by Megan Crane
“Is that what they do if there are too many baby boys?” Tait asked. Something flashed in his dark eyes when her mouth dropped open. “You said there are very, very few boys. And a whole lot of pansy excuses for men sitting around on their fat asses, enjoying all the hot and cold running pussy they can handle.”
“No one would throw a baby away,” Elenthea whispered, scandalized. Her heart thumped at her. Her stomach lurched. “We need all the babies we can get. Surely raiders do too.”
“We don’t build whole societies of bullshit around it.”
“The only time something like that happens is when there are horrible birth defects or the child is already dead when born,” Elenthea said hurriedly, but there was another question worming its way through her that she didn’t want to admit was there. Tearing her up. Making her wonder all manner of dark things about this place—the only place she’d ever known.
As if they’d been inside her all along.
Then Tait reached over and took her chin in his hard, blunt fingers, and there was no room left inside of her for shadows and dark. There was only the great, bright shine of it. Of him. Of his touch. A rolling light that stormed through her and made her buzz, everywhere. From the place he touched her to her breasts and then below, until it pooled hot and wild between her legs.
Elenthea thought maybe she was dying, but she didn’t care. Not when this fierce warrior stood so close to her, blocking out what little of the fading January sun she could see through the portholes and the brooding, terrible sea all around.
“Don’t get caught,” he ordered her, his voice fierce. As if he would brook no disobedience.
And when he dropped his hand—after a long, breathless moment when she thought he wouldn’t—she ran.
Not because she was reacting to him, she assured herself as she scrambled down to the dock, then raced from the boatyards over the outer pontoons, racing the waning light as she moved. Not because she could feel the press of his fingers against her flesh as if he’d burned her and left marks. Not for any reason at all except she needed to get back before she was found missing.
Because there could be no other reason.
But she was a liar. She knew it. She could feel the way her blood roared through her veins in a way she knew—she knew—had nothing to do with exercise.
She knew it when she managed to slip inside her house and slink into place near the outer doors just as the House Mistress finished her rounds, which was almost as risky as being marked missing. It called attention to her. It made her noticeable.
“Why are you out here and not back with the rest of the ranked girls?” Mistress Annet asked, frowning at her. “I marked you missing.”
“I was back there . . .” Elenthea frowned back, trying to emanate confusion. “You counted me already, Mistress.”
And if she’d ever wondered about her real, true worth, it was obvious in the way Mistress Annet blinked at that, then stared at her blankly. Because, Elenthea realized, she couldn’t remember either way.
“I suppose I did,” she murmured, and then left Elenthea sitting there where she could see out the doors, as if she’d come up to the outermost part of the house to take in the sunset, the way people sometimes did.
Because you’re that meaningless, Elenthea told herself, trying to get her heart to stop beating quite so quickly. That absolutely and utterly pointless to every person on this raft. Except the one person who doesn’t belong here.
But she didn’t care, really, because she’d managed to save herself tonight. Something that wouldn’t work again, she was well aware. Mistress Annet might not pay much attention to Elenthea in the general scheme of things, but she would start if Elenthea wasn’t careful.
And she had to be careful, because she had her secret to protect. She had Tait to keep hidden.
Mine, she thought then, thinking of the way his fingers had held her chin still. And that fierce gaze of his, so dark and deep. She felt that deep, delicious shudder work its way through her again. All mine.
She’d never had anything that was hers. She liked the idea that Tait was the first.
It made her whole life feel different around her. As if it really was a life, after all, instead of just a collection of days tumbling one after the next, one as pointless any other, until they were all a great blur and she was tossed overboard anyway to make room for someone with more promise.
Tait had touched her. More than that, he talked to her—and no one ever talked to her. They chastised her in passing, or they berated her because she happened to be in front of them, or they said arch things above her as if she couldn’t understand them, but they never talked to her. She wasn’t ranked high enough to merit that kind of conversation by rote, and she wasn’t ambitious enough to go around sparkling delightfully on the off chance that someone might notice her and start.
But Tait didn’t even know what rank was when she told him that, some days later, when she was trying to be much more careful about the time that passed when she was out there with him.
And more than that, trying to pretend that it was normal that she was telling this raider—this fantastical gift from the sea who she still couldn’t quite believe was real—things she’d never said out loud. Things she’d never dared tell herself before.
Maybe the fact she still half-thought he was a dream was why he was so easy to talk to.
“You mean you have to be ranked to open your mouth?” He shook his head and made the sea seem a little less wild around them, because suddenly, he seemed infinitely more ruthless than the seething water. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means I have a specific place. Everyone has their place. That’s how the Raft works.” She eyed him. “You said not everyone in your raider city is a soldier.”
“A brother, not a soldier. Soldiers fight a specific war or two and then retire. Brothers are family who defend the clan until their very last breath.” He inclined his head. “But no. Not all clan members are in the brotherhood.”
“They have different places, then. It’s the same.”
“I had to fight my way into the brotherhood.” Tait didn’t sound particularly fierce when he said that but still, she felt it. Everywhere. “It took years. If I hadn’t made it in, I would have built ships with my father, a skill that’s been handed down in his family since his ancestors built cars before the Storms fucked up all the roads. Every drop of blood in my body comes from men who worked with their hands. That’s how I know my place, baby. What about you?”
Elenthea swallowed hard, as if she was scared again. When she refused to be scared.
“The House Mistresses determine everyone’s rank. That’s one of their jobs.” She frowned at him. “I don’t think your clan is any different. You just said yourself that your brotherhood is higher than the rest of the clan.”
“I would never call it higher,” Tait objected. “That’s the kind of thinking that leads to fat assholes lounging around letting their women tend to their round, plucked bullshit like it’s a privilege.” He shook his head as if that was absurd when it was just . . . life. “The brotherhood has different things to do. The clan member who fishes and the clan member who farms are equal, even though they do different jobs for the clan. A woman who runs a shop and a woman who cleans fish give back to the clan, each in her own way. Camp girls offer comfort pussy and an escape for the brothers who fight too much to live in families. There is no rank. There is only clan.” He reached up and touched his fist to his chest, right over that intricate, circular tattoo he called a sigil. “Clan first, clan always. Clan forever.”
“You don’t have a Council? A ruling body of some kind?”
“The brotherhood advises the king’s council and the king’s council advises the king,” Tait said roughly. “And Wulf doesn’t round up the weak and kick them off the island. That’s bullshit. He protects the island and everyone on it. That’s his job, and it’s our job to do the same. The only people who need to worry about get
ting booted off the eastern islands are those who shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
Elenthea shook her head as if she’d never heard something so silly. Because she hadn’t. “But surely if you have this role to play in your clan, you receive something in return. No one works for nothing.”
Tait’s gaze seemed to land a bit too hard on her as he worked on the sail draped over his lap, making neat stitches that put hers to shame with his hands that dwarfed her own. Elenthea might have been embarrassed if she wasn’t so mesmerized by the sight. And a bit shaken by the way he looked at her.
“That’s a dirty little mercenary view of the world. Newsflash, Elenthea. No one likes fucking mercenaries.”
“Here, a woman earns her keep. She performs tasks. It’s hardly mercenary. It’s her responsibility.”
“You mean she earns her keep on her back?” When she nodded, something strangely hot and uncomfortable worming its way through her belly, Tait’s mouth hardened. “What happens if a woman refuses?”
“Don’t be silly. No one refuses.”
She laughed at the notion, the way she had before. A low-ranked girl like her had two sessions with the House a month, while higher-ranked women had more. There was no argument about that. If anything, there was intense competition to get a higher ranking. If a case of the sniffles meant a girl couldn’t perform, there were throngs of others begging to take her place. The House Mistress kept the schedule—and chose the substitutes if necessary—and no one contradicted a House Mistress. That was a great way to find yourself hauled before the Council.
“People are people no matter how fucked up the place they live,” Tait rumbled at her. “Even if they float around on pontoons and hope the dried fish lasts through the winter like you do. And wherever there are places like this that make up bullshit rules, there are going to be rule followers and rule breakers. That’s how it works.”
“No one refuses,” Elenthea said again, her head spinning. She explained the frequency of visits with the House to him. “It’s the law. Why would I break it? The consequences are extreme.”
“Let me guess,” Tait said then, something dark and light at once moving through his gaze. Something that made her chest feel tight and her lungs hollow. “Following the law twice a month isn’t a whole lot of fun.”
“Fun?” she echoed.
“Fun,” he said again, and then his mouth crooked in that dangerous way that made everything inside of her seem to skip off to the side. “It’s supposed to be fun.”
“Sex?” She stared at him, astonished. “Sex isn’t fun. Why would it be fun?”
But Tait laughed at that.
A very thorough, very male laugh that Elenthea was sure she’d feel hours later when she was curled up in her patchy furs in her dutiful place in the central pontoons. Because she felt it everywhere.
And something glittered in those dark eyes of his as he watched her. It was as if, when he looked at her, he felt all those strange, tight things that worked in her every time she saw him.
And Elenthea had most amazing idea.
“Will you help me?” she asked.
He tilted his head slightly to one side, and shoved the sail off of his lap. He was wearing his thermal today, his arms almost bursting through its seams as he reached up to twist his braids into a knot. There was a faint curl in the corner of his mouth that she was very much afraid she was becoming obsessed with. There was that breath-stealing gleam in his dark eyes. And there was that whole, glorious body of his that made her so restless. All those flat planes of muscle and brutal, leashed strength.
It had never occurred to her that a man could be beautiful like this, like the lightning storms that scraped the horizon in summer and made the hair on her body shiver into alertness.
Elemental. Overwhelming.
“Of course,” Tait said quietly. “I’m very helpful. Ask anyone.”
Elenthea knew he was mocking her. She didn’t care. The idea had seized hold, and she could hardly contain herself.
“I don’t know why didn’t occur to me before,” she said hurriedly, as if she couldn’t allow herself the time to form each word properly. She was too excited to get them all out. “When you were talking about sex.”
“If it’s about sex,” Tait said with a laugh, “then I’m even more interested.”
There was a different kind of heat in that. Something deep inside of her pinged into awareness, but she didn’t understand it. So she shunted it aside.
“Everyone keeps telling me that I have to distinguish myself. Gain the House’s notice. But I can never bring myself to do it.” She shrugged. “The truth is that I know how to do it. Or I was taught, anyway. I just always find sex so . . .”
She didn’t finish. She couldn’t have said why not. There was too much fire in Tait’s steady, dark gaze, and matching flames inside of her, licking all over her as she sat there.
“Boring?” he supplied, with another one of those little laughs that seemed directly wired to that increasingly soft and slippery place between Elenthea’s legs, especially when it took on that lazy note.
“Not boring,” she heard herself say. “Not anything. But everyone knows that the way to get the House’s attention is to perform in bed. To do, I don’t know, tricks.”
Tait wasn’t even trying to control his smile any longer, clearly. “Tricks. Like a pit wolf after a bone.”
“Yes, tricks. Positions. Something more than just lying there, doing the bare minimum.”
She didn’t know when they’d drifted so close together. She was sure she didn’t move, and she didn’t see him do it, but suddenly he was leaning into her from his side of the bunk. And then his fingers were brushing over her cheek. Then her mouth, as if he needed to test her lips with the pad of his thumb.
Once. Again.
And the world caught fire.
“Remind me what we’re talking about.”
His voice had gone scratchy and Elenthea didn’t understand why she could feel that everywhere. As if he was that shuddering thing inside her. As if he was already much too deep inside of her and he hadn’t even agreed yet.
“Sex,” she said softly, because for some reason she could hardly speak. “You know about sex, don’t you?”
Tait let out a breath that sounded like a laugh, only paler. And still, somehow, catastrophic.
“I know about sex,” he agreed. Like it hurt him, when he was so huge and strong that Elenthea couldn’t believe that there was anything that could hurt him. Not really.
And that wasn’t pain that blazed across his face as he looked down at her. She was sure of it.
“I know about a lot of tricks, but I’ve never done them,” she told him, she had no idea why her throat was so dry. And why she could feel her pulse there, like a taut, impossible drum. “I want you to teach me.”
4.
Tait couldn’t remember wanting anything more than he wanted to teach Elenthea every single trick he knew. Then do it all over again.
And again. And then a few more times after that, and he didn’t really think it was because it had been so long since he’d busted a nut, though it had been. He had the feeling it was just Elenthea.
He hadn’t thought about much else besides her in all the long, cold nights he spent either holed up in the boat he was making almost seaworthy, if not quite up to his standards, or poking around this floating city that mounted no guard and kept no watch in any of their pontoons. At first the lack of either had put him on alert, especially when he’d crept around the center pontoons where it was clear the higher ranked people lived. Tait had assumed it was a trap.
He couldn’t think of another explanation for leaving a whole city wide open like that. But then he’d realized it was why the city floated around out here, with only a few soft men, an abundance of women, and the usual dumb laws to keep the men balls deep in all the sweet, hot pussy they could possibly want—whether that was a requited situation or not.
The sea was their guard
and their defense. The sea kept them safe and out of reach of men like Tait and his brothers, who would mow them down in an afternoon and take what the men here could never possibly nut up enough to protect.
And Elenthea wanted him to teach her how to fuck these little punks properly.
His cock twitched at that because it involved fucking and Elenthea and who cared about the rest, but then, that bastard was a known asshole.
“Are you sure I should be the one to help you?” he asked her, his fingers still toying with that beguiling mouth of hers, and he knew she had no idea he was teasing her. That only made it better. “Maybe we don’t have any chemistry. That wouldn’t be learning any fun tricks. That would be another chore.”
Every last part of him objected to the idea that anything involving this woman could be a chore as he watched her brows draw together as if he’d never seen anything prettier. He hadn’t. She liked to curl herself up at the bottom of his bunk in this cabin while he worked on smaller, more finicky things and she had no idea what it did to him. She smelled like spice and a hint of citrus, and the longer she sat with him the more likely she was to unwind the various layers she wore and expose different parts of herself to his greedy gaze.
Her collarbone, one day. Her softly-rounded shoulder the next.
Tait was a man who enjoyed the clan’s camp girls daily. Camp girls walked around in bare feet and tiny, stretchy shorts that barely covered their asses while allowing any and all access. They liked their bellies bare and their tits on display. And they loved to fuck. Fucking was their job.
And here he was on a floating city in the middle of the sea, getting hot when Elenthea flashed her wrist.
He needed to get inside her. It was bordering on desperation.
Especially when she looked at him the way she was now, as if she’d never seen his species before. It was fair enough. He’d seen the men here. He’d peered in through windows and kept himself in the shadows, and he’d watched the soft, old fuckers lie back and let too many women do all the work. To Elenthea, maybe he really was a different species altogether.
