This was all moving way too fast. She looked down at the ring on her finger. Or maybe it wasn’t moving fast enough. She and Tristan weren’t kids anymore, and they had already wasted six months of the time they could have been together. After everyone had drunk champagne and eaten a hastily designed celebration cake, Angie and the others had insisted she and Tristan take the rest of the day off.

Tristan had invited them all down to the boat later in the day for a simple dinner and to bear witness to their collaring ceremony.

“Are you so sure I’m going to say yes?” she’d teased.

“I know if you plan to sit down any time soon, you’d better,” he’d returned.

He’d been joking, but only sort of. Goody made a mental note that there were some things her Master just did not find amusing.

Ben was headed back to the B & B to check on Gillian. If she was up for it, he would bring her down for dinner. She would have thought Ford would have done it, but Gillian suddenly seemed spooked by Ford. Yes, of the four men who formed Steel Knights Investigations, he was the biggest and the brawniest, but she also thought of him as the most laid back and gentle.

By the time they got to the marina, there was a small line-up of those who lived there, all wanting to see her ring and offer their congratulations. When he decided she’d tarried too long, Tristan had hauled her up and thrown her over his shoulder, muttering something about being tired of waiting. Goody had laughed and patted his ass as he carried her off.

She made a second mental note that when he hadn’t been laid since the day before, he was generally not in the best of moods.

Goody could feel the tension leaving his body the moment he stepped onto the deck of Raider’s Revenge. She was coming to understand that this boat and the sea offered him a kind of solace he’d never had before finding her again. It was the same peace she felt each time he took her in his arms and pressed his cock deep inside her—and that was a reciprocal peace. It was as if each supplied the piece to the other that had always been missing.

“You, my saucy wench,” he said in mock severe tones, “need to go downstairs, get naked, and stay there until I come for you. I’m going to cast off and take us out on the water for a couple of hours. Why don’t you order some prawns and crab, plus whatever else that’s easy to feed people?”

“Okay, I can have it delivered like ninety minutes before our friends get here. I’m also going to order more microbrews and some wine.”

Tristan nodded. “Sounds good. Now get your cute little butt down those stairs and get naked.”

She couldn’t read his mood. His words and tone were light and playful, but she had a feeling there was something more beneath this. In any event, if they were having people over, she needed to make a list and phone it in and then she really hoped he was getting naked, too, and planning to spend some serious time with her.

Goody could feel the moment the sails unfurled, and the wind caught them. It seemed as though the boat just lifted and began to glide across the open sea like the clouds sailed across the sky.

“We’re clear of the harbor,” he called down. “You can come up any time you like.”

She came up the stairs, somewhat suspicious when everything around the mizzen sail had been cleared away and there was a space for her to stand.

“Master?”

He crooked his finger, “I told you, difficult, not impossible.”

He had stripped down to just his button-fly jeans. This was how she liked him best—well, second best. She liked him best naked, which was one of the reasons she didn’t complain when he wanted her that way. That, and the fact that he swept away all her insecurities about her body by telling her how beautiful she was and how much he wanted her, which was evidenced by the pronounced bulge in the front of his jeans.

Tristan took a length of yacht rope and began to bind her to the mast. First one wrist, pulled gently behind her to be bound to the other wrist so that she was standing at attention with the mast at her back and tied so that she couldn’t get away. He had a knife in a sheath clipped to the waist of his jeans.

“I hope that’s for emergencies. Because you should know, there is no place, no way you could bind me that I would find that frightening.”

He smiled. “Good to hear. I have a sneaky suspicion that you’re going to get tied up a lot, especially given the fact that I told you and Gillian to stay indoors.”

“I explained that. Gillian got spooked and ran outside.”

“And you chose not to call anyone. I was already concerned about you being up there, just the two of you…”

So, this was the source of his discontent. She’d technically disobeyed him, and he wanted to punish her to soothe the fright she’d given him. Given that she’d basically wanted the same thing from him the night she’d found Dickface in bed with one of his co-workers, it seemed only fair. That wasn’t exactly true, she’d still wanted to be the one flogged.

“Yes, Master. I’m sorry I disobeyed you.”

Once he had her bound so that it would be hard for her to move her upper body, he stepped back and smiled.

“You’re a wanton sub, sweet thing. On a sailboat in broad daylight, tied naked to the mast, and yet your nipples are pebbled and begging to be used, and the only thing I can smell more clearly than the sea is your arousal, and I find it far more enticing.”

There was something incredibly erotic and yet oddly safe in the way he dominated her. Goody had always believed she only wanted dominance in the bedroom; instead, she was finding she craved it in all areas of her life. It didn’t mean Tristan wanted to control her or run rough-shod over her, he just wanted to enhance her life, make things easier for her, provide structure and support, and give her orgasms… lots and lots of them.

And there was an innate sensuality in being bound in his ropes. She wanted to be on her knees, with her arms bound behind her as he held her head in place and shoved his cock down her throat. She wanted to work with his cum in her belly and dripping from her pussy.

He opened his kit and seemed to examine two floggers. One was the one she suspected he’d used that first night on her as it had little knots at the end. The other one looked to be deerskin, which would make it extremely soft.

He stepped back and with an experienced hand, he began to wield the flogger in a circular motion so that the falls hit her breasts softly. Goody’s nipples tightened, her pussy clenched, and she moaned. If he needed this, so did she. She closed her eyes and relaxed into the rhythm of the falls softly falling, thudding against her skin. Her mind was going into neutral, and she began to sub out. The man had a gift; there was no doubt about it.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, reaching between her legs to give her clit a hard twist.

“Youch. That hurt,” she said, bringing her legs together.

“Damn straight it did. You don’t close your eyes. You don’t get to sub out, at least, not that quickly. Spread your legs wide. I have an all-access pass to that pussy, and I mean to use it.”

“Yes, Master,” she said, never losing eye contact as he began to expertly wield the flogger again.

His arm moved and he flicked his wrist, bringing the falls back down across her breasts, her belly and her thighs. The longer he used it, the more she began to want him to use it on her pussy. She wanted him to strike harder, faster, anything but the same balanced, slow flogging that had her right on the cusp of a climax, but not quite there. When she realized he no longer had his eyes locked with hers, she let hers drift down to his fly and smiled as she saw his cock throb in the same rhythm as the flogger. It was good to know what she felt deep in her pussy was also going straight to his dick.

“I thought I told you to look at me.”

“I am looking at you, Master.”

He chuckled. “You are such a brat.”

He stopped swinging the flogger and closed the distance between them, pressing his pelvis into hers so that their bodies were in perfect harmonic rhythm. Goody was certain that if someone had been listening, their heartbeats would have been synchronized. He rubbed her clit with the handle of the flogger, and she bit back a cry.

“Those nipples aren’t getting anything until tonight and then only after I’ve had them in clamps for a while. As soon as our friends leave, you’re going to go down to our stateroom, get naked and find them in the bedside table. Then you’ll come into the main salon and present them and yourself to me. You’re going to suck my cock until I tell you to stop and then I’m going to spend the rest of the night fucking you repeatedly.”

“Yes, Master.”

He laid the flogger aside and opened the front of his jeans. His cock came out—enormous, hard and ready. Well, she was wet, soft, and waiting. Tristan lifted her up by the back of her thighs so that she was at the perfect height. He fitted his cock to her pussy and then pressed himself all the way inside her in one long, hard pass. That was enough to push her over the edge and she called his name as she came, the orgasm as violent and surprising as a summer squall.

He groaned in satisfaction at the feel of her pussy clamping down on him, trying to get him to remain inside, but she’d already learned Tristan was not a man who settled for a single climax. No, he’d get several from her before he was through. He dragged himself almost all of the way out before slamming back in. Her body bowed in response as he began to take his fill of her.

He thrust into her, her inner walls trembling as Goody tried to hold onto any semblance of reality as he inflicted his sweet, torturous, intense pleasure. Her breath sped up and the soft cries she made became even softer whimpers as climax after climax began to claim her, each approaching faster than the last as he pounded into her. Her back hit the mast with each surge forward, but not painfully, just in a way that served to remind her that she was bound to it and to the man who was fucking her.

Her body stiffened in anticipation, and her breathing became more erratic as he took his pleasure, ensuring she got hers as well, using that to feed his own. It was terrifying and embarrassing to realize that he could undo her to this extent.

Harder and faster, he drove into her, plunging deep and pulling back before driving forward again. Suddenly, the edge of the abyss was before her and with one hard, brutal thrust he ground himself against her as she screamed in ecstasy, her pussy spasming as it contracted all along his shaft. Her legs trembled and she writhed in his hold, savoring every bit of pleasure as he held her in his arms. The orgasm went on and on, until she was almost begging for it to end, not sure if she could take any more, but knowing if he offered, she would take what he wanted to give her. He continued to move, jettisoning the last bits of his cum inside her, drawing little mini orgasms from her as her lips parted in a wordless plea for more.

She lay spent and exhausted in his arms—a state of being she had rapidly acclimated herself to. Tristan held her close, and she listened as the pounding of his heart resumed its normal rate and rhythm and beat in perfect synchronicity with hers.