by Megan Crane
And then that was out there. Sitting on the wet rocks with them. Shivering in the October damp. There was no taking it back.
Eiryn didn’t shut her eyes, because she wasn’t a little punk. She’d take what was coming to her. She tilted up her chin and left her hands at her side. And realized she fully expected him to backhand her. The way their father would have done—the way he had done, on numerous occasions. She expected that wild, insulted light in Wulf’s eyes to tip over into violence. Contempt. She had every expectation he would take her down for saying such things to him.
She braced herself for the hit.
And she didn’t know what to do when he didn’t throw that punch.
Wulf stood there for a long moment, a look she’d never seen before on his face. It scraped through her. It made her feel hollow and something like shaky.
“You think I’m going to hit you?” His voice was mild. But she could see that odd light in his eyes. Something far darker than fury. “You think—what, exactly? I’m going to slap you down right here?”
Her lips felt numb, and Eiryn couldn’t tell if that was the weather or the way he was looking at her. “It’s more accurate to say I don’t know that you won’t.”
Wulf blinked at that. He looked away for a moment, down the length of the beach to where the brothers were throwing around the bashed-in hulls of shipwrecked boats, looking for parts to salvage. And probably also just to throw them.
When he looked back her, she wanted to cry. But it occurred to her she didn’t know how to do that, either.
“Do you know why I didn’t kill him?” Wulf asked quietly. So quietly the wind almost stole the words away. Eiryn folded her arms over her middle and told herself she didn’t know who he meant. But she did. Their father’s twisted-up, angry face flashed through her head. “Why I ordered him crippled instead?”
“Because you wanted him to marinate in what he’d done,” she replied. Everyone knew this story. “You wanted to make sure he had a lot of time to sit and think about it.”
Wulf shook his head, his gaze never leaving hers. “Because you begged me to let him live.”
That jolted through her, a cold shock kicking through her, low in her belly. She couldn’t breathe.
“What are you talking about? I was ten years old when you took the throne. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You were ten years old, yes,” he agreed. “I had just won. Amos was a prisoner. You came to me then and there and you begged me not to kill him. You reminded me that he wasn’t only the war chief to you, or Amos the giant asshole, he was your father.”
She had the vaguest, strangest memory of that night. The whole clan had been out in the streets, it seemed, watching the young upstart Wulf battle old, canny, and deeply hated King Donovan all over the village. It had ended down at the docks, when eighteen-year-old Wulf had landed the killing blow and won his throne, leaving the old king lying there in the water like so much trash.
She remembered the torches against the night, the wild celebrating with the leftover edge of terror at what had happened. She remembered a leaner, younger, and much more feral Wulf standing there in the center of everything, the old king’s blood on his face and a very different look in his blue eyes than the one she’d known before.
To her he’d been her Wulf. Always so kind and patient with her.
How had she forgotten that?
But she knew how. One crippled, embittered man. And a lifetime of hate she’d nurtured like it was love.
“I can’t believe you listened to me,” she said, trying to pretend he hadn’t rocked her completely.
“You are my little sister, Eiryn,” Wulf told her. His voice was gruff. Resolute. “I thought you needed him. If I’d had any idea what he would do to you, I would have broken his neck and left him to rot on the green.” His gaze slammed into her, brilliant and blue against the gathering dark. “That night was the last time I can remember you calling me your blood brother without any edge to it. Until now.”
She had no idea how long they stood there like that. The brothers moved around them. She heard Tyr’s great bellow. She heard Jurin’s booming laughter. But she and this king who was also her older brother, her blood, stood there with too much history and the same shitty father between them.
Eiryn cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, because she didn’t know what to say. She only knew that things had shifted. That everything had shifted. “You’ll be happy to know that I fixed my shit. I think. I won’t . . .” And it amazed her what it cost her to meet his gaze then. “I won’t abandon my post again.”
He studied her for long moment, his gaze uncomfortably shrewd.
“No,” he murmured. “I don’t think you will.” Then he nodded toward the ladder behind them. “Go. Do what you need to do. Don’t ever grab my arm like that again unless you want it cut off—” but his mouth curved as he said that, and his ferocious eyes gleamed—“and under no circumstances are you to come back into my sight until you’ve eaten something and washed off the mildew smell. I don’t care if it takes days.”
She smiled at him. A real smile, bright and wide, and then wider still when he looked taken aback by it.
“You have my promise,” she assured him. “I won’t offend the royal nose.”
And this time when she climbed that obnoxious ladder and ran back to the Lodge, it really was easy. Her legs felt like separate weights, dragging her down, but her heart was lighter than it had been in years.
In her shower, she rinsed out her hair a final time and squeezed out the excess water. She stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a wide, soft towel, then combed her fingers through her wet hair and left it otherwise alone.
She padded out of her bathroom, letting the radiant heat from the floors soak into her bare feet. Her rooms were in the east wing of the Lodge, set up on a higher floor with views out over the village and the bay. At night sometimes, when the wind was good, she could hear the crash of the ocean while she slept. Her rooms were private. Very few people ever came in here, by invitation or at all. Her living room looked like any other brother’s. Weapons on the wall. Perhaps a nicer seating area than some, arranged to let her watch the screen Gunnar had set up or stare off through her windows at the sea. A wide, stone-topped table where she mended her things as needed and sometimes ate. All very standard. All very common to anyone in the brotherhood.
But her bedroom was entirely different.
Possibly it was completely feminine, she thought as she made her way down the hall toward it. Though she never would have used that word before the past month. Still, what else to call the high bed in the ancient four-poster style that she’d piled high with mattresses and pillows, furs and blankets? The thick, deep rugs in bright colors to take the sting of the dark winters away? It was the only place in her whole life that she’d ever let herself be soft, and only while she slept.
She used to think that with pride, as if it made her strong to hide parts of herself. Tonight, it only made her wonder how she’d gone so long and so far when she was so divided.
She was halfway across her bedroom floor, her gaze on one of the soft, bright rugs in question, when the fact she wasn’t alone in her bedroom penetrated.
Her head jerked up. She froze.
Riordan leaned there against the end of her high bed, one hand looped around the nearest bedpost. His dark eyes were glittering fiercely. He looked pissed, in fact, something she ignored as she looked down to his legs. He was wearing very low, cut off exercise trousers, the bottom edge of a white bandage visible beneath one ragged hem. And that was all he was wearing.
So many things warred inside of her, then. What to say. How to say it. Where to start—and all of it was swept away by something much bigger and much more raw because he was here. He was alive.
She’d ordered him to live and he had.
He straightened. Slowly. He pulled himself to his full height, reminding her that he was Riordan, one of the most powerful broth
ers in the clan. His beautiful body, smooth brown marble etched with the brands and tattoos that marked them as who they were, was a little battered. A cut here. That bandage. But he was here.
They were both here.
Eiryn finally admitted to herself that she hadn’t believed for one second that they would survive that crossing. Not at this time of year. Not in that boat.
“This is bullshit.”
She blinked at his gruff tone. “What?”
He was gripping the bedpost so hard she thought it might snap off. That hard-ass, serious look was stamped all over his face. Like they were facing off as usual and he was here to slap her down. Also as usual.
But nothing was as usual.
“It was supposed to be a whole winter,” he said, like that was some kind of accusation. “I want my winter.”
“Riordan.” She found her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. “You’re hurt. You should be resting. What are you raving about?”
He scowled right back at her. “I cut myself off from shit like this a long time ago. Deliberately. My whole life, I sacrificed everything for the clan. For the brotherhood. For the glory of dying the way I deserved to die for what I did to my family.”
She eyed him. “Did you make it snow that year?”
He actually growled at her. “You told me I used that to keep everything else at a distance, and you’re right. I always have. Except you.” He shook his head then. “Ten years ago you came out of nowhere and knocked me off balance. And I knew I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve to be happy. But what the hell did scraping you off do but make it worse?”
“Is that what this is?” she asked, forcing her words out though her throat felt too tight. “Worse?”
“You’re under my skin,” he told her, his voice that dark sugar that rolled all over her. “You have been for years. I always know where you are. I always know what you’re doing. I find you first. It doesn’t matter how badly you want to kill me, or how much you blame me, or what you pretend when you look at me. I told you on the beach. It’s you and it’s always been you.”
“Why are you yelling at me?”
“Because you fucking know it!” he threw at her. “You knew I lied ten years ago and you knew exactly what I was saying on that beach today and what is it going to—”
“Hey. Dumbass.”
He stopped, looking even more furious than before. “What did you call me?”
“I called you a dumbass, because you are one.” She shook her head, raking her hair back with her hands because she’d never wanted to hit him more, and that was saying something. But for once in her life, hitting wasn’t the right answer. So she opened her mouth and she made herself say something far more demanding. And terrifying. “I love you.”
She thought that shimmered there between them, but maybe she was hyperventilating.
Riordan’s dark eyes bored straight through her. His gorgeous mouth was something like grim.
“Yeah, babe,” he said, his voice too dark. “I know. You have for a long, long time. Let’s call it ten years, for the sake of argument.”
She scowled at him again, even while her heart tripped in her chest and much lower, her pussy blazed with need.
“I’m glad you know so much, asshole. Here’s what I don’t know. How does this work? How can two brothers possibly . . .” She shook her head, because this was all a little dizzying and she didn’t know how to stop it. Or if she wanted to stop it. “You can’t claim me. Or if you do, I should claim you too. Because to be clear, I have a lot of thoughts about anyone touching you without permission—”
“Eiryn.”
“—and those thoughts involve my blades. And there definitely can’t be any public sex unless I’m on top, in front of all those lecherous bastards who, you’re so right, already spend a lot of penis time with me in their—”
“Baby.”
She stopped, her heart going wild in her chest and her voice so scratchy she could feel it in her chest. But he was smiling then. That dark, rich curve of his mouth that made her turn to pure heat and need inside, hungry and wild. “You can be on top. You can be in any position you want, if you think that’s going to make a difference. Hell, we don’t need to put on a show for anyone ever again. I’ve had enough compliance to last me a lifetime.”
There was something inside her then, growing wide and going deep. Filling her up. And she didn’t know whether she should try to run toward it or away from it, when all she really knew how to do was fight.
She focused on Riordan instead.
“I spent all this time hating you,” she said, her voice rough again. “I cut you open, and I’m not even sorry. But all this time I was calling it the wrong thing.”
She didn’t realize she’d moved, but she was standing in front of him then. She slid her hands up his bare chest, reveling in the feel of him beneath her palms. Hot and smooth. Alive. And hers. At last, hers.
“I don’t know how to do it right,” she confessed. “I don’t know how to do anything that isn’t dark and violent and more than a little fucked up.”
Riordan’s mouth kicked up in the corner. “I told you I like you lethal. I meant it.”
She shook her head, aware on some distant level that she was shaking. For once, she didn’t care. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be normal.”
“I hope not,” he said gruffly. He smoothed his hands over her hair, holding her there before him. Eiryn wrapped her arms around his chest and let him tilt her face to his. “I like you, babe. All of you.”
“I hate it when you call me babe.”
“No,” Riordan said. “You don’t.”
He bent down, pressing his mouth to hers. He took his time, tasting her and tempting her, hot and deep and perfect.
Not like sex, though it hummed there between them, that shining, desperate, gleaming need that had always bound them together and always would. This kiss was more like a promise.
Until it shifted, making the hunger bloom and her pussy clench.
He moved as if to pick her up and she pushed him back, frowning up at him. “Your leg.”
“It’s my third leg you need to worry about,” he muttered, making her roll her eyes.
“Get up on the bed,” she told him. He slid himself onto her high mattress, pushing himself into the middle.
Eiryn let her towel drop and crawled up with him. She knelt beside him, her beautiful warrior stretched out on her bed for the first time. Her hands shook a little as she moved them to his waistband, helping him strip the cut-off shorts down and off his leg without hurting him. Too much.
She flicked a look at him. “Are you sure . . . ?”
“You have three seconds to climb up here and handle this situation,” he told her, all bossy-ass brother, and the truth was, she liked it. “Or I will.”
And who was she to refuse that cock of his, long and thick and dark, rearing up from his cut stomach and tempting her almost beyond bearing?
“Lie still,” she told him huskily. “And try not to be an idiot.”
Her thighs still hurt from her run, but she didn’t care. Her knees were scraped, but she ignored that. She swung her leg over his sculpted torso, much higher against him than she needed to go, and let him feel exactly how wet and hot her pussy was as she dragged herself down the length of him. Then she propped herself up with one arm and reached between them, wrapping her fingers around his thick, silken cock and working the fat head inside her slick sheath.
“Slow it down,” he rumbled at her. His hands came down to grab her ass, holding her in that firm grip she loved. “I’m not kidding.”
And because he was hurt, she went slow. She tortured them both, easing him in, taking him slow inch by slow inch until finally—finally—she had all of him inside her, so hard and huge it made her breath go funny.
She rolled her hips, long and slow and careful not to mess with his thigh. He sucked in a breath, so she did it again.
Riordan reached up and took her
face in his hands again, pulling her down close. She kept up with her slow, hot roll, sending that glorious fire everywhere. Her mouth. The pulse in her neck. The greedy, hard points of her nipples that she shamelessly rubbed against his chest. And her hungry, demanding clit that she could rub against him in this position, throwing her so high and so close she almost burnt to a crisp right there.
But Riordan had that serious look on his face again. And his eyes were so dark she thought he could see straight through her. She didn’t hide. She didn’t deflect. She held his cock deep inside her, and she let him see exactly what that did to her.
Because here in his arms there were no divisions. She was as much a woman as she was a warrior, and Riordan knew both sides of her equally. Intimately. He’d fought with her and he’d fucked her silly and she imagined that if they were lucky they’d continue to do both of those things for a long, long time.
This time, when emotion pricked at the back of her eyes, she let it fall. Because she had nothing left to hide. Not from him.
His face changed. Softened.
“What’s this?” he asked, that dark magic voice of his a bare scrape of sound. He shifted and ran his thumb below her eye, catching the tear that fell there.
But Eiryn smiled at him, wide and true, and rolled her hips again, sending him so deep inside of her it should have hurt. It should have, but it didn’t. Just like them.
“I think I’m happy,” she whispered, and it came out like a vow.
Riordan levered himself up from the bed, still holding her close, his hands cradling her face again, his dark eyes intense.
“I thought I was going to die today,” he told her. “I thought I was ready. But when I looked up and saw you on that cliff, with all of our brothers behind you . . .”
She pressed her mouth to his. “I know.”
He slanted his mouth over hers, taking the kiss deep. Then he pulled back again, whole worlds of emotion right there in his dark eyes. She recognized it. She felt them in her, too. She felt him everywhere.
“Eiryn.” Her name was a promise. And something far more primitive. “You’re the only thing I love I haven’t killed.”
