A Ship of Bones & Teeth

by Karina Halle

I expect her to scream for help or try to swim away. Instead, the princess punches me right in the face.

Hell to the yeah

the crew of the Nightwind is more intelligent than you’ll ever give us credit for.” The skepticism remains on her face. “If you think intelligence is some sort of virtue for a man who has a cage in his room, you’re more daft than I thought.”

“You can drop the sword now, luv,” he says softly. “It won’t do you any good. I’m not going to let you get away, no matter how much you beg. And believe me, I would love to hear you beg.”

We’ve tried passenger pigeons but Skip, the ship’s cat, ate them more times than not.

I give him an incredulous look. “You going to let me brand you on your rear, then?” He gives me a salacious grin. “If that’s what tickles your fancy.” Oh, rats. He’d probably just enjoy it, wouldn’t he?

There’s one thing that they have that this crew wants more than anything else.” “And what’s that?” I ask. “A mermaid.”

Ruh roh

I love you. I love you and I wish you didn’t love me, because if you didn’t love me you never would have come here. I never would have lost you.”

“You really think you know this mermaid? Do you think you are one?” Aerik sneers, his hands on the bars and his ugly face pressed through. “Have you concocted all of this in your head to make up for all your shortcomings? The fact that you have come from no family, that you have no one that loves you, that the only thing you have going for yourself is a pretty face and a nice pair of tits and a tight cunt that I’m sure you’re doling out to the captain whenever he wants.” He pauses. “And so now you pretend to have feelings for this overgrown piece of rotting salmon.”

KILL THIS MAN!!!! KILL HIM NOW

“You are a stunning abyss of a creature,” I tell her. “One that I could spend eons swimming in and never get to the bottom of.”

“Darling, your body would bring any man to their knees where they would be in the right position to worship you. It’s a body carved by god yet meant for sin, and it would become anyone’s salvation.”

God Almighty, she is the moon and I am the tides.

“You be a good girl,” I warn her. “Good girls get rewards.”

“Humans can be nice? This is coming from the Captain Ramsay Bones Battista, who slices heads off first and asks questions later?”

All she does is talk back and look pretty.”

Me >:)

I continue holding my fingers against his jaw, wishing I could tell him one last thing but I don’t even know what that would be.

It doesn’t matter that we are at the bottom of the sea, all I want, all I need, is to kiss her once and for all.

I taste her, savor her, want to sink deeper in these depths until she is my only obsession.

I want to ask her how she knows that because this is the first I’m hearing of it, but I know her answer will be infuriatingly vague and I’ll have to chalk it up to her being royalty and having a finer education than me.

“Anyone ever tell you how immoral your mouth is?” “Never. I suppose I’ve been saving it for you.”

“Good girls get rewards.” “What do the bad girls get?” she asks through a growl. I grin at her. “Bad girls get punished thoroughly. I reckon you deserve both.”

“Yes, Captain,” she groans. I let out a harsh breath. Devil Almighty. The term captain never sounded so sweet.

Some might say he speaks straight from the devil, but I’m discovering I like what the devil has to say.

“Want me to keep devouring you like the dessert that you are?”

“How does it feel, luv?” he asks quietly. I try to move my hips, experiment with the feeling. “Full,” I manage to say. “Good,” he says, his eyes dark with need.

“Look at me,” Ramsay says, bringing my focus back to his face, to the fierce determination in his eyes. “Keep looking at me while I fuck you. I don’t want you to be imagining anyone else but me.”

“I’m going to fill you with my seed, luv,” he says, his voice low and gravelly as he brings his lips back to my neck. “Not that pathetic prince, but me. I’ll claim you in every way that I can, my essence so deep inside you that I’ll become a part of your blood and bones.”

There’s comfort in my disdain for him.

Damn it. Everything that’s uncouth and repulsive about me he somehow loves.

“I still hate you,” she seethes through a gasp. “You can hate me all you want with that brain of yours. But your body doesn’t. No, your body loves me very much.” “Just your cock,” she manages to say.

“This is what you want?” he asks, his voice rough and thick. “You want my fingers to play with you while you’re getting rammed by my big cock?”

“Maren,” Ramsay says from behind me. “My Maren.”

“I’ve never had an addiction before,” he says hoarsely. “But I think you’ll be mine.”

he raises my other hand to his mouth and kisses my wrist, the tender sensation causing a ripple in my chest.

I want wrist kisses :(

She stands beside me at the rail and peers through the spyglass at the horizon and I take a moment to drink her all in. With her pirate attire, her black hair blowing back in the wind, even those faint lines of gills on her neck, she looks so beautiful that there’s a sharp ache in my ribs, a longing for her that has slowly been coming to fruition. She belongs here, right here beside me, with the ocean breeze in her hair and the sun on her skin.

“I’m not teasing,” she protests, and I see the sincerity in her eyes. “Take me below and have your way with me.”

“Aye. Beautiful and deadly all at once. The only kind of lady I fall for.”

The hold is full of bodies. The bodies of his crew, piled high. Dead. I let out an ear-piercing scream and Ramsay stares in total shock, anguish and terror contorting his face in the light of the flame, while it shines on the pale, still faces of Sam, Henry, Thane, Cruz…

DUDE NOOOO!!!

I can’t read his eyes in response. But I know when he looks at me like this, with such intensity, he’s seeing all of me, even the parts I’m used to hiding. And whether it’s something I’m ashamed of or not, he sees it. And I remember, once upon a time, that had been all I ever wanted.

my grip tightening around her waist, one of my hands splayed at her back and keeping her pressed against me, as if letting her go now would result in letting her go forever.

“Then perhaps the both of us are mad, if madness and monsters are one of the same,” I murmur. “But we can be mad together. We can drown in our madness together.”

“You are not falling apart, luv,” I tell her, speaking so that my lips touch hers. “You are just falling into place.” “Is that place with you?” she asks, her mouth moving against mine, barely a kiss at all.

“Like you’re the moon and I’m the tides, and every thought, every need, every want, is drawn to you, Maren.”

“Gods,” she whispers harshly, and I feel like a god from the way I’m inside her, the way I’m able to make her look at me like I’m worth worshipping.

I know that this is where I belong, drowning in this madness with her. Two monsters that have found their souls in one another.

I do wish there was a mirror above the basin. I’d like to see how I look before I start the day.” “I can be your mirror,” he says, leaning against the doorframe. “And I’ll be the first to tell you that you look prettier than a peach.

I make no false claims when it comes to you, luv, you belong to me body and soul, heart and spirit.” He pauses and gives me a breathtaking smile that makes my stomach flip. “Monster, Syren, princess, and pirate.”

:') <3

I delicately wipe my lips and fold my hands in my lap, like a lady.

*post blowjob*

“You,” he says hoarsely, holding out his hand for mine. “I need you.”

“You are delirium personified,” he rasps against my mouth, his hands in my hair, giving my strands a sharp tug. “You’re a fever in my soul, for which there is no cure.”

“Look at you, you miracle of a creature,” he murmurs, his brogue getting thick. “Look at how you take me so well, how well you ride my cock.”