Edge of Power

by Megan Crane

  “That’s what they told me about my virginity,” she whispered fiercely. “And it turns out you can lose everything anyway, without even losing it. So who cares? If I’m going to be punished for a crime either way, why not do it?”

  “Are you talking about making your father bleed, Kathlyn?” Wulf asked, his voice a low rumble that ignited inside of her, making everything seem to . . . shimmer. Then explode. “Or something else?”

  Kathlyn’s pulse was too liquid, too fast. Her heart was knocking so hard she kept thinking it would do damage. And everything inside of her was raw and knotted. Temper. That sharp, confusing hunger. Her breasts felt strangely swollen and her belly ached, low and insistent, and she felt that same slickness between her legs that she’d felt up in his tower room.

  And she had no idea what was happening to her. She didn’t lose her composure. She didn’t crack and reveal herself and show anyone her true feelings about anything, ever. But he’d told her a story about himself and the things he’d lost and she didn’t know why she trusted him, this savage stranger, with all the parts of herself she usually hid. It wasn’t as if there was a single thing about him that was safe. Not one thing.

  That’s exactly why, a small voice inside of her suggested. He’s not safe. So you don’t have to be, either.

  “I don’t know,” she heard herself say, but all she was aware of, suddenly, was how close his mouth was to hers. How close he was.

  “Let’s find out,” Wulf suggested, low and rough.

  He slid a hand around to cup the nape of her neck, and then he claimed her mouth with his.

  10.

  She tasted better than he remembered, but this was not how Wulf handled women.

  Ever.

  He was never out of control or anywhere near it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared something of himself with a woman he wanted to fuck. And not because he was opposed, necessarily, but because there was always something better to do—like get his dick nice and wet.

  This edgy hunger that roared in him was new. Brand new. It was a driving need that was eating at him even now.

  Wulf had never felt anything like it before.

  Women were easy. Pure relaxation. Pleasure and comfort and never any work. Not for him. He’d never had this fire in his blood, nor this clamoring in his gut, as if he wasn’t certain he would survive without her taste. Without her mouth open and yielding beneath his, tempering his driving fury and changing it, somehow. Making it into pure, unadulterated greed.

  For the first time in his life, not just for pussy in general. But for her. Kathlyn. Specifically.

  He didn’t know what the hell this was. If it was some weird-ass, knock on compliant effect or some sneaky Stockholm syndrome bullshit after a week in this palace. He only knew that he had no choice here. No control. No other option.

  And he was a man who always, always had control.

  If he couldn’t have that, he thought then, he’d have her instead.

  He took her mouth, devouring her, giving her no quarter and not giving a shit if she could taste exactly how wild and uncontrolled he was. It was like a declaration of war, only this war was drenched in sugar and it was the first battle he’d ever found himself in that he thought he might lose.

  And the fucked-up thing was, he wasn’t sure he’d mind.

  What the hell is happening to you? he demanded inside his own head. But he didn’t have an answer.

  There was only Kathlyn. There was only the taste of her sweet lips and her bold tongue and the way she met him and matched him, her untried fists gripping his jacket near his abdomen as she strained up on her toes. Trying to get closer. Trying to take more of him.

  Trying to fucking kill him.

  He’d made so many women come. He’d fucked his way through more feasts and celebrations and bonfires on cold beaches after a raid than he could remember. Pussy was as plentiful as the rain and the cold on this shithole planet, and he’d indulged himself far and wide, long and deep. And he couldn’t remember ever feeling anything like this before. He couldn’t remember anyone, anywhere, like his princess. She was artless and seeking, trembling with enthusiasm and need, and so hot she was burning him alive where she stood.

  She was almost more than he could bear.

  “What the fuck are you doing to me,” he growled, tearing his mouth from hers for a brief instant. It wasn’t really a question.

  But it took too long for her to answer, or maybe she couldn’t. She looked as dazed as he refused to admit he might feel himself. Because he didn’t get dazed. Ever. Not even when he was kicked in the head. Which, he could admit, felt a lot like this, only with fewer spots before his eyes.

  And in the next second Wulf was taking her mouth again, tasting her and teaching her and losing himself in the wet, hot slide of her tongue against his—and not worrying much about how dazed he certainly didn’t feel.

  His cock was an unruly agitator, urging him on. Making this madness feel not just like a fantastic idea, but the only possible course of action. Inevitable. And Wulf knew that it was late. That if he wasn’t careful, he would run straight into daylight, those pissant guards would wake up, and the fact he could leave his cell at will would be discovered. He knew that he should leave simply because he’d told the soft, pretty princess more about himself than he’d ever told anyone else, and he couldn’t pretend that was only because his entire clan already knew his business and had no need to ask him about it. He knew that there were dangers here—he could feel them pressing in from all sides of the dark room and crackling at him from the dancing fire—but the truth was, with her taste in his mouth, he didn’t give a fuck.

  And he knew more now. This wasn’t that first night in his rooms when he’d had no idea who she was or what she wanted or why she was pretending to be something she wasn’t. Tonight she wasn’t pretending at all.

  More troubling, neither was he.

  He knew too much. About this place, about this princess. And now she knew too much about him, too. About Giliana, who had deserved better, and the daughter she’d called Tana, who Wulf had only met when it was much too late. They were the story he never told. The names he never uttered. He didn’t understand what had compelled him to mention them here. To give them over from that locked place inside of him to this soft, doomed girl who looked at him like he was some kind of savior.

  Now she knew better. And he couldn’t keep his hands still, as if he was determined to light her on fire before it occurred to her that he was the last man on this drowned earth she should ask to help her. With anything.

  Wulf knew how to manage his clan. He even thought he was good at it, especially compared to douchebags like Athenian. But that didn’t make him a savior. It made him a king.

  He moved from holding her face where he wanted it, where he could taste her best and angle his head to take it deeper, wetter, hotter. He skimmed his way down the sides of her lush little body. The thin microwool nightgown she wore was loose, but that only made the curves he found beneath his hands that much more enticing. He smoothed his way over the indentation of her waist, then found her hips and gripped them. He pulled her against him, rubbing her against his cock and letting her feel how hard he was. How desperate.

  And she shook. His little virgin trembled, all for him.

  Wulf had never given a shit about innocence. But he liked the taste of it on his tongue. He like the shape of it beneath his hands.

  This time, it was Kathlyn who pulled back. Her delicate little hands, balled up into fists, were pressing into him directly beneath his ribcage as if she needed to keep her grip on him to steady herself. Which only made his unruly cock that much happier and more determined.

  “Take this off,” she ordered him, with an imperiousness that he should have disliked intensely. He would have, he knew it, with any other woman. But that was the thing about his princess. He liked it. He liked all of it.

  “You want me naked, baby?” He could hear how lazy his voice was. H
e wondered if she could hear the craving in it. The driving hunger. Part of him liked the fact that she could have no idea that it was out of the ordinary for him. That she had no context for any of this outside of the stupid ceremonies she’d watched over the years. Wulf didn’t need to witness one of them himself to figure it wouldn’t bear a lot of resemblance to the way he planned to take care of her tonight. “Take it off yourself.”

  Her breath puffed out of her, as if she’d knocked it out of her own lungs. Or he had. And he could feel the way she trembled, tucked up against him. Wulf might have been a scary fucker his entire life, but he didn’t want her afraid of him. Not here. Not now.

  Not too afraid, anyway.

  “Consider me your playground.” He growled that out, unable to believe how much this was getting to him. It was like she’d burrowed under his skin. He didn’t understand how the fuck she’d gotten there, or how he was ever going to get her out. But tonight, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when he wanted her this badly—and had since the moment she’d tossed herself into his room wearing those absurd almost-clothes. He lifted a hand from her hip and brushed it over her cheek. “I can handle you, princess.”

  “I never had a playground before.” That smile of hers was heartbreaking. And made him want to hunt down her father here and now and break his fucking face. “King Athenian’s only daughter was never supposed to lower herself that way. No noticeable happiness or joy in public. People might get the wrong idea.”

  “The difference between this and your bullshit mounting ceremony is that there’s no one here but you and me. No one watching. No one judging. You can do anything you like.” He studied her for a moment as she digested that. “Do you have any idea what you like?”

  She shook her head, her brown eyes wide and filled with gold. “Do you?”

  He felt his mouth curve.

  “As a matter of fact, I have a few ideas.”

  The strangest sensation was building in him. It was like a bubble, buoyant and impossible. And it had everything to do with his princess and the way she looked at him, as if the whole world was sitting right there on his shoulders and he was so strong he could lift her, too, without breaking a sweat.

  So he did. Wulf bent a little and swung her up, liking her weight in his arms as he lifted her against his chest. She let out a small sound and he only held her tighter, so soft against him, still smelling of sugar and something buttery. He carried her over and settled her on the couch arranged in front of her fireplace. Then he shrugged out of the stolen black sweatshirt and tossed it on the floor, kicking off his boots while he was at it.

  And through it all she watched him like he was one of those ancient movies they watched too much of in the winter months, on the screens Gunnar had wired up all over the Lodge. As if he was that magical and larger-than-life. It made him want to be. It made him want to be whatever she saw in him.

  Wulf could admit it, she made his dick so hard it was practically crawling out of his trousers, and he knew she wasn’t even trying. That was the effect she had on him simply by being in the same room.

  He went to his knees at the side of the couch, pulling her legs open so he could kneel between them where she sat. Her dress stretched up and open with her legs, and he took a moment to push it higher up her thighs, baring that smooth, naked pussy to his gaze.

  At last.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in a satisfyingly hoarse whisper, her eyes wide.

  “I’ve been waiting to taste this hot little cunt since I saw it a week ago,” he told her in a growl, not bothering to keep that wild hunger from his voice. “And I hate waiting.”

  Her lush mouth fell open a little wider, but she didn’t speak. Maybe she couldn’t. Wulf grinned.

  He wanted to dive right in and get his tongue on all those naked brown folds, but he held himself back. He ran his hands over her thighs, skirting her pussy, and then back again, as if he was warming her up. Again. Then again, soaking in her incredible, impossible softness. As if she was made of sugar herself.

  But soon enough he returned his attention to those creamy, bare folds. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his head for days. It was like he’d never seen a pussy before. And he hadn’t, not like this. Bare and smooth to the touch. And remarkably sensitive. His faintest touch made her shiver and squirm, and that was before he got to the good stuff.

  “Look at this pussy,” he murmured as he spread her open and gazed down at her. “Soft and smooth and such a pretty brown, then a hint of pink inside.”

  She shuddered. And then kept shuddering as he traced her with his fingers, dragging his way through the soft, hot center of her, where she was bright and scalding wet and every second he wasn’t balls deep inside of her was torture.

  Her hands were at her sides, trying to find purchase on the couch cushions. Her head was back and her mouth was open, the microwool slipping even further down one shoulder, distracting him with a hint of her breast. But he regained his focus.

  “How do you think you taste?” he asked her, casually, as if he didn’t have his hands all over her sweet, virgin pussy, and he felt her get juicier and hotter all over his hand.

  But she didn’t answer him with words. Her chest was rising and falling too fast, and she looked as if she might explode, so he didn’t wait for an answer. He just bent his head and spread those smooth thighs wide so he could get his shoulders between them. Then he opened his mouth over her proud little clit and sucked.

  Not hard. Not yet. But she still arched up off the couch, making the kind of noise that got his cock a little too excited. He had to shift to get more comfortable, and then he got down to business.

  It wasn’t just that Wulf loved pussy, though he did. And it wasn’t that she was remarkably sensitive, though she was, and he could feel every delicious shiver that rolled through her. But he was all too aware that no one had ever tasted her before. That he had the pleasure and the responsibility of being the first.

  The first to lose himself in the sweet cream of her, sugar and hot, glorious woman. The first to hear her pant like that. The first to lick his way around her hot little cunt when she made those wild, greedy, half-delirious noises he thought might haunt him for the rest of his life.

  And that was only the beginning.

  He slid his hands beneath her and lifted up her round, smooth ass to bring her cunt closer to his mouth. He held her like she was a delicacy at a feast and he planned to gulp her down, every last drop. And then that was exactly what he did. He ate at her. He licked into her. He used his teeth against her tender flesh, making her arch and wiggle and cry out, and he loved every second of it. He loved every sound.

  He was ruthless and thorough. He kept at her, licking and sucking and burying his face between her legs like he’d waited his whole life for this taste of her. Like he might die right here if he didn’t get his fill. He felt her thighs go tight as she got closer. She clearly didn’t know what to do, so she pressed herself against his mouth with one breath and squirmed in the next, but none of that mattered. He didn’t give her any room to do anything but surrender.

  To do anything but give herself over to him. Completely.

  “I can’t,” she sobbed out. “I can’t.”

  But he laughed against her, where she was so wet and hot and endlessly sweet. Then he sucked on her clit again, harder this time, and threw her over the edge.

  And she shattered.

  Then shattered some more, all over his face, while he tried to keep his cock from punching its way out of his trousers, and enjoyed the ride.

  Because it was only the beginning.

  When she came back to herself Kathlyn was stretched out on the couch.

  The same old couch in the rooms she’d lived in most of her life, but everything was different. Her body no longer felt like hers, for one thing.

  Sensation poured through her, finding new ways to make her shake. Shiver. Fall apart and then come back together, but sewn up differently.

/>   You will never be the same, something whispered inside of her. Kathlyn knew it was true. She’d known it when she met this man, if she was honest. This night was only making it more clear.

  Every movement of his mouth against that most private part of her—she couldn’t bring herself to think those words he’d used, much less say them even to herself—had changed her. Altered her as if from the inside out. As if his touch—his tongue—had reordered her very bones.

  It took her long moments, still too hot and far too dizzy, to realize that she was still dressed. Or wearing her same old nightgown anyway. Which she was fairly certain she would never look at quite the same way again. It was still rucked up to her hips and the part of her that had been such a perfect princess, so worried about how she was perceived, prickled to life and ordered her to do something about that. Push it back down. Make herself look more like a lady.

  But she couldn’t quite bring herself to move.

  It was only then that she remembered why she was in this state in the first place.

  Wulf waited there beside the couch, a smile she could only describe as both very hard and very male on his fascinating mouth. Heat burst through her anew, as she realized that she knew what that mouth felt like now. Not just against her own in one of those exultantly noncompliant kisses that still made her shake, remembering it anew. But between her legs. And his beard . . .

  “Are you still with me, princess?” His voice was lazier than before, but if possible, his eyes had gone bluer.

  “Of course I am,” she said.

  And realized she wanted to sit up straight. She wanted to pull herself together, as if that could make what had just happened here more acceptable. She wanted to reclaim . . . something. Her dignity, maybe. But then in the next moment, she remembered that none of that mattered. She had nothing to lose here. She’d been ruined before he walked in the door.