Edge of Temptation

by Megan Crane

  He was so hard, again, it was as if he hadn’t come in another long year.

  She smiled. “I know you do.”

  “You can choose,” he told her.

  He reached for his side table and rummaged in the top drawer, then pulled out a delicate silver chain with hammered steel clamps attached on each end. It looked like jewelry. It was his favorite kind of decoration. He dropped the chain in Maud’s lap, where her hands were folded so nicely, and she jerked slightly. She stared down at her hands and the chain as if she was afraid to examine it more closely, but then he watched a red flush work it way from her cheeks to her neck to her beautiful tits.

  Whatever she was, it wasn’t afraid.

  “Choose?” she echoed.

  “Your tits or your cunt while I spank you. Entirely up to you.”

  She shifted then, clenching her thighs together and then tipping her head back to meet his gaze. Hers was dark and hungry. Telling him everything he needed to know, even before he saw the clatter of her pulse in her neck.

  And he didn’t care what he’d promised himself. He was going to lose himself in her ass. Again. He was going to fuck them both raw. He was going to make her come so many times she wouldn’t be able to see straight, and then he was going to do it all over again.

  It was already July. There was so little time left.

  Gunnar wanted to spend most of it glutting himself on the pleasures of her perfect body. He told himself that way he might grow tired of her, but he knew better. Of course he knew better.

  “You tell me, sir,” she whispered. She shifted again, and he opened his mouth to order her not to try to get off against the furs when he realized it was something else. Was she … embarrassed? His unfazeable, unflappable little nun? Sure enough, she flushed a darker, deeper red. “Where will it hurt more? I want them there.”

  He didn’t recognize himself in that moment, because he wasn’t the Gunnar he’d known all these years. This last year. Ever. He was back in that crooked mirror again, looking at the only person who’d ever fit him so well. He was lost and he was found. Made entirely new, right here with her, because she was the only woman he’d ever known who lusted after the same things he did, the same way he did.

  God help him, he was screwed.

  And he didn’t care.

  “Maud.” Her name was like his own kind of prayer, urgent and low. He took her too hot face in his hands, amazed anew at how perfectly they fit. Every part of him. Every part of her. The thought of forgetting everything outside this bedroom and sliding himself into that sweet, virgin pussy of hers and truly claiming her in every possible way almost took him to his knees. The thought of forgetting this whole last year and focusing on her instead, with her eyes like summer and that sweet sin of a mouth, was the greatest temptation he’d ever known. “Maud—”

  But he never finished.

  Horns sounded, everywhere. Alarms from all over the city, blaring in the windows and through the walls. A sequence of blasts that told Gunnar—and every other raider listening—that ships had been sighted off the coast of False Harbor, the little way station the clan maintained on the west side of the island. Idiot mainlanders who thought they could bring their grievances to the raiders landed there and congratulated themselves on their superiority when they saw nothing but a cavern, a raider or two, and a selection of camp girls. They rarely noticed that they were trapped in a tiny, narrow cove surrounded by steep, unclimbable rock walls and only the vicious sea at their back until it was too late. It made picking them off something less than sporting, but a man couldn’t have everything. And whatever survivors made it back to the mainland with stories of slaughter and terror only added to the raider legend.

  They live in caves like animals! But then thousands more appeared from nowhere and cut us down where we stood! They’re something more than simply men …

  Gunnar was moving before he had time to think it through. Instinct and a lifetime of training took over in an instant. He strode from the boxcar, pausing only to dig through one of the chests outside it. When Maud came to the wide door after him, he appreciated the picture she made, all that peach and cream skin, tousled blond hair, and nipples like velvet pebbles. She still held the silver chain in one hand and he liked that. He more than liked it, but the alarms were blowing.

  “Wear these,” he said gruffly, pressing a set of clothes at her. She took them from him, her wide gaze asking all the questions she didn’t. “I don’t want you naked if the Lodge is taken.”

  Her hand shook slightly, but she only nodded. “Is that likely?”

  “Only if they kill every last raider on this island,” he replied gruffly. “But you never know.”

  She dressed in what he’d given her while he shrugged his harness on again. He checked his blades while she pulled on a loose shirt and a pair of soft trousers that reminded him of the clothes she’d been wearing in the desert, if warmer.

  “Stay down here,” Gunnar ordered her. “There are a thousand places to hide. If it gets crazy, head toward the farthest back corner. Look for an old tractor—do you know what those look like?” She nodded. “There’s a tunnel in the wall behind the rear right wheel. You can follow it back into the caves and get out that way if you have to.” Something gripped him then and he moved back to her, taking her chin in his hand. “If no one burns down this building, you’d better be here when I get back.”

  “I haven’t walked away from you yet,” she pointed out. Calmly, of course. Always so damned calmly. “I can’t imagine why I would now.” She waited an insolent moment that deserved its own punishment. “Sir.”

  Gunnar took her mouth in a bold kiss. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t question himself. The alarm was raised. She was his mate, no matter the reasons he’d claimed her that even he didn’t know for certain. She was here in his home and she still thought she could tease him, and a swift, hard kiss had to stand in for all the things he’d almost said.

  He tasted her only enough to get his blood pumping, then he was moving again. He navigated the path to the stairs through the towering walls of his possessions, then slammed the heavy, grated door behind him on his way out.

  It had been maybe five minutes since the alarms started. Gunnar strode into the great hall, taking in the situation at a glance. The camp girls were assembling. Tyr’s woman and some of the Lodge’s cooks and cleaners from down in the village. They’d wait for the next signal here, together, where they could lock the hall up tight and hold off a siege if necessary. Outside the great windows, the summer sun had only just made its lazy appearance above the mountain, clear and bright after days of rain. Brothers assembled out on the expansive green, dividing into battle groups under Tyr’s terse direction.

  Gunnar made his way toward them, moving fast through the hall and out into the lobby. But halfway to the great doors he saw Wulf coming down from the wings that led to the king’s rooftop tower.

  There was no pretense of laziness in his blood brother now. Wulf was fully dressed for battle and ready to party. Mayhem in his frigid eyes and murder on his lips, like the king of the raiders he was.

  He paused when he saw Gunnar, an expression moving over his face too fast for Gunnar to name it. Still, he felt it clutch at him, deep inside. He shoved that shit aside. This was no time for family drama.

  “I don’t want you in a battle group,” Wulf said.

  Not Wulf, his little brother. Wulf, the king.

  There was no preamble. No reference to the long, barely civil night they’d just spent at each other’s throats. It made Gunnar think of the tattoo he wore stamped over his heart in a way he hadn’t in a long time.

  Clan first, clan always. Clan forever.

  “The caves,” Gunnar supplied, in confirmation of the order Wulf hadn’t given him directly.

  Wulf nodded again. Their eyes met, a swift, harsh touch of the same blue, and then Wulf was pushing out through the doors and walking out to meet his army on the green.

  Gunnar didn’t
watch him go. He didn’t let himself think about how easy it was to fall back into that comfortable old shorthand with his blood brother that had once been such an important part of his life.

  Did Audra choose you? a small voice asked, deep inside. Or did she hate him?

  He ignored that, too.

  He headed back through the Lodge, winding his way through the hall where all the nonfighting residents were still gathering, wiping the sleep from their eyes and clumping together in hushed groups. He headed back through the kitchens and then took the narrow passage that led out into the caves beneath the mountain.

  When he hit the fork, he headed right. Left was the series of hot pools that the brothers used fairly religiously and the rest of the clan had access to at certain times of day. But the path to the right took him farther away from the Lodge, straight into the noisy, welcoming howl of the generators. His domain. When he’d moved the generators back into these caves he’d spent a lot of time thinking about the tactical implications of it. Sure, keeping the noisy buggers off site made life in the city and in the Lodge a whole lot quieter, but it also meant that an enemy could simply bypass the Lodge altogether and head directly for the caves, where they could cut all the generators and plunge the city into darkness and chaos too easily.

  That was why he’d built another narrow entryway and why Wulf kept a continuous guard at its entrance. Gunnar shoved his way through the steel door into the small room beyond, where the roar of the generators was audible, but not yet deafening. He stood perfectly still when he was met with the expected blade, and made no attempt to reach for his own. He only nodded at the newly minted brother before him, and the other man retracted his blade after checking out Gunnar’s tattoo. Maybe for a moment too long, but what the hell. It had been a long year. Gunnar forgot him instantly the moment the point of his blade dropped.

  But there was another brother, more weathered than the newbie, who stood farther back in the small entryway with his arms crossed over his barrel chest.

  This one, Gunnar remembered. It was obviously mutual.

  The last time Gunnar had seen this fool had been on that battlefield in Kentucky. He was known as Farrell. He’d made it into the brotherhood and had survived his first year of summer raids, which meant he had some skill. And a whole lot of luck. But he was also blood kin to Dandro, the fucking ape, and if Gunnar had his way that entire bloodline would already have been exterminated.

  Neither one of them made any attempt to check their scowls.

  “I heard you were dead,” the little shit growled.

  “Sorry to ruin your celebration,” Gunnar retorted. He reminded himself that there were alarms in False Harbor and this was no time to pound a bitch’s head through a wall, no matter how much the asshole deserved it for the primary sin of sharing blood with that punk ass Dandro. And the secondary sin of being mouthy as hell. “Any trouble with the machines?”

  “Somehow,” Farrell said, snide and harsh, “the world managed to keep right on turning without you storming around the place pretending you had your hand on the crank.”

  Gunnar had no memory of moving. One moment he stood in the door and the next he was across the small room, slamming the insolent bitch against the wall. Farrell roared something. Gunnar blocked his weak attempt at a kick and slammed him again, making sure his head knocked against the stone hard enough to settle the fucker right down.

  “You mean this hand, jackass?” He squeezed Farrell’s neck and watched his eyes bug, just because he could.

  Then he let go, because he wasn’t an animal. Not entirely.

  Farrell wheezed something that probably would have been insulting, had he been making any sense.

  “Learn some respect,” Gunnar suggested. “If you can’t learn it, fake it better. Or the next time you shoot your mouth off at me I’ll rip you a new asshole. Literally.”

  He nodded at the newbie, kept his face straight because the kid’s look of awe and fear almost made him laugh, and then slammed his way into the noisy embrace of the generator room.

  He’d missed this place, he realized. The heat and the roar. He made his way from machine to machine, reintroducing himself to the machines he’d built and cobbled together with his own two hands. He used an old trick to make one of the more finicky ones run more smoothly, then coaxed one of the bitchier, older generators from a sputter to a purr. He nodded when he encountered one of the apprentices he’d trained himself in that other life on the other side of this long last year, and was gratified to find that they’d kept everything running well in his absence.

  It told him something that he didn’t want the clan to suffer, no matter how furious he’d been with the brotherhood and Wulf since he’d lost Audra. And when the red lights at the cavern entrance flashed the all clear because the horns couldn’t be heard over the generators, he discovered he was as happy about that as he’d ever been. As if he’d never been even slightly conflicted about his place in the clan.

  He found himself rubbing his hand over his tattoo as he stormed back out of the caves, only baring his teeth at Farrell when he passed.

  Clan first. Clan always.

  Maybe that shit went deeper in him than he’d thought.

  The kitchen was buzzing with tales of mercenaries on the shores of False Harbor, and that itching thing between his shoulder blades went nuts. Instead of heading down into his basement, he kept going out into the great hall. There was still a crowd there, gathered in little groups all over the vast space.

  “What mercenaries?” he asked the first camp girl he saw. Maybe more tersely than necessary.

  Ranya was a pretty thing who had been his and Audra’s third more times than he could count. He’d never laid eyes on her before without appreciating her tight, sweet curves and remembering her fondness for licking pussy. But today was different. Her dark, tightly curled hair was a cloud around her head, and she was standing with her light brown forehead pressed to the big window, frowning out toward the mountain as if she could see straight through it to the western coast of the island and False Harbor itself.

  “Even one is too many,” she murmured by way of reply, but then she shifted back from the window and smiled at him. And she was pretty. So very pretty. But Ranya’s smile did nothing for him any longer. It was nothing like the sun. It had no moonlight in it. It was just a smile.

  Gunnar might have found that deeply alarming, had he not had other worries biting at him.

  “Particularly if it’s Krajic,” he said shortly.

  Ranya nodded, her smile fading. “They say it is. Zyron will finally be avenged.”

  “Finally,” Gunnar echoed in agreement, because it was the appropriate response.

  The truth was, in that moment, he didn’t care if Zyron was avenged or not. He just needed to make sure that neither Krajic nor any of his little band of assholes had the opportunity to get their eyes on Maud. He wanted her protected. From the mercenaries themselves as well as from Wulf and the rest of the brotherhood, who would be entirely too interested in how they knew her.

  It only struck him as he strode back down the basement stairs, his head full of contingency plans to cover any eventuality if that mercenary bastard really was coming here, that he’d somehow slipped back into his old life. Easily and completely.

  He’d spent the long night consulting on council matters, just like back in the day. He’d showed up for his duties when the horns had sounded without a single second thought. Then he’d made sure the generators were not only protected, but running well. Now he was storming back toward his basement with nothing but the protection of innocents on his mind.

  It was as if he’d never left. As if he’d never gone on that raid last summer.

  As if he’d never lost Audra.

  He waited for that vicious kick to follow, the hollow agony that reminded him he’d betrayed her all over again—but it didn’t come.

  It didn’t come.

  And that was the worst betrayal yet.

  He sto
pped halfway down the stairs to his basement, his head spinning like he was drunk. He slapped a hand on the wall as if he thought he might fall, though maybe he only hoped he would.

  He should have felt Audra more here than anywhere else. That was why he’d spent as little time in the city as possible since she’d died. There was no part of the Lodge that didn’t hold memories for him, and most of them with her. Raiders were never particularly shy about sex and they’d been more public and inventive than most. Audra had been a theatric, extroverted creature. She’d loved nothing more than a wild argument followed by a good screw, and all the better if both parts of the equation were witnessed by half the clan.

  And Gunnar had loved every moment of that wild, dizzy ride, because she was his mate. She was his reward.

  She was the only one who had chosen him.

  His mother had chosen her rocks and the deep water of the bay. Eiryn had chosen their father when Wulf and Gunnar had turned their back on him. Their half-sister had been a sweet-faced little girl when Wulf had taken the throne. She’d disappeared over the mountain with Amos when he’d been crippled and then she’d nursed the evil old bastard through the worst of it—when both of her half-brothers had told her there was no need for her to take on that burden. She’d come back honed for battle. She’d fought her way into the brotherhood and more importantly, to her place as Wulf’s bodyguard.

  She certainly hadn’t come to Gunnar for advice on that. He would have told her to let Amos stew in his own misery as he deserved, and he would have advised her against tying herself to their overly ambitious and political brother.

  He’d confided that advice to Audra instead. Or maybe she’d been the one to suggest a course of action for Eiryn to him, he couldn’t remember now.

  Audra, who had listened to him, always, and taken his side—even when he hadn’t thought a side needed to be taken. Audra, who had encouraged him to do as he liked, when he liked, because there were new brothers almost every year, but he was irreplaceable.