Naked, he walked slowly around his desk, passing within a few feet of the prisoner, Bainbridge’s gaze surely following, hot on his skin. Hawk opened the top drawer and pulled off his rings one by one, hiding his vexation when one of them caught stubbornly on his scarred knuckle.
He liked the gold earring—he forgot about it most of the time and was occasionally surprised by it in the hand mirror when he shaved and shaped his short beard. But the rings he found cumbersome, and they only came out when Captain Hawk was in his full regalia.
After dousing the lamp, Hawk stretched out on his mattress naked, wincing at the stiffness in his back. He commanded, “Behave. Or remember how your sister will suffer. Yes?”
“Yes,” came the reply, brimming with resentment.
Despite his resolution to ignore his prisoner, Hawk smiled to himself.
Chapter Five
“I’ll make you like it. Just imagine how much you’ll hate yourself after that.”
Even with the break of day, the words still echoed in Nathaniel’s head as if hissed by the devil himself. There was no need to imagine a thing—he despised his weakness in not being able to rid himself of traitorous desires.
He’d pretended to be asleep when Hawk roused in the darkness. There had been a few moments of silence when he’d been sure he was being watched, and he could understand deer freezing in place under a predator’s scrutiny.
Even after the key had scraped in the lock and he was sure he was alone, Nathaniel had stayed curled under the horrible blanket, sleeping fitfully again.
Now the sun was in the sky, and he wasn’t sure what time it was. There had been no delivery of food and water, but perhaps that would only be once a day. He would have to ration his water or risk sipping from Hawk’s bottles of alcohol, a dangerous proposition if he was discovered. Nathaniel had never been much for drink, but was tempted to dull his senses.
Good Lord, it had only been a day. He’d never survive a month without going mad. And perhaps he wouldn’t survive at all. If his father didn’t pay…
He wanted to scream. There was no way of foreseeing the future, so he must focus on the present and force away the worry lest he go mad.
He kicked off the blanket, sweating, his breeches straining with a morning erection. A turgid state that only grew more pronounced as images of the pirate captain stripping off his clothes ran riot through Nathaniel’s head.
I can’t even control my feeble mind.
He’d tried not to look. He truly had. Yet he’d glimpsed the tanned, muscular flesh, the dark ink of a tattoo painting the pirate’s sternum depicting—what else?—a sea hawk with wings spread wide.
The villain had dropped his drawers and trousers to his ankles, then bent to remove his boots, the pale, firm globes of his arse facing Nathaniel.
Nathaniel wondered anew how the long scars had come to be over the pirate’s buttocks, fingers of faded pink that were undoubtedly blood red when inflicted. He couldn’t imagine Hawk bending to anyone’s will; being overpowered, subjugated.
Yet clearly he had, since there was little doubt the scars came from a punishment. Curious. How had he suffered those scars and when? Nathaniel thought men who were lashed took it on their backs, not lower.
That line of reasoning of course made him think of lower, and the pirate’s cock and balls hanging thick between his legs.
“I’ll make you like it.”
The memory of Hawk’s growl, his accent that carried perhaps a lingering hint of the West Country, sent flames of desire licking through Nathaniel. He spoke with the profanity of the sea, yet also like a learned man.
Nathaniel wondered how he had come to be not merely a pirate when branded it, but the formidable Sea Hawk. Tall and broad, scarred and weatherworn, dark hair dusted over thick muscles. Fearsome and bold, wholly male in the primal way of a horse or a beast of the jungle.
He groaned, giving in and unfastening his breeches, breath hitching as he wrapped his palm around his shaft. He admitted the truth that the devil wouldn’t have to put in much effort at all to make him like it.
Spitting in his palm, he jerked himself, attempting without success to focus solely on the physical sensation.
Does he really fuck other men? Would he make me suck his massive prick? Make me bend over and take it?
Moaning, Nathaniel spread his knees, feet flat on the wooden planks. He’d used his own fingers in the past, but what would it be like to have another man’s cock inside him? Not just any man’s—the pirate blackguard’s? It would be huge as it split him open…
When Mr. Chisholm had taught him to wrestle so he could turn the tables on his vexing older cousins, it had somehow still been a gentlemanly pursuit. Nathaniel had loved the press of their bodies and feverishly dreamed of more while pleasuring himself in the privacy of his chambers.