Edge of Temptation

by Megan Crane

  I’m glad I can provide you assholes with so much entertainment, Gunnar had snarled at them, his hands itching to reach for his blades no matter how suicidal it would be to draw on the war chief in the great foyer of the raider Lodge. Or ever. I’ll be the first in line to point and laugh when your entire goddamned life is called into question. I’m sure you’ll find it hilarious, too.

  The two men had exchanged a look Gunnar couldn’t read. Then Tyr had reached out and clapped him on the back. Gunnar had jerked away, automatically dropping into a fighting crouch, his hands up and ready—and one a little too close to his favorite blade.

  Tyr had only stared stonily back at him, looking pissed and unimpressed at once.

  Lock your shit up, brother, he’d advised Gunnar in a low, hard voice, the same man who spoke of cannon fodder and acceptable losses without a moment’s pause. That was who he was. There’s a very fine line between my sympathy and your stupidity, and you with your hand on a blade in the lobby of the Lodge is making me forget where the hell that line is. Don’t make me handle you the way I would any other bitch in this clan who wasn’t the king’s blood. You won’t like it.

  You don’t have to handle a damned thing, Gunnar had assured him from between his teeth. The you dick at the end of that sentence had been implied.

  Then he’d stalked up to his blood brother’s rooftop retreat by himself, taking a kind of perverse pleasure in the way the other members of the brotherhood moved the hell out of his way as he’d stormed through the Lodge’s halls.

  Fuck all of them, he’d seethed. They’d see the truth when he brought Audra back. He’d shove their sympathy and their suspicion and those bullshit stories about that dirtbag Dandro right up their asses. He couldn’t wait.

  He’d marched himself out into the great, glassed-in rooftop garden, where the rain had drummed down hard, almost loud enough to drown out his temper, and then he’d barreled into Wulf’s fortified domain to find his blood brother, the asshole king, looking as lazy and halfway asleep as he always did. The bright blue eyes Wulf shared with Gunnar had been half lidded and his dark blond hair had been woven into that single, thick braid he wore tossed over one shoulder like his own version of a crown. He lounged there before his grand stone fire as if Gunnar had caught him napping away the fall evening.

  He hadn’t. Wulf’s laziness was a lie. An act of studied carelessness, of seeming mildness, when the real man beneath was all naked ambition, fearlessness in battle and politics alike, and a sheer, focused ruthlessness in all things. Like the order he’d given back in June that had led to Audra’s death, it was a careful game Wulf played to lull his enemies into imagining him a target. It was hiding in plain sight. He’d been playing these games since Gunnar and he were boys and the only thing Wulf had commanded was playtime in the clan nursery. But menace and power had always rolled off him in waves, and it did that day, too. It had been obvious in the way he held himself, as if his bones flatly refused to tell his lies for him. It had inhabited his clever face behind his dark blond beard and that calculating, considering gleam in the blue gaze they’d both inherited from their war chief father—the father Wulf had unseated on his rise to the head of the clan, leaving Amos crippled for the rest of his miserable life as a warning to others as much as a reward for the old man’s own shitty behavior. And to underscore Amos’s position in the new clan under its new king, Wulf hadn’t even done it himself. He’d outsourced the downfall of his own father.

  That was the truth about Wulf.

  As if Gunnar had needed any reminding.

  That was when Wulf had asked him about his refusal to fuck his troubles away in a pile of camp girls, which was irritating on a number of levels, not least that the only way Wulf could know Gunnar hadn’t was if one of those little bitches, Tyr or Riordan, had used the telephones Gunnar himself had wired into the Lodge to tattle on him.

  You haven’t been this interested in what I did with my dick since you were waiting for your balls to drop, Gunnar had snarled.

  Wulf hadn’t moved from his position in his large, comfortably weathered armchair. His legs had been thrust out before him, his chin propped on a fist, looking for all the world as if he was moments from lapsing into another deep sleep there and then, though Gunnar didn’t know anyone stupid enough to believe that. He certainly wasn’t dumb enough to buy anything his blood brother did, and it only added to his fury that Wulf imagined otherwise. That Wulf was treating Gunnar like just another subject under his rule.

  Yes, Wulf had murmured after a moment, his voice much calmer than the look in his eyes. That was a trying hour, as I recall.

  Gunnar had refused to sit. He’d stood there, vibrating with his hatred and his grief and his fury, and looking back he didn’t know how he’d kept himself from launching himself fists first at his only blood brother. His king. But he hadn’t. Somehow, he hadn’t.

  He’d gritted his teeth and he’d clenched his fists to his sides and he’d waited.

  He’d waited a long time.

  Gunnar. Wulf had sat straighter then, that blue gaze of his narrow. Fuck or don’t fuck. I don’t care. But driving yourself crazy in isolation, keeping worrisome vows to a dead woman who betrayed you and me and the whole of this clan, isn’t healthy.

  Gunnar had thought that the very height of arrogance. Gunnar knew how little Wulf had liked his mate, long before anyone had questioned her loyalty. Everyone had known it, Audra included. Audra especially, since Wulf had made no secret of it. Gunnar knew Wulf had likely rejoiced at her death and these accusations that she was as evil as he’d always clearly thought she was. If he hadn’t arranged it all himself, he certainly hadn’t stopped it.

  It was one more reason her resurrection was so necessary.

  Do not—and Gunnar had spat the words out with no pretense of the respect due his king—tell me how to grieve the mate I lost because of your goddamned orders, you arrogant fuck.

  It was suicide. He’d known it as the words left his mouth. If their younger half-sister had been there—deadly Eiryn, the king’s chosen bodyguard because she wielded the fastest blade in the clan, and who tolerated even less disrespect to Wulf than Wulf himself—Gunnar would have expected her blade at his throat, and no matter that they all shared the same shithead of a father.

  Part of him had craved it.

  Maybe that was why he hadn’t policed himself the way he should have. Maybe that was why, without his meaning to do it, between one heartbeat and the next, he found his hand on his favorite blade.

  He didn’t pull it from its sheath. But he didn’t have to draw on Wulf to threaten him. The intention was there, like a shout in the room, loud and clear.

  He’d watched his blood brother’s face harden, no pretense of laziness anymore. Nothing but pure, ferocious rage.

  But when Wulf spoke, he’d sounded almost bored.

  You want to fight me, Gunnar? Are you sure about that? Whether you plan to cut down your king or your brother or your blood, the fact remains I haven’t been defeated in battle in a long, long time.

  True. Gunnar had hardly recognized his own voice, granite and grief. But the last man who kicked your ass? Was me.

  Wulf had smiled. It should have been terrifying. Gunnar was too far gone to care.

  You think you have a shot? As far as I can tell you haven’t eaten a solid meal in months. I could cut you in half with one hand tied behind my back and a blindfold on, using my dick instead of a blade.

  Gunnar had snarled. I’d like to see you try.

  Wulf’s mouth pressed into a brutal line, somehow managing to seem as if he loomed above Gunnar when he was the one sitting down. One of his talents.

  I don’t give a shit how you grieve, Wulf had replied after a moment, his tone deadly. I give a shit how my blood brother handles himself, in the brotherhood and out. I give a shit that you refuse to accept the truth about your woman despite the evidence. And I give a shit when you show up here looking like the vagabonds feasted on your carcass and left
you for dead. And then want to draw on your king.

  I have a solution for you, your royal fucking highness, Gunnar had seethed at him, reckless and dark, but he’d dropped his hand from his blade. Leave me the hell alone and give a shit about your own business for a change.

  He still didn’t know why Wulf hadn’t struck him down then and there. He’d seen the fury on his blood brother’s face. He’d known his king had taken down other men for far less. Gunnar hadn’t cared, and he should have. Some part of him had wanted to die rather than live like this, it was true, betrayed so utterly and so completely by either his blood brother, king, and clan or by his mate—but not until after he performed Audra’s ritual. Not until he’d tried to fix this the way she’d have wanted. The way he owed her, surely.

  But Wulf had only glared at him for another long while, murder thick and sharp in the air between them, as if the tower reeked of the blood they hadn’t spilled. Yet. Then he’d waved his hand, dismissing Gunnar without another word.

  The charitable part of Gunnar thought that dismissal was a gift on Wulf’s part, because the next thing out of Gunnar’s mouth that day had been more than likely to be some seditious, insulting shit even his younger blood brother couldn’t ignore. Or he might really have drawn his blade and created a situation that couldn’t have been ignored.

  But there wasn’t a whole lot left in Gunnar that was charitable. And the rest of him thought his king was nothing but a power hungry little bitch who didn’t like the fact that Gunnar hadn’t fallen in line after he’d lost his mate, the one person in the clan who’d dared show Wulf to his face how little she thought of him.

  He hadn’t fallen in line and he hadn’t accepted that crap about Dandro, or Audra and Dandro’s attempts to take out Wulf and take the raider throne, either.

  And Gunnar hadn’t touched another woman, as much because Wulf had told him he should as because he was keeping the vow he’d made to himself after Audra’s death. Not once in all that time.

  Not until the nun.

  5.

  “Is that where we’re going?” Maud asked now, frowning out the front window of the truck as they entered the final approach, her voice snapping Gunnar back into the truck. The Eighty. The nun on her knees with her hands full of her own soft, slick pussy, so hot and sweet Gunnar thought his dick might punch holes through his own goddamned trousers at the memory alone. “It looks … busy.”

  There were lights in the distance, flickering on the far-off horizon and then looming larger as the truck drew closer, barreling down the old road as if someone were chasing them. It was the first hint of light, of civilization or what passed for it out here so far from the western kingdoms, since the sun had gone down hours back. Signal fires danced in a ring high up on the tower of the old capital building, announcing the bandits’ presence to anyone who imagined they might try to sneak into the city under the cover of dark. Warning those who might come to fight, inviting those who were looking for the kind of rough-and-tumble trade Lincoln offered as the only nonwestern-kingdom–controlled port along the stretch of the Mississippi Sea coastline. In the daytime the burnished gold dome at the top of the old structure was still visible from what must have been its long lost glory days, the tall tower its own sort of beacon, but in the dark there was only fire and warning, and bandits creeping everywhere in the thick, dangerous night.

  “It’s always busy.” Gunnar didn’t want to answer her. As though he suddenly thought a conversation was as much a betrayal as all the ways he’d like to acquaint himself with that soft, unmarked body of hers. Either way, he was annoying himself half to death with this. “That’s why people stop here to get supplies.”

  His cock was still caught up on the memory of Maud’s hands on her pussy, the slick way she’d worked herself almost as hot as that blowjob that had nearly taken off the top of his head last night. Gunnar told himself it was the fact he hadn’t had one in a long time, that was all, when he’d spent every year previous to this last one making sure his dick got the kind of close attention it deserved. Daily. And besides, there was nothing inherently special about the way she’d taken care of herself. Nothing different than the way any other woman had done the same thing in front of him, really.

  And that was why you rewarded her with an orgasm that did nothing but give you blue balls. You asshole.

  “It’s not safe to leave you in the truck when we stop. This is a rough place.” He threw sardonic a look at her. “You’ll probably like it. It’s a town, more or less.”

  The women he’d known his whole life would have thrown something right back at him at that. Attitude, a middle finger, even a blade. Audra had never liked anything that smacked of mockery. For all her bright colors and dances at a moment’s notice, she’d taken herself very seriously.

  Maud only laughed. Her remarkable, musical laugh that made him imagine it was possible that one day he might not feel like this, grim to the bone and heavy with all he’d lost—

  But that was nothing but another betrayal. Worse than the ones before.

  Every time, it was worse.

  Damn her.

  “I do like towns,” she agreed, in her bright, oblivious way, as if she either wasn’t smart enough to understand that sardonic tone he’d used or chose not to listen to it—and he had the sinking feeling it was the second one. She wasn’t nearly as dumb as he’d like her to be, to make all of this nice and easy. “You would, too, if you spent your entire life either off on some remote beach in a rickety old caravan or locked away in a convent with nothing to do but menial chores and a lot of endless chanting.”

  Gunnar couldn’t answer that. He didn’t want to think about her life, or the fact it was running out and she’d still spent most of it isolated and locked away. None of that was going to change with him. Then again, it might well have been even worse if she’d never ended up in the convent in the first place. Life was hard, brief, and unfair. That was the deal and Gunnar knew it better than anyone.

  If Maud didn’t know it yet, she would. And she should.

  He leaned back and rummaged through his pack, keeping his other hand on the wheel and his attention on the dark road. He fished out the item he was looking for and then tossed it into her lap without any ceremony.

  She made a soft, surprised little sound, and then she was quiet.

  Very quiet.

  He waited.

  “A collar?” she asked after another few miles hurtled past, her voice overtly polite. “Like … for animals? Is that what this is?” She cleared her throat. “You … carry one around with you on the off chance you might need a heavy-duty metal collar in the course of your day?” She paused. “Do you?”

  “Put it on.” He sounded edgy to his own ears. Close to losing his shit, and that would be a nightmare for everyone. He would pound them both into oblivion right here in the truck and while that happened, while he was buried to the hilt inside of her at last, the bandits would swarm and they’d be lucky to end up dead instead of sold into some kind of slavery. Either way, he’d fail Audra and her name would never be cleared. He couldn’t have any of that, no matter how hard his cock was. “People in this shithole respect nothing but power, and you don’t have any. If you don’t instantly look like someone more powerful owns you and is watching over you, they’ll take you for themselves, and believe me when I tell you they’ll make the priests’ bullshit you lived through all these years seem like a happy vacation.”

  Maud sniffed. “I could be powerful. How would you know?”

  That was almost funny. “I know.”

  “Not all power looks the same. I’m not all … muscle-y and fierce. Your blades not only look sharp but kind of heavy, so I couldn’t carry them around all the time like you do, sure. I’m not going to beat you at arm wrestling or anything. But that doesn’t mean I’m powerless.”

  “You’re a soft, pretty thing, and that’s not power.” His voice was short. “It’s something powerful people use.”

  He could feel the way
she scowled at him, though he didn’t pull his eyes from the road to look, especially not now that he’d had to slow down to make his way through the outskirts of the city on all the deliberately crappy, pothole-filled roads.

  “Maud.” He bit out her name, and he almost imagined he could taste her, the way she’d tasted herself on her fingers. He didn’t know if he was hard or merely furious, but either way it pumped him on. “Put the damned collar on.”

  She turned it over in her hands, shifting to scowl down at it in her lap instead of at him.

  “Is the entire world obsessed with virgins?” She sounded dubious. “I thought that was a church thing.”

  “This is an old, shitty, beat-up world, little nun. Anything new is a miracle. Everything else is used up or drowned or rusted out. Who wouldn’t want a little piece of virgin pussy in a land of too many compliants and their pointless winter marriages?”

  For a moment she was silent. The only sound was the truck itself and the heavy wheels against the old, cracked blacktop. Gunnar navigated around a fallen tree, feral-eyed bandit kids running in a pack, and a burned-out vehicle graveyard that nearly blocked one street. As effective a perimeter as any, he supposed.

  “Is that why you want me?” Her voice was quieter than before, but still so smooth. “Because I’m … new?”

  Gunnar let out a sound that was too harsh to be a laugh. “Don’t kid yourself. I don’t believe in fucking miracles.”

  His use for her was practical. Purely practical. Either Audra’s spells would work and he would deposit his mate into Maud’s virgin body, or they wouldn’t and she’d be as dead as Audra. She’d bleed out right there in the same damned spot. Gunnar figured he’d put himself out of his misery if that happened, because why not? And either way, he thought that was a better deal for Maud than a lifetime of the church and its douchebag priests.

  Though he didn’t like that twisty thing inside him, sharp like a little bitch, suggesting he ask Maud what she thought about being his unwilling sacrifice.