“A lover, then.”

“I have many.”

“Whore.” He spat the word while somehow maintaining his stoic mien.

“Don’t shame me for being liberated. I’m a sexually transgressive woman, doing just as a man does. It’s my prerogative to do it with whomever I like as often as I like.”

That used to be my habit. Then I met Priest. After two lonely dry years, it was about time I started enjoying life again. But not here, and not with Lord Prude.

“Where I come from,” he said, “you’re a ruined woman.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Have you ever sheathed yourself inside a woman?”

His eyes screwed down to slits, and from across the table, I felt the heat of them on my lips. Veins throbbed in his temples and throat. Not in outrage. His body language remained calm. But he was positively trying to shield a reaction. While thinking about sheathing himself in a woman? Who? Certainly not me.

“Yes.” He licked his lips. “I’ve shared my bed.”

“Whore.” I gasped in mock displeasure. “I mean, if you were a woman, of course. You would be an embarrassment to your family. Scandalized. Exiled. Ruined.”

“If you have a point, make it.”

I released an exasperated breath. “You seem like an intelligent fellow, Ashley. Surely, you see the hypocrisy in your social traditions.”

“I don’t make the rules.”

“You just follow them. Marvelous. Because I have some rules of my own.” I rounded the table, stopped beside him, and leaned a hip against the edge. “My enjoyment in carnal relations doesn’t mean I welcome it with everyone. Would you like to know what happened to the first lord who greeted me with his unwelcome prick?”

“Enlighten me.”

“In hindsight, I should have castrated him before I gutted him. But I was only fourteen. Such a shy maiden, that poor girl.”

“I doubt you were ever shy.”

“Just so. I hadn’t yet learned the art in creative, prolonged torture. Did you know a man can still maintain an erection when the skin is flayed from his genitals?”

“You’re a vile creature.”

“Thank you.” I smiled sweetly.

It was true that I’d skinned a man who had made a habit of violating women. Only once, though. I didn’t have the stomach to attempt it again.

“A woman…” His gaze slid to my lips. “Commanding a fifty-gun galleon. When did the gates of hell break open?”

“I think I liked you better when you didn’t speak.” I snapped my fingers in front of his unblinking eyes. “Stop looking at my mouth.”

“I can’t seem to make sense of you.”

“It’s easy, Commodore. Just think of the smartest man you know, remove all the hauteur and bigotry, and add a larger pair of testicles.”

“Disturbing.”

“The world is disturbing.”