Angelique Rising (45 page)

             
C'mon my little Picasso, with a need like yours you are mine now whether you know it or not, it's irresistible to you, yield! You've no misdemeanors a few good solid whacks on that delectable heavenly rump of yours won't set right quickly enough. What I want to do to you I am going to do, but you can be darn sure you're going to like it, I'll make damn sure of that. I'm a fucking MASTER at this and I am so going to own you and what you want baby it will be irrelevant but believe me it is going to be me! I love women! Women are the best flippin' inventions in the entire fucking universe!

             
She wasn't running. Even in the dimming light, I saw it. A flicker of interest that morphed into an impassioned war between her fearful reluctance and her excruciating desire. Her eyes locked on mine.

             
By golly I had her.

Chapter Six

Jaesha

              No friggin' way. Nuh uh, José. He hadda be crazy. "Surrender control" when I was with him so I could
learn
from him? What crackpot scheme was that? I was thunderstruck.
For-get-it-buster.
And all of it dumped on me with a
so
fiendishly sincere but
so
inscrutably delighted face.

             
Gee whiz though, it was fascinating in a deliciously uneasy kind of way, so yes, I was curious. And he was so tempting, the way he spoke, the things he described, he positively oozed
mouthwatering male
power,
like some kind of electric current that you can't let go of. I started feeling light-headed. His incredible masculinity unsettled me (okay, I thought he was
hot
). And all the while he just sat there gazing at me unruffled and self-possessed, imperturbable, so sure of himself as his eyes blazed
I've done this before darlin' and I know what the outcome is gonna be
. (Man did he have that wrong. Kenneth might have been a natural born boss, but I alas was a natural born saboteur.)

             
Now the rather problematic aspect to all of it that he of course knew nothing about, was that while he was rapturing on about
La Sex Extraordinairé,
I had spent my entire life running away from even
la sex
minisculé.
Heck, I'd have had to train just to be a neophyte. But to my total befuddlement I found myself actually considering having sex with him, okay probably not, but still, I was entertaining the
possibility
and I hadn't done that with anyone
ever
, my first and only sexual experience having been rape while passed out drunk at a party at the age of fifteen and the subsequent humiliation of the photo passed all through school.

             
Of course I wouldn't consider doing anything far-out with him which I was sure he was into big-time (though honestly I didn't know what "far-out" was any more than I knew what the standard conventions were) but I could envision he and I... well, no, I couldn't, but I figured he probably wouldn't need too much of my input anyway. So maybe, like...
once
. What did I care if it encouraged him in his crazy delusion? If I did it with him just once maybe I could be normal. So I kept Kenneth talking while I tried to get up the courage to actually well, you know.
Once.

             
"I'd have to know precisely what this agreement of ours would include," I said trying to sound like I actually knew what on earth he was talking about while at the same time prevent the nervous giggles that threatened to erupt out of me.

             
"Of course," he said with a maddening tone of inevitability, entitlement even. "Well, the basics. The time frame would be forty days spread out over no more than five months. You would come when I called you, though I would always give you reasonable notice and I understand that there may be rare times when your own life justifiably takes precedent, though this must be legitimate. And I know women like privacy when they are having their periods so I will never call you at that time unless you don't mind, and I assure you
I
don't mind. You will have your own bedroom here, but I am free to enter it as I choose and I
will
so choose. I have a staff here, you have not seen them and may not, but there will be no need of any housekeeping duties on your part."

             
His exhortation, though blisteringly attentive, was also prideful and preachy, heedlessly high handed and arrogant. Totally big shot C-E-O
baby I will
fuck your brains out and you know you want it.

             
But I'm not saying I didn't like it.

             
"Tell me about these punishments of yours that are supposed to make me concede myself to you." Oh yes indeedy, Mr.
I-Don't-Mind
, tell me about
those
.

             
"Not
make
you, help you
choose
to. Some are physical. Most are psychological," he said, his eyes alight as he gave me the big smile treatment attempting to distract me from the suspiciously dictatorial tone of his voice.

             
"Like what
exactly?"

             
"Being tied up. Spanked. Maybe whipped, though not that left permanent marks. Forced to be adorned with what you do not wish to wear. Your hair cut and styled the way
I
prefer. Your punishments would vary according to what you needed, what would be the most helpful to you and I can't predict that now. But remember Jaesha, your punishments would never be more than you could bear,
you
manage them. If it is ever more than you can handle you simply say Stop."

             
He tried to make it sound like those punishments of his meant no more than the briefest of trifling interruptions.
Minor inconvenience is all.
What
I
heard though was that his punishments could be whatever he darn well wanted them to be and that could be anything!

             
"And if I did say Stop?"

             
"Then I stop. And I have the option of terminating our agreement if I think you cannot go on. But remember too that your punishments would only continue inasmuch as you were unable to abandon yourself over to me, instead defying me,
refusing
to submit yourself to me, unable on your own to move forward. But once you did there would be no further
need
of punishment, all that would happen would be the continuation of your learning. As I've told you, this is not about punishment, punishment is just a tool to help you give up your own natural self determined stubbornness. So you can then be open to learn from me."

             
I almost
saw
the restless energy and excitement that swarmed over him.

             
"I could never let somebody else choose my haircut."

             
"Then we will remove that from consideration. See? It is negotiable."

             
Like he expected applause or something, like he was being magnanimous. My reaction was to instantly wonder what I could say that would irritate him the most.

             
"I'm sorry Kenneth, but I know me, you come at me with a whip and I'm outta here."

             
"Perhaps we should discuss rewards."

             
"You saw how I live. I'm not into
things
. I wouldn't be interested in jewelry and clothes. And I'm not a prostitute, I wouldn't take your money. There isn't any incentive strong enough to keep me here if I wanted to leave." I obviously didn't know then that while I never understood Kenneth he
always
understood
me
.

             
"If you do the whole forty days I will pay off all your student loans and credit cards."

             
Godamn.

             
Godamn, Godamn, Godamn!

The Dangerous Path of Loving Jaesha
on Amazon.

COQUINA HARD

by

Lorain O'Neil

PROLOGUE

August, 1768

“Kill me first,” her disbelieving mind shrieked as she rammed her mortally thin body between the barrels. “
Don’t
let
the
Italians
touch
me
.”

Forni had already raped two Minorcan girls, declared himself Captain-General over the settlement and seized a schooner to flee Florida. Three hundred of Forni’s rioters now roared toward her, smashing storehouses, plundering rum casks, murdering overseers. She heard one overseer die trying vainly to ward off the rioters’ blows, dying in the sand as the Greeks stabbed him in the groin, chopping off his nose and fingers.

Her name was Toria Brighton and she was a member of the largest single migration ever to come to America, surviving a wretched Atlantic crossing only to be crushed by starvation in the new Florida settlement.

“Help
me,
God,” she hissed, every fiber of her bursting in terror. “Save
me.
”

The frenzied mob careened onto the great coquina wharf of new Smyrna, directly to the barrels Toria cowered behind.

New Smyrna itself was more than a hundred thousand acres of Florida swampland and pine barrens, owned by one Dr. Andrew J. Turnbull and his aristocratic partners. Rushing to settle Florida, the British Crown had rashly granted huge tracts of land to British speculators but on one invidious condition: the land had to be peopled within three years. Failure resulted in complete forfeiture.

A man smashed a barrel, exposing her. I’m dead now, she told herself as mind-numbing horror engulfed her. Hands seized her, but not the drunken Greeks or Italians, but sixteen-year old Levy the Jew, from Minorca.

“Levy!” she tried to scream above the roar of the mob. For just an instant, the bellowing of the men and the wails of the captured women already forced onto the schooner distracted the rioters.

“GET ABOARD!” Forni exploded in Italian from the deck of the
Balmer.
“We’ve got to make tide, you dung-eating bastards!” Forni was ursine, his dark skin stretched tightly over a gaunt frame. He knew, as all New Smyrna’s survivors knew, they’d been tricked into slavery at New Smyrna and nothing but death awaited them there.

“Freedom!”
a crazed Greek howled from shore. In chaos, a hundred rioters overwhelmed the
Balmer’s
gangplank and joined the hundreds of men already on board. Levy the Jew went with them, clutching Toria tightly. Aboard, he placed her on the deck where the abducted women already dragged on board cringed in a group, crying.

“They’ve tied up overseers below,” a panicked woman whispered in Catalan, the language of Minorca. “They’re going to starve them, say it’ll teach them what it feels like.” In the months the colonists had been at New Smyrna each had received only a quart of corn a day. Hominy was ladled out and men were forced to publicly whip their wives for trying to steal bread for their starving children.

Forni continued thundering orders at the mob, the Greeks not understanding Italian, the Italians too drunk to care.

We’ve wasted too much time, Forni snarled in boiling fury,
too much time!
Three days to convince the Greeks to come, never able to convince those idiot Minorcans. But now we have Turnbull’s ship, we’ll make Havana, and leave those stinking Minorcans to die here in the pissing swamps!

The wind in the harbor was against them and they missed the tide.

“A pox on this place for eternity!” Forni raved. “Now we have to wait for the next filthy tide to get us over that devil’s sandbar!” And out of Mosquitto Inlet forever. “Turnbull might be warned by then!”

“Ha!” a drunken voice answered. “What can Turnbull do against hundreds of us?”

Forni paid the fool no attention. Have they heard of our revolt in St. Augustine? he asked himself for the hundredth time. He scanned the north horizon uncontrollably, searching for the mast of a ship, any ship. They can’t get here in time he prayed.
But three days, three days has been too long!
Three days to organize the men, kill the overseers, provision the boat, wait for the tide. That foul sandbar! I’d be gone from Florida forever but for that damn bar blocking the harbor!

Forni sailed the
Balmer
southward, following the waterway close to the beach, waiting for the high tide to lift the ship up over the bar and out to sea. To Havana. To freedom.

“Maybe the British in St. Augustine will come,” Toria cried out, unable to accept her fate.