Loreley Jone's world is shattered when the ship carrying her and her family from London to Antigua is sunk during a hurricane. Orphaned and barely alive, Loreley is rescued, only to be sold to a brothel in the Pirate's Republic of Nassau, in the British Bahamas. After discovering that Loreley is nobility, the brothel's owner auctions off Loreley's virginity to the highest bidder, the pirate captain Gideon Graves, a man notorious for his sadism.

Alone and frightened in a dangerous world she doesn't understand, Loreley must seek her freedom on the same waters that destroyed her old life, where she discovers that the only chains that can hold her are those of her own making.