The captain stepped back, ignoring her as he upended the pouch into his hand. It wasn’t a jewel that fell out. It was a small black stone, a piece of polished obsidian, a single rune carved upon it. Worthless. Utterly worthless.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, holding it between his finger and thumb before her face. As he did, the tattoos on his arm seemed to pulsate and writhe. But no, that must’ve been just a trick of the light.
“It’s nothing,” she said sullenly. It was just a trinket, something a tourist would buy.
“Nothing, eh?” He smiled. “Do you know who I am?”
“I heard the men call you Captain Henrik.”
“That’s the name I use when I’m on land.” His grin returned. “But do you know who I am?”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” He grinned again. “Here’s a little tip. Next time you steal from someone, first be sure you know who they are.”
“Of course I can.”
“What exactly do you see?”
She frowned. What sort of question was that? Was he trying to humiliate her? “I’m not your puppet to dance to your tune.”
Henrik—or whoever he was—smiled again. But this time, it didn’t reach his eyes. “Puppet…no, I wouldn’t say that. But we’ve agreed you’re my captive. Humor me, if you’d be so kind. Tell me what you see.”
Folding her arms across her chest, she glared up at him.
Deepening and lengthening, they ran across the floor, crept up the walls, and sucked away all the light. Again, the tattoo on his arm pulsed, growing darker and more stark, more pronounced against his skin. Writhing around his arm.
But she tightened her jaw and gripped her arms, willing herself to show none of the fear she felt.
“Have it your way,” he said. The stone seemed to disappear—one moment he’d been holding it, the next his hand was empty. It was a neat trick, but she’d seen sleight of hand before. Parlor tricks. Like the shadows, perhaps.
Just because she couldn’t see how it was done didn’t mean they were real.
Tendrils of shadow shot out from him, wrapping around her wrists. They were darkness; they should’ve been insubstantial, but they weren’t. Her wrists were pulled up, as firmly and as inextricably as if he’d used his hands.
She stared at him in shock as he drew her to her feet, then used his shadows to raise her wrists until her arms were extended above her head. Still, he pulled, and she was forced onto her toes, fighting for balance, her body painfully stretched.
“Mind your mouth,” he said lightly as he sat himself in the chair she’d just vacated. His smile was back, his eyes once more dancing with playfulness, his anger vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
His shadows held her wrists perfectly, with no slack or movement, no matter how she resisted. Her arms were held so high that it was difficult to find purchase on the rug with the toes of her boots. When he turned her to face him, she felt like the puppet she had denied being.
More shadowy tendrils extended toward her, hooking into the hem of her long shirt and lifting it upward.
She squeaked in fear, her eyes locked on his smug expression as the shirt passed over her head and was pulled free of her arms. It fell to the floor as if it had somehow passed through the shadows, yet how could that be when they held her so tightly?
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“You like to defy me, don’t you?”
More shadows reached for her legs, pulling off her boots one by one. She was forced to balance painfully on the toes of each foot, her weight pulling on her wrists and shoulders.
“I see a black stone!” she cried. “A small black stone, with a rune etched upon it!”
“Oh, it’s too late for that,” he said, sounding happy about it.
“Haven’t you guessed?” He smiled.
The tendril yanked back with a sound like a snip, and as one, her bindings fell loose to the floor. There were a dozen loops, each thin in their own right, but together they formed a thick, tight barrier—and he’d cut through them as effortlessly as if they were nothing more than a sheet of parchment.
Her breasts fell free of their confinement, bare to his gaze. But he didn’t look at them; his eyes held hers. His stare was intense and penetrating, and she could only imagine how wild, scared, and vulnerable her own eyes must appear. For at last, she understood who he was.
Yet there was no denying the shadows that had half stripped her, or those binding her wrists, holding her body suspended before him.
“Ebon,” he said with a smile, waving a hand dismissively. “Just Ebon. The ‘Shadowbane’ bit was never part of it. I don’t know where it came from. So theatrical, don’t you think? I never cared for it.”
A dozen more tendrils drifted lazily out toward her, slipping into the waistband of her breeches.
“What are you going to do to me?” she whispered. She felt her breeches being drawn down, much more slowly than he had removed her shirt.
He was in complete control, and if she had thought herself helpless as his captive, it was nothing to her abject vulnerability before his shadow magic.
“I’ve told you already how we deal with stowaways.”
His earlier words echoed in her mind, far more ominous in her current predicament.
“I didn’t stow away,” she protested as he stripped her breeches down her legs and off her feet, leaving her in just her undergarments.
His grin returned. “I do apologize; I’d quite forgotten. Would you like to know how we deal with thieves?”
Then, between one heartbeat and the next, they solidified into steel-hard blades, pulling away as one, cutting through her last shred of protection. The tendrils dissipated, fading away like wisps of smoke, and the shreds of her last piece of clothing drifted lazily down to the thick rug of his cabin.
“Please,” she begged again, her body exposed and held helplessly. She was entirely at his mercy, but Captain Ebon wasn’t known for mercy. Cruelty, piracy, ruthlessness—not mercy.
His tendrils were back, a half dozen snake-like silken trails winding around her ankles and creeping up her legs like vines. Their touch was as silky as before. Some felt cool while others were surprisingly warm, the dichotomy sensitizing her skin and awakening her body.
She gasped at the sensation, helpless to stop them as they wound around her calves, up over her knees, and traced thin trails up her thighs.
“A dozen lashes will kill me.” To her shame, her voice was a whimper. But she was so very scared.
His shadows rose farther, caressing the insides of her thighs, grazing her ass but skirting around her mons. The coldest one pushed intrusively between the cheeks of her bottom, squirming as it slid up to the small of her back, making her gasp again.
“Hmm, you’re probably right,” Ebon said, feigning thoughtfulness. “We wouldn’t want that now, would we?”
The shadows climbed higher, over her stomach, along her spine, in one continuous line down to her ankles. And with each inch they climbed, the length of them caressed her skin. The sensation of the one between the cheeks of her ass was incredibly distracting, but then two more reached her breasts.
Her eyes widened at the touch. How much control did he have? One tendril was warm, the other cool, clearly deliberate.
A shiver ran through her as he coiled the ends of the tendrils around her nipples, squeezing, pulling, flicking over the sensitive tips. Her back arched in reflex, and she tried to draw a breath; it came as a gasp.
And he’d answered her unspoken question: his control was absolute.
“Please,” she gasped again.
“Please what, my little captive?”
“Please let me go.”
