Aboard the Lady May Ch. 01

The trousers she wore were old and threadbare, so when he cupped his palm gently over her mound, he could feel the soft heat of her even through the coarse fabric. She tensed slightly but didn't try to escape, and then her hips moved, thrusting her pelvis up and into his touch.

"Good girl," Felix whispered in her ear. He pressed inward with his fingers, then rotated the base of his palm against her, making her gasp and arch. "That's my good girl," he repeated, and his whole hand began moving in a slow, rolling massage. "Let me show you," he said. "Let

me show you what pleasure is. The way it's supposed to be. The way you can beg for something your don't even know exists."

He made a fist to align his knuckles, then began to rock the bony ridge lengthwise against her. His hand tipped up, and the second knuckle of his index finger pressed hard against her clit. His hand tipped down, and his pinky and ring fingers nestled into the wet warmth seeping from her body's core. She moaned and fisted one hand in his shirt, and Felix, sensing her pleasure in this caress, opted for a moment not to change methods.

"Remember how it was before?" he whispered in her ear, maintaining the same rocking motion with his fist. "How, even though you were frightened, for a moment you didn't want me to stop? How you moved with me and put your mouth on my chest?" She nodded, but he wanted her to acknowledge the truth aloud so he could hear the pleasure in her voice. He persisted, demanding, "You remember?" as he dug in hard with one knuckle and twisted.

"Yes!" she gasped, her too-thin body convulsing as he maintained the pressure, rotating his knuckle slowly back and forth. "I remember."

"Do you want me to stop now?" he asked. He relented for a moment, then pressed in harder and began to wriggle his hand like a landed fish.

She shook her head wildly, gripping fistfuls of his shirt, and her mouth was on his skin again, wide open and pressed to the warm flesh disclosed by his low-throated collar. With her cheek pressed to her bent knee, she was coiled shivering into a tight little ball, all but the one out-slung leg, splayed uncomfortably wide to grant Felix access to the humid hollow between her thighs. His knuckle still twitched and pressed on her clit, and he could feel the moist vibration of her moans on his chest. It wasn't enough. He wanted to hear them as well.

Forgetting in his urgency to be gentle, Felix unwound his arm from around her bent leg and raised it to grip a handful of her hair. He tugged once, hard, and her head fell back, drooping like a daisy on a broken stem. Blue moonlight illuminated her pale face—eyes tight shut, mouth open and twisted as if she were in pain—and a keening cry escaped her lips once she was no longer muffled against his chest. Felix found the small sound beautiful.

"Do you want me to stop?" he demanded again.

She said nothing, just thrashed her head again from side to side, and Felix pulled his hand away from her until only one fingertip still touched the drenched fabric covering her crotch. She moaned long and low, and tried to press her face back against his chest. Felix tightened his hand in her hair and wouldn't let her. He began to trace his fingertip slowly over and around her sodden mound, managing somehow to keep the contact light even when she thrust her hips up and into his touch.

"I asked you a question, girl." Felix reminded her, watching her face as his fingertip continued to move—slowly and a bit deeper, then so quick and light he only knew he was still touching her by the way the coarse fabric of her trousers snagged his rope-frayed skin. "Do you want me to stop?"

"No," she said. Her voice was deep and raw, making her sound for the first time like the boy she pretended to be. "Please," she groaned, and wrapped one hand halfway around Felix's wrist. She tugged as her hips thrust, seeking desperately to increase her contact with the fingertip that circled and pressed and danced away, disappeared altogether, then reappeared suddenly to thump once against her clit before withdrawing again. She cried out at the brief pulse of pleasure, then began to beg in earnest: "Please! I need you to—" she struggled for words, yanked once on his wrist, then settled for, "Please, more. Touch me more. Please!"

"Touch you how, girl?" Felix taunted. He was thoroughly enjoying the way each word sounded as though it were filed and hammered and torn from her throat. He scratched his fingernail lightly over her the entrance to her body, at the site where the heat and seeping wetness seemed to be concentrated. "How is it you want me to touch you? Tell me. Let me hear you say the words."

She bit her lip as her hips twitched, then she burst out: "On my skin! Like you did before. Not through my clothes. And please!" She arched her back away from the arms that were wound around her—one braced low and curled around her hip, the other wrapped high to fist in her hair. "Please," she moaned again. "Please! I hurt."

Felix asked, "Where do you hurt?" Her neck was bent back, long and white, luminous in the dark hold. When she swallowed, the tendons played under her skin in a slow, sinuous slide. "Tell me where," he insisted and bent to press his lips to the soft dip in the skin beside her ear.

"I—" She dragged one hand across her shirtfront from shoulder to shoulder, shuddering as the insistent scratching of his finger continued. "My chest," she blurted and arched her back again. "Please. It's so tight."

Felix lifted his head from her throat as his finger ceased its movement. He had thought only fleetingly about her breasts. He'd noted her chest's flatness and assumed that she was either naturally small or that her extreme thinness robbed her of what flesh she would normally possess. Whatever the case, he was so entranced by her body—by the fact of her femininity—that he hadn't much cared. Now, though, he wondered.

Confident that he was no longer in danger of frightening her, Felix acted quickly. He shackled both her wrists in one hand and raised them high above her head, then whipped her frayed shirt up and off in one smooth motion. She let out a small surprised sound but made no move to stop him or to evade his touch after he flung her shirt inside-out somewhere into the darkness of the hold.

"Christ almighty, girl," Felix said, sounding pained.

His stared as his fingers lightly traced over what he'd uncovered. She was by no means buxom, but the dingy linen bands that wound round her chest, rendering it boyishly flat, were obviously strained to suppress the soft mounds underneath. Even in the dim light, Felix could tell that the skin at her armpits and along the sides of her ribcage was chafed and marred with pressure bruises, and the slightly darker tinge to her skin along the bandages' edge—purple as opposed to the pale blue of the rest of her moon-washed body—hinted at dangerously impeded blood flow.

"Can you even breathe?" he asked as his fingers began a frantic search for the place where the bands began.

"Shallowly," she replied.

Felix heard the smile in her voice—still breathless from her arousal and, he realized now, from her sheer inability to draw a deep breath—but he refused to be amused. "Are you stitched into this thing?" he demanded, not noticing her wince as he pawed her aching, abused breasts.

"Here," she said.

She stilled his hands with the cool press of her own, then wriggled her fingers beneath the fabric over her sternum. Her breath hissed between her teeth as she carefully extracted a tightly twisted knot, and Felix knew that he would find a permanent impression in her skin when he finally succeeded in freeing her.

She picked at the knot for a moment, then Felix was there with a small, sharp knife.

"Stop!" she cried as he began to carefully slice through the bands. "I've need of that!"

"We'll think of a better way," Felix said, not pausing as he counted on her fear of being cut to keep her from moving. "You keep wearing this, girl, you'll damage yourself."

She said nothing to that, just went very still, and Felix was suddenly afraid of what he'd find when the bands were removed. He worked as quickly as was prudent, but for all the fabric was old and obviously worn, it was surprisingly tough, and he was further hindered by the way the multiple layers cut savagely into her skin. If she so much as dared to breathe too deeply, Felix knew he would stick her.

Even before the bands were fully severed, the smell wafted up to assail him: hot salt, and unwashed flesh, and the stink of suppurating infection. He held his breath and continued his careful sawing, and when the last cut was complete, the bindings did not fall away, but rather had to be peeled. Forcing her to lean away from him, Felix drew back the left side, then the right, and the fabric made a thick sucking sound as it was pulled away from her skin.

Felix wanted to swear, but even after nearly two decades at sea, he didn't know any words vile enough. Her breasts were lovely—firm and high and surprisingly large enough to fill his palms, with small, dark nipples that were drawn in tight and sharply erect; they were also covered with blisters and abrasions and sores in all stages of healing—some softly scabbed from the dampness beneath the bandage, others freshly erupted and tar-dark on her skin, all mingled with older scars as shiny as fish scales. His hands hovered over her, aching to touch, to bring her comfort, but he feared that he would only cause her more pain.

"Ah, girl," Felix said, sympathy thick in his voice, "do you hurt very much?"

She shrugged, refusing to answer, and Felix realized that she was embarrassed. He understood her reaction, reasoning that she would be as bothered by the destruction of her breasts as she was by that of her hair and any other visual remnants of her womanhood. He did not, however, want her to think that he was at all repulsed by her.

Deciding that his rejection would cause more damage than the pain of his touch, Felix cupped his left hand gently over her right breast and raised his other to her cheek. He stroked the puckered nipple with his canvas-rough thumb while simultaneously forcing her face up to his.

"Look at me, girl," he said and waited until her eyes finally complied. "You've nothing to be shamed for. It's hard enough keeping clean at sea, what with the salt and the sweat and the muck of the work, even when you're not forced to wear cloth so tight to your skin, and not able to change it but, what? once, maybe twice a month?"

She nodded, biting her lip as tears brimmed in her eyes and, ogling her mouth, Felix realized that he had yet to kiss her. In need of comfort as she was, he decided it was past time to remedy his lapse.

Her eyes grew wide then fluttered closed as his face descended toward hers. The brush of their mouths was soft at first, just touching the one against the other, without any pressure on either side. Then the girl sighed, and her warm breath across his lips made Felix groan and respond more strongly than he had intended. He changed his hold on her face, moving his thumb to her chin, then pressed down hard so her mouth fell open. Quickly, giving her no time to react, he thrust his tongue inside to rub against hers. She tasted pleasantly of grog and something sweet that he could identify only as woman. He grazed her lip with his teeth and, with skill he'd forgotten he possessed, sucked her tongue back into his mouth. And then she was kissing him in return.

It was obvious she'd never been kissed before—at least not in any way he cared to think about—but he found her ineptness arousing and sweetly endearing. It was further evidence of her essential innocence and her uninhibited willingness to respond to his touch despite the abuse to which she had been subjected. Their teeth clacked as she awkwardly mashed their noses together, but Felix patiently taught her to angle her head, to advance and retreat with her lips and tongue rather then her entire jaw. Before long she was kissing him expertly—thrusting her tongue inside to stroke a moan from his mouth, then tangling with his and teasing him to follow her back past her lips. He found a hole in the top right line of her molars, and when he tentatively probed with his tongue, he found the wound fresh, the gums still jagged, tenderly swollen and tasting saltily of recently spilled blood.

Felix pulled back slightly, intending to ask how she'd lost the tooth—although he suspected he already knew—but she was not ready to relinquish his lips. She leaned forward, following his mouth, and whimpered as the movement forced her torn breast into firmer contact with the hand that still covered it. He tried to pull back, to lighten his touch, but she grabbed his wrist and held firm, her message clear despite the negligible amount of strength she used to secure him.

"I don't want to hurt you," Felix whispered into the breath of space she allowed to form between them.

"Then don't," she said and pressed her mouth to his again, as if that settled the issue.

And, in a way, Felix supposed it did. He drew back his hand, despite her feeble protests, until he'd released all of her breast but the nipple. When she realized he didn't intend to stop touching her altogether, she released his wrist and began instead to run her fingers down and up his forearms to where they disappeared into the rolled cuffs of his shirt. Her fingertips were callused and hard as his own, but somehow smoother, the nails just long enough to scratch lightly at his skin. Felix, in turn, rubbed his thumb over her nipple, then plucked and twisted until she bit his lip hard enough to burn. He laughed softly, then curled the arm she leaned against down and around her. He stroked her stomach, trailed his fingers over the corrugated latter of her ribs, dipped his thumb into her navel and circled it in time with the one on her nipple. She moaned into his mouth and squirmed, mindlessly rubbing the rounded globes of her ass over the length of his hard cock trapped beneath her.

Felix tore his mouth away from hers. She was panting, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, while Felix's breath hissed through his nose in short, rapid bursts—as tightly controlled as the leash he'd placed on his desire. He could have her trousers off, he knew, and be inside her in seconds. She was a virgin and she would cry out, but in surprise more than pain. She was more than ready for him. Her body was throbbing and swollen with need. Felix could feel the pounding of her pulse everywhere he touched her, and the scent of her musky secretions hung thick and sweet in the air around them. He could imagine the buttery slick grip of her inner muscles, the pouting lips he'd briefly touched that he knew would cling and slide along his rigid length, the way her short nails would score the backs of his thighs, dragging him closer and deeper while her long, thin legs wound around him like velvet ropes, sanded smooth by sea spray and the rub of her rough trousers over her skin. And it would be, like all of her previous sexual encounters, what he wanted, rather than what she chose for herself.

Instead of giving into the demands of his long-deprived body, Felix kissed her hard. He lapped at the seam of her lips like the sea along the ship's stern, then dragged his mouth across her cheek and down the side of her neck. She arched to give him better access as he worked his way back up, planting sharp, nipping kisses along the way, until his lips latched softly onto her earlobe. He sucked and scraped with his teeth, then scored her ear with a quick plunge of his warm tongue. She gasped, surprised by the sensation, and by the cool brush of air that followed as he whispered in her ear.

"Tell me your name, girl," he demanded and traced his tongue along the shell of her ear.

She shivered and said, "Jemima."

"Jemima?"

His mouth paused in its ministrations. He could see her as a Persephone or a Morwenna, Rhiannon perhaps, or any of the other nymphs he knew from song and legend. But his mother's cousin had been called Jemima; she'd baked bread that floated on air and been broad as a well-fed broodmare. He'd loved her dearly and had never entertained a single carnal thought about her enormous, pillowy breasts or the thick thighs delineated whenever she wore her wrapper and stooped to bank the fire before bedtime.

"Jamie," the girl amended, and Felix felt her fingers plunge into the tarred hair at the nape of his neck, tugging urgently. "I go by Jamie."

"Ah," Felix said, "of course." He tested it, whispering, "Jamie," then repeated it twice more and decided he quite liked it. It was short and pretty and he could call her by it in front of the crew without anyone suspecting a thing. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "I'm Felix."

"Felix?" she said and her fingers stilled in his hair. "I'd have thought Marcus or Patrick. William, maybe. I had a dog once named Felix. He was small and yappy. Not at all like you."

Felix let out a sharp bark of laughter, deciding he liked much more about the girl than just her pretty name and delectable body. He squeezed her in a tight, sideways hug, careful not to smash her sore breasts, and kissed her until they were both desperate for air.

"Nonetheless," he panted when their mouths finally parted, "my name is Felix."

"Felix," she whispered against his lips, and copied him by saying it three times. "It's a nice name, I suppose."

"Thank you, Jamie."

"You're welcome, Felix."

They both laughed. And then his thumbs were back on her nipples, both of them this time, twisting and rubbing until her back arched and she raised her mouth for another kiss. He obliged her, using his tongue and suckling her own as one hand abandoned her breasts to make its slow descent down her abdomen.

Smoothly, he extracted his tongue from her mouth. "What do you want, Jamie?" he said, the backs of his knuckles slowly stroking the hollow between the two halves of her ribcage.

She looked up at him, dark eyes wide in her face, obviously surprised he would ask.

"Don't you want to rut on me?" she asked.

This time it was Felix's turn to wince; they both needed to work on their terminology.

"Very much," he said, thrusting his hips up beneath her to illustrate his point, making her eyes pop even wider. "But what do you want?"

She smiled as she melted against him. Her body went limp and boneless. "Your hand," she said. "I very much like the way you touch me. But please," she added, "not through my clothes. On my skin, like you did before, the time I made you stop."

"Will you make me stop again?" he teased, his hand already inching toward the waistband of her pants.

"No," she breathed into his mouth and arched, irritated by his slowness. "Please, Felix."

"Be patient," he said, pulling unhurriedly at her laces. "I want you bare, Jamie. And I want you begging."

"I just want you," she whispered.

Felix swore, suddenly unable to continue with his torment, and began to tear at her fly.

"Let me," she said, sounding satisfied as she kissed his chest, and her nimble fingers had her pants undone in seconds.

Felix gripped fistfuls of fabric, tearing it down her thighs, not caring when the fragile material fell apart in his hands. He'd already determined to find her new clothes—ones that were softer and concealed more so she wouldn't be forced to abuse her body in order to remain safe.

Her legs, like the rest of her—like he'd imagined they would be—were long and too thin, white washed pale blue by the cool moonlight. Beneath his callused hands her skin was smooth, nearly hairless as far as he could tell, and the curls at her thighs' juncture were neat and tight but not thick enough to completely cover the swollen folds that peeked shyly from beneath. He arranged her on his lap much as he had before: the leg closest to him bent and pressed to his chest with her other splayed as wide as the hip would allow, and all the while he never took his eyes off her plump, downy mound. Her secret hair, he knew, must surely be red, but in the hold it looked as inky dark as the nighttime sea. The contrast between it and her white, white skin struck Felix as the loveliest thing he'd seen in his life.