by Megan Crane
It tempted a man to believe in the god she’d spent all those years learning how to worship properly, if she was the result.
Maud was bucking and moaning as if she couldn’t help herself. As if she might not stop. There was nothing serene or self-possessed about the way she called out his name—or how it echoed in him, like he was a caveman. She was tossed across his lap in his favorite position, and he didn’t know which one of them he was pretending to punish here. He only knew his dick was so hard it felt like a fucking mountain and his arms were full of a sweet, soft woman with an ass he was turning a sweet pink.
He spanked her harder to see what she could take. At first she grunted a little with each strike, but soon enough she was riding his leg, trying to grind her poor, neglected pussy against him, and raising her ass into each stroke. Her perfect, rounded ass that reddened so prettily beneath his hand, with that deliciously obscene plug staring up at him and moving slightly every time his palm made contact. She was a marvel. And he didn’t have to slip his fingers down into her cunt to get her off, but he did it anyway. It was as if he couldn’t resist her or the way she came. Gunnar pinched her clit and made her shatter all over again, and then he spanked her until she sobbed.
And he let himself get a little lost in it, because the truth was, he was already screwed.
This entire situation was more than screwed. It was more than a betrayal. Giving Maud to Riordan hadn’t worked at all. It hadn’t clarified a thing. It had only turned him on and gotten him hard and made him furiously determined to make absolutely sure his little nun knew that no matter whose cock she had in her mouth—now or ever—Gunnar was the only one who mattered. Only and ever him.
He’d moved so far past simple betrayal that he didn’t know who the hell he was or what he was doing, but none of that signified. Not with that edgy, heavy thing in him that threatened to explode and made him wonder if he really might take up his blade against one of his brothers. Not with the hunger in him that had grown so huge and so sharp that it was blotting out the rest of the world.
He told himself he’d deal with that later.
Tonight, he was going to take this woman exactly the way he’d told her would. At last. He was going to spank her red and then he was going to fuck her ass. A blade to his throat wouldn’t stop him. The entire goddamned raider brotherhood in his face wouldn’t make him pause for so much as a second.
Gunnar understood that nothing could. Least of all his own misgivings.
It was the lust that had been swelling in him since she’d walked up to him in the desert. It was this heavy, pointed thing, not quite rage, that was breaking him open whether he liked it or not. And it was Maud. It was all Maud. His sweet little nun, her mouthwatering obedience and that heart-stopping smile, and her glorious surrender that went on and on and on and humbled him as much as it made him ache to get inside her.
Mine, he thought, or maybe he growled it out loud.
And he spanked her even harder.
While she bucked and shook and sobbed against him.
Proving she was his.
All his.
And tonight, that was the only thing that mattered.
When her ass was the color he wanted it, a nice hot red that wouldn’t leave her marked but would give her a nice, tender memory for at least the whole of the following day, he stood her up. The ache in his dick was a constant and it bordered on agony, but he continued to ignore it. He propped her up before him, his hands on the sweet flare of her hips to keep her steady when her knees quivered, and studied her for a moment. More to the point, what he’d done to her.
What a picture she made. So goddamned beautiful, and a pretty little mess because he’d made her that way tonight. Tears tracked down her lovely face, and the barbarian in him roared approvingly at the sight. Her short hair was a tousle from her upside down position and her lips were still the slightest bit swollen from another man’s cock. Her blue eyes were big and bright and sparkling madly with the same wild desire he felt inside of him, and she was shivering—though not from the cold.
He could almost see the sensation that poured through her in waves, and not only because it was in him, too, thickening the air between them. He could see the clues all over her body. The red stains high on her cheeks, the flush that washed down the expanse of her milk and peach colored chest, all the way to the triangle of wet blond curls between her legs and the plump little clit that he knew hid there. She was still breathing too fast. Her pupils were dilated, making her look as frenzied as one of the night market bandits on a sweet smoke high. Her nipples were puckered into hard, telling points, dark pink and a little bit mesmerizing, and his mouth watered at the sight of them, so high and proud on her full tits.
“You okay?”
He hadn’t meant to ask her anything. He could read her fine without any words. Gunnar had always had a way with a tricky machine, and women were no different. Pay close enough attention, use a firm hand and a little creativity, and they all did exactly as he pleased. That he’d bothered to ask Maud anything about her state when he could see and smell and feel and taste her arousal right there before him … baffled him as much as it infuriated him. It was one more thing to add to the very long list of ways he’d fucked everything up with this creature who shouldn’t have interested him any more than the valerian root he’d brought back here last fall when he’d begun collecting the list of ingredients he needed for the blood ritual he meant to perform.
It was one more thing to add—and Gunnar discovered that he didn’t give a shit.
She gazed down at him. And she was so well trained, so proper, that she left her hands at her sides. She didn’t cover herself. She didn’t wipe her face, though it was still damp from all that coming and crying. She waited for instructions and god help him, his cock was obsessed with every last thing about her, and so damned hard it was making his eyes feel crossed.
His fingers dug a little but deeper into the smooth flesh of her hips. He couldn’t help himself. And the truth was, he didn’t really try. He scowled at that, which made her blink as if it was directed at him—and then answer him, as if the scowl was a command.
“I don’t really know how to answer the question,” Maud said, and then she smiled that impossible smile of hers that lodged inside his chest, further and further each time he saw it. So warm and bright it put the crackling fire behind them to shame. “I think that means I’m fine. Maybe better than fine.”
Even her voice was perfect. Rough, husky. Because she’d been screaming and wailing and coming so much, he knew. And because before that, she’d been deep throating Riordan, who was neither small nor overly gentle. And Gunnar was twisted enough to hope like hell that his brother was enjoying the show from the upper level of the house, where he could likely hear every slap and every cry. Gunnar hoped—fiercely—that Riordan and his dick and his conspiracy theories were having a nice, quiet night alone on the couch.
Gunnar stood then, still holding Maud where he wanted her. And there were all those voices shouting inside of him, the way there had been for so long now. Grief, fury. Betrayal. Even Audra herself, as if she was still around to witness what he was doing. All the vows he’d made and the promises he had every intention of keeping. But he’d been listening to all of that noise for a very long year already. He’d prostrated himself to the things he’d lost.
He wasn’t prostrate now. He was standing tall, Maud was gazing up into his face like he was everything to her, and he was done listening to all those dark, broken things inside him. At least for now, tonight. Here in his bedroom where there was nobody but the two of them.
There were other dark places Gunnar needed to explore. With Maud. No matter what he thought of himself when the sun rose. That was tomorrow’s problem.
Very slowly, almost carefully, he brought his hands to her face and wiped away her tears.
“You cried for me,” he said gruffly.
“I cried because of you,” she replied, still smiling, and
still husky and breathy besides, and she might as well have knelt down and taken his cock into her mouth. It had the same effect. “I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”
He brushed her hair back into some semblance of its usual style, and then he reached down, very slowly, and covered her breasts with his palms. Almost reverently. Her breath rushed out, and he could feel her nipples harden even more against his hard, callused skin. He watched her face as if she were an engine he expected to blow. As if everything was that precarious. Her eyes fluttered shut and her lips parted and she didn’t moan, this time. She danced slightly from foot to foot and he knew that was the plug, filling her. Claiming her. Reminding her every second that she was his.
All mine, he thought, harsh and inarguable.
And if all those voices inside him had something to say about that, he didn’t hear them. Because there was only Maud. Only his perfectly obedient little nun and the way she trusted him when no one else alive did anymore, an obvious and quiet little truth that shook him down to his bones.
And when he took her mouth, he let loose the wild, desperate thing inside of him, that heavy weight inside his chest he chose to call hunger, as if it was that simple. He ate at her mouth, demanding and harsh, daring her to pull away from him. He thought he would have let her go. But she strained against him instead, trying to get closer, and he let her, tugging on her nipples until she rose up her toes. He slanted his jaw over hers for a better, deeper fit and her taste rolled through him, so addictive he thought it might kill him. Salt from the tears he’d made her cry, the faint, smoky taste of the meal she’d cooked for him, and the hint of the cock she’d sucked at his command, all because she wanted to please him.
And she did. Oh, how she did.
Mine, he thought again.
Like it was the dark, deep beat of his heart.
He didn’t know when he picked her up, or how he made it back across the room to the bed. He only knew he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop. He wanted to eat her alive. He wanted to drown in her. He wanted everything.
Over and over again.
When he made it to the bed he set her on it carefully, sitting her up on the side nearest the fire and making no particular attempt to hide his smirk when she gasped and tried to shift, trying to work around the plug that he knew made sitting a challenge.
“Did I tell you that you could fidget?”
She flushed a deeper red. “No.”
He cocked his head to one side, then pinched one of her nipples. Mercilessly.
She let out a laugh that was as much a gasp of pain.
“No, sir,” she amended, and her blue eyes sparkled. “And ouch.”
But she was a pain slut, his little nun. The musky scent of her arousal spiced the air between them, and she clenched her thighs together, trying so hard not to squirm. Trying to obey. She worried at her lower lip instead, the way he’d like to do for her, and she plucked at the wool beneath her as if her fingers had a will of their own.
As if he was finally pushing up against the limit of her obedience, and making her as crazy as he felt. It was about damned time.
Mine. And that time, it was a roar inside of him.
Gunnar peeled off his shirt. He kicked off his boots, then tore off his trousers, managing not to wince as he finally freed his aching cock. And somehow not coming like an untried kid when Maud made a little humming noise at the sight, a hungry and greedy sound that made him rock hard. She was going to cut him down where he stood, and he’d be damned if he was going to die without getting inside that ass of hers the way he’d promised. It was the only place he could have her without entirely betraying himself.
The way he needed to do, or he really thought it might kill him.
He reached past her and grabbed the small vial of oil, pressing it into her hand without ceremony.
“Put it on me,” he told her, his voice like gravel. “And make sure I’m nice and slippery, Maud. Thank me for thinking of your comfort.”
He didn’t remind her what he was going to do with his cock once she oiled him up. Or explain why it was a gift to her that he bothered. She was a virgin, but she wasn’t innocent, thank god.
She shuddered as goose bumps swept over her skin. Her gaze darkened.
She knew.
“Thank you, sir,” she said softly, and the sheer reverence in her voice tore him up.
Gunnar gritted his teeth, but it was worth it to stand there and pretend he was impassive while she rubbed the sweet oil all over his cock and even down on his balls, watching her make everything as slippery as he’d commanded. Her smooth, soft hands and the fragrant oil were slick and hot, and only the fact he wanted to sink into that tight ass of hers more than he wanted his next breath kept him from flooding her hands with his come and then making her lick them clean while he watched.
But he was hanging on by a very precarious thread, and it was a close call.
He pushed her back on the bed and she even did that gracefully, falling to the mattress and arching her back as she went. He didn’t know if that was because she knew how damned gorgeous she was, laid out for him like a feast, or if she was trying to ease the discomfort of the plug she wore. It didn’t matter. He moved to stand between her thighs and hooked his hands behind her knees, pulling them open and up to spread her even wider. He could see everything when he looked down, and he groaned a little bit at the sight. That glistening, hungry pussy of hers with the swollen clit he needed to get his mouth on one of these days. And that flattened end of the smooth, stone plug filling her ass, dark and gleaming, which made his pulse a red-hot throb in his cock.
He reached down between them and got a grip on the plug. Maud made a helpless sound from somewhere in the back of her throat, and that only made the red throb worse. Or better. So he played with it for a moment, pulling the plug out a little bit, then pushing it back in. Once. Again.
“Pain or pleasure, little nun?” he gritted out at her. “Which is it?”
And the little moan she made, broken and dirty and beautifully wild, was like music to him.
Gunnar eased into a little rhythm, watching with a growing, furious sort of hunger as Maud rolled her hips and arched as if she was trying to impale herself on the stone plug in her ass as much as she was trying to pull away. Both at once, he thought. As if she couldn’t tell the difference.
He was more than screwed. He was utterly lost, and he didn’t give a shit. And he could tell that he was about to snap.
Playtime was over.
Gunnar eased the plug out of her and tossed it aside, his movements jerky. Telling, had anyone been watching him. But Maud only moaned again, her chest rising and falling with such force it made her tits shake. Gunnar poured some of the oil into his hands and found her asshole again, massaging it, rubbing oil inside her, readying her—and ordering himself to take his damned time no matter how lust beat in him and made him crazy to get inside her now.
Finally, she was ready. As slippery as he was.
Gunnar leaned over her, bracing himself on the bed and arranging her before him. Her knees were wide and high and hooked up over his forearms to keep her where he wanted her. Her breath sawed in and out of her chest. He scanned her face and found her eyes dark, her lips pressed flat.
She’d gone stiff all around him. Tense when he wanted her supple.
Something washed over him then, complicating the driving, maddening desire and … shading it, somehow. Making it heavier, more intense. Because he could see that she was afraid. Overwhelmed. As easily as he could see that she was determined to suffer through this, if that was what he wanted. No matter how much it scared her or how much it hurt.
When Maud said yes, sir, she meant it.
He understood her then, like a deep flash of a white-hot fire scouring his very flesh. His little nun was nothing like the women he’d known before. Most raider women liked a little bit of a power game with their sex, one way or another, because it was hot and because raider men tended toward bo
ssy and domineering anyway. Most of the women he’d slept with over the years liked the trappings of these things. A collar while they had sex because it made them feel pretty and owned, their hands tied to bedposts because that meant he was focused on them even more than usual, spankings that were as much about making them come as any kind of correction or real punishment, because who didn’t like intense orgasms?
Gunnar was a dark and twisted man. He always had been. He liked possessing the women he slept with. He liked dominating the hell out of them. He’d learned how to make that hot and purely sexual, because most women—like his mate—were only as submissive as they needed to be to come hard.
But Maud wasn’t like them.
Maud had obeyed him on the ship, and not because she’d had the slightest interest in anything sexual while she’d been so sick. Maud had put that collar around her neck and followed him though the bandit night market because he’d told her to do it, not because he’d promised her his cock and a thousand orgasms if she indulged him. Maud wasn’t bargaining. She didn’t surrender to him because it would get her something in return. She didn’t even do it because that’s how they’d trained her in the church, because if she’d been a good little novice she never would have left the temple to stumble into him in the desert.
She did it because she was his.
His in a way he’d told himself a long time ago no woman could ever, truly wish to be, not really. Not outside the confines of whatever creative sexual acts he tended to come up with. Maud wasn’t just his here, naked and waiting and quietly determined. She was his in all the twisted, fucked-up, dark and possessive ways he’d stopped allowing himself to imagine could ever be real. That was what his fantasies were for, he’d told himself. That was why he built things and solved problems for the clan and tinkered with all those old machines, because all that dark and frustrated longing had to go somewhere.
