Edge of Temptation

by Megan Crane

  Kings rise and fall, she’d told him in her flashy, impetuous way, standing stark naked save the grand crown of metal and branches she’d fashioned to wear on her head, right here in this stairwell. Brothers die and are reborn in the next crop of young men. But there is only one Gunnar. Only one genius who can fix anything and everything. Who can heat up the winter and shine light through the darkness. What are kings and brothers next to that?

  How could he possibly let himself forget her? How could he slip back into the very life she’d taught him he wasn’t required to accept? He owed her a second chance. He owed her the attempt, anyway.

  Gunnar needed to get the hell out of here.

  He needed to get his shit together, grab his virgin sacrifice while she was still pure and before he forgot why he should keep her that way, and head for Kentucky before he missed his chance and Audra was lost to him forever.

  For good this time.

  * * *

  “Does he make you sleep like that?”

  Maud hadn’t been asleep so much as brooding, staring across Gunnar’s study toward the big map of what was once the mainland that filled the biggest of his screens. No Mississippi Sea. A landlocked Oklahoma. It was hard to believe it had ever been real, this mysterious continent marked with cities Maud knew had been underwater for over a century. More, maybe. No one was ever all that clear on dates when they’d been fighting to stay above the waterline.

  Still, Riordan’s dark sugar voice made her jolt against her pillow, there in her usual place on the floor. The clank of her chain against the wall was overloud when she moved and he frowned at it.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said. As serenely as possible.

  The king’s handpicked council met here every day to pick over the same maps and have the same arguments. Maud could recite them all. Eiryn didn’t care if the mainland had light because the raiders already did, so why raise the masses to the same level? It might encourage them to think they were the equals of the clan, which would inevitably lead to more clashes. Riordan usually acted as if he thought every word that came out of Eiryn’s mouth was a weapon aimed directly at him, making Maud wonder about what Gunnar had said regarding the history between the two of them. Helena and her sister, Melyssa, didn’t always agree with each other but they were united in their opinion that there was no choice in the matter; the world couldn’t remain under the control of the western kings and few priests who had their own reasons for leaving it dark.

  Or a raider clan, for that matter, Helena had said only yesterday, making Eiryn scowl.

  All the other members of the king’s council, male and female warriors of the brotherhood alike, came down somewhere near enough to those positions. Tyr muttered about tactics. Gunnar interrupted everyone to talk about the practicalities involved in reviving once-submerged, now-obsolete tech and getting it to work the way it was supposed to. Everyone had a different idea about who should be sent out to handle the issue, especially in the wake of Krajic’s visit to the Lodge.

  It hadn’t mattered that Maud had spent the entirety of the day the mercenaries had come catching up on her sleep, wrapped up in Gunnar’s cozy bed with the boxcar doors shut tight. She’d heard the tale told a thousand times since then. The insults the horrible man had thrown around. The references he’d made to the bishop who’d hired him—who had to be Bishop Seph, Maud was certain. And then the masterful way Tyr had taken him down right there on the stone floor of the Lodge, avenging his blood brother Zyron at last.

  Everyone who told Maud this story—or told it near her, because Gunnar didn’t exactly encourage her to interact with anyone—used the same reverent, hero-worshiping tone. While the few times Maud had entered the hall since, she’d looked for leftover bloodstains on the stones and marveled at what a different place this was than any she’d known.

  Not that the church had been all sunshine and flowers. But at least they sanitized their killings. They let the desert do it. They didn’t hack people apart in the center of the Great Cathedral.

  She found she really wasn’t sure which was better.

  “Maud.”

  She realized that Riordan had said her name a number of times and forced another smile.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and hoped she sounded appropriately dreamy. She’d found that made all these direct and forceful raider types uncomfortable. “I can’t stop staring at that map and wondering what the world would be like if the seas had stayed put.”

  Riordan didn’t look over at the screen. He kept his dark gaze trained on her instead, and it suddenly occurred to Maud that they were all alone down here in the basement. That happened very rarely. Gunnar had come back after all those deafening alarms had gone off to tell her that Krajic was on the island and she needed to stay in the basement until further notice. The easiest way to do that was to chain her to the wall and act as if he didn’t want her to move from that spot as long as there were other people in the vicinity.

  Except it had been over a week and she’d started to wonder if he wasn’t acting.

  “It would be more people wandering around stirring shit up,” Riordan said in that way of his, as if he was on the verge of breaking into laughter. Though he didn’t. “We have enough trouble already, don’t you think?”

  Maud shifted on her pillow, sitting up straighter, as if that would combat the odd light in Riordan’s gaze, much harder than usual. Wulf had ordered Gunnar to keep her clothed in the Lodge and he’d acquiesced, though she imagined the bishop would have frowned at what was considered clothes here. A very stretchy long-sleeved shirt with a low neck that was plastered to her body and a pair of tiny shorts that showed off more of her ass than they covered, because it distracted the council and that amused Gunnar. Today Maud had pulled on a pair of soft, loose trousers when Gunnar left for his usual training run up the side of the mountain that towered behind the city and a warmer sweater. She couldn’t decide if fewer clothes would have made her feel more in control of this, or if a heavy coat would have been better. She had to settle for her usual calm smile.

  “I don’t think I’ve met enough people to tell one way or the other,” she said.

  “Take it from me,” Riordan said shortly. “There are enough.”

  “Gunnar will be back soon,” she told him.

  Riordan grinned, which didn’t make him look any softer or more approachable at all. His dark eyes gleamed with something she couldn’t identify, but she could feel it wash over her. It made her neck prickle.

  “I’m not here for him. I’m here for you.”

  “Me?”

  His grin deepened, which was not soothing. “You.”

  Maud looked behind him, hoping against hope that Gunnar would appear the way he often did, as if nothing happened in this basement he wasn’t aware of. But the study sat in a pool of light and the rest of the space was dark, with only faint lights strung up here and there. No one stepped forward. If anyone lurked in the shadows, they stayed there.

  “Why?” she asked. She tried to sound as if she didn’t care either way about the answer.

  Riordan moved closer, his dark gaze on the chain, not on her. “Does that come off?”

  He’d muttered that to the wall more than to her, but Maud reached up and unhooked the chain from the collar, letting it fall against the wall. It clanked a few times, then was still.

  “Of course it comes off. He didn’t weld it to my body.”

  “What about the collar?”

  She didn’t realize her hands had gone to her neck as if she was protecting it from him until Riordan’s dark, clever eyes dropped to track the movement. But Maud didn’t drop her hands away.

  “I like the collar,” she said.

  Some part of her thought she should have been ashamed of that. Just as when she’d confessed her need for pain to Gunnar before those alarms had gone off, asking him to put those evil-looking clamps wherever it would hurt most. She’d tried them when she’d been alone that day. They’d been vicious.
But the thought of Gunnar putting them on her? She was instantly wet and shivery at the notion, though he still hadn’t used them, because he’d grittily told her they’d become a reward, not a punishment.

  She stood then, in a single smooth motion and still holding fast to her collar, because it was the same. A reward. “Is that a problem?”

  “Not for me.” Riordan’s gaze swept over her, and she remembered what it had been like in the cabin. That hot, hungry way he’d looked at her when she’d knelt before him and taken his cock from his trousers to please Gunnar. This wasn’t that. She thought it might have been simpler if it was. She’d have known what to do. “Let’s go.”

  Maud had wanted nothing but the opportunity to explore this place since she’d arrived. She’d daydreamed about it while she’d sat right here, looking serene and at her ease and perfectly happy to stay put. But now that Riordan was offering a chance to see something other than this corner of Gunnar’s basement, she recoiled.

  “Gunnar doesn’t want me to leave the basement.” At least she sounded less anxious than she felt. She hoped. “He doesn’t want me unprotected with those violent mainlanders around.”

  But Riordan was shaking his head. “Tyr sent them inland. The coast is clear.”

  “I think I’d feel better if I waited for him to come back…”

  Riordan shook his head, and something about the way he did it made her think of steel. Metal concealed behind a smooth grin. “Sorry. He wants to see you now.”

  She blinked at that, even while her stomach twisted. “Who does?”

  This time, Riordan laughed. It was that same laugh she remembered from back in Gunnar’s cabin. It was a musical affair and it didn’t touch his eyes.

  “There’s only one he when it comes to a summons like that, sweetheart. The king. Wulf wants to see you. Now.”

  * * *

  Gunnar ran like a pack of mercenary dirtbags were at his heels, when it was only his own pit wolves. They loved these morning training runs a whole lot more than he did, but then, they had four legs to work with. Straight up the killer backside of the mountain, as close to vertical as a trail could get without becoming a climb, was a lot harder with only two.

  It was painful and grueling every time. And it did not one goddamned thing to ease the war that raged inside of him.

  He wanted Maud, but he couldn’t have her. Because he needed her to get Audra back, and once he did—if he did—there would be no more Maud. There was no solution to that puzzle. There was one or the other, that was all. There was what he wanted now, and what he’d vowed then, and the fact there was a gap between those things only meant he was a man without honor.

  Not that it made any difference. That he loathed himself didn’t change a damned thing.

  It had been a long, torturous ten days back in the Lodge, sunk deep in the belly of a world he’d thought he’d turned away from. Wulf and the brotherhood and all the things he’d once loved about his old life in his face while Maud sat there on her pillow, obedient and sweet, and made him sweat with the need to claim her in every possible way.

  She was driving him over the edge.

  At first he’d thought he could handle it. He’d spanked her again, thinking a little penance and punishment on both their parts would do them both good.

  He could still hear the way she’d come all over him, first from the spanking alone like the perfect little pain slut she was, and then again when he’d thrown her down on that soft, wide bed, held her thighs wide, and buried his face in her hot little pussy at last.

  He was hard as a fucking spike all over again, thinking about it, which didn’t make his run any easier.

  She’d been sweet and soft, molten cream, and his for the taking. He’d eaten her like a starving creature, using his tongue and his teeth and his jaw all over her sopping wet cunt, and then getting his mouth on her plump little clit alone. He’d sucked it into his mouth, hard enough to make her cry out, and then he’d flipped her over and made her ride his face while he drowned himself in all that scalding heat.

  Again and again.

  He’d lost track of many times he’d made her come. He’d been out of his head, the taste of her driving him wild. He got his hands in that tight little ass of hers. He made her pinch her own nipples. And still he licked her and ate her, relentlessly, until she was weak and incoherent, sobbing out his name like one of her chanting prayers. He’d finally let her collapse on the bed and then he’d taken his iron-hard cock into the bathroom and took an icy cold shower to kick his own ass a little.

  And it still didn’t help.

  He had everything he needed to perform the resurrection spell. He’d prepared the last of the amulets he needed and he’d packed the necessary herbs and bones early this morning. He’d picked the ceremonial blade and said the right words over it, late in the night far out in the forest where no one could see him act out rituals that could as easily be made up as part of an ancient, lost religion. He had no idea either way. It didn’t matter, in the end. Now all that was left was getting the hell out of the raider city without calling down his blood brother’s wrath.

  Gunnar didn’t give too much of a shit about Wulf’s wrath, in and of itself. His blood brother could get as angry as he wanted and on a personal level, it wouldn’t affect Gunnar at all. It was the brotherhood who were sworn to serve the king who concerned him. There wasn’t much that could stand between Gunnar and his goal, particularly when he was in an armored truck that had mowed through highwaymen and bandit encampments like butter, but the raider brotherhood was one of the few things that could give him pause.

  Cunning, loyal bastards.

  They didn’t trust him, which meant Wulf didn’t have to order them to keep an eye on him. They did it anyway. He could see the tallying going on every time he walked into a room, as they all tried to take his measure. Audra was a major negative on his balance sheet, he knew. But most brothers accorded him points for the story that got around about him throwing Farrell through a wall, since Dandro’s mouthy kin wasn’t particularly popular among his peers.

  Never liked that little bitch, mighty Jurin, all red hair and a baritone to go with his massive size, had boomed across the hall one evening. Next time leave his head in the wall like a little punk-ass decoration. It would be an improvement.

  All the brothers had roared with laughter at that, except Farrell. That had won Gunnar points, he was sure.

  But the naked nun on a chain? That was trickier. The brothers were horny jackasses. They had sex the way some men scratched their balls. The camp girls were on hand to take cock night and day, and no one questioned a little role-play if that was what got a brother off. He got points for that part, certainly.

  The fact Gunnar wasn’t playing, though? That everyone knew he was a twisted bastard who liked tying them up and making them cry a little bit before he let them come? It was tempting to wonder if he’d flipped that switch for good. If he was more about making Maud cry, not that anyone had seen her shed a tear.

  Exactly how twisted are you, brother? Ellis had asked when they’d run into each other in the caves one afternoon, and this was from a brother who wore the bones of his enemies threaded in his long, dark beard.

  He knew they deducted points while they wondered exactly how messed up he’d become in his year away, off doing god-knew-what. And more, why he’d turned a corner on that shit. Was that Audra’s influence? Had Gunnar gone over to the dark side for good?

  Gunnar was sick of all the scorekeeping. The gossip that only got worse when the weather sucked and shut them all in together. He needed to get the hell out of here.

  He sped up around a switchback, his feet loud against the cold dirt trail, and nearly plowed straight into another person hurtling at him from farther up the mountain.

  It took him one second to determine it wasn’t an attack. Two seconds to recognize that it was Eiryn. Another beat of his heart to determined that she was likely on her own training run, not coming for him, because
her blade was sheathed the same as his.

  “A chance meeting with my blood kin on the side of a steep mountain,” he said darkly as she rocked to a stop a foot or so away, then glared at him as if he’d been the one to cause the near collision when she had gravity on her side. “I’m sure this will end well.”

  Eiryn rose slightly from the predatory crouch she’d dropped into the moment she’d seen him come around the bend.

  “Are you offering to jump over the side? That would solve some problems. Don’t let me stop you.”

  Gunnar made a show of looking over the side of the cliff while his breath came out in clouds between them. It was a long, foggy drop to the nearest treetop, and a good long mile or two farther down to the Lodge. A drawn-out, painful, broken sort of death.

  “It was more an offer to push you and that chip on your shoulder over,” he said mildly. He eyed her. “You could make it a race. See which one hit bottom first. I’m betting on that heavy-ass chip.”

  Eiryn straightened further and folded her arms in front of her. The pit wolves sniffed at her and Hatti even growled a little bit, discerning canine that she was, but Eiryn didn’t appear to notice. Much less react. She was cool, his half-sister. Cool and deadly, like a wicked blade, as befit the king’s personal bodyguard.

  It was hard not to admire her. And a lot easier when she wasn’t pointing that blade right at him, like she had been half the time in those council meetings in his basement.

  “I can’t think of anything more ironic than listening to you, the grand high priest of self-congratulatory suffering as if no one else’s life has ever been hard, talk about a chip on a shoulder.”

  His mouth curved. “Is that why you’re out here on the backside of the mountain running your own training program all alone in the woods?” he asked. “Instead of joining Tyr’s morning bootcamp bullshit like everyone else?”

  Eiryn didn’t have the same pale blue eyes Gunnar and Wulf shared. Hers were much darker, like their father’s. And right now they glittered murder at him.