Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [398]
He mauled them idly for a moment, pinching her nipples between a large thumb and forefinger to make them stand up, then pushed her toward his tumbled bed.
The sheets were stained with spilled liquor and stank of perfume and wine, and overwhelmingly of the rank, heavy odor of Bonnet himself. He shoved up her skirt and arranged her legs to suit him, humming all the while beneath his breath. Farewell to you all, ye fine Spanish ladies …
In her mind’s eye, she could see herself thrusting him away, flinging herself off the bed and running for the door, skimming light as a gull down the dark companionway and bursting up through the grated deck to freedom. She could feel the wooden boards under her bare feet, and the glare of the hot summer sun in her dark-blind eyes. Almost. She lay in the dim cabin, wooden as a figurehead, tasting blood in her mouth.
There was a blind, insistent prodding between her thighs and she convulsed in panic, scissoring her legs. Still humming, he thrust a muscular leg between her own, brutally nudging her thighs apart. Naked from the waist downward, he still wore his shirt and stock. The long tails drooped around Leroi’s pale stalk as he rose up on his knees above her.
He stopped humming long enough to spit copiously into his palm. Rubbing roughly and thoroughly, he eased the path and then set to business. With one hand clutched firmly on her breast, he guided himself with the other to an inescapable berth, making a jovial remark about the snugness of the accommodation, and then loosed Leroi on his mindless—and mercifully brief—gallop to pleasure.
Two minutes, maybe three. And then it was over, and Bonnet lay heavily collapsed upon her, sweat crumpling his linen stock, one hand still crushing her breast. His lank fair hair fell soft against her cheek and his exhalations purled hot and damp on her neck. At least he’d stopped humming.
She lay frozen for endless long minutes, staring up at the ceiling, where the reflections from the water danced across the polished beams. He sighed at last, and rolled slowly off her onto his side. He smiled at her, dreamily scratching one bared and hairy hip.
“Not bad, sweetheart, though I’ve had livelier rides. Move your arse more next time, hm?” He sat up, yawned, and began to straighten his attire. She edged toward the side of the bed, then, sure that he didn’t mean to restrain her, rolled abruptly off and onto her feet. She felt light-headed and desperately short of air, as though his bulk still pressed upon her.
Moving in a daze, she went to the door. It was bolted. As she struggled to lift the bolt, her hands shaking, she heard him say something behind her, and swung around in amazement.
“What did you say?”
“I said the ring’s on the desk,” he said, straightening up from retrieving his stockings. He sat down on the bed and began to pull them on, waving casually at the desk that stood against the wall. “There’s money, too. Take what you want.”
The top of the desk was a magpie’s nest, littered with inkpots, trinkets, bits of jewelry, bills of lading, tattered quills, silver buttons, ragged bits of paper and crumpled clothing, and a scatter of coins in silver and bronze, copper and gold, currency of several colonies, several countries.
“You’re offering me money?”
He looked up quizzically, fair brows arched.
“I pay for my pleasures,” he said. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
Everything in the cabin seemed unnaturally vivid, detailed and individual as the objects in a dream, which would vanish with waking.
“I didn’t think anything,” she said, her voice sounding very clear, but distant, someone speaking from far away. Her kerchief lay on the floor where he had thrown it, by the desk. She walked there, carefully, trying not to think of the warm slipperiness that streaked