Chapter Ten

He’d goaded her into it.

He knew that even as he willed his temper to cool.

He’d pushed her because he could.

He’d been an asshole because it was better than what he really wanted to do.

Having her there, soft and willing to do whatever it took to wash her father of his sins had spurred an animal awake inside him. It had fueled him with a perverse fire that scared even him.

If she’d stayed, he probably would have done something he’d never forgive himself for, and that terrified him.

He didn’t rape women.

He didn’t beat them.

He didn’t torture them.

But she made him want to do them all to her.

She made him want to hold her down and fuck her raw.

She had willingly given herself to him, had offered herself up like some sacrificial lamb in the place of a man who deserved to be fileted on a spit. He’d seen it in her eyes, her absolute submission to him.

She would have done anything he asked.

No man deserved that much power over another person.

Not a man like him, a man who was already teetering on a razor’s edge. He was already so dangerously close to the darkness. One slip and he didn’t think he could trust himself.

Not with her.

Not with anyone.

Christ, what kind of man wanted to strip a woman naked and tie her to the bed, and keep her there? No breaks. No peace. Just a never ending loop of fucking until she could never sit again.

That was what he wanted.

He wanted her to suffer.

To hurt.

To feel every ounce of pain Annie had felt.

He wanted to be that man capable of hurting another person to the point where death was their only option.

Then he’d looked into Cora’s eyes. He’d seen something there that had been worse than a dagger in the gut. Not trust. It would never be trust. Not love, or affection.

Acceptance.

She had already accepted her fate. She had accepted that he would hurt her and she would let him.

It was enough to make him hate them both.

“She put herself back.” Nicholas stood in the open doorway, brows furrowed over the disapproval in his eyes.

“She chose to stay.” James walked past his second and out the door. He didn’t pause to make sure the other man was following as he climbed onto the deck and the cold blast of autumn air. “She gave herself to me in exchange for her father’s pardon.”

Nicholas joined him at the railings, his arms folded. “What does that even mean?”

Fuck if even he knew.

“She wants me to take my revenge out on her, do whatever I want to her in exchange for letting her father live.”

Even in the dark, there was no missing the surprise that widened Nicholas’s eyes. “Seriously?”

James didn’t answer.

He stared out over the ocean and the approaching city line in the distance. On that shore, tucked away in his safe little home with his perfect wife and endless power was the man who had destroyed James. Or attempted to. For thirty years, he’d built his empire on the bodies of the innocent. No one had ever had the balls to take him down.

But James did.

He had the balls.

He had the girl.

What he lacked was the girl’s cooperation.

She was supposed to marry him.

He needed her to.

There wasn’t supposed to be another option. But somehow, they had gone from wedding bells to ... who the fuck knew what.

“Are we still turning around?”

He had the girl.

He had her.

She was his.

He could take her and go anywhere in the world.

He could keep her and she could keep his bed warm during the long, cold nights at sea.

He could teach her to accept him, to stay without being told to.

He could forget De Marco.

His promise.

His revenge.

Annie.

He could give it all up.

Maybe.

For her.

But Cora Harris wasn’t real.

She was an idea, an inspiration for a solution he’d been handed on a silver platter. Bishop may have made the improbable possible by hiring James to take Cora in the first place, but plans changed, especially when those plans involved the slaughtering of his crew.

No.

Cora needed to change her answer. She needed to accept that he would kill her father and not even the thought of her wrapped around him, warm and welcoming was going to deter him.

But not until he got rid of Bishop first.

“Captain?”

James peered at his best friend. “She needs to marry me. Without her, Bishop will be on us.”

“Did you try asking nicely?”

James ignored the sarcasm. “She won’t do it unless I convince her.”

Nicholas leaned into the railings, back against the ocean and squinted at something mid-point over James’s shoulder. “Ideas?”

“Just one.”

He had the weapon.

Now he just needed to change her mind.

“Call Mable. Get her a dress. I’m taking her out.”