by Megan Crane
She wasn’t sure she was breathing, actually, but that seemed to be a very minor concern. Helena licked her lips and his gaze got sharper, hotter. Fiercer. It turned out she liked that. And maybe he did too, because he wrapped her braid around his fist and tugged her even closer, pulling her off balance.
“I can do anything,” she told him, and she didn’t know why her voice was so breathy, so needy, when this was something she’d started. Something she was doing because she had to—and maybe wanted to, though her mind skated away from that—not because he’d issued an order. “Anything you want. Anything at all.”
Though the way that fluttering inside of her was making her quivery and much too hot, maybe there wasn’t as big a difference between what she had to do and what she wanted to do. Not as much as she’d like to pretend there was.
“I’m glad to hear that, sweetheart,” Tyr said in that low, lazy way that kicked up another round of shivery explosions inside of her. “Why don’t you take my cock out and show me how sweet you are, then?”
He was holding her head steady with her braid wrapped tight around his fist, so there was no hiding her face from him. There was no hiding anything. Helena was sure he saw the way the whole world spun away and became him, only him. Nothing but that demanding dark gold gaze on hers. He saw her go pale, then burst back into red. He saw the way she swallowed hard, as if she was nervous—Or just practicing, some wicked part of her whispered. He saw the way the heat of it made her start to sweat. She was in so much trouble, because he saw everything.
“There are so many people.” She hadn’t meant to say that.
Tyr merely lifted his brows. “Is that a problem?”
She thought of all the camp girls she’d seen doing exactly this without seeming to care either way if they were being watched by the entire clan or by no one. Or by Helena, for that matter, who hadn’t been able to tear herself away. You like to watch, Tyr had said. And here, now, held fast in this awkward, intense position against this absurdly commanding man, she could admit that she did. Or she had. Or maybe it was more than that—maybe it was the raiders’ total lack of concern about privacy that intrigued her almost as much as the things they did. It all made her shiver with some complicated combination of fear and longing at once.
And still, watching wasn’t the same as doing something herself right here in this crowded lobby, and this time without any wool wrap or encompassing darkness to hide herself behind.
Helena knew she should be appalled at the very suggestion. Disgusted. Puffed up in outrage the way all those compliant women she’d known would have been long since.
But she wasn’t any of those things, and she thought he probably saw that, too.
“No,” she said, and her voice was a soft scrape of sound that she could barely hear herself. “I don’t have a problem.”
Something flashed between them, so hot and bright it made her feel weak. Tyr settled back against the wall behind them, thrusting his legs out in front of him and seeming to relax completely, but the hand in her braid didn’t ease at all. And that little kick of almost-pain was perfection. It shivered through her. It reminded her who he was and where she was.
It made it impossible for her to pretend she wasn’t doing what she was doing, and there was a perverse part of her that loved him for that. For making sure she knew exactly how real this was.
She leaned over on the bench, swinging her legs up beneath her so she could kneel beside him and get her face down close to where his cock was already pressing hard against the fly of his trousers. She was trembling from the inside out and her pussy was a wet ache that she doubted anything but Tyr could ease. Her fingers fumbled as she tried to unbutton him. He let her.
She had the feeling despite that bossy hand in her hair, he would let her do whatever she wanted just now. It was a heady sort of rush that roared inside of her when she got that last button undone and pulled out his thick, hard length. She rocked herself where she knelt, Tyr tightened his grip, and the twin sensations—the drag of her pussy against her folded legs and that sharp bite of pain—made a wave of need go through her like an earthquake, leaving her drenched and weak in its wake.
It was hard to go slow, but she made herself do it. It was hard to run her lips over that smooth, hard shaft once, then again, in a dry sort of tease, or worship. She shifted so she could reach down and take his heavy sack in one hand, reveling in the sheer weight of him in her palm. Then she moved down so she could kiss him there, breathing him in, his intense male scent making her wetter and more greedy for him. She kissed every part of his balls and cock she could reach, and when she reached the thick head again, she slid him into her mouth.
She remembered what he’d taught her upstairs. She kept him shallow, sucking on his broad cockhead and playing with it as she liked, finding that slit of his with the flat of her tongue and licking him. Only when she felt his strong thigh tense, when his hand gripped her hair that much harder, did she slide down and take him deep into her mouth at last.
At last.
And everything seemed to slow. To drip into some kind of syrupy dream state and keep her suspended there, trapped between the hard cock in her mouth and the fist in her hair. The curious thing was how her heart swelled as big and as bright as that lustful, hungry sensation that poured through her and concentrated its white-hot heat in her greedy, empty pussy.
Helena was aware of everything. She simply stopped caring about it. She could hear people walk by, their voices and laughter and shouts of greeting and celebration. She was aware of eyes on her, all over her, and of the way they all must have been able to see how her head moved on him, how they must have known that his big cock was buried deep in her mouth. She heard the way the raider clan members greeted Tyr, in precisely the same tones of respect as they had before, as if it was of no matter to them one way or another what was happening in his lap.
Often he returned their greetings, sounding as unaffected as if he was still sitting there untouched. Sometimes he even talked to them for a moment or two, both he and the people he spoke to sounding completely unbothered by the fact that Helena knelt there, working his cock in and out of her mouth, his balls cupped in her hand and the rest of her so hot and tight and blistering with need she was surprised she didn’t burst into flame.
She lost herself in the slide, the suck. His hand gripping her hair and the rhythm she built. She thought she could stay right where she was, never finishing, never stopping, suspended forever in Tyr’s capable hands, trembling and needy and almost too hot and too wet to bear. She didn’t care who saw her. She didn’t care what happened next. She forgot about her great plans to escape, satellites and stars and light across the dark, and everything that wasn’t the sweet thrust of Tyr’s huge cock between her lips.
Again and again and again.
Helena wanted to stay right there forever.
But she felt Tyr’s thighs tighten beneath her, and he shifted. His grip in her hair pulled taut, and he held her head still as he surged into her, taking control so easily and seamlessly that Helena understood he’d never relinquished it in the first place. That, too, felt like a bolt of lightning deep into her desperate pussy, and a brushfire everywhere else.
He pumped himself into her and then came hard, holding her right where he wanted her so he could pour himself straight down her throat. He didn’t shout this time. He was matter of fact, as if this had been nothing more than a minor housekeeping duty Helena had performed for him. She shuddered in a darker sort of delight at that thought, this close to teetering over that edge herself.
Simply from pleasuring him. She definitely didn’t know what to make of that.
His cock softened slightly in her mouth and she licked the last of his saltiness away, and then he pulled her back up to kneel beside him. He let go of her to tuck himself away, and Helena simply … knelt there, where he’d left her. She was panting, and not because it was hard to breathe. Her breasts felt three times their natural size and her nip
ples were twin points of agony that she was sure anyone could see from across the room. And the scalding heat in her pussy was so distracting she couldn’t really think to do anything but wait there, right where he’d put her, until he raised that simmering dark gold gaze of his to her again.
And when he did, she felt it everywhere, the way she’d felt his hands all over her upstairs.
Tyr didn’t speak as he studied her, though Helena thought the air between them was different. Charged and changed. There was something about the stern set to his mouth that connected a little too hard to that strange, raw hollow inside of her. She felt shimmery, well used, and marvelous, and she couldn’t seem to settle on any one feeling. Too many different ones rolled and bucked and twisted around inside of her, making her worry that her skin couldn’t possibly contain them.
If this was obedience, or the sweetness he’d mentioned, it was the most overwhelming experience of her life. And possibly also the best.
“You haven’t looked around to see who’s watching you,” he said after a moment, and there was a gruffness to his voice that made her eyes prickle with a betraying heat, but she couldn’t quite seem to care about that, either. “Who’s witnessed your noncompliance. It could be the entire clan, for all you know.”
She didn’t know if she could speak. “I don’t care.”
The rawness in her voice was too obvious. And Helena couldn’t bear to look at him, suddenly. She didn’t know what to do with all this vulnerability that made her feel as if he’d scraped off every layer she had and left her wide open. Naked and conspicuous and even as that trembled through her, there was another part of her that simply didn’t care. That would have done anything he asked, if he asked it. If only he would touch her again.
He reached over and smoothed one big, battered hand over her braid. Then slid that same warm palm up over her jaw and held it there a moment, letting his thumb sweep over the lips that had just been wrapped tight around his cock. They felt loose. Used. Battered.
Beautiful.
Helena shuddered again. And there was an expression on Tyr’s face that she didn’t understand. Something almost … resigned.
“That was okay,” he said coolly, in that same matter-of-fact tone she’d heard him use on Riordan as he’d ordered him on that journey. She was too taken back by his tone to register the slap of the word he’d chosen. That came an instant later. “But most of the brothers require deep throating at a minimum for any serious cocksucking. You’ll have to work on your gag reflex.”
She wanted to die. She wanted to scream. She wanted to curl up into a ball and cry the way she hadn’t since she was a girl and certainly couldn’t let herself do here. But she didn’t do any of those things. She was the one who’d asked for this. This audition.
“Thank me,” Tyr ordered her softly, a dark gleam she couldn’t identity in those eyes of his. It moved through her, kicking up dust and leaving marks, and she couldn’t do a single thing to stop it, as if he was still gripping her braid and controlling her. “For taking the time to mentor you like this when I could have had any other woman in the clan suck me off a whole lot better.”
Helena thought she might choke. Maybe he expected it—or for her to balk, anyway. So she forced herself to smile, despite the way that hollow inside of her had started to feel more like a half-built sob, and she blinked back the tears she refused to let fall from her eyes.
You asked for this, she reminded herself fiercely.
“Thank you, war chief,” she managed to say. She didn’t even sound furious. It was a significant accomplishment.
Something flared in his dark gaze then, something that made his face tighten and look very nearly as fierce as it had earlier. She could have sworn he was about to say something devastating, but he didn’t. She thought he looked almost … torn. But in the same instant it was gone, and she told herself she’d imagined it.
Tyr stood and patted his thigh.
“You stay right here,” he told her in that grim way of his that probably shouldn’t have made her pussy clench so hard when she heard it, “no matter what happens. Let’s see how you handle the whole clan.”
* * *
Much later that night, the festivities were in full roar.
Wulf had stood up to give one of his usual speeches, leaving Tyr to marvel, as he always did, how a man who had been born in almost identical circumstances to his own was filled with a fire that had made Wulf stand out from the rest, even back when they’d all been boys. Wulf had taken over the nursery back in the day, managing to convince older, tougher, stronger children to follow him. He’d done the same with the clan once he’d taken his place as leader. They hung on his words. They cheered him and celebrated him. Unlike the king before him, Donovan, who had ruled with fear and fists, Wulf was loved. Adored. Worshipped, even.
And he deserved every bit of it, Tyr thought with bone deep satisfaction. Tyr was just happy that he had no such aspirations. He and Zyron had always liked to fight, so that was what they’d done, with eyes only on the brotherhood. Tyr particularly liked kicking ass. He liked to train almost as much as he liked to fight, and that meant he loved his role as primary blade craft instructor to the younger clan members. He liked his place in the clan, his role in the brotherhood. He liked that he’d earned the right to sit at Wulf’s side. He’d always enjoyed the perks of that position—the finest cuts of meat and the best wine, and at celebrations like these, his pick of any clan pussy he might want to sample.
Except tonight, he found his cock was as focused on the woman he’d made kneel at his side throughout the meal as the rest of him was. He had tunnel vision where Helena was concerned, and this kind of thing had never, ever happened to him before.
There was no pretending it wasn’t a huge problem. Tyr didn’t obsess over pussy. Tyr liked sex and he wasn’t all that particular about who he had it with. Women came in all shapes and sizes and predilections, and he liked having all kinds of sex with all of them. He had.
But he couldn’t seem to think past Helena.
You knew that when you carted her out of that compound, he snapped at himself.
He found himself toying with that thick, soft braid of hers as she knelt there beside him, and he pretended he didn’t see the looks his brothers threw his way. He knew exactly what they were thinking. She was his captive, and he was treating her like one—feeding her from his hand, making her stick to his side like he’d chained her there—but he hadn’t claimed her. He’d seen more than one of his brothers—and hell, half the clan—check out the way she’d worked his cock out there in the lobby. They’d certainly all checked out the sweet curve of her ass as she’d knelt over him, sticking it up in the air in what would have been a clear invitation from anyone else, had Tyr not glowered down every last one of those twisted bastards and warned them off.
Technically, as a captive of the clan and in the absence of any stated, official claim, she was fair game. In practice, no one was dumb enough to roll up on a woman the war chief was clearly keeping to himself, whether he’d formally claimed her or not.
And the truth he didn’t want to admit to himself, but couldn’t quite deny, was that Tyr had no intention of sharing her with anyone. He didn’t want to pull that apart and take a hard look at it. He didn’t want to ask himself why. It was a gut deep thing. It felt as certain as his own blood in his veins, as elemental.
It pissed him off.
After the great feast, the music had been cranked up and things had started to get fun. Some clan members danced over near the big speakers the tech heads had wired up like the screens in all the bedrooms. Tables had been pushed back so clan members could challenge each other to various kinds of fights and the clash of practice irons melded into the sounds of fists against flesh, Tyr’s favorite song.
And the sex, of course. The clan liked its sex.
It was the usual scene of erotic carnage. Tyr saw the pretty young thing who tended the shop for her father’s blacksmith forge bouncing up a
nd down on the lap of one of the off-duty nursery teachers, both of them red-faced and moaning loud. On one of the long tables, a group of weavers and dressmakers mated to strong men of the clan who were remarkably possessive during noncelebration time sat in a line, demanding that the passing clan members perform a pussy taste test. Both men and women took them up on it, as usual, to great cheers and much squirming. Over in the part of the hall that had been set aside for dancing, some of the people swaying and jumping to the blasting music had started to roll it over into something else. A farmer and one of the Lodge’s cooks held a round woman Tyr recognized from the fisheries between them, each working a hard cock into one of her entrances as they kept her suspended there between them.
Tyr didn’t have to look to the woman trembling slightly beside him to see that she was taking all of it in. Or more, that it turned her on as much as it did him.
That pissed him off, too, if he was honest, because he’d expected this kind of scene to scare the crap out of a compliant girl like Helena.
It was crazy that it annoyed him she was loving it. He was crazy.
He’d been having a fairly intense conversation with two friends of his who lived here in the village but weren’t in the brotherhood, but they’d both moved on. One threw his woman over a bench and was taking her from behind, and the other was waiting his turn to try to best Wulf in a bare-knuckled fight in the center of the hall. No one ever had, of course, but they kept trying.
Tyr had run out of excuses. And he was disgusted with himself that he’d actually felt he needed any excuses in the first place. He didn’t like what was happening here. To him. If he was any kind of man, he would release Helena to all his hot-eyed clan members the way she’d claimed she wanted him to do and take advantage of whatever pussy he could find until this mad thing inside him faded away.
But he didn’t do that.
