32. Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Two
I tugged Ursa after me before Tobago could change his mind—out of the galley, waiting until the doors slid shut and we had some modicum of privacy in the corridor.
Turning, I intended to give him a piece of my mind.
In front of the others, I had to be placating.
Naturally, I understood where he was coming from and why he might have qualms seeing me in that position with another man, no matter how staged it all was.
But it was imperative, absolutely imperative, that I made him understand just what was at stake.
Before I could say a word, though, Ursa had picked me up and backed me into the wall. I squawked in surprise that morphed into protest as my legs instinctively wrapped around him to keep myself from falling. “Ursa! What are you—”
He pinned my hips to the wall with the strength of his ironlike thighs. Grasping both of my wrists with one of his hands, he held them high above my head, as the other hand clamped down on my throat—not tightly enough to cut off my air supply, but to hold me firmly in place.
Nonetheless, all the air rushed out of me. “What are you doing?” I gasped when I was able to catch my breath again.
“You stay here,” he told me sternly. There was nothing soft or yielding in his tone. He was all firm authority, bordering on aggressive. “Safe here. No Croydon.”
“Ursa.” I tried to squirm but I couldn’t budge even an inch.
He was so very strong; I knew it better than most, and yet somehow it so frequently came as a surprise.
Maybe because he’d never used his strength against me before, never held me against my will.
“That’s ridiculous. I have to go back. You know I do. ”
Ursa said nothing in response, which I knew was as good as a no.
He really wasn’t going to release me, I realized. This was no banter on his part, no playful demonstration.
As a feminist, I was quite outraged. As a woman, though . . . I’m ashamed to say my body was responding rather . . . unexpectedly to this show of physical dominance.
I squirmed futilely. “You don’t understand. Tobago is the captain. We have to listen to what he says. He’s in charge.”
“You listen,” Ursa countered. “Ursa in charge.”
Oh, good Lord, why did that send a current of heat coursing to my core? Trying to clamp my thighs together as discreetly as possible, I held his gaze. It was my turn to be the stern one. “If we disobey, we can be thrown off the ship.”
That was the wrong tack to take with Ursa. He didn’t want to be on this ship anymore, anyway. He shrugged, unconcerned.
“They can leave us behind in some place that isn’t safe,” I pressed, needing to make sure he understood me. “Someplace that Rawley can find us.”
At last, the steel in Ursa’s eyes softened.
He wasn’t afraid of Rawley, of course. As much as I’d tried to impress upon him the danger that a man like Rawley posed—with all of his money, his influence, his vast array of connections—Ursa didn’t know how to conceptualize this power past the physical threat Rawley held. 1
But he knew I was afraid of Rawley. By then I’d confided to him what Rawley had done to those poor women in his lab. What Rawley had done to my mother. And he’d seen firsthand what Rawley had done to me.
I stayed silent, watching the gears turning in Ursa’s mind, the shifting emotions flickering through his eyes. At last, with a tight clench of his jaw and a great release of air from his nostrils, he nodded.
Relief flooded through me. “Thank you, Ursa.” I moved to reach for him, but his grip on my wrists, the hard clench of his thighs around my hips, didn’t lighten.
Instead, with the hand that had been clamped around my throat, he began running his palm in a deliberate trail over my body—across my upper chest, over one breast, then the other.
I was still fully clothed, but my body had become rather responsive to the entire situation, and I let out a sound that was half moan, half gasp. “What are you doing?”
“Croydon's scent.” The tight expression on Ursa’s face revealed exactly what he thought about this. This was no game to him, no petty jealousy or teasing banter. Something far more primal was happening. “I must reclaim.”
That was the only warning I got before he rubbed his hand possessively over my (clothed!) pussy. Again. And again.
I couldn’t catch the moan this time, and Ursa’s eyes blazed with heat as he looked down at me, before tracing a slow, deliberate circle with the heel of his palm.
I instinctively attempted to raise my hips to meet his touch, but when I couldn’t manage to hold myself up for long, he smirked.
I’m in charge, that expression blazed arrogantly.
Well, two could play that game. “I have to go back,” I reminded him. “Practice until we get it right. Croydon’s scent will be all over me again.”
And yes, if it wasn’t perfectly clear, I was shamelessly trying to goad him into more jealousy.
More touching. More reclaiming. I didn’t understand why his possessiveness inspired this kind of reckless need in me.
That was what he turned me into—a wild, wanton thing.
Or perhaps that was what I had always been, he just helped me to unleash it.
At whatever he saw in my own expression, Ursa’s eyes sparked, a dusky blue fire. “Then I reclaim. Again.”
And he would, I knew, my heart racing with anticipation even as I kept up the pretense of trying to squirm away from him. He would rub his scent all over me. He would reclaim me as many times as it took for there to be no question that I was his.
1. Which, as Ursa had demonstrated many times (often to hilarious effect), was none.