By Hook or By Crook - 4
< caution tape >
Title: Gunnery Exercises
Series: By Hook or By Crook (related PWPs)
Other Titles in the Series:
Prologue
Hook, Line and Sinker
Fight Fire With Fire
Silence is Golden
(You don't have to read them to get the gist of this, but some of the references made are to earlier pieces)
Pairing: J/N
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The erotic potential of page 173 in Nelson's Navy(coincidentally the best Xmas gift ever), as realized by yours truly.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue, and all that jazz. (Razzle dazzle 'em!)
Warnings: Bondage, language, gunnery, sex
Feedback: Need we go through this again? Me. Slut. For. Feedback. Especially here, because I'm not sure if this is a regression to my earlier style or not, and if it is, whether that's a good thing, and... blablabla more insecure writer babble
Beta: lolita_stardust-- I love you babe!
Catchup: Jack has been chatting with James about such pertinent issues as sex and... sex, all the while getting James more and more naked. Sneaky Jack...
*GUNNERY EXERCISES*
Suddenly, James found himself tied spread-eagled to his bed with Jack standing alongside examining his grubby nails with an intensity that James could only assume was directly proportional to his own discomfort. Norrington was livid. It was not only the fact that Jack had taken advantage of his preoccupation to lash his limbs to the bedposts, it was the fact that, before doing so, the pirate had efficiently divested James of … everything.
James could do little more than sputter indignantly and try to cling to whatever small graces he had left - not many that he could think of. “Sparrow-how dare you!-you have no right-“
“Right is secondary to ability and opportunity, James.”
“But you can’t-“
“Can. Did.” Jack swept his hand above the bedframe to illustrate just how thoroughly he had done. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
James frowned. “Question?”
Jack cleared his throat and smiled obligingly, ducking his head to the side. “I repeat: If one has determined that you equate sex with love, and if one has also determined that love does not exist, then what are you left with?”
Norrington blinked once or thrice. “Nothing.” From his tone of voice, it could just as easily have been a question.
Jack rolled his eyes. “No, not nothing. If you see love as inextricably linked to sex, and then drop the love angle, you’re left with …sex.”
“That makes no sense. If one thing equals another, and one is lost, then the other disappears with it.”
“Only if you can successfully deny the existence of both things.”
James’ eyes widened with apprehension as he caught the ominous bubbling note in Jack’s voice, and widened further, then narrowed, as Jack leaned down to whisper in his ear, “And there are some things that one simply cannot deny.” At this he licked a long, hot swipe from the point of James’ chin to the hollow behind his ear, then closed his teeth over the earlobe, thoroughly enjoying the way James shivered when he flicked his tongue against the captured flesh.
“Like that?” Norrington asked weakly.
“Like that,” Jack whispered, and in so doing released James’ ear. “And like this.” He reached over and rested a hand on James’ knee, walked it slowly up his thigh, making sure to cover every inch of perfectly pale skin, and settled it over his hip, pressing just hard enough with his thumb into the hollow of the joint to make James feel as though his knees had quite suddenly and simply disappeared from the middle of his legs.
Despite that, though, Norrington seemed to have caught a second wind so far as arguing was concerned, and he leveled a particularly hateful glare at Jack. “I demand that you untie me at once.”
It would likely have had a great deal more of an effect if the one making the demand were not naked, trussed like a holiday bird, and rather flushed and breathless. But seeing as the majority of those conditions were outside of Norrington’s control, Jack had to give the man credit for making due with what he had. Namely, a very steely glower.
Jack bent down again and devoted his energy to kissing that glower away, with hard, and soft, and wet, and hot, and everything he could think of. And James couldn’t have been that determined, because he was kissing Jack back with all he had, and making low moaning noises when Jack slid his hand unhurriedly from one hip to the other, never pausing, but making no attempt to avoid what lay between the two points.
Then James came to his senses again, and tore his mouth away from Jack’s. And glowered. Again. “I must protest to this highly inappropriate treatment, Mister Sparrow.” He tugged in vain on one wrist tie, as though to specify exactly which part of the treatment was inappropriate.
“Listen, mate, it’s for yer own good.”
James had probably not looked so skeptical in his entire life. “My own good.”
“Aye,” Jack purred, trailing a finger slowly down James’ chest and swirling it into his navel, causing a very undignified and quickly stifled squeak. “’M giving you a wonderful opportunity.”
“And just what opportunity…” interrupted by a gasp and a shudder as Jack retraced the same path with his tongue “…might you be granting me?”
“The opportunity… to lose control.” Jack flicked his tongue just a bit lower, and James jerked and made a deliciously strangled sound that twisted Jack’s lips into a grin.
“And why…in heaven’s name…would I want to do that?” James was more breathless than menacing.
“Because, love,” Jack made his way back up James’ body, settling his face right beside James’ ear again, but his hand was still moving, scrawling invisibly eloquent illustrations over the white marble chest and abdomen, every once in a while tracing over a nerve point that made the muscles flex and twitch. “It’s something you’ve never done before.”
“And did you ever think - Jack stop that - that there was a reason I’d never - I said stop - done it before?”
Jack’s voice in his ear was low, and smoldering, and entirely lewd, and it made James gasp just to hear it. “Because you’re afraid to.”
“I---“ It would have been easier to protest if Jack hadn’t actually been right. Defensively, James scowled and retorted, “Well you’re not exactly behaving so reassuringly, what with tying me down.”
“Quite on the contrary, love. As far as my behavior, you have the assurance that there are no strings attached. …Well…" He looked pointedly at the bonds and added, "Figuratively speaking, that is. Just another… business proposition, aye?” Jack swung a leg over to straddle James’ statuesque hips and touched the fingertips of one hand to a dove-pale elbow. “And for tying you down, well, that lifts the burden of command from your shoulders. You don’t need to keep control;” He trailed his fingertips down along the sensitive tricep, feeling it tense and quiver along with all the rest of the commodore’s muscled torso. “The ties will keep it for you.”
It was a dark, burning promise that pulled Norrington’s body into a fierce slow shiver.
“All you need to do,” Jack continued, at the same time tracing a thin serpentine path across James’ collarbone with the forefinger of his other hand, “is let them.” The finger wandered a little lower, circled, tweaked, stroked soothingly when James jerked again. “See, love? Holding strong. Lucky you.” James raised a quizzical eyebrow, and Jack answered the unworded question. “Sailors are famed for their knot-tying, of course.” James nodded blandly; that observation was nothing new to him. “And pirates…” Jack grinned his terrifying, sizzling, golden grin before continuing. “Pirates… are famed for much more interesting things.” On the word ‘interesting’, he rocked his hips down, deliberately.
“…Like that?”
“Like that.”
“Jack, I will not let you mesmerize me into compliance with your… sordid tactics.”
Jack’s face lit up, in exactly the opposite of the response Norrington had been hoping for. “’Sordid tactics,’ you say? Were they still so sordid last night when it was you, turned on me?” James frowned.
“That,” He had to pause because Jack was resettling his weight, which shifted his hips distractingly. “Was an action of necessity, and one of reciprocation. It was perfectly justifiable.”
“I see.” Jack busied himself with checking the ties at each limb and post, crawling about over James’ body and seeming to ignore the way the commodore’s eyes widened and his jaw tightened with each adjustment.
“Sparrow, if you do not stop this at once, I will have you hanged without further dalliance - as was my duty to begin with - despite whatever consequences may befall me. Your behavior is entirely unacceptable and-“
“Still giving commands, James?”
“Commodore.”
James seethed, and Jack smiled. “Right. That.”
A silence fell, tenser for James than it was for Jack, and the commodore had to break it. “And…”
“And what?” Jack snaked down to James’ feet and licked up from ankle to knee, then gave him a leer and drawled, “Go ahead then. It’s the only command you’re going to get. …Tell me, James,” he pressed his lips to the soft tender back of the nearest knee, “How does one prepare to fire a cannon?”
The question was so incongruous that James had to blink several times, and open and shut his mouth, before he could respond. “W--what?”
Jack sat up and shook his head, on the verge of laughing. “A cannon, James. I assume you know the orders? To reload after firing?” James appeared near to answering, but Jack continued all the same. “A pity if you didn’t, really, and a shame for the British Navy as a whole, to have such an incompetent commodore.”
“I do know.” Norrington finally insisted on getting his word in. “I simply do not see why I should suffer to recite the steps to y--ou…” He broke off with a rising pitch and a cascading shiver as Jack dragged the pad of a finger up between James’ thighs to the tip of a surprisingly attentive erection.
“You don’t have to tell me, mate; it’s your choice.” Jack’s voice was soft, warm, and accommodating, and it terrified James for that very reason, while he waited for the other shoe to drop. “Of course, I do have to admit I was looking forward to a lesson in gunnery…” Jack unfolded himself and slunk off the bed, and the proverbial shoe fell with a thud. Languorously, and never taking his eyes from James’, he strolled over to the wall and leaned back against it, then began to jack off, very expertly and very showily. He licked his lips, dragged his wrist, echoed the delicate, sensuous motions of a violin virtuoso, and James was helpless but to watch.
By God and all the angels who were at that very moment horrified to hear themselves called upon in such context, he was a commodore of the Royal Navy, he was the ‘great pirate hunter’, the man of ice and stone - though just then some parts were much more stone than others and none of him was ice - and it was torturing him, nearly breaking him, just to watch Jack. To see his face, so intensely focused, so blissfully transported, so damned directly fixed on James’, like a bloody challenge… But Norrington thought of that face, of those little muscles tensing and slackening along Jack’s neck, of the way that picture looked beneath him, desperate, begging, or worse yet above him, with pressing, and sliding, and leaving him desperate, and begging, and… “Worm and sponge.”
“Hmmm… what?” It was a moment before Jack saw fit to recognize Norrington’s concession. James writhed uselessly on the bed as Jack gave himself one more long, slow stroke, and repeated his words, nearly a plea this time.
“Worm and sponge.”
“Is that so…?” Jack sauntered lazily over to the bed and granted Norrington a single kiss. “Well, ‘m not sure if I know what you mean by that, love. Think you could… elaborate?” While he spoke, Jack was distributing the oil he had clearly pilfered from James’ bureau, and the bureau-owner was watching with rapt attention as the succulent shine spread over golden fingertips, nimble fingers, even as a stray drop hit like ice on his own smoldering thigh and he shivered. “James?” He turned his attention back to Jack’s words, and caught the tail end of the repetition Jack spoke for his victim’s benefit. “…details on how to worm and sponge?”
James didn’t see the relevance or use, but if it would get him relief and / or freedom from these ties he would gratefully fall back on his rote memorization of the section of Burney’s dictionary, and it rolled out of his memory banks word for word. “The sponge is to be rammed down th-“
And all at once he understood Jack’s design, because in complete synchronization with the word ‘rammed,’ Jack had slid in one finger, soon pressed a second, and James, not expecting it, had tensed, hissed with pain, then gone silent save for the eloquent arch in his back. “Hm?”
“D-down the bottom of the chamber…”
“Aye,” Jack nudged his fingers a last bit further, “got that, love, what next?”
James swallowed hard and tried to recall his recitation. “And… and then… and then, twisted-ah! …Twisted round, to… to…” But Jack was still twisting, and James couldn’t patch the rest of it together, busy as he was jerking and winding his hips, and rolling his head on the pillow. All he could do, verbally, was hiss a curse, and hiss it again louder when Jack pulled his fingers out.
“So there’s the first part. Now…” Jack showed a feral, toothy grin and black, concentrated gaze as he put the oil to use again, on himself. "…What ought we know about loading?”
James’ throat was stuck in a whimper, so he licked his lips and swallowed it temporarily, and recalled his lessons on loading a cannon. “The c- the co-- cartridge is to be put into - oh God - into the gun, and thrust a little way - ah, I can’t.” He was thrashing his head on the pillow, desperate in an effort to keep his thoughts clear, but he couldn’t any more, he just couldn’t, and Sparrow would have to accept that.
He didn’t. “Of course you can; you’re a bloody commodore of the bloody Royal Navy. ‘Sides… I won’t know what to do if you don’t tell me, savvy?”
“I’m tied to the bedposts; what command do I possibly have?”
The question was rhetorical, but Jack dropped his voice to a low velvet growl and answered. “Enough. Now talk.”
James felt something hot chase something cold up his spine, then his stomach flipped and his cock jumped and both of them screamed at him to do what Jack said. He could hardly hear himself when he spoke. “The cartridge is then to be f-forcibly ra-ammed down, God above!” James flung his head back, strained his neck up, and threw his hips down into Jack’s, as much as he could, which wasn’t much with no leverage. Jack nudged in the rest of the way.
“That’s your cue, mate.”
James took a few precious moments to collect his breath, because he knew he’d be needing it soon. “…Home.”
Jack locked firm hold onto James’ hips, drew back, and launched into a relentless rhythm so that James was trying at the same time to pull away from the bed and push against it, failing at both, desperate for some slight control over his own sensation but completely without it. A groan tore from his feet through his throat and Jack, hearing it, smirked. He didn’t change a thing.
Later, a split second, a near eternity (James couldn’t say because his only measure of time was the constant fill and draw, in and out, over and over, and that was infinite), Jack leaned down, put his face right next to James’, and whispered, “This’s what the ties’re for, love. Lose control.” And one wicked hand left James’ hip to close around in front.
It was electric fire through James, from his head to his shoulders, up his arms down his sides, to his feet, through his center. He shouted, strained against everything that held him, none of it gave, and he crashed back to the bed just in time to see that look on Jack’s face, the little muscles racing down his neck, as he … fired.
That last thought brought a silly smile to Norrington’s face, and that permitted him to query: “I cut the ropes, Jack. What did you use for ties?”
Jack gave an enigmatic smirk and traced a finger down the side of James’ neck, then tapped it twice against the skin. James frowned, raised both eyebrows, and craned his neck to catch sight of the headboard.
“…You didn’t.”
“Did. Pirate.” Jack snickered and got to his feet. “Better use for the thing than tied ‘round your neck, don’t you think?”
***
My Two Cents: Wooh, more smut. Mm, hormones. Gotta love 'em. This is half Brian Lavery's fault, and half Elessil's. (Everything's Elessil's fault anyway.) The actual quotes I had James speak are from W. Burney's Universal Dictionary of the Marine, though I know it was not published until 1815, and appear on page 142. I found them cited on page 173 of Nelson's Navy, that great work by Brian Lavery. Also, note the caravat abuse. I like that part. On another note, it is true that this set of PWPs was my first fic ever, that I started writing them in February of 2004, and that I stopped partway through this piece (the second set of "like that"s, to be exact) in June-- or maybe July. It is also true that I didn't like this series at ALL for many months after I dropped off, in fact despised it, but then came back to it for... I don't know what reason, and realized that actually, I was decently proud of at least the first in the series.
Anyway. I'll stop being boring now. Let me know your opinions! Please?
Ta,
-M
< /caution tape>
Title: Gunnery Exercises
Series: By Hook or By Crook (related PWPs)
Other Titles in the Series:
Prologue
Hook, Line and Sinker
Fight Fire With Fire
Silence is Golden
(You don't have to read them to get the gist of this, but some of the references made are to earlier pieces)
Pairing: J/N
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The erotic potential of page 173 in Nelson's Navy(coincidentally the best Xmas gift ever), as realized by yours truly.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue, and all that jazz. (Razzle dazzle 'em!)
Warnings: Bondage, language, gunnery, sex
Feedback: Need we go through this again? Me. Slut. For. Feedback. Especially here, because I'm not sure if this is a regression to my earlier style or not, and if it is, whether that's a good thing, and... blablabla more insecure writer babble
Beta: lolita_stardust-- I love you babe!
Catchup: Jack has been chatting with James about such pertinent issues as sex and... sex, all the while getting James more and more naked. Sneaky Jack...
*GUNNERY EXERCISES*
Suddenly, James found himself tied spread-eagled to his bed with Jack standing alongside examining his grubby nails with an intensity that James could only assume was directly proportional to his own discomfort. Norrington was livid. It was not only the fact that Jack had taken advantage of his preoccupation to lash his limbs to the bedposts, it was the fact that, before doing so, the pirate had efficiently divested James of … everything.
James could do little more than sputter indignantly and try to cling to whatever small graces he had left - not many that he could think of. “Sparrow-how dare you!-you have no right-“
“Right is secondary to ability and opportunity, James.”
“But you can’t-“
“Can. Did.” Jack swept his hand above the bedframe to illustrate just how thoroughly he had done. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
James frowned. “Question?”
Jack cleared his throat and smiled obligingly, ducking his head to the side. “I repeat: If one has determined that you equate sex with love, and if one has also determined that love does not exist, then what are you left with?”
Norrington blinked once or thrice. “Nothing.” From his tone of voice, it could just as easily have been a question.
Jack rolled his eyes. “No, not nothing. If you see love as inextricably linked to sex, and then drop the love angle, you’re left with …sex.”
“That makes no sense. If one thing equals another, and one is lost, then the other disappears with it.”
“Only if you can successfully deny the existence of both things.”
James’ eyes widened with apprehension as he caught the ominous bubbling note in Jack’s voice, and widened further, then narrowed, as Jack leaned down to whisper in his ear, “And there are some things that one simply cannot deny.” At this he licked a long, hot swipe from the point of James’ chin to the hollow behind his ear, then closed his teeth over the earlobe, thoroughly enjoying the way James shivered when he flicked his tongue against the captured flesh.
“Like that?” Norrington asked weakly.
“Like that,” Jack whispered, and in so doing released James’ ear. “And like this.” He reached over and rested a hand on James’ knee, walked it slowly up his thigh, making sure to cover every inch of perfectly pale skin, and settled it over his hip, pressing just hard enough with his thumb into the hollow of the joint to make James feel as though his knees had quite suddenly and simply disappeared from the middle of his legs.
Despite that, though, Norrington seemed to have caught a second wind so far as arguing was concerned, and he leveled a particularly hateful glare at Jack. “I demand that you untie me at once.”
It would likely have had a great deal more of an effect if the one making the demand were not naked, trussed like a holiday bird, and rather flushed and breathless. But seeing as the majority of those conditions were outside of Norrington’s control, Jack had to give the man credit for making due with what he had. Namely, a very steely glower.
Jack bent down again and devoted his energy to kissing that glower away, with hard, and soft, and wet, and hot, and everything he could think of. And James couldn’t have been that determined, because he was kissing Jack back with all he had, and making low moaning noises when Jack slid his hand unhurriedly from one hip to the other, never pausing, but making no attempt to avoid what lay between the two points.
Then James came to his senses again, and tore his mouth away from Jack’s. And glowered. Again. “I must protest to this highly inappropriate treatment, Mister Sparrow.” He tugged in vain on one wrist tie, as though to specify exactly which part of the treatment was inappropriate.
“Listen, mate, it’s for yer own good.”
James had probably not looked so skeptical in his entire life. “My own good.”
“Aye,” Jack purred, trailing a finger slowly down James’ chest and swirling it into his navel, causing a very undignified and quickly stifled squeak. “’M giving you a wonderful opportunity.”
“And just what opportunity…” interrupted by a gasp and a shudder as Jack retraced the same path with his tongue “…might you be granting me?”
“The opportunity… to lose control.” Jack flicked his tongue just a bit lower, and James jerked and made a deliciously strangled sound that twisted Jack’s lips into a grin.
“And why…in heaven’s name…would I want to do that?” James was more breathless than menacing.
“Because, love,” Jack made his way back up James’ body, settling his face right beside James’ ear again, but his hand was still moving, scrawling invisibly eloquent illustrations over the white marble chest and abdomen, every once in a while tracing over a nerve point that made the muscles flex and twitch. “It’s something you’ve never done before.”
“And did you ever think - Jack stop that - that there was a reason I’d never - I said stop - done it before?”
Jack’s voice in his ear was low, and smoldering, and entirely lewd, and it made James gasp just to hear it. “Because you’re afraid to.”
“I---“ It would have been easier to protest if Jack hadn’t actually been right. Defensively, James scowled and retorted, “Well you’re not exactly behaving so reassuringly, what with tying me down.”
“Quite on the contrary, love. As far as my behavior, you have the assurance that there are no strings attached. …Well…" He looked pointedly at the bonds and added, "Figuratively speaking, that is. Just another… business proposition, aye?” Jack swung a leg over to straddle James’ statuesque hips and touched the fingertips of one hand to a dove-pale elbow. “And for tying you down, well, that lifts the burden of command from your shoulders. You don’t need to keep control;” He trailed his fingertips down along the sensitive tricep, feeling it tense and quiver along with all the rest of the commodore’s muscled torso. “The ties will keep it for you.”
It was a dark, burning promise that pulled Norrington’s body into a fierce slow shiver.
“All you need to do,” Jack continued, at the same time tracing a thin serpentine path across James’ collarbone with the forefinger of his other hand, “is let them.” The finger wandered a little lower, circled, tweaked, stroked soothingly when James jerked again. “See, love? Holding strong. Lucky you.” James raised a quizzical eyebrow, and Jack answered the unworded question. “Sailors are famed for their knot-tying, of course.” James nodded blandly; that observation was nothing new to him. “And pirates…” Jack grinned his terrifying, sizzling, golden grin before continuing. “Pirates… are famed for much more interesting things.” On the word ‘interesting’, he rocked his hips down, deliberately.
“…Like that?”
“Like that.”
“Jack, I will not let you mesmerize me into compliance with your… sordid tactics.”
Jack’s face lit up, in exactly the opposite of the response Norrington had been hoping for. “’Sordid tactics,’ you say? Were they still so sordid last night when it was you, turned on me?” James frowned.
“That,” He had to pause because Jack was resettling his weight, which shifted his hips distractingly. “Was an action of necessity, and one of reciprocation. It was perfectly justifiable.”
“I see.” Jack busied himself with checking the ties at each limb and post, crawling about over James’ body and seeming to ignore the way the commodore’s eyes widened and his jaw tightened with each adjustment.
“Sparrow, if you do not stop this at once, I will have you hanged without further dalliance - as was my duty to begin with - despite whatever consequences may befall me. Your behavior is entirely unacceptable and-“
“Still giving commands, James?”
“Commodore.”
James seethed, and Jack smiled. “Right. That.”
A silence fell, tenser for James than it was for Jack, and the commodore had to break it. “And…”
“And what?” Jack snaked down to James’ feet and licked up from ankle to knee, then gave him a leer and drawled, “Go ahead then. It’s the only command you’re going to get. …Tell me, James,” he pressed his lips to the soft tender back of the nearest knee, “How does one prepare to fire a cannon?”
The question was so incongruous that James had to blink several times, and open and shut his mouth, before he could respond. “W--what?”
Jack sat up and shook his head, on the verge of laughing. “A cannon, James. I assume you know the orders? To reload after firing?” James appeared near to answering, but Jack continued all the same. “A pity if you didn’t, really, and a shame for the British Navy as a whole, to have such an incompetent commodore.”
“I do know.” Norrington finally insisted on getting his word in. “I simply do not see why I should suffer to recite the steps to y--ou…” He broke off with a rising pitch and a cascading shiver as Jack dragged the pad of a finger up between James’ thighs to the tip of a surprisingly attentive erection.
“You don’t have to tell me, mate; it’s your choice.” Jack’s voice was soft, warm, and accommodating, and it terrified James for that very reason, while he waited for the other shoe to drop. “Of course, I do have to admit I was looking forward to a lesson in gunnery…” Jack unfolded himself and slunk off the bed, and the proverbial shoe fell with a thud. Languorously, and never taking his eyes from James’, he strolled over to the wall and leaned back against it, then began to jack off, very expertly and very showily. He licked his lips, dragged his wrist, echoed the delicate, sensuous motions of a violin virtuoso, and James was helpless but to watch.
By God and all the angels who were at that very moment horrified to hear themselves called upon in such context, he was a commodore of the Royal Navy, he was the ‘great pirate hunter’, the man of ice and stone - though just then some parts were much more stone than others and none of him was ice - and it was torturing him, nearly breaking him, just to watch Jack. To see his face, so intensely focused, so blissfully transported, so damned directly fixed on James’, like a bloody challenge… But Norrington thought of that face, of those little muscles tensing and slackening along Jack’s neck, of the way that picture looked beneath him, desperate, begging, or worse yet above him, with pressing, and sliding, and leaving him desperate, and begging, and… “Worm and sponge.”
“Hmmm… what?” It was a moment before Jack saw fit to recognize Norrington’s concession. James writhed uselessly on the bed as Jack gave himself one more long, slow stroke, and repeated his words, nearly a plea this time.
“Worm and sponge.”
“Is that so…?” Jack sauntered lazily over to the bed and granted Norrington a single kiss. “Well, ‘m not sure if I know what you mean by that, love. Think you could… elaborate?” While he spoke, Jack was distributing the oil he had clearly pilfered from James’ bureau, and the bureau-owner was watching with rapt attention as the succulent shine spread over golden fingertips, nimble fingers, even as a stray drop hit like ice on his own smoldering thigh and he shivered. “James?” He turned his attention back to Jack’s words, and caught the tail end of the repetition Jack spoke for his victim’s benefit. “…details on how to worm and sponge?”
James didn’t see the relevance or use, but if it would get him relief and / or freedom from these ties he would gratefully fall back on his rote memorization of the section of Burney’s dictionary, and it rolled out of his memory banks word for word. “The sponge is to be rammed down th-“
And all at once he understood Jack’s design, because in complete synchronization with the word ‘rammed,’ Jack had slid in one finger, soon pressed a second, and James, not expecting it, had tensed, hissed with pain, then gone silent save for the eloquent arch in his back. “Hm?”
“D-down the bottom of the chamber…”
“Aye,” Jack nudged his fingers a last bit further, “got that, love, what next?”
James swallowed hard and tried to recall his recitation. “And… and then… and then, twisted-ah! …Twisted round, to… to…” But Jack was still twisting, and James couldn’t patch the rest of it together, busy as he was jerking and winding his hips, and rolling his head on the pillow. All he could do, verbally, was hiss a curse, and hiss it again louder when Jack pulled his fingers out.
“So there’s the first part. Now…” Jack showed a feral, toothy grin and black, concentrated gaze as he put the oil to use again, on himself. "…What ought we know about loading?”
James’ throat was stuck in a whimper, so he licked his lips and swallowed it temporarily, and recalled his lessons on loading a cannon. “The c- the co-- cartridge is to be put into - oh God - into the gun, and thrust a little way - ah, I can’t.” He was thrashing his head on the pillow, desperate in an effort to keep his thoughts clear, but he couldn’t any more, he just couldn’t, and Sparrow would have to accept that.
He didn’t. “Of course you can; you’re a bloody commodore of the bloody Royal Navy. ‘Sides… I won’t know what to do if you don’t tell me, savvy?”
“I’m tied to the bedposts; what command do I possibly have?”
The question was rhetorical, but Jack dropped his voice to a low velvet growl and answered. “Enough. Now talk.”
James felt something hot chase something cold up his spine, then his stomach flipped and his cock jumped and both of them screamed at him to do what Jack said. He could hardly hear himself when he spoke. “The cartridge is then to be f-forcibly ra-ammed down, God above!” James flung his head back, strained his neck up, and threw his hips down into Jack’s, as much as he could, which wasn’t much with no leverage. Jack nudged in the rest of the way.
“That’s your cue, mate.”
James took a few precious moments to collect his breath, because he knew he’d be needing it soon. “…Home.”
Jack locked firm hold onto James’ hips, drew back, and launched into a relentless rhythm so that James was trying at the same time to pull away from the bed and push against it, failing at both, desperate for some slight control over his own sensation but completely without it. A groan tore from his feet through his throat and Jack, hearing it, smirked. He didn’t change a thing.
Later, a split second, a near eternity (James couldn’t say because his only measure of time was the constant fill and draw, in and out, over and over, and that was infinite), Jack leaned down, put his face right next to James’, and whispered, “This’s what the ties’re for, love. Lose control.” And one wicked hand left James’ hip to close around in front.
It was electric fire through James, from his head to his shoulders, up his arms down his sides, to his feet, through his center. He shouted, strained against everything that held him, none of it gave, and he crashed back to the bed just in time to see that look on Jack’s face, the little muscles racing down his neck, as he … fired.
That last thought brought a silly smile to Norrington’s face, and that permitted him to query: “I cut the ropes, Jack. What did you use for ties?”
Jack gave an enigmatic smirk and traced a finger down the side of James’ neck, then tapped it twice against the skin. James frowned, raised both eyebrows, and craned his neck to catch sight of the headboard.
“…You didn’t.”
“Did. Pirate.” Jack snickered and got to his feet. “Better use for the thing than tied ‘round your neck, don’t you think?”
***
My Two Cents: Wooh, more smut. Mm, hormones. Gotta love 'em. This is half Brian Lavery's fault, and half Elessil's. (Everything's Elessil's fault anyway.) The actual quotes I had James speak are from W. Burney's Universal Dictionary of the Marine, though I know it was not published until 1815, and appear on page 142. I found them cited on page 173 of Nelson's Navy, that great work by Brian Lavery. Also, note the caravat abuse. I like that part. On another note, it is true that this set of PWPs was my first fic ever, that I started writing them in February of 2004, and that I stopped partway through this piece (the second set of "like that"s, to be exact) in June-- or maybe July. It is also true that I didn't like this series at ALL for many months after I dropped off, in fact despised it, but then came back to it for... I don't know what reason, and realized that actually, I was decently proud of at least the first in the series.
Anyway. I'll stop being boring now. Let me know your opinions! Please?
Ta,
-M
< /caution tape>