Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
“Your ass is in the air. Unless you’re offering to the panting crowd, you might want to tuck your tail.”
That voice. Eugenia knew that voice. “It was you who pulled me from the water.”
“That I did.”
Dragging her gaze from those boots, she ignored all the rest of him—the open shirt, the exposed chest, the dark hair shining and in need of a cut—to get directly to the point. His eyes.
Hazel. Lined. Not a day under forty.
“I want off this ship.”
The man might have set a cigarette to his lips and lit it. But there was no cigarette, and lighters were worth more than a fast fuck. “No.”
“I won’t whore for you.” Not ever.
He gave her nothing. “We’ll see.”
“Listen to me, slaver.” She crept nearer, overcoming his legs so they might negotiate eye-to-eye. Woman-to-man. “You’ll be disappointed.”
The corner of his lips lifted. “I doubt it.”
Had he just winked at her?
Asshole.
Confrontation was no different than an elite university’s oral exam. He was no different than any of the men who might have had her in their clutches for a short time. No different than dirt. A prick deserving of the clinical Eugenia who aced every test and never said die. “This is a ship with three-hundred or so men and less than two dozen women. Where, from what I understand, thirty men a night dump their saliva-laden food and drink on two of the aforementioned women. I’m amazed there hasn’t been some outbreak that killed off half your slaves. And, as condoms are no longer produced and those available would have expired last April, I’d rather not be exposed to gonorrhea, which asymptomatic men spread despite the supposed physical examination all these rapist undergo—”
It was so fast his backhand landed on her cheek before she’d seen him go from lazy, lounging cowboy to typical violent male. The taste of blood in her mouth, the throb and heat that came each time a man had put his hands on her, led Eugenia to turn her head right back toward the captain. Again, they were eye-to-eye.
Life, tickets, baking sheets, and shared scraps for sex. It wasn’t worth it. He needed to know she knew that.
She needed to know how far he’d go.
Limits set parameters for escape. Violence defined a man.
Push hard. Mouth off. Let them know she might be scared, but what did it matter? The whole fucking world was scary.
And this ship, this society he’d designed? No.
Make the big, bad pirate slaver do what the men at her table wouldn’t do in the name of rules and trades. Make it public and grotesque in this fake civility. Make a statement. “Captain, if you’re going to hit me, put some effort into it. That was barely a swat.”
And he obliged, so predictable she hardly blinked an eye when her back hit the deck.
Grip on her throat, his free hand snaking up that sorry excuse for a skirt, he hissed, “You think you’ve got something more precious—”
But his own efforts, his own violence, stopped him dead in his tracks.
She’d known rape might take place before the final stomping, but she had not imagined the asshole would push aside her panties and delve in.
It never went down that way. Ringleaders didn’t just force the goods when a profit could be made; they lathered up the crowd. Made a display to get their followers panting in submission.
Yet the captain had, in less than a heartbeat, shove three of his fingers as deep as they might go.
The behavior didn’t match the boots.
Rough grip cutting off proper blood supply to her brain, Eugenia still grimaced, squeezing her eyes shut from the burn.
There would be blood on his hand. And by the scandalized look on his face, he had felt the membrane ringing her vaginal opening give under careless penetration. What she had spent a lifetime guarding, he could have traded for a whole herd of cattle. Gone, because she’d goaded him.
And, yes, she grasped that there was no proof of virginity, that all bodies were different, but after enough pap smears, Eugenia knew hers was a bit more. That band of skin unstretched and there.
Shocked enough to loosen his grip, Eugenia found the air to snarl right in the captain’s face, “Get your fingers out of my vaginal canal.”
Those fingers fluttered in place of retracting. “It isn’t possible…”
Still in her, the sting only growing when he continued to wiggle them as if to make sure it was blood squelching over his touch, Eugenia fought to keep her legs as they were. To show no fear and to remember that she could cry over this later where no one might see. But not now. “Perhaps you find the concept outdated. But believe it or not, I was waiting for a worthy man to spend my life with. What you just stole was my gift to give, not yours to take. You also just made me far less valuable to trade off this ship. Well done.”