Chapter 706: Quick Thinking* [Bonus - ]

Chapter 706: Quick Thinking* [Bonus Chapter]

He rolled his eyes with a fond smirk touching his lips.

"To be fair, I bite back," he added. "She’s wearing a few of mine, and hers won’t fade either. We call it even."

’He bites back,’ Morwenna noted with a feral flicker of interest. ’Are both of them like Rabid dogs or something...’

He glanced down at the collar of marks with a sigh.

"Which is why I’m hiding them under an illusion veil whenever I leave Blessed Land... Walking around anywhere looking like I lost a fight with a bear trap tends to invite questions."

Morwenna stared at the radial collar of bites, her gray eyes narrowing with ferocious competitive fire.

’I have to beat this,’ the pirate queen resolved, her jaw setting with absolute martial determination.

She quickly counted the marks.

...Twenty-two.

’I can do thirty! No, forty! I’ll bite right on top of the ones Eluned made to overwrite her claim! Then his broad shoulders, then down his spine, then his ribs... and maybe one gentle little one at the base of his shaft! A signature! Every ship needs a figurehead!’

Her mind spiraled into glorious degeneracy.

’There are so many filthy things I want to do with my Captain’s magnificent body... and if he lets me sink my mouth into his ass, oh gods, that would be a whole different level of paradise!’

Silas looked down at her face, watched the gleam in her eyes and read her thoughts like an open book.

"Whatever deranged offensive you’re planning in that dirty head of yours," Silas chuckled. "it isn’t going to work, Morwenna."

Before she could protest, Silas shifted his weight.

With an effortless burst of Gold Core strength, he reached under her waist, scooped her off the wet basalt and hoisted her over his right shoulder in an exact mirror of how she’d carried in the living room earlier.

"W-Whoa!" Morwenna yelped, her thighs dangling down his chest and her face hovering behind his back.

SMACK!

Silas brought his broad palm down squarely against the plump luscious curve of her right buttock.

The force sent a mesmerizing ripple through the thick supple flesh of her backside, and the sharp crack echoed through the training ring like a whip.

"Ahhhnnn~!"

A loud breathy scandalized moan tore from Morwenna’s throat with her hips twitching helplessly over his shoulder as a delicious stinging ache blossomed across her skin.

Silas grinned and gave the round cheek an affectionate lingering squeeze.

"Look at that... You really are an unrepentant pervert, aren’t you?"

"Shut up, Captain..." Morwenna whined, burying her burning face against the back of his hoodie, though her arms wrapped tightly around his waist and held on for dear life.

Silas turned on his heel and strode out of the arena.

He hit the release rune, and the heavy blast doors slid open, venting a cloud of warm citrus-scented steam into the living lounge.

As they stepped onto the plush crimson carpet, he paused and swept his gaze over the vast room.

...It was completely empty.

The glass coffee table held only the empty mugs, the velvet sofa was bare, one mug lay on its side on the carpet with lemien juice soaking slowly into the pile, and Solenne, Rika and Aeliana were nowhere to be seen.

"Wait a second," Silas muttered, his brow furrowing as his hand continued to fondle the round yielding flesh of Morwenna’s rear. "Where did everyone go? And why is Rika’s cup on the floor? Well maybe I missed something..."

Over his shoulder, Morwenna’s heart did an Olympic-level vault into her throat.

"U-Uh... m-maybe the phoenix knocked it over?" she suggested, her voice shaking violently as his strong fingers gave her cheek another firm rhythmic squeeze. "Birds are messy! And I mean... it’s past midnight! We were sparring for over a long time, Captain! They probably got exhausted from hauling all that ore and went to bed!"

"Still, it’s strange for Aeli not to wait up," Silas mused, his protective instincts flaring. "I should check on them just in case... Make sure the mana from our spar didn’t disturb their rest."

He turned toward the corridor, carrying Morwenna along as he headed straight for the door of the secondary guest bedroom... There were a lot of them but this was the nearest one.

Morwenna’s soul practically left her body.

’FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!’

Her mind screamed in panic.

...If he opened that door he’d find all three of them piled on the same mattress like a stack of cordwood, snoring slumber-herb fumes out of their mouths.

He was a Gold Core Lord and he’d put two and two together in half a second, realize she’d poisoned the lemien juice, and lock her in the brig.

’Think, Morwenna! Think! You’ve outfought krakens! You can outfight a doorknob!’

Silas reached the heavy mahogany door.

His hand left the soft warm curve of her backside and reached for the polished brass handle.

His fingers touched the cool metal...

"M-Master...!" Morwenna gasped, her voice dropping into a trembling and remarkably breathless pitch.

Silas’s hand froze as the brass handle stayed unturned.

He slowly lifted his head and glanced over his shoulder at the woman draped across his back as an unmistakable dusting of crimson appeared across his cheekbones and his gold-ringed eyes flickered with sudden surprise.

Morwenna had never called him Master before.

It had always been Captain or Silas, muttered in moments of quiet camaraderie.

Hearing that sweet and profoundly vulnerable title slip from the lips of the fiercest pirate queen in the basin knocked the air out of his lungs.

Morwenna caught the shift in his eyes.

’He... he liked that?!’ she thought. ’He LIKED that! Aeliana’s books never lie hehe...! I’m going to write her a thank-you letter later.’

A spark of desperate genius ignited in her mind.

She leaned her chin against his shoulder and pressed the full heavy swell of her breasts against the side of his neck with her warm sweet breath tickling his ear as she pitched her voice into the most scandalous seductive purr she could muster.

"Master... please don’t check on them..." she whispered, her lips grazing the sensitive skin beneath his jaw. "They’re grown women... they can take care of themselves for one night... but your woman has been waiting centuries for this... are you really going to make me wait another second... Master?"

Silas’s grip on the door handle tightened.

His knuckles turned white as he closed his eyes and sent his Gold Core perception through the mahogany in a single brief pulse.

Inside the dark bedchamber, he sensed three steady life-signatures resting on the wide mattress with their breathing deep and their mana pathways calm and undisturbed.

...They were simply asleep.

Silas let out a slow shuddering breath and withdrew his hand from the handle.

"You’re right," he murmured, his voice dropping into a low smoky timbre that curled Morwenna’s toes. "They don’t need me to baby them every hour of the day."

He turned away from the door with a dangerous and intensely possessive smirk curling his lips as he glanced back at her.

"Forgive me for keeping you waiting, Morwenna."

Over his shoulder, Morwenna silently pumped her fist in the air, her face splitting into a glorious grin of victory.

’I am a genius!’ she cheered internally. ’The flagship has breached the harbor! Raise the colors! Fire the salute! Somebody get me a medal and a bigger bed...’

Silas strode down the long hallway and kicked open the double doors of his private master suite with a bang.

The room was huge, dominated by a massive four-poster bed draped in dark silk and surrounded by sweeping panoramic windows that overlooked the glittering skyline of Central City.

"It’s a bit cold, no?"

With a casual flick of his wrist, a focused gust of wind-mana slammed the balcony windows shut and drew the thick velvet curtains, plunging the chamber into the warm dim glow of enchanted crystal sconces.

Whoosh! Thud!

He stepped up to the edge of the bed.

With an easy fluid motion he lowered Morwenna from his shoulder and let her tumble backward onto the plush down-filled mattress.

Fwump!

"Ah...!"

A soft breathless whimper escaped her as she sank into the silken sheets, her damp hair fanning out like a dark halo across the pillows.

’It’s so soft,’ Morwenna thought dazedly. ’Why are these kinds of beds always so soft...?’

Silas stayed at the foot of the bed with his gold-ringed eyes sweeping over her, there was an intense smoldering heat in his gaze that made the air in the room feel suffocatingly thick.

His eyes traveled from her flushed face down the sculpted hollow of her throat, over the heavy wet mounds of her breasts straining against the black sharkskin, to the breathtaking curve of her hips.

"You’re so damn hot, Morwenna," he murmured, his voice rich with honest appreciation. "You have no idea what you do to me..."

A violent blush detonated across Morwenna’s face.

She quickly averted her eyes and stared at the carved wooden headboard, her hands clutching the silk sheets and her teeth sinking into her lower lip in flustered maidenly shyness.

’D-do to you...’ she thought. ’P-pervert... what’s that supposed to mean?’

Whatever he was doing, it was working but it was embarrassing... Did he not feel any shame saying stuff like that?

Silas stepped forward and set a knee on the edge of the mattress, leaning over her until his shadow enveloped her completely.

"May I do the honors..." he whispered, his fingers lightly brushing the hem of her soaked tunic. "...of removing these clothes?"

Morwenna swallowed hard, her throat bobbing, and gave a small jerky and utterly submissive nod.

Silas started with her boots. He shifted down the bed, took hold of her ankle in one warm calloused hand, and lifted her boot into his lap.

’The boots?!’ Morwenna’s brain stalled.

She thought he was going to start with the top so he could take her in properly but boots were nice too.

’M-my feet feel all tingly...’

Silas took his time.

He pulled the first lace loose, then the next, working his way down the leather in slow deliberate tugs while his thumb drew lazy circles against the inside of her ankle.

The boot came free with a slow reluctant slide and landed on the carpet with a heavy thud.

Thunk!

The second followed.

Thunk!

His palms slid up her bare calves, pausing at the back of each knee where her pulse was fluttering wildly, and Morwenna let out a tiny strangled noise she would later deny making under torture.

"Ticklish?" Silas murmured with a wicked gleam in his eye.

"Never!" she lied, quivering like a plucked harp string.

"Liar," he said softly, and he bent and pressed his lips to the inside of her knee.

Chu!

Morwenna’s whole body jolted.

Her hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of silk, and the noise that left her was somewhere between a hiccup and a death rattle.

"Nhn~"

’Knees...?’ She thought as Silas continued, did he perhaps have some kind of fetish for her knees...? Did he do the same things with Eluned...?

Chu! Mwah! Smack!

He worked his way slowly up her thigh, each kiss a little warmer and a little wetter than the last, until Morwenna was clutching the sheets with both fists and staring at the canopy with the glazed look of a woman who’d forgotten how to breathe.

He moved up the bed as both hands settled at the hem of the wet sharkskin tunic, and he began to peel it upward an inch at a time.

...It didn’t want to come.

The soaked fabric clung to her skin like seaweed to a hull, and it made a wet reluctant schhhlllp! with every inch.

First came the tight washboard line of her stomach, glistening with a faint salt-sea sheen then the sharp curve of her ribs.

"Mnn~ Be careful~"

Silas’s gaze followed the hem upward and his breath slowed with every inch of skin he uncovered... However, immediately after that, the tunic got stuck.

It caught at her shoulders, wedged on her chest and refused to budge, leaving Morwenna blindfolded in a tangle of wet black leather with her arms trapped over her head.

"Mmph! Mmmph-mph!" came her muffled voice from inside the fabric. "Th’ damn thing’s FIGHTING me, Captain! Don’t let it win!"

Silas laughed softly, tugged once with a firm patient hand, and the tunic came free with a wet shloop.

Her damp dark hair exploded around her head like a storm cloud and Morwenna blinked up at him looking flushed and breathless as every thought in her head evaporated.

Silas just looked.

He looked at the pale skin kissed by a faint tan across her whole body.

He looked at the heavy round breasts rising and falling with her ragged breath, tipped with dark dusky-rose nipples already tight and beaded in the cool air.

He looked at the soft shivering plane of her stomach, and his throat worked as he swallowed.

"Gods," he breathed. "Morwenna."

’He’s staring,’ she thought, a thrill of fierce triumph shooting through her. ’Like a man looking at a treasure map... Take your time, Captain, the X marks the spot... Look all you want... Please... don’t stop looking...’

Silas hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her black sharkskin shorts.

"Lift for me," he said quietly.

Morwenna lifted her hips on trembling command.

The shorts came away with a long slow slide, the damp fabric clinging to the full curve of her hips before giving way with a reluctant SHLUP.

He drew them down her thighs and past her knees, and his hands lingered on the muscled length of her legs the whole way.

The shorts hit the carpet with a wet sound.

Splat!

Morwenna lay stretched across the dark silk with every inch of her bare and the cool air of the bedchamber brushed against her whole body at once.

...She was magnificent.

Her skin carried the flawless glow of a woman who’d spent centuries between sea and sun without ever once going soft.

Her breasts were round and heavy and full, her waist tight and narrow, and her hips flared out with the wide devastating curve of an ancient fertility idol, framed by a neat dark triangle of hair between her sculpted thighs.

The faint lines of old scars crossed her ribs and hips like a map of every battle she’d survived, and somehow they only made her more beautiful.

Silas drank her in with a hungry slowness.

His eyes followed every curve from her flushed face to her curling toes and back again, as if he were memorizing her.

Morwenna forced herself not to cover up however she only lasted nine seconds.

"Y-You’re staring!" she squeaked, throwing one arm across her breasts and the other hand over her face, peeking through her fingers.

"I’m admiring," Silas corrected. "There’s a difference between that and normal staring... Hey, Move your arm."

"...Aye, Captain."

The arm moved.

"Gods, you’re gorgeous," he breathed again, and he reached out and brought his broad palm down in a swift sharp and remarkably loud spank across the plump silken swell of her left buttock.

SMACK!

"AHHHHNNN~!"

A loud piercing and completely helpless moan ripped from Morwenna’s chest with her back arching off the mattress and her toes curling into the silk as the stinging pleasure radiated straight down to her core.