by Megan Crane
Riordan only lifted his dark brows. “Was that a threat?”
“An observation.”
Riordan smirked. “Don’t insult me. You look like you’ve been fasting all winter. I could take you with one hand. So could a mild breeze.”
Gunnar made a low noise as he took a seat at the long table, across from his warrior brother, not about to let his guard down with a wily son of a bitch like Riordan.
“Does your new woman dance?” Riordan asked mildly. When Gunnar only glared back at him balefully, he shifted his gaze to Maud, who was watching them with her version of a worried frown—that blank expression Gunnar hated, less armored serenity than simple armor. “Do you?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied, and there was an uncertainty in her voice that scraped at him. He preferred his little nun bright, provoking. Not small and entirely too careful.
“Dance is not a euphemism for sex.” Gunnar’s voice was shorter and harder than necessary, but he could see it calmed her. Her shoulders edged down from where they hovered up near her ears. “He’s trying to stir up some shit by comparing you to a dead woman.”
He didn’t call Audra by name. Or call her my mate the way he usually did. He told himself there was no particular reason for that.
“Then no,” Maud said after a moment. And though she sounded much calmer than before, Gunnar found he couldn’t read her gaze any longer. “I don’t dance. Not since I was a child around my mother’s fire.”
“I’m not getting this substitution of yours,” Riordan said. He was looking at Gunnar, his smile as easy as his gaze was hard. “How can you pretend you’re filling a hole when this one is so different?”
“I’m not filling a hole.” In any sense of that term, though he doubted Riordan would believe that even if he’d admitted it. Or he would believe it, because he already thought Gunnar was a lunatic. “You dick.”
“Audra danced like a maniac, threatened to turn shopgirls into toads, and boned her way around the islands with an attitude problem and a flair for the dramatic,” Riordan continued cheerfully. “This one cooks, smiles, and treats you with respect. I haven’t heard her say a single shitty thing to you since I arrived when, let’s face it, brother, Audra would have raked your ass over the coals a hundred times already and then told you she wanted me to make her come right here on your table, just to piss you off.”
“Go to hell.” It was important that he’d managed to say that without any noticeable flare of temper. That he sit where he was and listen to this crap without reacting.
Or worse, remembering.
He reminded himself it was important that he not go for Riordan’s throat with his hands or his blades or his boot.
“Maybe you’ve moved on to a better class of woman. You have my congratulations, it’s about time. But why are you hiding her away all the way out here? Why not come back to the Lodge? It’s summer. Tyr found himself a mainland girl who says she can turn the Internet back on. Like it’s not a story old people tell each other, but a real thing. There’s shit to do, Gunnar. If you’re all better now, with your special church-bred version of comfort pussy on tap, you need to get your ass back to the brotherhood and do it.”
Gunnar didn’t know how he sat there so impassively. How he did nothing but keep his expression carefully blank, especially when he saw Maud stiffen over by the cooking range, where she was back to stirring her cauldron of stew. Almost as if … but he didn’t want to chase that down. He didn’t want to figure out what Maud was reacting to over there, and so what if he felt that prickling thing between his shoulder blades that suggested he connect a few dots he didn’t want to pull anywhere near each other. It was bad enough that she’d already become more to him than she should have over these past weeks. If she was also useful to the clan? Forget it.
“Did you say … the Internet?” he asked Riordan. Carefully. And then wished he’d ignored that part when Maud stiffened again, answering a question he hadn’t wanted to ask. At least she was behind Riordan, which meant Gunnar could ignore it. Happily. “Are you drunk? The Internet is a myth. Or it might as well be. Unless the clan spent the last year building a network, which I doubt, since not one of you assholes even knows what the hell that is.”
“True. But you do.”
Gunnar knew that Riordan was deliberating pushing his buttons. He knew Riordan was banking on the fact Gunnar couldn’t let something like the Internet come up without throwing himself into it and figuring out if it was even possible to access or re-create something long thought lost to the Storms. The magical Internet, which had allowed people all over the world to access information. All information. The things Gunnar could do with that kind of knowledge at his fingertips boggled the mind …
And the old Gunnar, the Gunnar who hadn’t made vows of resurrection and revenge over the bloody body of his mate, would have been halfway back to Lodge already on the off chance it was actually possible. But he wasn’t that man any longer.
“This mainland girl thinks she can reconnect it.” Riordan shrugged. “I don’t know. Tech isn’t my thing.”
Gunnar made a noncommittal sound, and then fought to keep his mouth shut.
“Are you confused, brother?” Riordan asked. “You seem a little confused. Maybe you forgot that this is the shit you live for.”
“Not anymore.” He wished he hadn’t said that.
“Maybe you’re so busy pretending you’re a hermit and acting as if a random nun is your dead mate that your head’s a little fuzzy,” Riordan suggested. “That sound right? Are you trying to get your replacement piece to pick up where Audra left off? Because I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that one treacherous bitch for a mate is one thing. It could happen to anyone. But two? That starts to look like maybe the problem is you.”
Gunnar bared his teeth. “Is there anyone you haven’t accused of treason recently? When did Wulf become so fragile?”
“Because if it is you?” Riordan’s smile was equally feral. “I’ll take you out myself, brother. Right here.”
Maud chose that moment to intervene, bustling over to the table with the big iron pot and thunking it down between them, her short hair damp from the steam and her cheeks flushed. She set out bowls and utensils, making about ten times more noise than necessary—and again, Gunnar thought she meant to protect him.
He told himself it was the food she ladled into his bowl that made him feel warm, not that odd notion. He was the warrior. He was supposed to protect her, not the other way around—
Except, of course, he was going to protect her only until he killed her.
Maybe he was as confused as Riordan thought he was.
But he knew he wasn’t. Gunnar hadn’t confused Maud for Audra. Not once. Not ever. Not when Maud had kissed him like she really was his mate back in Nebraska. Not even when he woke up to find himself wrapped around her every goddamned morning like he thought she was, too. Some part of him wished he really was confused. That would be a good excuse for all of this, certainly. That kind of grief-stricken madness would make sense of the sleeping situation, for one thing, which every single day he vowed he’d end and then there he was, rubbing his dick against Maud’s sweet ass every morning all over again.
He thought it probably said something about him that he hadn’t even really noticed she was wearing Audra’s clothes. Partly that was because Maud had chosen the things his mate had considered her emergencies only collection of boring, practical items and had rarely used. That was why they were here, in this cabin she hadn’t cared for, so far away from the intrigue of the city. And it was even more because his little nun looked absurdly edible in low-slung trousers and those thin, long-sleeved shirts with nothing underneath since it turned out she didn’t like binding her breasts. He spent half his long morning run imagining what it would be like to get his mouth on her tits.
Come on. Half his entire day.
He was imagining it again now, right there at the table where they all sat and ate. He was imagining
the precise moment he’d close his mouth over one of her tight little nipples, and then how he’d suck it in deeper, until she made those breathy noises he remembered so vividly from back in that godforsaken desert he had to check to make sure she wasn’t making them now.
Of course she wasn’t. He could tell she was uneasy—he could sense it as if it was a kind of scent and no, he didn’t want to think about that either. But even so, she was sitting straight and graceful the way she always did, her head bent toward her own bowl. She looked elegant and otherworldly, and Gunnar didn’t think she knew she was showing off the mouthwatering line of her neck. Or that his horny-ass brother was eying her like she was a part of the meal in front of him.
“I didn’t know nuns could cook,” Riordan said.
“Like you suddenly give a shit about the culinary habits of the church,” Gunnar muttered.
Riordan kept his gaze on Maud, scratching the side of his face with his middle finger instead of replying.
“Of course nuns cook,” Maud said, in her usual perfectly serene way, as if nothing was going on here. As if members of the brotherhood stopped by every day to talk about treachery and the fucking Internet, of all things. “Nuns are taught to serve all the needs of the priests. That could be anything from spiritual concerns to a good meal at the end of the day, depending.”
“Lucky priests,” Riordan muttered.
And for a while there was no sound but the howl and slap of the storm outside the cabin, the crackle of the fire from across the great room, and the scrape of their utensils against the bowls.
Gunnar felt Maud’s gaze on him now and again, but he didn’t look up. Now that Riordan wasn’t poking at him, he found his head spinning with everything his brother had said. The accusations were the same as ever, if maybe more pointed this time. What he’d said about Audra’s personality was true, too, little as Gunnar liked to think about all that. But what he kept getting stuck on was that Maud hadn’t known who he was.
Even Audra had cared who Gunnar was, little as he wanted to admit that to himself. Especially now. Audra had been no fan of Wulf’s, sure, but that was caring about him in a whole different way. It still put Wulf smack down in the middle of everything. How had Gunnar never recognized that before?
Maud was the only woman—hell, the only person—Gunnar had ever met and spent any time with who hadn’t been comparing him to his blood brother the whole time, one way or another.
Is that what you think? Audra had always taunted him, dancing out of his reach and laughing at him while she did it in her usual challenging way. Or is that what your famous blood brother told you to think?
He didn’t know what that thing was that roared through him at the memory, hot and wild and edgy, but he knew it was a problem. This was all a problem, and he’d let it get out of control. He’d known for at least a week now that he’d done all he could here in his remote cabin, three days’ walk in good weather or a long, treacherous drive from the Lodge. The Lodge, where he not only kept his more serious workshop but also happened to be the center of clan life, the headquarters of the brotherhood, and the residence of the goddamned king he didn’t want to face.
He needed his full workshop to complete his preparations for the ritual, but he didn’t want to deal with rest of it. Not the clan and all the things they wanted from him, since what Gunnar could do with a machine or a pissy heating system really was like magic to most people. Not his bossy, intrusive brothers, who’d never encountered a grill they didn’t feel entitled to get all up in. And certainly not Wulf.
At least a week now he’d known he had to go anyway, but he hadn’t wanted to leave the cabin. Not because of all the things he didn’t want to deal with, but because he hadn’t wanted to share Maud.
He hadn’t wanted her attention on anyone in the world but him.
Gunnar thought maybe he’d moved past simply betraying Audra and deep into something far sicker and more dangerous. He refused to name it. He didn’t want to think about it.
This had gone too far. Hadn’t he learned anything from the taste of Maud in Lincoln? How had he let her into his bed, knowing how a simple, artless kiss from this woman could leave him undone?
He was doing everything in his power to keep her, he realized then.
Keep her, not kill her.
Unacceptable, he raged at himself, while he watched Riordan smile too easily and pay a little too much attention while Maud moved around the cabin, cleaning up after their meal as if she really was the farmer’s mate she played when it suited her. She’s not yours. She’s not anyone’s. She’s an ingredient in a spell, no different from any of the other herbs or incantations.
The worst part was, he knew he no longer believed that. Not really. Not the way he had when he’d set out to collect himself a proper virgin. Not even the way he had when he’d told her as much in Lincoln.
And that was why, long after the evening meal was done and they sat around the fire, when Riordan made yet another crack about how Gunnar was obviously locked away out here pretending Maud was his lost mate, Gunnar came to a decision. The only one he could.
A simple, elegant solution that would shut Riordan up, if nothing else. And if it happened to also prove a few things to Gunnar that he shouldn’t have needed any proving in the first place, well. That was just a bonus.
“I’m not pretending anything,” he said with a sigh, rubbing his hands over his face. “You relentless asshole.”
Maud was sitting in the armchair closest to the fire, her legs tucked up beneath her while her gaze tracked back and forth between the two of them where they sat on either end of the long couch. Her hair was a little bit longer these days, falling just below her ears. He remembered how dull her eyes had gone on the boat, how sick she’d been, and how little he’d liked that. Those weeks seemed far away tonight. The fire was keeping a flush on her cheeks and that sparkle that was only hers made her blue eyes gleam. Her wide mouth was always tipped toward a smile, and when her gaze met his, she melted. He could see it. He felt it, somehow. He just knew.
But that was the problem. That was the whole fucking problem right there. It had to stop.
“Everyone thought you went somewhere to lick your wounds, like a dumb animal,” Riordan said, in the voice he used when he was enjoying messing with people, his specialty. Which at least meant he’d backed off the traitor thing for the moment. “Instead you’re playing house with a nun. But you’re not pretending anything? Are you sure?”
“Is there a reason you have such a hard-on about my personal shit?” Gunnar asked mildly. “Is it sharing time? Because we can always talk about your crap. Last I checked, the only woman you ever thought about calling mate still wants to gut you with her favorite blade and leave your bones to be picked apart by scavengers. You want to get into it?”
Riordan grinned, as if he’d never had an intense, youthful winter with Gunnar’s half-sister Eiryn, currently the moody and lethal bodyguard to their king—exactly the position a man wanted a former lover with a grudge to hold.
“Look at you. You’re raging around the place like you’ve been freshly mated, all puffed up and angry. Next thing you know you’ll be shouting about getting matching brands, calling the nun your property, and threatening to put out my eyes if I look at her too long. Or am I confusing this one with the last one? I can’t keep track.”
Gunnar’s decision was already made, but that little dig confirmed it. It was only polite, after all. An accepted part of hospitality to a weary traveler. Many men would make the same offer with a mate they’d fully claimed, so far away from anything like civilization and any available pussy. Priests weren’t the only ones with needs and this was a world of very few pleasures.
“Maud.” Everything stopped when Gunnar said her name like that. A stern, simple command. Riordan fell quiet. Maud went still, her gaze flying to Gunnar’s and holding. “Why don’t you show our guest how you pray?”
He saw something move over her, a ripple of sensation or rea
ction, maybe. A log in the fire shifted and popped, sending up a shower of sparks. Maud swallowed hard enough that Gunnar could see it from where he sat. But she didn’t look away from him, and she didn’t look uncertain any longer.
He kept his gaze steady. Calm. Absolutely sure she would do precisely what he asked, the way he’d been on the boat when she’d been sick. And more, that she wanted to do it. Because he’d asked it.
“You want me to pray.” She didn’t phrase it as a question. “With him.”
“Little nun,” Gunnar said, his pet name for her in his mouth like the taste of her on his tongue, and he could see the way that rolled through her. He saw goose bumps rise along the curve of her lovely neck, saw the way she clenched her thighs together, and he knew without a single shred of doubt that she was as wet and hot as he was hard. “Don’t make me ask again.”
She unfolded herself from the chair, and he thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful as Maud in the firelight, her pulse visible in her neck and her gaze locked to his, her blue eyes big and dark with emotion. She swayed slightly as she stood, but she steadied herself. She breathed in, let it out, and then she crossed over to Riordan.
She kept her gaze on Gunnar’s for a moment, then tore it away to consider the man sprawled out before her. A total stranger to her, Gunnar was aware. That was the point.
Some men sent out their mates like the camp girls who served the brotherhood, to ease a lonely traveler and to round off a nice evening the way most raiders considered natural and right. It was an ancient practice designed to ease any potential tensions inherent in housing other dangerous men, strangers or otherwise, beneath one’s roof. A man tended to view things through a rosier lens after getting his dick sucked well, or having a nice, dirty screw after a hot meal. Sex made the world go round. Raider women, known to be as lusty as their men, enjoyed the practice themselves. Outside of the seasonal festivals and summer feasts where sex was as plentiful as sunshine, a stranger at the door might be the only bit of excitement a woman was likely to encounter over the course of another hard year, and all the better if she could call it a duty.
