I look up at him and his smile chills me. Slowly he strides a circle around me, comes to a stop at my back. I do not know what he will do next. I don’t know if even now he’s again raised his whip, and I brace for the next sting of his lash. Instead he unlatches both shackles. My legs give way and I kneel, quivering, waiting for whatever torment comes next.

    I do not see what he reaches for, but I hear him slap it against his hand. I look up and see he is holding a billy club, its wood polished and gleaming. He sees my look of alarm. “No, I will not beat you. Never do I leave scars. This instrument is for a different purpose entirely.” He strokes it against his palm, admiring its polish in the candlelight. “This one is meant only as an introduction. A training device, small enough for the tightest virgin.” He looks at me. “But you are not a virgin.”

“No,” I murmur.

He turns to the wall and reaches for a different billy club. He holds it before me and I cannot look away, cannot stare at anything but the monstrous object looming before me.

“This one is meant for a harlot who’s been well-ridden. One seasoned enough to accommodate any manner of man.”

I swallow. “That’s impossible.”

“Is it?”

“No woman can take that…thing.”

He slides the club across my cheek and the wood is smooth and terrifying. “Unless she is properly initiated. It’s what whores do, Ava. You learn to please. Because you never know who will walk in the door and what he will demand. Some men just want to ride you. Others prefer to watch. And then there are those who want to see how much you can endure.”

“This isn’t what I want!”

“I am but a reflection of your own shame. I give you exactly what you desire. What you expect. Even if you do not know it.” He tosses aside that monstrosity of a club and I flinch as it thuds to the floor. “You are your own cruelest judge, Ava, and you yourself hand down your punishment. I merely wield the instrument. I bend to your will, just as you bend to mine. Tonight, this is what you want. So this is what I deliver.” He wrenches apart what remains of my dress. I do not resist as he grasps my hips and uses me like the whore I am. The whore I’ve proven myself to be. I am nothing but flesh, bought and paid for.

    I give a scream of release and together we fall forward as he collapses on top of me.

For a long time we do not move. His arms curl around me and I feel the beating of his heart against my bare back. How can a dead man seem so alive? His skin is as warm as mine, his arms solid with muscle as they encircle me. No real man can match him.

No real man could understand my desires so completely.

He rolls off me. As we lie side by side on the floor, he gently traces a circle on my bare flank. “Did I frighten you?” he asks.

“Yes. You did.”

“You need never be afraid.”

“But fear is part of your game, isn’t it?” I look at him. “The fear that you might hurt me. That you might actually use that thing on me.” I glance at the billy club, lying a few feet away, and I shudder.

“Did it not excite you, just a little?” He smiles and I see the gleam of cruelty beneath the surface of those dark eyes.

“You wouldn’t really use it on me, would you?”

“That is the mystery, is it not? How far will I go? Will I use the whip too savagely and tear your beautiful back? You do not know. You cannot predict what I will do next.” He slides his fingers down my cheek. “Danger is intoxicating, Ava. So is pain. I give you only as much as you want. As much as you can bear.”

“I don’t know what I can bear.”

“This we shall learn.”

“Why?”

“Because it satisfies us both. Some have called me a monster because I enjoy the crack of the whip and the cry of the conquered. Because I am aroused by the screams and the struggle.”

“Is that really what you enjoy?”

“As do you. You simply do not admit it.”

“That’s not true. It’s not what I want.”

“Then why do you allow me to do it?”

I look in to those diamond-cold eyes and see the truth staring back at me. I think of all the reasons I deserve every punishment he has doled out and more. For the sins I’ve committed, the pain I have caused, I deserve his whips, his clubs, his brutal assaults.

    “I know you better than you know yourself, dearest Ava,” he says. “It’s why I chose you. Because I know you will come back for more, and for worse.”

He caresses my face. His touch is unnervingly gentle, but I shiver. “How much worse?” I whisper.

He smiles. “Shall we find out?”

Eighteen

I jolt awake in the turret and blink against the sunshine that glares through the windows. My left hip is sore from lying on bare wood. My mouth feels like cotton and my head pounds from the hangover I fully deserve after the bottle of wine I drank last night. With a groan I cover my face with my arms, trying to block the light from my aching eyes. How did I end up sleeping here, on the floor? Why did I never make it back to bed?

Memories drift back. The climb up the staircase. The candles burning in the sconces.

And Captain Brodie.

With a start, I open my eyes again and wince as sunlight stabs my sockets. The fireplace is swept clean with no hint of ashes in the hearth. The alcove gapes empty, just bare walls and floor. No bed, no curtain, no manacles dangling from the ceiling. I am back in my time, in my world.

I look down at what I’m wearing. This is no dress of coppery silk, just the same thin nightgown that I wore to bed. I look at my wrists and see no scrapes or bruises from the manacles.

    I stagger to my feet and grip the handrail as I slowly make my way down the turret staircase to my bedroom. There I pull off the nightgown and turn my back to the mirror. Last night, I’d writhed to the sting of his whip, had cried out as leather lashed my flesh, but in the glare of morning light, I see my back is unmarred by any bruises, any welts. I turn before the mirror, searching my naked body for any signs of the abuse I’d endured at his hands, but there are no telltale souvenirs of the punishment he meted out to me last night.

No, there is something.

I reach between my legs and feel the slick evidence of my arousal, so wet and copious that it might be his leavings that now trickle down the inside of my thigh. I stare at my glistening fingertips and wonder if this is the unholy mingling of our lust, the physical evidence that I have been violated by a man long dead. My cheeks flush in shame at the memory, but that shame also sets off a new tingle of desire.

My cellphone rings on the nightstand.

As I pick it up, my heart is still thudding, my hands unsteady. “Hello?”

“At last you pick up. I’ve left three voicemails for you.”

“Hello, Simon.” I sigh and sit down on the bed.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I didn’t want to get distracted. I’ve been in the zone.”

“What, the twilight zone?”

“Research. Writing.”

“Yes, I read the chapters you sent me.”

“What do you think?”

“They’re good.”

“Just good?”

“Okay, okay. They’re fucking great. What you wrote about oysters made me so hungry I went out and gorged on two dozen, washed down with a martini.”

    “Then I did my job right.”

“When do I get to read the rest of it?”

I look at the pile of clothes, which are still lying on the floor where I dropped them last night. The ghost has distracted me. How can I write when every moment I stop to sniff the air, hoping to catch his scent?

“The book is coming along,” I assure him. “This house has been the perfect inspiration.”

“Ah yes, Brodie’s Watch. That’s why I’m calling. I want to see it.”

“Of course. I can send you some photos. I’m not the world’s best photographer, but—”

“I want to see it in person. I was thinking this weekend.”

“What?”

“It’s ninety-two degrees here in the city and I need to get out of Boston before I melt. Look, Ava, you’ve been MIA for months now, and Theo insisted I check on your progress. He signed your advance check and now he wants reassurance that you’re back on track to deliver. If I leave by noon Friday, I should be up there around five-ish. Or do you have a date with a hot lumberjack that evening?”

“I, um…” I have no excuse, none at all. All I can say is: “That would be fine.”

“Good. I’ll take you out to dinner, if you’d like.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Then I’ll cook dinner. Or you cook. I’m just keen to lay eyes on this sea captain’s house. Besides, it’s time to think about marketing strategies. Based on the chapters you’ve sent me, this book is going to be about far more than food. You’ve given it a true sense of place, Ava, and now I want to see Brodie’s Watch for myself.”

    “It’s a long drive, just to see a house.”

“I’m coming to see you, too. Everyone’s been asking why you haven’t been around lately. Why you’ve vanished.”

If only I could vanish. If only I could melt away into these walls like Captain Brodie. Turn invisible so that no one can see what I’ve become. But I’ve known Simon for years, since long before he became my editor, and I know that once he’s made up his mind, there’s no changing it.

“If you’re arriving that late in the afternoon, you’ll probably want to spend the night here,” I say.

“I was hoping you’d offer.”