... the cause of his everything.

  Including what portended to be a great loss of blood.

 
For to deliver the most precise strokes possible when he flayed her rosy bottom, he would need to use his dominant arm, the very one the bounty hunter had injured, the one that even now bled fresh into the bandage. But Harry needed discipline.

  And he would always give Harry whatever it was she needed...

  He only hoped he didn't pass out first.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Three lengths of rope immobilized her body, but she could still do some tricks.

  For instance, she could tilt her pelvis, thereby bringing her buttocks up, an open, if vulgar invitation.

  Her disciplinarian groaned at the unsubtle summons.

  She laughed. "You know you want it that way."

  He palmed her bottom; she actually heard him swallow. Oh, he wanted it all right. She knew he did; already his thumb was at the crack.

  Another hoist of her hips. "Go on! Your chaste Quaker lady will not give you sodomy! But I will. Gladly." She went up on her toes, making it easier for him to engage her.

  His finger rubbed into her anus.

  "Mmm..." she murmured, a further enticement to end his reluctance. This time, she would fight for her man; this time, she would not let him sail away from her, into the arms of a lady who would give him ennui within the space of a day.

  "You want this," she coaxed. "Do not deny it."

  He didn't; he didn't say anything. But his magnificent cock, now released from his breeches, prodded her from the rear, the bulbous head wet with his excitement.

  "Send it into me hard, straight into the buttocks. Cock me good in the arse."

  His reprimand was irritatingly subdued. "Hush, girl. Don't say such wicked things."

  "You needn't play at being the gentleman with me, seaman! I know polite society bores you silly. And I disobeyed you, defied you, you need to discipline me. Best take the anal opportunity when it presents itself, for you will never get it from that devout lady you kissed upon the cheek, not even if you first say the holy words. Unnatural practices are frowned upon amongst the devout."