Edge of Power

by Megan Crane

  She shook against him, and this time, he could feel it in his cock. He had to suck in a breath to keep still. To not shift a little, get that wool out of the way, and rub his aching dick all over that hot, bare, creamy pussy of hers.

  “One,” he said, counting down the seconds he’d given her to save herself. He shook his head as he studied her face. “You’re still crying. You know what I told you.”

  “Courtesans don’t cry,” she repeated, though her voice was reedy. “There. That’s a true thing.”

  Wulf figured she was too far gone for it to occur to her that she’d given herself away with that.

  He let his mouth curve a little. “Two.”

  And this time she didn’t say anything. Her hands curved into fists on his shoulders, and he supposed that was eloquent enough. Her eyes were wide and slicked with as much heat as misery, and he was still holding that bare ass of hers in his palms, round and soft and all that sweet cream right there at his fingertips. And he could see she wanted to talk. He could see her fighting herself.

  He moved his hips, rubbing the thick length of his cock against her and grinning a little when she let out a long, shuddery breath that matched the goose bumps that rose all over her shoulders and chest.

  “Three.” He sighed, very much as if there wasn’t a kind of dark triumph running through him. “You were warned, sweetheart. My cock isn’t as friendly as I am.”

  In case she was unclear about that, he rocked himself against her again, harder this time, making her writhe against him.

  “I’m not a courtesan,” she whispered then, fierce and broken, as if it was torn out from the depths of her. As if he didn’t already know that. Then her head tipped back, like she was trying to hold it high even as he held her pinned to the wall. Her gaze met his, something almost haughty mixing with the heat and the misery and the dampness. “I’m a princess.”

  3.

  Kathlyn had miscalculated. Badly.

  That was the only thing careening around inside her head as everything seemed to go still and breathless around them. As the raider before her and around her and pressed up against her—so intensely male he made her eyes water—turned to stone.

  “You’re a princess,” he said, his voice a rough sort of rumble that only mixed in with the tumult inside of Kathlyn. She almost couldn’t focus on the actual words. “A fucking princess.”

  But she certainly noticed when he shifted his stance, pulling that great, thick length of himself away from her, then setting her on her feet. It was a chaotic sensation, coursing through her whole body, sending something very nearly electric shooting . . . everywhere. And that was just him letting go of her. She had to cling to the wall behind her to stay upright.

  Then again, maybe that was just because he was looking at her too closely, with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen in her life. So blue and so cool that Kathlyn was certain that he could see parts of her she’d kept hidden forever. Parts of her she couldn’t name.

  And he didn’t step back. He gave her no room, no quarter. If anything his stone cut, sculpted wall of a chest—a mouthwateringly golden expanse covered in sigils and tattoos, scars and brands—seemed to expand.

  Which was problematic for so many reasons, Kathlyn felt a little dizzy counting them all.

  It was bad enough when she’d walked into the room and found him lounging on that couch looking as if she’d interrupted his nap. As if he either didn’t know or didn’t care that he was a prisoner here, tucked away in the part of the palace Kathlyn’s father used to house the enemies he planned to toy with. He hadn’t been what she’d expected, after her run-in with two raiders last fall. He was . . . more. More intense. More terrifying. More . . . something. It had taken everything she had not to turn and run back out of the room. Some part of her couldn’t understand why she hadn’t.

  And now he was right there in front of her. And everything had shifted. He’d picked her up and he’d touched her in a place that only her attendants ever went near, when they were waxing her to conform to acceptable standards should her father decide to finally unclench his death grip on her life and allow her to lose her virginity at last, like a normal girl her age. Or when they were administering her weekly tests, impersonal and quick, to make certain she was still intact. Still a virgin. Still a commodity her cruel father liked to use as a negotiation tool across the western highlands.

  The way the raider king had touched her was nothing like that.

  The world felt a little bit liquid around her now, as if the air itself had changed shape while she was open to him and he was pressed against her and his hands . . . Her heart kept getting louder and wilder with every beat, so bad she could feel it in her temples and thumping out a rhythm in her throat.

  She shouldn’t have come here in the first place. And she should have run the moment she’d seen him, when her heart had dropped to her belly before her belly had sunk to the floor. Her half-formed idea to finally take control of her life had seemed little more than foolishness the minute she’d faced the reality of this man. This raider king.

  Because he could be nothing but a king. Kathlyn had no doubt. He didn’t need a throne or minions or to drape himself in fine furs and precious metals. This man carried his throne around with him. It was implied. It was the way he held himself. It was that strange force that swirled around him without him having to do a thing, intense and insistent. Unmistakable.

  Power, a little voice inside of her whispered. Real, true power.

  He exuded a kind of savage elegance, every inch of him crafted for war and blood. Maybe she’d let her memory of the other two raiders she’d met last fall dim across these months of darkness, because she didn’t recall either one of them affecting the air around them like this. He’d sprawled on that couch the way he stood before her now: as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He was lazy-eyed and seemingly relaxed despite those bold, sure marks all over him that she’d understood instantly were stories of the battles he’d won and the men he’d killed. So very, very many. Of both.

  And she could see all over him, because he was naked. Almost naked, anyway. A long, lean feast of golden, sculpted, hard-packed flesh, save for a length of wool slung low on his hips.

  Kathlyn had never seen a naked man before. A glimpse here and there at various mounting ceremonies and too-raucous feasts over the years, but nothing like this. Nothing like a barbarian warrior, as terrifying standing in a chamber as she imagined he’d be on a battlefield.

  More, maybe, because he was so close.

  Power poured out of him as he stood there before her, watching her carefully, those wicked hands of his no longer touching her. His power was a fact, like the dance of flames in the fireplace. It lit up the impossible blue of his eyes and seemed to tangle in the long, dark blond braid he wore tossed over one shoulder. It crackled in the air around him. More than that, it made her body . . . do things, even without his hands on her. Something cramped, low in her belly, again and again, like a pulse. And her nipples stood up, painfully tight, as if he was a blast of frigid air, sweeping in from the snowcapped mountains.

  Kathlyn’s throat was much too dry. Dusty. He looked like finely wrought stone, carved into a form that made her feel entirely too warm. Like she was developing a heat rash all over her exposed flesh. His was a lean, muscled, tried and tested sort of strength, evident in the powerful arms he’d used to hold her high against him and the sculpted chest with all those tattoos etched into his skin like promises. Even his thighs were astonishing, thick and hard and golden like the rest of him.

  Her own thighs had been wrapped around his waist and she was afraid to look down. She was afraid she’d find the skin had peeled right off of her, that was how scalding the heat was that still poured through her—

  She had to press her fingers into the stone wall behind her to clear her head. Hard.

  “Who are you?” he asked, conversationally. She didn’t mistake that tone for anything but what it was—a direct command from a m
an who was not used to having so much as his slightest demand ignored.

  “Kathlyn,” she heard herself say before she knew she meant to speak. And her name seemed to change things. The raider didn’t move. But his gaze altered as it pinned her to the wall. She had the sense of terrible storms and dark seasons, when all he did was study her with those blue, blue eyes of his that she worried might haunt her forever.

  “Kathlyn,” the raider repeated, and there was something in the way he said her name. Something steely and sure. It would have been breathtaking, had she been capable of anything like a real breath. “King Athenian’s only daughter. The fucking princess.”

  “Yes.”

  “The one who warned my brothers about her father’s plans to attack the clan when we least expected it. Within a month from now, presumably. On the eastern islands, where most mainlanders are too afraid to go.”

  Kathlyn had no idea why she felt as terrified, right here in this moment, as when he’d risen up from that sofa and started toward her. More, maybe.

  “Yes,” she managed to say without stammering. Not that she’d ever stammered in her life, but she could feel the onset of the condition like a lump in her throat. Just waiting for him to scare her a little more. “That was me.”

  “You were hiding in a fucking curtain in the Great Lake Cathedral, wearing a gold dress.”

  “Discretion is the better part of valor,” she managed to say, and it was amazing how he looked more solid before her than the wall behind her felt beneath her fingers. “Which sometimes means hiding in a curtain to avoid talking to a couple of mean girls you already know you don’t like.”

  There was something almost incredulous on his face then. The harder, more dangerous version. “Spoken like someone who doesn’t know shit about valor. Only cowards hide, little girl.”

  “I’m a princess, not a raider,” Kathlyn said, still managing to sound like some version of her normal, deliberately calm self. “If I launched myself into battle every time someone insulted me, I would have been dead a long time ago.”

  His hard, hard mouth hinted at a smile, and there must have been something wrong with her that she found it so fascinating. That it wound around inside of her until it connected with that pulsing thing and made it blaze. “Not if you win.”

  Kathlyn didn’t know what she might have said to that, because he was reaching over. And she told herself there was something she should do about that. Try to bat his hand away. Push herself off the wall and try to put some space between their bodies. Something. But she knew without having to try anything that this man would do exactly what he wanted anyway, no matter what she did. Not just because he was so much bigger, and apparently made of poured concrete, but because he had all the control here. So much that she imagined that he’d do nothing but laugh if she tried to combat him. She thought she was better served just meeting that wintry gaze of his and trying not to pass out from all the mad sensation that stormed around inside her.

  He angled himself closer to her and his gaze dropped. Right about the time Kathlyn realized where he was looking, he was running his finger beneath the edge of the stretchy fabric that clung to her hips. Almost as if it was an afterthought, that callused little swipe back and forth, back and forth. Kathlyn felt a lush heaviness shift through her again, making her want to lie down even as it made her want to do . . . something. It was like a chill, except she wasn’t cold. Then it was a fever, but she wasn’t sick.

  Only then did it occur to her that when he’d lifted her up, the stretchy bit of fabric that was meant to be a sort of skirt had rolled up her hips. Which meant—but her mind veered away from that as if it might actually, physically hurt her to admit that her private parts were hanging out. And though her hands actually began to ache from how hard she was gripping the stone behind her, she forced herself to not twist away from him no matter how many flames seemed to lick through her from the place his lazy finger met her skin.

  Back and forth. Back and forth.

  “This is not a gold dress.” He tugged on the bit of fabric as if fascinated by the way it stretched, his tone a sort of lazy she couldn’t quite believe. “It is neither gold nor a damned dress.”

  He tugged on her skimpy, see-through skirt again. That strange, shivering weight rolled through Kathlyn once more, then seemed to settle between her legs. She wanted to step away from him, pull down her skirt, wrap herself in her cloak, and hide. At the very least, she wanted to draw her legs together, but he’d angled himself between them. Or close enough. And when he raised that piercing blue gaze of his to her face again, she knew, somehow, that he was perfectly aware of that tiny, involuntary leg movement she’d stopped almost before she’d started. She thought—with only the faintest hint of hysteria—that he might just be aware of everything.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, in that quiet way of his that shuddered through her, more terrifying than her father in a full rage. Because sometimes her father shouted himself out. Kathlyn knew, somehow, that this man would not. That if he decided on a course of action, he would carry it through. No exceptions.

  Her stomach flipped over. Her mind raced.

  “Well,” she began, her voice betraying her. Too soft. Too rough. Too revealing by far.

  He shifted so he was propping himself against the wall with a big hand on either side of her head. Not intimidating at all. Not in the least. She was so unintimidated that the back of her head started to hurt and it took her a few too-quick breaths to realize she was pressing it a little too hard against the wall.

  “You should know that I can tell when you lie,” he murmured, so casually. As if he was talking about something meaningless, instead of her life. “And I don’t like liars, princess. Especially because you suck at it.”

  Something seemed to expand inside of her, brilliant and blistering and uncomfortable, and any story she’d been meaning to tell him evaporated in the face of it. Just disappeared.

  “They said a raider king had turned up at the gates. And I thought a raider king seemed like the perfect candidate.”

  “For this strange little performance?”

  “For my virginity,” she told him, because what could it matter now? She wasn’t entirely sure that she was still a virgin anyway, the way he’d touched her—and remembering that made a surge of heat flood her all over again. “I decided I wanted to get rid of it. On my terms. Not my father’s.”

  It was more complicated than that. But she couldn’t imagine getting into that here. With this overwhelming, more than half-wild stranger, who looked at her with certain mayhem in his gaze. And something else that seemed to lick over her exposed skin like a flame.

  He shifted again, and she thought he was reacting to the enormity of what she’d said. Of King Athenian’s daughter breaking all known social rules and taking her virginity in her own hands, when everyone knew it was her father’s property, to do with as he wished. That nothing good happened to highborn girls who defied their fathers. That girls who failed to bleed as expected at their mounting ceremonies came to bad ends.

  But when he looked down at her, there was a gleam in his gaze that she might have thought was amusement had he been another, softer man.

  “What the fuck are you doing with your virginity anyway?” he asked, clearly unaware that her maidenhead was the most expensive and sought-after prize in the whole of the western highlands. In the whole of the world, she would have said, before this moment. “I thought you compliant girls got rid of it as soon as possible, the better to start engaging in those depressing winter marriages year after year.”

  Kathlyn hardly knew how to process that. And then her mouth did it for her, as if she’d never learned the faintest bit of self-control. Then again, she’d never been mostly naked and pinned to a wall, nose to nose with a nightmare brought to glorious, stupefying life.

  “Compliant girls in general, yes. Princesses in general, also yes. But in the sense that a girl’s mounting ceremony is usually held shortly after she bleed
s so that her father can deploy her into strategic winter marriages for a few years before giving her to someone permanently. To lock down alliances and so on.” She pulled in a breath. “Me, specifically? No. I’m King Athenian’s only daughter. My maidenhead is the great treasure of the western highlands.”

  The raider king looked lethal. And something like amused. “Is it now?” He considered her for a long, searing moment that she could feel deep inside of her, that slow and insistent pulse. “And you thought you’d hand it over to the first barbarian at the gate? Funny thing, princess. You don’t look like the kind of girl who likes it that rough.”

  It had never occurred to Kathlyn that there were different kinds of sex. That there could be a vast gulf between what she’d seen at so many mounting ceremonies and what had nearly happened in this room. And more than that, yet another huge space between this, right now, and whatever it was the raider king called that rough in that near-lazy way of his. It made the strangest sensation wash over her, making it impossible to tell if she was afraid or if she was on the verge of tipping over entirely into that restless, panicky thing knotting inside of her that she couldn’t quite name.

  She only knew she’d never felt anything like it before. That it had everything to do with this man she should never have trifled with. And that it was a little too late for regrets. Because he was caging her between his big body and the stone wall behind her and his finger was still moving over that same little stretch of her hip. This way, then that. As if he could hear that pulsing thing deep inside her and was matching it.

  “Mounting ceremonies are never that rough,” she said, because she was afraid if she didn’t say something he would . . . do something. Or maybe she was more afraid that she might. That all those new and frightening things she felt rushing around inside of her were dangerous and might burst, and what would become of her then? “I thought it would be fine.”