Authors: Corinne Davies
Davies, Corinne - Steam-Driven Seduction [Steampunked Lust 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (2 page)
“Kass, stop fighting me.”
“Never.” She kicked back, gritting her teeth as she went on the offensive and tried to break his grip. Part of her knew it was a fruitless effort, because under all the refined elegance Julien showed the world was a powerful man more than able to subdue her. He countered every move she made, which infuriated her further. One mistake was all she needed to break away from him.
“I didn’t want it to be like this.” He pulled her arms behind her, and she heard a sharp
snick
that sealed her fate. He lifted off her, but she couldn’t move her arms. Binders incased both arms from wrist to elbow, locking them together and behind her back. She could still fight, but if she fell she’d injure herself and wouldn’t be able to defend herself. Julien turned her around and searched her face while rubbing her upper arms. Kass panted, her heart slamming so hard out of fear that she struggled to catch her breath.
She’d no idea what Julien saw in her features, but he drew her close to him. Wrapping his arms around her, he rubbed her back between her shoulder blades, mumbling soft words against her hair until she calmed enough to understand what he was saying.
“Keep your breathing even, Kass. You’re safe.”
She yanked out of his arms, furious for losing control of her fears. Julien let her create some space between them but didn’t let her go too far. “I didn’t want to use them.”
Kass refused to look at him. Wearing the binders confused her. The terror she felt at first had morphed into something different. Something comforting, which confused her more than her reactions to Julien. Avoiding Julien’s gaze, she looked along the wall and noticed the locking mechanism on the door was still activated and the door was closed.
The launchpad was still open and the wind whipped around them. She darted a look up at him. “Did you scale the outside of my ship, in flight? You really are insane!”
“You didn’t give me much choice.” He moved to the launchpad and tripped the lever, which made it fold back up into itself, and the outer door rolled back into place. The doors sealed with a hiss, then deafening silence descended over the room. Kass backed up against the wall for balance. With her arms encased she could still use her legs, and she would.
Right now all she could do was fight because she could never allow herself to fall under his spell again. Julien turned and his eyes narrowed slightly. The wind had wreaked havoc on his tightly restrained hair. Dark strands had pulled loose from his queue and now hung down, framing the aristocratic, chiseled features of his face. He looked more like a Highland lord rather than a Roman nobleman now. His eyes blazed and he reached down and rubbed the generous erection pushing his kilt forward.
Her cunt wept in memory of what he felt like stretching her to the point of pain, but she only ever felt the most exquisite pleasure in his bed. He’d been sweet and caring, until the night she found her bed empty and went searching for him. He’d held a whip in hand and flicked the weapon over the skin of a man strapped to a post. If that didn’t shock her enough, she stumbled across the scene as the prisoner screamed out his pleasure. Kass still remembered the man spurting out his seed onto the floor in front of him. At the time she didn’t understand any of it. All Kass saw was her husband using a whip on another human being.
She’d been so horrified she ran from him and then kept running. Every time she heard a rumor Julien was close, she pulled up the anchors and moved. After a few months he stopped chasing her. She used every waking moment raiding slave dens and rescuing people so they wouldn’t suffer what she had. It’d been over two years since she saw him last. She’d learned a lot while living on her own and knew she could never be what he wanted. Innocent little slave girl Kassandra was gone.
Kass would never allow another man to rule her. She pulled on the binders encasing her arms and tried to hold on to the fury that was starting to wane. When she started infiltrating the slave dens by posing as a buyer, she learned a great deal about the slave trade. Not all men were evil creatures bent on inflicting as much pain on another human as they could. Slavers on the other hand were a vile species. She wouldn’t rest until she eradicated them from the earth.
Julien watched her posture and marched over to the door. “Kassandra, you and your entire crew are coming back to
Atlantis
with me.”
“Why? Did you whip all your slaves into the ground already?”
“What did you say?” He whipped his head around and strode over to her. She tried to kick out her foot and hit him in the face, but he caught her leg and pushed it back toward the floor. Crowding her against the wall, he used his body to pin her. The pressure of his body against the binders at her back made her pant, and shivers raced down her spine. She knew what he was capable of but didn’t understand why she felt driven to prod at him.
What was said couldn’t be unsaid. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her chin and met his gaze. “You heard me.” She refused to cower at his feet pleading for mercy. Even though a small voice in the back of her head was begging for exactly that and she was terrified he might see it in her eyes.
Julien’s gaze heated and his nose flared at her defiance. “Kassandra, do not push me.”
“Why not? Are you planning on whipping the skin from my back, too?”
Julien slapped his hand against the wall next to her shoulder. The sound made her jump, but she refused to drop her eyes. “Yes, I may do that.” He leaned forward until his lips were almost touching hers. “Only I’ll leave your creamy skin intact and have you screaming my name as your delicious juices paint your thighs.”
“Never.” Kass planned to shout the word in his face, but it escaped her lips in a soft whisper.
Julien pressed his hand to her thigh and boldly slid it up to her hip, pressing against her hip bone with his thumb. “If I dip my hand between your legs, will I find you wet and waiting for me?”
Kass clenched her teeth together and glared at him. She could feel how wet she was, but nothing would get her to admit it to him.
“Won’t you bend a little bit for me, Kassandra?” He pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek. “I’ll have you screaming my name,
precious
.” He whispered the endearment against her skin, reminding her of a time when she clung to him for strength, but she could stand on her own two feet. She didn’t need him anymore.
Keep lying to yourself.
Julien lifted his hands to her upper arms and pulled her from the wall. As soon as he stepped away from her, she missed his presence. The reality of the situation hit her. She really was going back to
Atlantis
, against her will. “Where’s my crew?”
“They should be docking with
Atlantis
shortly before us,” Julien replied as he unlocked the door. Two large men stood in the hallway.
“Kassandra, let me introduce you to Gabriel and Raphael, also known as Gabe and Raz. Geoffrey is the one flying the ship at the moment.”
Julien introduced her to the pair as if she was an honored guest and not a prisoner on her own ship. They were identical twins and Kass quickly looked back and forth between them, trying to figure out what the difference between them could be.
The one on the left grinned. “Go ahead and try, ma’am. But, there’s no difference.”
Kass eyed him as if he was an errant child up to mischief. “That’s ‘Captain’ to you, and you have a scar on you left hand your brother doesn’t.”
Gabe and Raz blinked at each other in amazement and then turned back to look at her with a small amount of respect in their eyes.
“Never underestimate a woman, especially my wife.” Julien’s laugh echoed down the hallway, making Kass’s heart pound. She’d forgotten how much she loved that sound.
“I’m not your wife anymore.” Kass tried to kick at him, but he grasped her upper arm and guided her down the hallway. “I trust you can manage the stairs, or have you figured out a faster way back up to the upper deck?”
“Nothing I’ll ever tell you.”
Gabe and Raz followed them down the hallway. Kass took no small amount of pleasure from the fact that Julien needed help to keep an eye on her.
Julien smirked at her. “Hold tight to those secrets, Kassandra, and we’ll see how many of them I’ve claimed by the week’s end.”
“Hold tight to your delusions, Julien.” Kassandra lifted her chin and quickened her pace as she navigated the stairs. “I’ll be long gone by the end of the week.”
Chapter Two
Julien allowed Kassandra to march ahead of him on the stairs, her head held proudly, her chin tipped up in defiance. He remembered when Miguel had done the same thing to him. He’d never expected to find love after Kass left him. Miguel snuck into his heart almost the moment Julien met him, but without Kass to complete their trio, he hadn’t allowed himself to stay with the man. He’d walked away and isolated himself on
Atlantis
. His palms itched to smack her bottom as he had Miguel’s and get her to lower her gaze, but he knew the timing for that was wrong. Knocking his wife down a peg would be detrimental to everything he wanted in life. First and foremost he wanted her back, and if it meant ignoring her pride now, then he would.
She’d changed over the past couple years. Her will was stronger and she’d learned that she had the ability to take care of herself. Yzzi’s words echoed in his thoughts. One afternoon a month ago, he’d stood on a balcony in the sun speaking with her after locking Liam and Tristan in his office. They were about to make the same mistake with Yzzi that he’d made with Kassandra. He’d stepped in and separated Yzzi from them before one of them said something in anger.
Yzzi’s father was a general in the New World militia. Yzzi and her sister, Tori, had been raised by their mother in one of the Old World clans. Their father claimed them after their mother’s death, but neither woman agreed with the New World’s puritan view of morals. Both women became one of the biggest sources of inside information until they were caught. Thankfully, their husbands managed to rescue them.
Yzzi was a very wise woman, and during their conversation Julien realized that he’d wanted to stand in front of Kassandra and protect her. But, he hadn’t considered allowing her to stand next to him. Yzzi’s observations had been right. He’d allowed his pride to interfere, and he’d failed. Instead of helping Kass become stronger, he’d let her lean on him more and more. The more dependent on him she became, the less likely he would lose her. In the end, that was exactly why he’d lost her.
While he didn’t know the exact moment when she’d had enough, he suspected she saw him training a lovely submissive to be responsive to his Master’s touch. Darien had been a good friend of his but couldn’t provide everything his husband needed. Darien’s husband, Shelby, needed to be dominated and controlled in order to feel wanted and loved. Julien had trained them both and at night showed Darien how using physical stimulation would provide the edge Shelby needed to finally break down the mental barrier he’d erected.
If Kassandra had come across him that night, she’d have misunderstood everything she saw. With her past, she would never see the whip as anything but a method of torture. When he made love to her, he was careful never to be rough or too aggressive, not wanting to wake up any old fears she might have carried. When she disappeared a day later with the ship he’d given her as a wedding present, the world dropped out from under his feet.
Watching the woman in front of him march up the stairs, her arms in binders, her beautiful ass rocking with each step, Julien wondered if he had it all wrong. She’d been terrified when he first put them on her, but she’d come out of it and snapped at him. His cock twitched, and he rubbed it with his palm. There was something about the confidence with which Kassandra moved now, her steps sure as she navigated the twisting staircase to the upper decks.
He glanced back at Gabe and Raz, who were both obviously fascinated by his wife, but they weren’t men he would share her with. They were too young. This new Kassandra would steamroller over them before they ever knew what happened. She reached the upper deck and headed toward the bridge.
“Kassandra, to your quarters, please.”
Julien could almost feel the anger emanating from her. She squared her shoulders and spun on one heel, glaring at him as she headed in the opposite direction. Raz and Gabe parted as she marched past them like a pissed-off queen.
Bloody hell, she’s beautiful.
The hunger inside of him growled in frustration. He would’ve loved for her to try to defy him again. Julien might not be willing to share her with Gabe and Raz, but there was a part of him that would happily bend her over and claim her as they watched. The hunger wanted to prove to every male around them that she was his and only his.