“Go on,” he breathed into the hush. “Punish me. Finger that beautiful cunt. Show me what you think I lost.”

It wasn’t his words that stirred my hand into motion. It was the turbulent look in his eyes. The challenge. Did I have it in me to touch myself without touching him? Could he sit there and watch without losing control?

I went for it. Spreading my legs, my fingers digging into my flesh, I drove my strokes up inside, using him—the glorious view of his body, the memory of our lovemaking, the pained look on his face. I used him for my own pleasure. He was the muse that inspired the languorous burning in my veins, the uncontrollable trembling in my thighs, and the moans singing past my lips.

Sinews tensed in his neck. Muscles bounced in his jaw. His mouth opened on the surge of his breaths, but otherwise, he remained still. Behaving himself.

His self-restraint only further aroused me, and when I finally reached that peak of venereal excitement, I cried out, twitching from head to toe and squirting all over my hand.

I caught myself before I toppled off the cask and sucked in great gulps of air.

His breaths continued to hiss past gnashed teeth, his hands white-knuckled on his lap, and his full attention locked on my dripping swollen cunt.

As the tingling remnants of orgasm faded, the crushing need to feel him inside me didn’t abate. Nothing would ever compare to what I’d once had with Priest Farrell.

My legs wobbled as I stepped to the water bucket and washed my hands and thighs. He didn’t speak, but I felt his gaze caressing the lines of my back.

Snatching the shirt from the floor, I pulled it over my head and started toward the ladder.

“What if the compass isn’t the map?” His gravelly voice brought me to a halt.

He never cared about the treasure. Never once expressed an interest in being wealthy. He had the dominating disposition to command his own ship, and he did that now and then. But he never kept the vessels he seized. He just…gave them away.

Priest was a slave to his carnal desires, a worshiper of the standing prick between his legs. He would follow it before anything else.

“Why do you care?” I turned to face him.

“Because you do. What if the map is inside the instrument?”

“You think I haven’t considered that? There’s no keyhole. No openings.” My head pounded as irritation threaded through my tone. “It doesn’t open.”

“I located the inventor who crafted it.”

“You say?” My face numbed, and a ringing sound erupted in my ears.