by Megan Crane
“I don’t want your compliance, Helena,” he growled down at her, his dark hair falling down around them, warrior braids surrounding that stern face of his, his mouth a cruel and beautiful line.
“What?”
“You lying here like you’re doing me a favor does nothing for me.” He rolled his hips and she caught her breath as the sensation stormed through her again. “You going to participate? Maybe do something—use your hands? I told you. I don’t like cold pussy.”
It took her a moment to understand him and when she did, Helena wanted to kill him. She glared up at him, and she was sure he could see the murder in her gaze—especially when his own gleamed bright with dark amusement.
As if he knew perfectly well that compliance required that the woman lie still, as disengaged as possible, because everyone knew only raider whores and castle trash liked it. For normal, civilized people, the making of babies was meant to be a business proposition, carried out as efficiently and quietly and undramatically as possible.
Of course he knows. He’s an asshole.
Helena lifted her hands from where they’d been in fists at her side and slammed them against his chest the way she’d wanted to do in the courtyard, when she’d had to settle for that simple, terrified touch that had changed everything anyway.
She might as well have punched him. It all would have ended up the same and bonus, she’d have punched him.
“Can I touch you now?” she asked him, making no attempt to hide the edge in her voice. “I thought that was forbidden.”
It was possibly not the smartest thing to do, challenging him when he was propped over her and wedged so deep inside of her. Or at all—but Helena lost her train of thought. He was too fascinating. So hard, everywhere. All sculpted ridges and hard planes that announced his profession, his calling, him, like a shout. His chest was a work of unyielding iron with hot, male flesh stretched on top and a healthy dusting of the same dark hair as his head. His tattoos and his scars made her palms itch to explore him, to learn him—but his gaze had gone wolfish, so she dug her nails into him instead.
And all the while he thrust in and out of her—so lazy and so slow, as if he could do it in his sleep or maybe as if this was him asleep—while she could feel the tingle and the rush of his ruthless possession all the way down to her toes.
“Are you trying to hurt me?”
“Yes.”
Tyr laughed. “You have to try harder than that.” He stopped moving then, though he kept her open and impaled beneath him, his heavy lower body keeping her pinned down to the furs. Something was wrong with her that she should find that so unbearably delicious, she knew it. “Digging your nails into me is a way of saying thank you, Helena. It’s cute. It’s not going to hurt me. A boring fuck, on the other hand, just might.”
Her hands balled into fists again and she entertained another satisfying fantasy of punching him in the face—but didn’t. She’d probably break her fingers. Tyr merely watched her, as if he could read her mind and found that boring, too.
The irony didn’t escape her. This man was a barbarian. Violent and uncivilized at his best, and proud of that. Helena was the one who should have been concerned about boredom, given how unlikely it was she’d even be able to explain to this man what she needed to do and why. She should have been thrilled that he thought having sex with her wasn’t up to his debauched raider standards. That might mean he wouldn’t make her do it again after this.
Yeah, because making you was the hard part, a small, derisive voice inside of her scoffed at that. All that begging was him forcing you.
“I can’t help it,” she told him. Sweetly. “I’m very boring. Ask anyone.”
His mouth curved. “I don’t need to take a vote when I can see it for myself, sweetheart.”
She wanted to kill him. She did. But she could still taste him against her tongue, and that thrilled her so much it almost hurt. And he might have been bored with her—though there was a certain set to his jaw that made her think he was saying that just to mess with her—but that cock of his was a revelation. It felt like a claim, a brand. Like he’d changed her with every thrust, and there was no coming back from that. She was so wet and so hot, restless and yearning, and she’d never felt anything so wrong or so good in all her life.
And what did she care what he thought of her? He’d just reminded her he wasn’t compliant and that she didn’t have to lie there quietly and calmly the way she’d been taught. So why should she?
Helena smiled at him, and once again she thought, Why the hell not?
She tested herself against the length of his cock inside of her, rolling her hips until she could mimic that glorious drag and grind against her clit. It wasn’t quite as good as when he actually pumped himself into her, but it was fine. It was good enough.
So she dug her fingers into his insanely hard biceps and she rocked and wriggled herself against his steel-hard cock, and in about three seconds it was a whole lot better than good enough.
All that heat. All that fire. All hers.
And Tyr’s big, hard body above her, around her. Caging her and pinning her, and all the while he held his cock so deep inside of her as if it really were made of steel and meant to drive her wild exactly this way. She felt that fist of need punch at her hard, and she knew enough to chase it now.
Helena worked herself against him, not caring if he saw her sweat. Not caring if he heard her grunt at the effort. Not caring one little bit what he thought, as long as she could work herself straight on toward that glorious shattering that danced right there, right out of reach—
“What are you doing?” Tyr asked, and she noted on some level that he sounded strange. Amused, maybe. And also as if he was in some kind of pain.
“Boring you,” she panted at him.
His hard mouth curved, dark and hot. “Then you should do it harder, sweetheart. Like you mean it.”
But Helena wasn’t listening to him. She rolled her hips one more time and another sweet climax broke over her, finally, making her convulse against him right there while he watched.
9
Tyr was still watching her when she opened her eyes again, a kind of ravenous expression on his stern face that made his dark eyes looked like melted gold. And his cock was hard and hot and still deep within her, while she continued to quiver and clench all around him.
“You done?” His voice was a growl, amused and harsh and hungry at once.
“Oh.” Helena’s voice didn’t sound like hers. Her heart was beating too fast and her eyes were much too heavy, and a delicious sort of sleepiness was stealing through her as she lay there, damp and breathless and yes, she could admit it, pretty damned pleased with herself. She stretched, there beneath him and with him lodged so deep inside her still, as if he was perfectly safe when she knew he was the opposite. She could feel the danger coming off of him in waves. She had no idea why that failed to terrify her as it should. “Sure. If you’re bored you can—”
“Shut up.” She remembered how truly lethal he was, suddenly, with a shiver that had everything to do with the set of his ruthless jaw and that hard gleam in his dark gold eyes. She bit her lip. Tyr shook his head, making his braids move. “I’m not your goddamned sex toy, girl.”
“Uh…” She didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re not sorry. You got yourself off on me like I was a dildo. I’ve never seen a compliant girl do anything so selfish and dirty before in my life.”
That made her open her eyes a little bit more, the better to study his fierce, set face and have a belated think about her own helplessness beneath him. How had it never occurred to her before, how vulnerable sex could make someone feel?
Because, a voice inside her answered, it’s never made you feel much of anything before.
She ran her tongue along her teeth, her gaze on his like he was eating her alive with it. “I can’t tell if you’re mad about that or not.”
That gleam in Tyr’s dar
k gold eyes intensified. “Neither can I.”
He dropped down and got his face in the crook of her neck, setting his open mouth against the tender skin there and biting down—just enough to make Helena gasp and jolt, a shock of sensation bursting through her and lighting her up all over again, from that sharp point of brilliant contact all the way down to bloom bright in her clit.
Wow, she thought—and then realized she’d said it out loud.
Tyr let out a dark laugh, and then he did it again. He wrapped his powerful arms around her and hauled her tight to his huge wall of a chest, making her arch up into him until her nipples dragged against him and that got mixed up, somehow, in the feel of his teeth and the sharp, bright thing that seared through her. Pleasure. Pain. Both at once, burning her alive. She let out a moan she couldn’t control, and he hummed his approval against her neck, where he worked his mouth all over her, his lips and his tongue, his teeth and his beard, sending a storm of hot, sweet, dangerous light to every far corner of her body she hardly recognized any longer.
Only then did Tyr move his hips against hers, and she was so slick and wet that she could hear it as well as feel it, loud in the quiet of his big bedroom. And it was like a lightning strike that went on and on, hard and wild, making something almost too hot to bear begin to coil around and around inside of her. Pulling tight. Pulling much too tight—
“You better hold on,” he gritted out against her neck.
And this time when he slammed that big cock of his in and out of her, again and again, there was nothing the least bit lazy about it.
That fire she’d played with on her own exploded into something else, instantly, showing her exactly how much he’d been holding himself back before. It was far hotter and very nearly insane. It blew her up. It slammed through her, burning her alive, and all she could do was wrap her arms around him and hold on tight as he pounded into her.
He shifted, muttering something she didn’t catch against her neck, and he reached down between them to pull her knees up. One impatient tug and then a new angle, her knees high over his hips so her thighs splayed open even wider, and just like that he was much deeper inside her.
So much deeper.
He didn’t slow those wild thrusts at all, no matter that the intense sensation made her cry out, then stay like that with her mouth open and her eyes clenched tight—
She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t survive it.
Tyr bent and fastened his mouth to one stiff nipple, and there was nothing gentle about it. He sucked hard and he used his teeth and still he hammered into her, throwing her right back into all that nearly unbearable need as if it were the dark ocean off that mainland beach. She tried to meet his thrusts, to control the depth of them or the power, but he was holding her right where he wanted her and there was nothing to do but sink headfirst into the sweet dark of all that intensity.
To lose herself in him completely, the way she had since the first moment she’d seen him.
Storms raged through her and her body felt as if it was entirely his, that he was making her rain, sleet, howl—whatever he wished. Whatever he demanded. Whatever the hell he wanted. There was nothing to do but surrender to it, to him, and let him sweep her away.
“One more time,” he commanded her, his voice a feral rasp.
And Helena was more than half gone, she was out of her head and lost somewhere in the dark exhilaration of the way he took her so ruthlessly—but she knew he wasn’t asking her. It wasn’t a choice. It was a command. A declaration of intent and will.
And somehow that made it even hotter. Even better.
He maintained his fierce pace, pounding into her, and he bent his head to her other nipple, sucking it with the same dark intent, but this time, he shoved one of her knees up higher as he did it. His next thrust was so deep, so intense, she saw stars.
And then she simply blew apart.
Helena didn’t realize she was screaming until she heard him laugh, and still he kept hammering into her, riding her as she bucked and rolled, and then roaring out his own shattering as he came deep inside of her, flooding her again and again.
Making her think she would never be the same again.
* * *
And for a long time after that, there was nothing. Just shattered pieces where she’d once been whole, and Helena was too far gone in a storm of sensation to care about that the way she knew, somewhere deep inside of her, she would when she was herself again.
The afternoon shadows were much longer when she woke up, and it took her an extended moment to remember where she was. The furs she slept on were soft and so deliciously, luxuriously warm she felt like one of the grand princesses she’d seen once in the western highlands, riding around wrapped up warm and cozy in the middle of an icy February. Her body felt as if it belonged to someone she’d never met, someone who wanted things she refused to name even inside her own head. And when she summoned her courage enough to sit up and look around, she found she was alone.
The breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding escaped her then, in a rushing sound that seemed to disappear into the vast, supremely masculine space. It was so unlike the way things were back on the mainland, this chamber of his. Whole families could and did live in rooms this size, to conserve resources and share their combined heat through the cold, dark winters. They would camp out on the wood floors and wrap themselves in all the lengths of wool Tyr had left tossed heedlessly across his bed, a thoughtlessness that suggested he had so much at hand he hardly thought about it when even a few pieces of the stuff would make a normal person think she was rich.
Helena couldn’t really comprehend the careless abundance here, when fine wool like this had always been rationed out so carefully back on the mainland. It was as shocking to her as the lights on the wall—the quiet, steady electricity she’d been so sure only the western kings had been able to access since the Storms. Instead, she kept taking stock of her surroundings, as if she was plotting the escape he’d warned her against. Fewer weapons on the walls, more of those thick tapestries. A fireplace across from the massive bed, which was so fancy and unheard of in a single person’s bedchamber she could only blink at it. Throw rugs lined the floors to cushion even a barbarian’s tough feet from the winter chill. And there was so much space.
Before Ferranti had decided to isolate Helena, the better for her to think about her defiance and general attitude, she’d lived in a room smaller than half this size with six of the other unattached women. Looking around at all the honeyed wood and the tapestries that gave the room a lush, decadent feel, it was tempting to imagine resources weren’t scarce here the way they were pretty much everywhere else she’d ever been. She ran her hand over the lustrous, chestnut-colored wolverine fur closest to her, thinking there was so much of it here in Tyr’s rooms alone that it hardly seemed possible. As far as she’d always known, fur was a luxury item reserved for the very, very rich who could afford to buy it or hunters who could fashion their own.
Helena had touched fur once, outside of a sharp-eyed trader’s stall in the farmlands. She’d seen it on that princess from afar. And Melyssa had reported, with great pride, that Ferranti had a skin of something or other in the bedchamber she’d shared with him all winter. Helena had certainly never rolled around on a bed piled high with too many furs to name, and … done such things.
Her cheeks grew hot as she sat there, and she didn’t know what the hell was the matter with her. Had she simply … turned entirely red, now? Bright, flashing red—so crimson she could light up a room of this size in the dark with her cheeks alone? She couldn’t remember ever flushing so much before meeting Tyr. Now it was among the many things she’d done more of with him than with any other man.
She didn’t know how she felt about that. Any of that.
Oh, she knew what the priests would say. She’d heard the sermons they’d all had to sit through winter after howling, tedious winter. Compliance was a duty. Compliance was a glorious chore. The fate of huma
nity was entrusted to the compliant, who set aside childish, outdated notions of “passion” and “love” for the greater good and a better future for all, blah blah blah.
But her parents had loved each other. Helena knew that without a doubt. They’d been a mated and devoted pair from the moment they’d met as teenagers until the day they’d died, as rare as that was these days. And unless Helena was very much mistaken, she’d just received a very thorough lesson in the benefits of the passion the priests had assured her all her life didn’t and couldn’t exist. Right here, on these furs, in the city that raiders—long held to be thoughtless, barbaric animals incapable of anything but pointless brutality—had built proud and beautiful on the side of a mountain instead of hidden away behind concertina wire and old concrete. Complete with bright lights while the bulk of the mainland lay in darkness.
Nothing made any sense.
It was as if she’d toppled straight off the side of the world. As if she were hurtling through space.
Helena crawled to the edge of the wide bed and pulled one of the lengths of fine wool along with her, wrapping it around her as she stood. She tucked it in under one arm so it hung on her like a dress, and so it wouldn’t prevent her from wielding a weapon if she was foolish enough to pick one up.
Are you that stupid? she asked herself. Do you want to escape him or do you want to provoke him?
It shook her—hard—that she didn’t know the answer.
Helena gritted her teeth at her own foolishness—and at the actual answer to that question she could feel floating around inside of her, telling her things she didn’t want to know about herself and the things she wanted. She squared her shoulders. She reminded herself that something as insignificant as sex wasn’t worth getting so flustered over, and that she had more important things to worry about, thank you. And then she followed the faint sounds she could hear from somewhere else in Tyr’s sprawling den, pushing through the heavy door from the bedroom and padding on her bare feet down a small, polished hall until she found herself back in the great room.