Misty Dawn & The Raven Ch. 5

Sunlight bathing Dawn's cheek awoke her. She tried to stretch her limbs, but found it too strenuous for her battered body. Her head was pounding and her eyes seemed under a fog. She tried sitting up, forcing herself to do so, despite the dull pain that ebbed her strength. She rubbed her gray-green eyes with one hand just as the other fell upon a small hand on the bed. She turned, blinking hoping that it was Charles, but as her head slowly cleared she found that she had been lying close with Lady Catherine who was still sleeping, her body, and will exhausted. Dawn looked at her, first in slight surprise; but then for a long moment of pity as she scanned the crimson striping of Lady Catherine's flesh from the lashing Charles had metered out.

Dawn softly squeezed her bedmate's thin fingers and brushed some of her dark locks from her cheek with her own fingers. Turning to rise she forced her legs upon the deck. Her legs were sore from their stretching, her skin screaming as her own marks were pulled over her own straining muscles; but stand she did. Dawn felt woozy, but she steadied herself by leaning on the bedposts. Charles was nowhere to be seen and the cabin felt empty. A large silver tray was set on the desk with a variety of fruits and some only slightly molded bread. A pitcher of wine and two small silver goblets sat ready. Suddenly Dawn's hunger spoke through her pain and she staggered on weak limbs to the desk and sat in Charles' chair, plucking a piece of exotic fruit from the tray.

Dawn noticed to her delight that Charles, if not all his men, ate far better fare than she had experienced upon her former vessel. The foreign fruit was soft and sweet, its nectar lit her tongue in a remarkable way. Cherries, apples, and such she had tasted before, but the strange treats from Charles' larder were a delicacy. She poured herself a small glass of wine. The cool velvet contours of Charles' ornate chair seemed to mold to her tormented skin as she sat and ate. The food and wine seemed to fill her with a new strength, though she was truly still very weak.

Sitting there in the quiet of Charles' cabin she found herself cataloging the injuries to herself. The skin of her back and buttocks flamed against the velvet. The muscles in her legs and arms felt as if they were still pulled taught, and she rubbed her calves just above her ankles softly in thought. Then it struck her, her pussy, her womanhood was stretched pulled and on fire, as if it were lacerated, yet the sensations were sending impulses of exquisite pleasure to her brain.

With a half chewed piece of forgotten fruit still in her mouth, she stopped and put aside the half eaten morsel in thought. What had happened to her there? Suddenly her slow mind recovered bits of a white carved instrument, ridged and cut, sculpted and decorated.... Dawn nearly choked as she swallowed the bite in her mouth instinctively and leaned back in the chair. Her thighs parted quickly and she thrust a hand to her hidden spot. Before she knew what she was doing, she had two fingers probing her depths to discover if she was still carrying that oriental treasure in her pouch. Her fingers dove in to her heated slit and, though they found no object, they sent warm washes of sensation firing through her body. Her tortured inner walls ignited to her probing fingers and Dawn's every nerve exploded in a cresting tide of the pain of a finger on a fresh healing wound, and the immense pleasure of her own touch.

Dawn drew in a sharp breath, and forced her fingers from her passage, slick with her own fluids of love. She leaned back deeper into the chair as her own lustful fingers began a slow rhythmic dance over her external nub of desire. The lids half closed over her gray-green eyes and she sighed softly at her own touch. Her cheeks filled and puffed with her breath, as the rays of the bright sun reflected from the waves washed over her skin. Her hungry digits turned faster in their chase. Her other hand slowly reached and caressed her breast, pinching her nipple with precise pressure that sent shocks of pleasure through her bosom.

A small, but very welcome release shot through Dawn's soul and she gasped softly and sank softly into the chair. She half rolled into a ball in the chair and panted quietly. Her own medicine doing far more good for her mind's recovery than food, drink, or any of Fazul's treatments could. A lazy smile flooded her face as she laid her head on the strong arm of Charles' chair. For the first time in her life, she had strength, power over herself and her own fate. She was drunk on her own power, which she was just beginning to discover for herself. A quiet laugh escaped her lips as her mind mulled over the flush hand that fate had dealt to her. Though it had been but a few days ago, the lifelong woman's maid with no power in the world was gone as surely as if she had died. Now, Dawn was for the time at least a favored treasure of a pirate captain. Hundreds of eyes scanning her revealed flesh, she was sparking lust in the hearts of all the men that literally surrounded her; and that was very powerful indeed. For the first time in her life, she felt truly safe, truly alive.

Dawn stopped her musings as she heard a rustle and a quiet groan from the bed. She looked over at the pitiful sight of Lady Catherine as she tried with great difficulty to rise. Dawn watched her, Catherine looked like a ship after a harsh gale, bashed about the rocks and floundering as she cringed at her every attempt to push herself to a sitting position. Catherine had not led a life that led to the development of muscle tissue, nor was she very familiar to physical pain. She tried vainly for the third time and collapsed into the pillows with a slightly muffled sobbing groan.

"Damn the English bitch!" Dawn hissed under her breath as she pulled herself from the comforting pushiness of Charles' chair. Dawn could not exactly determine why she actually rose to help Catherine, other than she did not want to listen to the shrill whine that the Englishwoman had fine tuned to a tee. She stepped to the bed and started to lift Catherine from the mattress, "Now, now, milady," Dawn said with forced comfort in her voice, "let me help you, ma'am."

"Y-yes, Dawn," Catherine choked out of her dry lips. Dawn refused her usual smile to Catherine's failure to thank her. Dawn was actually cursing herself as she helped the poor woman from the bed and led her to a chair at the desk and offered her some of the fruit. Catherine cringed as Dawn lowered her into the hard wood chair. Catherine hurt too bad to protest what was running through her mind, 'the least the child could have done was put me in the velvet chair, has she lost her mind?' Catherine instead quietly took a piece of fruit and lifted it to her lips. She was acutely aware of every grain of wood in the chair as it pressed against her swollen buttocks and lash licked back. She held herself at a perfect posture, not out of any rigid sense of propriety, but her back would not take the bite of the wood. Therefore, Catherine held her back off the back of the chair.

Dawn sat back into Charles chair and reached for the wine. She refilled her goblet before pouring a fresh one for Catherine. She caught, just over the rim of the pitcher, the glance of daggers searing out of Catherine's brown eyes. Dawn lowered her eyes and to cover her slight cracking smile, she turned and looked out the window and commented, "The sea is quite beautiful today, mum," as she raised the goblet to her half smiling lips.

This was far too much insolence for Catherine to stomach. She slammed the fruit down hard on the desk, squishing its juice over the ornate surface and soiling the corner of one of Charles' charts. "Do you dare to laugh at me, you little Irish whore!" Catherine shouted in her shrill voice, anger giving her strength and courage that had left her for so long. She was swept away in a rush of venom that she was delivering to Dawn's doorstep. "How dare you, laugh at me. You do not pour for yourself when I am in need of nourishment! Where under God's eye do you place yourself before me?!?" Catherine shouted as she pushed her self erect and leaned over the desk to shout at Dawn's face. "How dare you sit there like the whore of Babylon in your master's chai...."

Catherine was cut short as she was spun around violently and her words were finished by a loud slap that sent her sprawling over the chair she had hardly wanted to sit upon. Charles stood looming over her, his arm still outstretched from where it had flung after he slapped her across the jaw. Neither of them had heard him enter like a thunderbolt due to Catherine's tirade. Catherine looked up at him and cowered before him, terror having conquered her rage.

Dawn placed a hand over her lips as Charles drug her to her knees by a fist in her hair as his cold blue eyes blazed into Catherine's face. "First, bitch," Charles hissed, "this is my cabin, and you were my guest in your recovery. Since it is my cabin, only I have the right to raise my voice in my sanctuary. Second, you stupid cow, you owe your life to this woman. I suggest you think about that. For on this ship if one owes his life to another; it is a debt that can rarely be repaid. Until it can be the debtor is at the mercy of the lender!" Charles tossed her roughly to the deck before he finished, "Perhaps we should show you, later," he finished with a hiss. Turning to the door he shouted, "Fazul!" Instantly the hulking moor filled the doorframe with his customary head bow. "Fazul, fetch the stocks!" Fazul disappeared with a silent nod, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Charles seized Catherine's, still rope sore, wrist in a fist like a manacle and pulled her to the edge of the desk. "I suggest you finish your fruit, milady," Charles said as he forced her mouth to the desk with a hand on the back of her neck. "I do not tolerate stains upon my charts, so I hope for your sake your tongue has some talents."

Tears sprang forth from Catherine's eyes as she was forced to lap up the squashed fruit with her mouth to keep from suffocating. Dawn watched with both terror at Charles display of temper, and fear for Catherine. 'Why could she have not been so loud as to call for him?' The stupidity of the nobility never ceased to overwhelm Dawn's peasant senses. Charles flung her back to the deck when she had lapped long enough for him. Dawn looked at her lips, slick with sweet fruit juice and tears. Dawn stepped around the desk and gently put her hand on Charles' tensed forearm.

Charles felt the slight hand upon his arm and relaxed from his anger a bit. Taking a long breath, Charles calmed his tone to a more conversational, if cold, tone, "Catherine, you don't seem to realize that all you have is your life, and that is owed to my Misty Dawn here. Your body belongs to my crew, and your brain seems to be lost at sea, milady. I believe it is high time you took stock of your situation." With that Charles turned and kissed Dawn's neck before walking over to lean against the window frame and stare out at the waves as if looking for some answer in the deep blue crests behind the Raven.

Dawn was not sure what to do, looking at Catherine's crumpled cringing form in its fetal sprawl on the deck; then glancing over her shoulder towards Charles who seemed lost in angry thought. He looked so handsome, but there was an air of violence and danger about him that all of her upbringing should have warned her to fear him. However, Dawn was lost in a fascination of his danger, somehow that made him even more desirable. Her heart felt pulled in two directions at once, a small part of her was pulling her to kneel and comfort the skinny, whining Catherine. Yet, another, growing part of her heart was pulling her body like a moth to the deadly flame that was Charles. The two sides made war upon one another and her body stood still in the middle of it all, a Dawn stalemate.

Catherine looked at Dawn standing there, a flash that could have been hatred or jealousy burned out through tearing blurred brown eyes. The child was helpless to help her. Catherine half thought Dawn was frozen with fear, and half thought that she was bewitched by this sea devil. The mad man's words had cut her to the bone. His tone had hit her harder than the back of his hand; she was truly beginning to grow terrified by the monstrous master of this ship. Part of her wished he would just kill her outright and end her further suffering, but deep in her mind, she knew that he had spared her for a fate far worse.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Fazul's bald brow was furrowed in a frown as he picked his way through the hold. Stepping over a well-fed and scurrying rat, he ducked beneath a beam as he reached the area where Charles stowed his example devices. Clearing a few odd bits from its top Fazul plucked the heavy wood and iron piece of restraint from the deck and turned around in the gloom of the hold. Giving it a quick once over, satisfied that the hinges were in good repair and the lock was not frozen, he nodded, then shook his large decorated head and started for the stairs. He paused and muttered to himself as he neared the stairs, "What does Sultan think he is doing? The poor woman could scarcely take another beating and live. To kill her now, o soon after sparing her life would surely upset members of the crew." Fazul sat on a rum barrel and rested his body while his mind toiled away inside his hairless dome. He thought of how ill prepared the woman was for any further beatings. He knew that Charles understood that she needed a few days of rest, no physical harm, nor any penetration, if she was to heal properly for her purpose. Fazul could only shake his head again slowly.

Fazul looked over the stocks he had been sent to retrieve. They were large, a man could possibly walk around with their weight around his neck and shoulders, his hands locked in; but the bony fragile woman...never. When she was locked into this, it would be as good as if she were trapped into a full size stocks. There was no chance she could move with this weight surrounding her. Fazul was growing angry with Sultan as he contemplated the stocks. The poor woman would surely die in this devise if he beat her again. Fazul was frustrated, "Why not have just killed her before and spared some of his ointments and time?!?" Fazul growled under his breath as he stood up to climb the stairs.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Robbins had watched Charles and Fazul burst into the captain's cabin at sounds of raised voices. He had heard, though his old ears could not identify what he heard, Charles commanding barks. He had thought he had heard the sounds of a powerful slap. Then he had seen Charles' giant shadow, Fazul the moor, leave the cabin, and head for the hold. He had tried to busy himself with ropes and looked with an experienced eye at the sails, full out in the wind; but he found himself drifting towards Charles' door, his curiosity forcing his feet to move. His mind racing over what was going on behind Charles door.

The silence emanating from the door was deafening to Robbins, he licked his cracked lips and wiped a gnarled hand over the back of his neck absently as his imagination went wild. His dirty short-legged trousers begging to bulge like a sail in a stiff gale. He wandered absently past Charles silent door and lurked around the corner of his captain's cabin for a long moment. Slowly climbing the stairs to the stern castle, his old gray haired legs and knobby knees paced him behind the young wheelman in slow but distracted movements. He would have given an arm to see what he was imagining Charles was doing to the two tarts below his feet.

Robbins leaned heavily on the polished rail, the sea wind cooling his heated flesh where his imagination was leaking a single drop of his excitement into the cloth of his tented trousers. Robbins shuddered as if from chill, but rather from a wave of lust that was surging through his body as he imagined Charles surging into an eager trollop's twat, the way he burned to do. Robbins shook his head and scratched himself obscenely as is rum sodden mind churned. Feeling himself ready to spill he pulled his hand away and fumbled for the small bottle of rum swelling his hind pocket. Pulling the cork in desperation, he took a huge swill of the rum, tilting his head back high, pressing his groin to the gunnels as he did.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Fazul crossed the deck with purpose to his strides. The stocks set at a comfortable high on his massive shoulder. He watched Robbins pouring more rum down his throat at the stern castle and shook his head. "Master Robbins," the hulking moor shouted against the wind, "shouldn't you be inspecting the powder as Sultan ordered?" Robbins half choked, his last received order suddenly flooding back to his mind, smothering the wonderful daydream he was having.

"A--aye, s'r," Robbins coughed as he spun on his heel. He wiped his sun beaten lips with the back of his hand, half to clean the dribble of rum, and half to hide the curse he uttered beneath his breath, "Charles' damn moor! There are sail'rs 'ere 'bouts wit all 'dier riggin' about 'em!" Robbins had never liked the moor. He was all duty and no sense. Having Fazul around had always been like having a queen's officer around the ship. He resented Fazul for his position with Charles. Fazul was always the trusted confidant, always. How could any man trust a man that drank tea more than rum? Robbins never could understand Charles trust in the man. Robbins old eyes glared at the hulking second mate as he made his way down the stairs and across the deck set about on his duties. His stride disrupted by his aching and apparent need.

Fazul ignored the drunken man and walked onto the cabin door. He stopped and lowered his burden before quietly knocking. Charles as still staring out to sea when he heard the quiet knock, not turning around, just barked," Enter, Fazul!"

The knock had woken Dawn from her frozen observations of Charles. The way his powerful arm rested on his hip, his other arm cocked and leaning into the windowsill in his habit of thought. The way his blue eyes glistened in the sunlight. His long blond curls falling over the broad shoulder slung belt the supported his cutlass and down his back resting between his thick shoulder blades. His powerful back could be seen beneath his flowing loose shirt. The black leather belt cinched at his waist pulled his breeches tight over his backside. Below that, his thighs and calves were thick from the exercise of a seaman. Never had she seen such a man, nor had she ever desired any man as much as she did this one.

Catherine had stopped sobbing but remained cowered upon the floor, frozen with fear. Some desperate hope had sprung to her that if she were perfectly still and quiet they would forget about her entirely. The knock and its forced bark from her captor had fanned the flames of panic in her breast and she pleaded in a quiet nasal whine, "No, no, Captain, please... have mercy." Her eyes flashed quickly. Tears welling once again as Charles spun round to stare at her with his blazing blue eyes. The look he gave her was frightening; she could see lust and a diabolical flare to his gaze.

"Have mercy?" Charles smirked as Fazul pushed his way into the cabin, the individual stocks in his inhumanly powerful grasp. Catherine's mouth dropped, she could not put voice to her scream as she looked at the cruel device. The irony of criminal's in possession of an instrument of justice eluded her terror filled mind. "But milady," Charles said mockingly as he slowly rounded the desk towards Catherine's meek form, "I have already shown you great mercy; against my better judgment, mind you mi slut. You have been granted a great mercy not but a few hours passed." Charles bent as he pulled her chin roughly away from their frozen stare at the stocks to face him as he finished, "And you, mi tart, chose to repay your benefactor with shouts and hatred! Fazul!" Charles finished with a commanding bark.