Chapter 1. Taken
Tags, Tropes & Triggers:
dark romance | enemies to lovers | Bad Boy x Good Girl | powder dynamics | psychological conditioning | forced proximity | bdsm | broken bird | Antihero | villian romance | historical fiction | golden age of piracy | violence | humuliation | slow burn | captive roamnce | past trauma | possessive mc | Dubcon
This is my first time doing something like this (posting publically at least) Thank you for navigating here, I hope I can provide aomething that interests you! -Margot
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The world tilted.
Lydia's bare feet scraped across rough wooden planks as two men dragged her along a gangplank. Salt water sprayed her face, mixing with the tears already tracking down her cheeks when a rogue wave hit the dock. The gag, a strip of dirty cloth forced between her teeth and knotted hard behind her head, tasted of sweat and a faint metallic tang she would soon recognize as blood. Wrists bound in front of her, the rope rubbing her skin raw, she had no defense against the rough hands that lingered too long as she was led along the deck of the dark ship. She could see the faces behind them between the tangled red ropes of her own hair- leering, amused, cataloguing her like cargo. The fine silk of her nightgown, the only thing she'd been wearing when they dragged her from her bed was torn at one shoulder and soaked through with harbor spray. It clung to her in a way that invited comments Lydia couldn't quite let herself understand. Though she didn't know the meaning behind the words and phrases they used the tone underneath them were unmistakable.
Behind her, the small Caribbean town that had been her home for the last 10 years still glowed with scattered fires. The smoke climbed to the cliffs, obscuring the fate of her home but she's fairly sure she knew. She saw the bodies of her servants left where they fell. She saw her father's onced prized study- ransacked; the old man himself was nowhere to be found. Whether he lived or died, she didn't know. The thought sat in her chest like a stone. If they did keep him alive but sacked his shipping warehouses he may just do himself in. He probably headed there at the first warning shot. She had heard terrified screams and gunshots when they hauled her through town. She saw buildings she watched for years grow from wooden shacks to stone buildings turned to rubble within hours. She knew by time they set sail there would be little left of the only isolated home she knew.
As rough hands led her by the shoulders to the harbor Lydia realized her fate. Her feet stopped working, frozen in abject terror as her memory flooded with the countless stories she'd read about pirates who took captives. About pirates and what they do with their captives.
She couldn't even see the ship as they dragged her to it. All she saw in the darkness in front of her was a massive black hole in the center that almost seemed to suck the surrounding light into it. The stars disappeared behind it and there water between her and it was pure black, not even the reflecting flames of the adjacent burning town.By the size of the void in front of her Lydia guessed this would be the largest ship she's ever boarded.
Lanterns swung from the rigging, casting dim yellow light over scarred wood, coiled ropes, and the hard faces of men who paused in their work to stare as Lydia was led across the deck. Someone laughed. Someone else made a crude remark about the color of her hair. For the first time in her life, Lydia was silenced by terror. She kept her eyes fixed on the planks beneath her feet to avoid the eyes fixed on her. Nothing in her sheltered upbringing had prepared her for this, not the variety of European tutors, not the hours reading every book in her father's study. Nothing could have prepared her for the smell of unwashed bodies and gunpowder, for the way these men looked at her as though she were already meat, or the absolute helplessness of being seen like that.
The two men hauled Lydia down a narrow companionway and along a low corridor that smelled of moist wood and stale rum. A heavy door was kicked open. The cabin beyond was larger than she expected- a wide stern window showing black water and distant stars, a small table with one chair, both bolted to the floor below, a fine four-poster bed on the portside draped in fabrics too rich to have been paid for honestly. Shelves lined one wall, charts and bottles secured behind a low rail to keep them steady in rough seas. A single massive chair, bolted to the floor, loomed near a dark wooden desk like a makeshift throne. A lantern hanging from the massive mid-beam above lit the room evenly with dim yellow light that shifted slightly with the sea.
Lydia was forced to her knees in the center of the room. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for what she was certain came next, but it didn't come. And when she opened her eyes again, the men had stepped back away from her. Her mind was racing with confusion when she heard him for the first time.
Boots sounded in the corridor. Heavy, unhurried. The pace of someone who commanded the chaos around him rather than reacting to it.
The man who entered filled the doorway completely when he entered through it.
He was tall enough to duck slightly beneath the frame, broad through the shoulders and chest in a way that spoke of years of violence rather than idle strength. A short, dark beard framed a strong jaw, hiding a handsome mouth beneath and framing tired cold grey eyes above. His black hair was tied loosely at the nape of his neck, spilling out toward his face as he looked down at the woman on the floor of his cabin. His coat hung open over a linen shirt stained with something that might have been blood or wine; a cutlass hung at his hip on the left side, a pistol on the right. When his eyes, sharp and intelligent, met with hers, fury brewing, trapped behind fear, something in the room seemed to contract.
The two men straightened.
"Captain," larger of them said. "As ordered. Prettiest thing in the whole town. Thought the crew could use her, but you said-"
"I know what I said." His voice was low, almost conversational, and it carried absolute authority. He stepped fully inside and closed the door behind him with a soft click. "Get out."
The two men without another word.
Silence settled. Lydia's pulse hammered against the gag. She kept her bound hands in her lap and tried not to flinch as he circled her slowly, boots thudding against the deck.
He stopped in front of her, close enough that the hem of his coat brushed her shoulder.
"Look up.”
Lydia didn't move.
A large hand fisted in her hair and drew her head back- not gently, but not cruelly either- a demand rather than an assault. His eyes moved over her face with open, clinical interest: tear tracks painted with dust, mouth forced open from the gag, the fine bones of a girl who had never known real hunger, or real fear, until tonight.
"Wealthy little thing," he murmured.
“Soft hands. Clean skin. Probably never lifted anything heavier than a lute." His thumb dragged across her cheek, smearing wetness into a horizontal stripe across her face. "The men thought you'd make fine entertainment for the lower deck. I decided otherwise. Congratulations on being the prettiest thing in your town... though you may come to regret that, in the days ahead Princess"
He released her hair and crouched so they were level. The movement brought the scent of him- salt, steel, something darker underneath... like smoke and old leather but decayed somehow. This close she could see the faint scar cutting through one eyebrow, and the absolute lack of mercy in his expression.
"My name is Captain Elias Voss. This ship is The Black Mercy. You belong to me now. Not the crew. Not the sea. Me.”
He reached behind her head and untied the gag with deliberate care, as though unwrapping something fragile. As the cloth fell away his rough knuckle traced her cheekbone with surprising softness. Lydia's jaw ached. She sucked in a ragged breath but did not speak.
Voss watched her mouth for a moment, then rose and crossed to the bolted table, pouring himself a measure of dark rum. He drank, and set the glass down.
"You will clean this cabin. You will prepare my food when I require it. You will keep yourself washed and available to me at all times." His tone remained almost mild, which somehow made the words land harder. "Cross me, and I'll make sure you regret it. I'll leave no permanent marks on your face, but believe me you'll feel it for days. Try to run, and I'll let the men decide what happens to you instead. Please me, and your life here will be tolerable. Those are the only rules that matter."
Lydia's voice came out hoarse and small. "My father-"
"Is either dead, or wishing he was. The town is finished. Whatever life you had ended the moment my men kicked in your door." He turned back to her, eyes narrowing slightly. "You're educated. I can hear it. That will make the next part far more interesting."
He crossed the cabin again, caught her bound wrists, and hauled her to her feet as though she weighed nothing. The size difference between them was immediate, humiliating, her head barely reached the middle of his chest. He walked her backward until her spine met the edge of the table, then leaned down so his mouth was inches from her ear.
"I'm going to break you, Lydia. Not all at once. Piece by piece." His hand found the tear in her nightgown and stilled there, not pushing further, simply resting- a promise rather than an act. His other hand rose to her throat, not choking, just holding, a reminder of exactly how easily he could. He held it there for a moment before trailing a finger across her delicate collar bones.
"Let me guess, you longed for adventure," he said softly, almost thoughtfully. "You'd look out through the large glass windows of that fine estate of yours, the one I just left burning, and dreamed of a world far away where no one knew your name or your title."
Her blood ran cold with his accuracy and she hoped it didn't show on her face. "A lonely little lord's daughter with all of life's comforts dreaming of somewhere else.
Anywhere else where who she was mattered more than who her father was." His mouth curved, cruel and almost amused. "Congratulations Princess. You've found it."
He held her there a long moment; Close enough that she could feel the heat of him, the weight of him, the weight of the threats, the weight of... something else. Something growing.. before he finally stepped back giving her space to gasp again for air.
“Sleep if you can," he said, nodding toward a blanket on the floor opposite the bed . "On top of the blanket. Tomorrow, you start earning your keep." Then he turned, poured himself another measure of rum, and did not look at her again as she settled in the corner, curled inward on top of the thin blanket.
Finally facing the wall so the Captain could not see her face, she let the tears stream down silently. Even without seeing his eyes on her she could feel his attention like a pistol aimed at her back, and it felt like his hand back at her throat. She did not sleep.
