by Megan Crane
Lyla had been right that day on the beach, she thought as she gazed around and saw hints and clues of sex wherever she looked. The church could make all the rules it wanted. But sex was sex.
Eiryn saw the other women around her tending to themselves as if they all had the same nighttime routine, so she did the same. If she’d been out on a raid her hair would have been in braids and she would have simply bunked down wherever they stopped like everyone else. But this wasn’t a raid. And the women here were fussing with their hair and doing obviously insane things like taking off their shoes and stripping off layers of their clothing in this alien, unsafe environment. Eiryn couldn’t imagine why anyone would deliberately make herself that much of a target. Soft, undressed, and easily overcome. Any thief who wished could come by, help himself to whatever goods the women had stowed in plain view, kick the women’s shoes away and then saunter off, making it a pain in the ass to get up and chase them—not, of course, that any of these women would leap up and chase anyone.
That was the key point. The one she had trouble remembering. She wasn’t supposed to worry about her safety any more. That was Riordan’s job.
She pulled off the pink headband one of the camp girls had given her and ran her fingers through her hair, combing it out. She shoved the headband in her pocket, then sucked it up and took off her boots, tucking them under the cot. She didn’t react when she felt Riordan settle in behind her on the mattress. He’d taken off his boots too and he shifted around, stretching his feet out as if to demonstrate that he was too big for the cot, which had been obvious at a glance. Eiryn moved to the side and then stood, indicating with her chin that he should make himself comfortable. Or as comfortable as it was possible to be in a place like this.
His dark eyes glittered with something she didn’t want to read when they met hers. But she felt it anyway, hot and thick, rolling through her. Her pussy ached, the traitorous little shit, and she could a feel a pulse beat there, soft and insistent. She had been ignoring this man for years. She’d been keeping her distance. She’d been behaving, damn it, all this time, because one stupid summer ten years ago had very nearly wrecked her. Like hell would she let him take her down again.
And yet the only thing she could think about was what it had been like today. What it had felt like to have her hands all over him. The heat he gave off, like molten steel, and not only because Kentucky was so stiflingly hot. The ridged wonder that was his abdomen and the heavy strength in his arm. The sound of his dark sugar voice in her ear and the way it rolled all over like a caress.
Riordan was stretched out before her on a tiny cot she was going to have to share.
With him.
How had she imagined this would be simple?
“Lie down,” he told her, in the same peremptory fashion every other man in this place used when speaking to every other woman. And only she could see the way his hard mouth crooked in one corner.
It didn’t really help.
She was entirely and utterly boned, and she had the terrible, sinking sensation that she was about to prove it.
“Babe.” Riordan patted the two inches of unclaimed mattress beside him and even flashed that grin of his, the smug prick. Because he knew exactly what was going on in her head. She had not one tiny doubt about that. “Now.”
And this was the mainland, where she was playing a compliant for the foreseeable future. Compliant women did things like this—and much worse than this—all the time. Hell, they lived this way and, if the women back in the Catskills were to be believed, they didn’t complain about it. Some even liked it.
Too bad for her that this happened to also be her own, personal doom on a thin little mattress on a narrow cot in a shithole like Louisville. None of that mattered.
Eiryn had no choice but to obey.
8
Eiryn’s pulse was a frenzied clatter inside of her, making her raw and jittery and as close to unsteady on her own two feet as she’d been in years.
But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were in a public place and she was supposed to be as dutifully compliant as the women around her. Normal Eiryn would have hurt Riordan, gleefully, for his smugness alone. Compliant Eiryn, on the other hand, had no choice but to suck it up.
And she wasn’t a little bitch. She’d volunteered for this bullshit.
She moved over to the cot and eased herself down on the mattress. She made a brief, pointless attempt to restrict herself to the two inches of room left where Riordan’s giant body wasn’t, but gave that up pretty quickly. It was useless. He was everywhere. There was no option but to surrender.
There were very few things in this life that Eiryn hated more than surrender in any form.
Riordan didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. He sprawled there on the cot, awaiting the inevitable. And probably enjoying himself while he watched her fight her way into doing what she had to do, but she couldn’t even blame him for that. If this had been happening to anyone else, she’d certainly have laughed her ass off.
Eiryn gritted her teeth. Then she threw herself down and wound herself around him without any further dawdling. She straddled one of his legs and wrapped one arm over his lean, cut waist, trying to ignore the blast of heat that came along with any contact with Riordan, ever, as well as the upsetting little earthquake that rocked through her while she did it. She forced herself to drape her body over his in a manner that was entirely too easy and distressingly comfortable. Worse, it brought back way too many memories of doing the same after a particularly bone-melting session in his bed. Or hers. Or out in the woods on a run. Or out in a boat in a windless little—
Stop remembering that crap, she ordered herself.
Riordan curled his arm around her head in what felt a little too much like an embrace and guided her face to his chest, the final indignity.
And then Eiryn had to lie there a minute, force herself to breathe, and try to accept that this was happening.
This was really, truly happening and there was no hiding from it any longer or pretending it hadn’t all been leading here since that night in the Catskills when she’d walked straight into this mission with her eyes wide open. This was worse than touching his rock hard torso while waiting in a line or walking too close to his massive, iron-hewn body through narrow streets. This was her own body plastered to his. Her knee hiked up over one of his massive thighs and her breasts smashed against his side and chest so the heat of him blasted into her like a furnace.
This was her face on his chest, so that it was a physical agony to stay still and keep herself from rubbing against him like a drunken, addicted feline.
The truth was his heartbeat beneath her ear, pounding in his chest like he was running up a hill when he wasn’t moving. Or the way she flushed too hot and too red, right there against him where she knew perfectly well he could not only feel it, he knew exactly what it was. And why.
Of course he knew why.
She let out a breath and it came out ragged and telling, as loud in the heated little space between them as one of the damned blasts of that horn over the whole of the port city. Riordan tensed beneath her, almost as if he was about to haul her higher against him and take her mouth with his—
But he didn’t.
She told herself she was relieved. Grateful. But she could still feel that relentless, throbbing need low in her belly and like a sharp fire in her clit, making her want to thrash around. Make noise. Cry out in ways she never had and never would because it would show too much weakness. Do something to ease the gritty, raw hunger that always gnawed at her when she was near this man but here, now, was eating her alive.
Eiryn could feel his hot, dark gaze on her like a punch, like the mighty downswing of his great, curved blade. She could have met it. She could have tried to read him or tried to mask her own reaction. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
It was too much.
All the years of necessary lies, all the hard conversations and hurt feelings and bul
lshit, were ripped away on this little cot in the dank sewer of Louisville, and all they were doing was lying pressed against each other. Fully clothed. Not even touching any of the really dangerous parts together, and still, her head spun. Her breath caught. Her breasts actually hurt as they swelled against the restraints of her bindings. And her pussy was a soft, wet, fire that she was terribly afraid would never, ever go out.
She was dizzy and breathless and totally, epically screwed.
Eiryn wanted to feel any number of things just then. Amused. Bored. Irritated. Something. But instead she was raw, pure and simple. Inside and out. As if this long, strange day had scraped all of her skin from her body and this was the result.
“Eiryn.”
She couldn’t do this. Or she couldn’t do what she had to do tonight and also talk about it.
“Don’t,” she muttered at him.
“Look at me.”
She told herself that she didn’t like that commanding note in his voice. That it was more evidence against him, more reason to loathe him. But the truth was in the way it dripped through her like he’d made his own humidity, thick and rich and utterly relentless.
“I would rather sell myself in alleyways to desperate mainland travelers, thank you,” she told him. Or rather, she told it to his immense pectoral muscle, located directly beneath her.
She was rewarded with the bark of his laughter, though Eiryn would have vowed to the bitter end she’d never had any intention of making him laugh. Still, it warmed her. Or maybe she was already too damned hot in this stuffy warehouse.
“I’m pretty sure it won’t come to that,” Riordan said, and she wasn’t prepared for any of this. She could feel his voice in his chest, that big and dark rumble, and it took everything she had not to nestle against him and wait for more.
Beg for it, even.
Yes, Riordan, she’d said with such confidence in the Catskills. It seemed liked years and years ago now. We’re going to have sex. We’ve had sex before, so it’s not really going to be a revolution. Deal with it.
What the hell had she been thinking?
Another blast of the city’s horn blared out then and with no further warning, the generator noise cut off and the bunkhouse was plunged into darkness. It was a thick and total blackness, like a wall coming down. In the chaos of the first moments there were curses, people calling out for each other, and a series of odd noises that probably meant people were tripping over things. Eiryn tensed, waiting for the inevitable attack, the screaming, the terror—something that would justify the level of threat that had hung over this city all day.
But there was nothing. Someone calling out the same name repeatedly. A variety of curses, and the sound of metal scraping against the concrete floor, as if cots were being shoved together or apart.
Riordan wrapped his arm tighter around her, then twisted to the side, taking her with him. Eiryn hardly had time to breathe, much less protest, before he guided her hand to the packs beneath them and the opening he’d left in one.
Inside, she felt the worn hilt of a blade.
And felt calmer instantly.
She nodded some combination of understanding and thanks against his chest and he rolled them back. But this time he kept going, turning her with his big, sure hands as he went, as if she was as light and airy and insubstantial as one of these mainland women. When he stopped moving they were in a different position.
It was not an improvement.
Eiryn was on her side facing away from him and Riordan was curled around her, all of his heat and immense strength pressed tight against her back. She couldn’t actually decide if it was better or worse than before, after a searing beat to consider the matter. She only knew that nothing good could possibly come of it. Her breasts felt entirely too sensitive as her nipples punched at the fabric she’d used to bind herself, and every breath sent that tight, raw sensation spiraling through her body to pool like syrup in her pussy. But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t put the necessary distance between them. She couldn’t fight him off. She was suspended somewhere between the heat of Riordan’s body and the impenetrable dark before her, as surely as if she was locked up in a cage.
She was so bright red she was surprised she didn’t cast her own light. She was so overheated she could feel herself sweat, a damp heat at her temples, beneath her breasts, between her legs. And she was distractingly, obviously tense from her set jaw to her cramped toes. She was a mess. But Riordan didn’t do anything. He draped his heavy arm over her, anchoring her against him with a big hand spread wide on her belly. She could smell him all around her, clean male and the smoky note beneath it that was entirely Riordan. His mouth was close enough to her neck that she could feel his breath, but he didn’t move closer.
Goosebumps shivered into embarrassing, humiliating life all over her neck and down her bared arms, and she had to fight not to follow suit with the rest of her body. But trying not to shiver only made her more tense.
Eiryn laid there without moving, letting all of this happen, because she’d signed up for it and more, hadn’t she? And so what if she couldn’t breathe? She listened to the bunkhouse quiet down all around her. She could hear shifting in beds and the squeaking sounds of the loud-ass bedsprings as people tried to get comfortable.
This was fine. This was perfectly fine. This was closer than she’d been to Riordan in a long time, but really, it was fine.
She would just keep telling herself that, over and over, until it was true.
First, she heard a new squeaking sound from far in the distance. Then another, closer in. She thought it had to be the bedsprings. Then, after a moment, cots started to moan and complain from all different directions in a variety of low, rhythmic patterns. She couldn’t place the pattern for a minute. Then she thought she could, but told herself it couldn’t possibly be what she thought it was . . .
But she heard a low, male groan that indicated that yes, someone really had climbed on, pumped away, and come in about five seconds.
“Kill me now,” Riordan muttered, and his mouth was closer than she’d thought. Almost right there against the tender flesh behind her ear, and Eiryn just managed to keep herself from shuddering in response.
“That would take a whole lot longer than he did,” she retorted instead.
She felt his chest move behind her with silent laughter and found herself smiling into the dark like a fool.
And she knew without a single shred of doubt that it was because he couldn’t see her do it. Because she’d never have smiled at Riordan, of all people, if he could see it. She’d never, ever risk herself like that.
“I need to block this shit out,” Riordan said, lower and richer than before, his dark magic voice washing over her like some kind of spell. She shut her eyes and told herself she was warding him off, but it sounded hollow even in her own head. “You going to gut me if I touch you, Eiryn?”
He was already touching her. That was the problem.
“I don’t have a blade, asshole.”
But there was no heat in her voice. Certainly not as much heat as was building between them. Or anything like the heat that roared through her when he shifted, pressing the hard ridge of his cock, still in his trousers, against the seam of her ass.
“We both know you could do it with your fingers if you felt like it,” Riordan reminded her, as if she’d forgotten who she was in all this dark heat.
Maybe she had.
Because Eiryn could have elbowed him. She could have kicked back and gotten a kneecap, done a little damage. She could have bitten his damned arm where it curled beneath her. There were at least ten particularly vicious maneuvers she could have performed to get out of his grip or at least force him to loosen it, but she didn’t do any of them. She didn’t even shift forward to get that heavy cock off of her.
The truth was a vicious bitch, but Eiryn couldn’t seem to hide from it anymore.
This was the trouble: she didn’t want him to stop.
She was so
tired of pretending she was happy things had ended between them ten years ago when he’d engineered that awful little scene and had then walked away from her like she was nothing. Less than nothing. She’d taught herself how to behave as if she hated him but here, now, in this strange place where there was nothing but total darkness—no flickering flames of a bonfire to expose her, no sharp-eyed brothers to clock her weakness where Riordan was concerned, no witnesses of any kind to her disgraceful behavior—it was as if none of that mattered. As if it wasn’t a factor. No past. No future in the brotherhood that would have to look the same as the past ten years if they were both going to stay in it. Nothing but that body of his that had thrilled her and ruined her in ways she would never admit, especially not to herself.
And no one knew them here. No one knew her. Eiryn was nothing but another compliant woman in the care of her man. No one really looked at her when there was light. No one would care what happened in the dark. It was almost as if none of it counted. As if nothing that happened between them here was real.
Or anyway, that was what she told herself as Riordan smoothed his strong, battered hand over the toned stretch of her belly, sending shock waves dancing deep beneath her skin. He hit the waistband of her jeans and expertly tugged her fly open.
Then he . . . did nothing. He waited.
With his big warrior’s hand resting in the open fly of her jeans, touching her bare skin, but not quite there. Not quite catastrophic.