The devil and his deep blue sea.

Chapter 20 - hugs - ashely

POSEIDON wraps me in warm blankets, layers and layers of them, and makes me sit on the edge of his bed while I warm up. It takes a long time to stop shaking. It takes a long time to get my breathing under control. What helps, strangely, is to listen to the sounds of the ship. The rock of it in the ocean. The bump it makes when it moves gently against the other ship. After a while, people start coming onboard again, and I can feel their footsteps on the deck in tiny vibrations. Poseidon sits in the chair next to the bed and watches me. At first, I thought he’s being dispassionate because it was such a close call. Because he’s worried about me. It was bad, what happened, but I’m not going to fall to pieces yet. I don’t want to. I’m wrung out from all the crying, and all of my skin is so sensitive that the lived-in blankets feel rough. But then the silence starts to wear on me. I take a few last, deep breaths before I break it. “I think you should take me home. At least to the U.S., anyway. If you drop me off anywhere in the country, I know I can get a flight.” Poseidon narrows his eyes. They’re the colour of storm clouds over the ocean, a deep blue lit up by fire, and I don’t like what I see there. It’s not the same man who was here before this last escape. There’s nothing playful or sexy or greedy about him. Every part of him is held away from me. Apart from me. “My daddy will pay. I know he will. He probably already has.” “Your daddy.” His mouth curls. “You think I care that your daddy will wire me money when he gets around to it? I don’t fucking care about that. I have money.” He doesn’t say princess. All at once, like a thunderclap, I recognize his expression, the vicious set of his muscles, for what it is. My body startles involuntarily inside the cocoon of blankets. “Are you mad at me?” “Mad?” A mean smile crosses his face like the curve of a dagger. “I’m fucking furious with you. And you’re going to pay.” “I know I’m going to pay. My dad will give you any amount you want, and if you want more because I was reckless, then he’ll give you that too. All you have to do is—” “Not him. You. You’re going to pay. And you’re going to do it right now.” His deadly, even tone is a thousand times more terrifying than a shout would have been. “And do you know why? Because you crossed a fucking line when you left me. You put everyone on this ship into a situation they might not have walked out from, and all so you could live out some little rich-girl fantasy. Nobody does that to my crew. Nobody does that to me. Nobody.” “I’m sorry.” Guilt hammers itself through my heart. “I know. It was bad. I shouldn’t have done it.” “But you did. And now you’re going to learn about the consequences for putting my people at risk.” “I didn’t mean—” He silences me with a hand in the air. “Nicholas.” Nicholas pushes open the door to Poseidon’s quarters. He’s been waiting for this moment. My stomach freezes. The scratches between my thighs sting with the cold. I pull the blankets tighter around me. And then I see what Nicholas is holding. A length of rope. I can’t move. Poseidon stands up and pulls me to my feet. The first layer of blankets falls to the floor. He reaches for the others, and I pull back an inch. “This isn’t fair.” My voice is high and scared and the worst version of me, the version of me with no sense of how dangerous her actions are, with no sense of any real consequences. I’m not that person. I try not to be that person. “This isn’t fair, what you’re doing.” “No, it’s not fucking fair, but that’s how shit goes when you’re the captain. You make the rules.” The crew is in the hall. I see them now. They’re mostly in shadow, but I can see them. Poseidon takes advantage of me looking out at them for help to strip away the rest of the blankets. I’m naked underneath, and I feel it for the first time. There’s no heat in his eyes, no sense of play, and fear is a pair of cement shoes. If it weren’t for the floor of the ship, they’d take me all the way down. Poseidon puts a hand on my elbow and takes me to the door. Jason is outside, and the cook, and there are others. All people I’ve talked to. They’re careful to keep their eyes up while we move past. “Don’t do this,” Jason calls as we’re climbing the stairs. “She didn’t know what she was doing.” “She knew,” answers Poseidon. He doesn’t slow down. At the top of the steps, the rest of the crew is waiting, but they give us a lot of space. Most of them look down at the deck. Their faces are drawn and scared. They must be mirrors of mine. My palms are slick with sweat, my chest aching with new terror and shame. Naked. I’m naked in front of all these men, and I have no idea what Poseidon’s going to do. We stop in front of the mast. It doesn’t have rigging, as Jason explained to me once when I was bothering him between swimming lessons. It’s actually a communications tower meant to make this look like a sailing ship. My mind slips into that conversation again. It’s better than standing out here in spitting rain. “Tie her,” Poseidon says. The cook pushes his way between me and the mast, both hands up. “A trade,” he says. “No.” “Hear me out on it.” I have never seen the cook look afraid. I’ve made him laugh exactly three times. I’ve made him smile six times. Now his mouth is drawn down, his eyes wide. “I’ll keep her in the brig. You won’t have to look at her. Don’t do this.” Poseidon doesn’t pause to consider it. “Get out of the way.” “All my savings,” the cook says. “Yours.” Now Poseidon speaks louder so that the crew members hanging by the railing can hear. “What I say goes on my ship. She disobeyed direct orders. If you keep standing there, you’ll be disobeying direct orders too.” “I didn’t hear an order.” This is a risk, and I know it is, because Poseidon already told him to move. My knees are jelly. My knees might never function as knees again. I don’t know. Droplets land on my skin, each of them a new reminder of my nakedness and how cold it is to be afraid and without clothes. Poseidon doesn’t take the bait. “I order you to get out of my fucking way.” The cook stands there for another beat. My heart aches for him. He’s trying to get Poseidon to fight him, and I get the sense this might have worked if it weren’t for this situation. If it weren’t for me. Poseidon doesn’t fight. He waits, and I can feel the seconds ticking by. I’ve googled enough to know there are different rules at sea. That Poseidon would be justified in anything he chooses to do with a mutineer. The cook looks at me. He lets me see his face, his sorrow. I want to tell him it’s okay, but it’s not. He steps out of the way. Poseidon moves me in front of the mast and presses me against it. It’s colder than the rain, and my belly tenses with the shock of it, but he doesn’t let me step back. He stands behind me and stretches my arms around it. I clasp my hands on the other side, and then there’s the tug and pull of rope around my wrists. “It’s done.” Nicholas is in sight for a second, his eyes lowered to the deck, and then I can’t see him anymore. “Not another step,” Poseidon announces. I can’t see where everyone is standing, but they must have been moving, must have been going somewhere. “Everyone stays on deck until this is finished. Even you, Cook.” I twist my head around. It’s hard, tied like this, to get a view of anyone. Cook is off to Poseidon’s side, his eyes on the deck. He doesn’t lift them up to look back at me. Everyone I can see is doing the same thing. My heart pounds. They’re not moving, but they’re not looking, either. It’s the most privacy they can give me. Poseidon holds out his hand. It’s Nicholas who steps forward with a set jaw and spots of color on his cheeks. It’s Nicholas who puts the whip in Poseidon’s hand. The whip. In Poseidon’s hand. “No,” I say. “Don’t do this. Please, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.” The rope around my wrists doesn’t hurt but it doesn’t have any slack, either. I can’t get away. Poseidon doesn’t answer. He steps to my side, testing the whip in his hand. That’s all it takes—that one motion, and I know with horrible certainty that he has done this before, that this is not the first time, and that he knows how to make it hurt. Alongside that certainty, another feeling burns itself into being. I hate him, and he’s beautiful in the rain. It looks at home on him. I want him, and he hates me enough to do this. To tie me naked to a part of his ship and whip me in front of other people. I’m terrified. I’m fucking terrified. I have never been so scared, except for one other time, and it was earlier, on that ship with those men. He gets closer and drags the whip across my skin, letting me feel it, and all that heated want crashes down underneath the weight of my fear. I’m afraid to suffer for him. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s already happening. Poseidon takes a single step back. “Look forward.” There’s nowhere to look but the mast. It’s mean, what he’s doing. It’s cruel. He’s making it so I can’t see when he draws his arm back. “Please don’t,” I beg the mast. “Please don't hurt me. Please don’t, Poseidon. You don’t have to do this. You can stop. I’m sorry. I won’t leave again, I won’t—” It turns out I don’t need to see him. The whip makes a sound when it moves through the air, almost a whistling, and then it makes first contact. There’s nothing, and then there’s everything, a lightning line of pain across the curve of my shoulders. The scream wrestles its way out of me before I can stop it. It becomes a begging plea. “Don't do it!” I scream at him. “Don't.” Another blow, this one lower. The rain makes it worse somehow. I don’t think any more drops are falling, but the lingering wetness on my skin forces me to feel everything. “Please.” Again. My head snaps back, body trying to arch away from the whip, but of course it’s too late. It will always be too late by the time I react. I can’t hear my own screams, but I’m sure I’m screaming. It’s too loud, too much to process along with the pain. Every individual line is fire, it’s fire. I hate it, and it’s not killing me. It’s killing me, but I’m not dead. This is the real force of his anger, this is the consequence of putting people’s lives in danger. He’s doing it for them. He’s doing it for th— Another stripe lands, this one across my ass, and it’s so intense that I’m howling when the next one comes. I was cold before. Now I’m burning up. Feverish with pain and the most fucked-up desire I have ever felt. I want him to forgive me. I want him to carry me back to his bed. Maybe that’s what I’m begging for. Not for this to stop but for the other things to happen. To please, please, look at me the way he did before. Please. Distantly, I can hear murmurs from the rest of the crew. Nobody dares to try to stop him, not one of them, and I get it. I get it now. It would be like begging the tides to stay in place. It can’t be done. It’s a waste of breath. One more. Two. The rest of the world blanks out. My voice gives, breaking along itself, and I’m abruptly hoarse but I can’t stop talking to him. Can’t stop begging. Can’t stop wanting. It’s clarifying, this pain. It shows me exactly what I want. And what I want is to hate him back. I want to hate him back. I’m past it, really, past screaming, past hoping that it will work. It’s a reflex. Can’t be stopped. Let the body surrender to it. That’s the way through. If there is another side, this is how I get there. I open my mouth to scream again anyway. No sound comes out, only silent breath in the shape of his name.