Gently at first, then not so gently. Then not only the one finger.
Oh my god.
“Breathe,” Tyr said at her ear, but Helena ignored him. And she couldn’t obey him anyway.
She was transfixed. Poleaxed. Lost in the scene before her and the terrible knowledge of where this couldn’t possibly be going and yet it had to be heading there. It had to be. She was destroyed and caught and she didn’t even know what was happening to her anymore, or who she was, or why she could feel every thrust of Riordan’s relentless fingers in that woman’s asshole as if he was doing it to her. There was a sledgehammer where her heart should have been and a terrible ache in her pussy, and then right there before her, right out in the open where everyone could see, Riordan was pressing the head of his thick cock where his fingers had been.
The woman moaned. So did Helena.
Tyr’s arms moved, holding her tighter against him. If she’d been able to process it, she might have imagined he’d done that as automatically, as thoughtlessly, as she’d let out that moan.
Riordan pressed deeper. He was speaking, Helena, realized, though she couldn’t hear what he said. He stroked the woman’s back, moving one big hand in a small circle as if he was soothing her. She trembled, but she didn’t fight him. If anything, though she trembled, she seemed to melt at his command. And Riordan didn’t stop. He pushed in slowly, so slowly, until he was balls deep inside the woman’s ass.
Her ass.
Helena only realized she was rocking herself against Tyr’s still hard cock behind her when he muttered something that sounded like a curse and set her away from him, letting go of her to rustle around in his pack again.
She didn’t care what he was doing. Riordan was still seated deep inside the woman’s ass, not moving. He smoothed his hands up and down her back, soothing her again, and Helena could see that she was quivering. But the full breasts that hung down as she rested her head on her arms and seemed to fight to breathe were pebbled into hard points.
Riordan leaned over her, pressing his sculpted chest against the woman’s back and bracing himself with one hand on the ground near her head. He slid his other arm beneath her to rub at her clit with that hand of his that still gleamed with oil. And only then did he begin to thrust.
He pulled out slow and went in slower. Once. Then again.
The woman let out a high, thin moan, and Riordan grinned again. And began surging into her ass that much harder. Over and over, until the woman began rocking back to meet each thrust, making no effort to hide the noises she was making as she did it.
And Helena sat wrapped in wool and a man she hardly knew, and shook.
“Are you going to beg me to fuck you, Helena?” Tyr asked, and he sounded something like grim in the dark. “Or are you more about watching?”
“No,” she said, though her voice sounded shredded, as if she’d been screaming into the wind for hours. She didn’t even know what her response meant. She had no idea what she wanted.
Or she did. She did. But she wasn’t ready to accept that.
Helena twisted around to look at Tyr and froze, her mouth dropping open. He’d opened his trousers and pulled out that cock of his that she’d been rubbing herself against all this time. It was huge and so damned hard, and he was running one fist up and down it, hard and dirty and oiled. The oil must have been what he’d reached for in his pack. It was mesmerizing and more, it made a spike of pure greed shoot through her.
“I need to come,” he told her, his voice a guttural thing but a certain, considering light in his dark eyes. And he didn’t look at anything but Helena, sitting with her wool wrap gaping open and her mouth much the same, she was sure. “I don’t give a shit if it’s in you or some other piece of ass.”
And later, Helena would tell herself all kinds of stories about this moment, she knew. That she’d coolly analyzed the pros and cons. That she’d worried about what might happen to her while he was off having sex with someone else. That she’d simply acquitted herself the way she would have in any winter marriage sort of situation.
But here, now, there were no stories. There was only that stirring, needy look in his eyes and that beautiful cock. There was all that sex and debauchery in the wind, moans and cries into the night and the slapping sound of hard thrusting beneath it. And Helena wanted to touch this particular raider in front of her more than she could remember wanting anything else, ever.
More than her destiny. More than her promises.
So she did. She crawled up closer to him, she pushed his hand away from that thick cock of his, oiled and smooth and so perfect it made her shake a little bit, and she wrapped her hands around him.
And then it was her turn to play.
* * *
Helena was going to kill him.
After all these years and all the battles he’d weathered, the war chief of the brotherhood was going to be taken down by one gray-eyed girl and her untrained hands all over his dick.
Tyr supposed it wasn’t a bad way to go.
He leaned back against the log and watched her with narrowed eyes as she knelt there before him, that frown between her brows as she focused all her attention on his cock, sliding her hands up and down the oiled length, testing the shape of the head and the heaviness of his balls. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth and she hummed a little bit as she worked him, and Tyr thought it was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen in his life.
The wool he’d wrapped her in slid down her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to care. Her long black hair was drying this close to the fire, shifting and sliding around her as her body moved. He could see those cute little tits, the peaks hard as hell and making his mouth water for another taste, but he didn’t move.
He let his pretty little mystery worship his cock the way she wanted to. She licked her lips and he thought she might suck on him a little bit, the way her cheeks went bright red, but she didn’t. It was all about her soft, soft hands and the odd little rhythms she built. She moved both hands together, up and down. She let one hand play with his balls while the other twisted this way and that on his thick, sensitive cockhead.
And the best was how she was turning herself on. He saw the gleam of sweat break out all over her skin. He saw the way she moved her hips, as if that greedy little pussy was looking for something, anything, to fill it up and make it feel better. He watched the way her gray eyes darkened and grew more and more unfocused.
Tyr felt his own orgasm like a hammer to the side of his head, coming at him fast. He could have held it back, but why bother? He hadn’t had a hand job in a long time but this woman, these hands, were making him reconsider his position on the subject. Anyone who looked at his dick like it was a holy object while she couldn’t seem to stop touching him should be encouraged to keep right on doing that.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t having painful fantasies of working his way into that tight little pussy of hers and finally, finally pounding into her the way he wanted to do.
“Beg me,” he told her then, his voice harsh with need. “Beg me to fuck you.”
Her hands slowed, and he reached out to catch them and move them, thrusting a little bit harder into her grip.
Helena eyed him, and there was a kind of mischief in her gaze that almost made him come right then. “No,” she said.
“You want me inside of you.” He slowed them both down then, dragging his cock through the circle of her fingers like it was her cunt. “You want me so deep and so hard you don’t know how to breathe. Beg me, Helena.”
She shuddered, and the faint smile she aimed at him seemed to pierce him hard, like the blade of an enemy, sinking deep and somehow making him that much closer to busting a nut right there. He told himself it was about sex, nothing more.
“No,” she said again.
Tyr grunted. “Fine. Suit yourself.”
He sat up and hooked an arm around her waist, then rolled her beneath him, her back nestled against the wool and all of him hard and heavy o
n top of her. He kneed his way between her legs and settled himself against her, his cock nestled tight against her scalding hot, dripping wet pussy.
This was definitely going to kill him.
But she’d never tell him a single secret if she didn’t think she could trust him, and there was no better way to prove a man could be trusted than what he didn’t do with his goddamned cock.
Even if he had to grit his teeth, hard, when she wriggled beneath him.
“I said no. Why did you ask if you were going to ignore what I said?”
It took him a moment to fight that dark tide back, the one that was all animal, all barbarian, and bit at him to fuck fuck fuck and then fight something, just for fun.
He propped himself up in his elbows and shoved his fingers deep into her thick, dark hair, holding her head fast between his hands.
“I’m not buried in that wet pussy, am I?” he growled at her. “So maybe dial back the drama.” She scowled at him and bucked against him, sliding her juicy cunt all over his cock, and he sucked in a breath. “Good plan, Helena. See how long I keep from fucking you when you taunt me like that.”
She froze, like he’d figured she would, and her breath came in fast little pants. Her tits were like hard little bites against his chest, her thighs were soft and spread open and clamped around his hips, and he’d known it when he’d seen her, hadn’t he? He wanted to take his time with this one. He wanted to lose himself in her until he knew every single secret of her lush, long body. He wanted to make her scream his name. He wanted her to take his cock in every single way she’d seen a cock get taken tonight, and that was just to start.
He could handle this.
“Breathe,” he ordered her. “It’s less fun if you pass out.”
She frowned at him, but she managed to take a long, deep breath, and Tyr shifted, getting the base of his cock flush with her plump little clit. She moaned.
“Yeah,” he said, aware that his voice was thick. “Right there.”
He experimented, thrusting so the base of his cock dragged over her clit and the rest of his cock skimmed through all that sweet cream. Her eyes crossed and her jaw tightened and he grinned. His poor little compliant girl.
He was going to rip her conventional little soul right out of her body, one fuck at a time.
“Get your hand back down there and grab the head,” he ordered her.
She didn’t think to argue, he saw, and he liked that maybe a little too much. It took her a minute to figure out the angle from beneath him, but she did it, and when her still-slick hand was finally wrapped around him again, Tyr began to move.
It wasn’t exactly dry humping when she was this wet, and it was too damned good. The length of his cock was buried in all her softness and that tight grip of her hand on the tip was going to take his head off. His balls smacked into her taint with every slide he took through all that heat and cream, and Tyr kind of lost his shit there for a minute. He rocked against her, making sure to bang her clit with every stroke, and when he could grab back the final shred of his control, he watched her face.
She was flushed and wide-eyed. She shuddered and she shuddered. She was slick with sweat and her thighs trembled as they cradled him, and he’d already seen her come once. This was going to be even better.
He dragged his cock against her clit then. Once. Again.
She made a very high-pitched sound in the back of her throat and went very stiff against him, a stunned look in those stormy eyes of hers. Tyr moved his hips in a circle, rubbing hard against her clit, then harder still.
Helena made a sobbing sound. She whispered, “Oh no—”
The way she had in the woods. And then she came all over him. He felt the surge of wet heat right there on his cock as she shook and rocked and clenched down on him tight.
He rode it out, so hot and so wet, such sweet cream all over his cock, and then he finally came so hard it almost ripped him open, shooting into her hand and then spilling all over her perfect belly.
And when he dropped his head down to rest there a minute, to get his face in the crook of her shoulder and taste her satisfaction, Tyr didn’t give a shit what the hell this woman was doing or what mysteries she was wrapped up in or what she was hiding.
He wanted to get inside that pussy. He wanted to stay there for a long time.
He wanted to forget everything else in the whole damned world but that.
But her.
6
It didn’t occur to Tyr until the next morning, in the gray butt crack of a particularly surly dawn after the previous day’s cunt of a storm, that thinking that kind of crap was pretty damned close to treason.
If not outright treason, than it was the kind of bullshit that got a brother ripped in half after his woman got killed. Like that poor bastard Gunnar, the once-mighty warrior who was even now roaming the farthest reaches of the eastern islands with his collection of pit wolves and a broken brain, as far as anyone knew.
Tyr was not going down like that over some piece of ass, he told himself now. No way in hell.
It took a lot more willpower than it should have to keep himself from looking over his shoulder to the part of the boat where the captives were huddled together with the camp girls who had come along for this latest raiding adventure. He knew Helena was there with them, right where he’d put her and told her to stay. She was wrapped in his wool and wearing those same socks as shoes with her own stiffly dried clothes, as protection against the wind and any greedy brothers who might think she looked like a nice treat to while away the sailing time to the eastern islands.
Helena had slept like the dead last night, curled up against him like she trusted him, and Tyr had never cuddled a piece of ass in his life. He liked to sleep alone. Or with his blades, if he was feeling particularly hardcore. He liked his goddamned space or he wouldn’t have been a raider in the first place, he’d have packed himself into one of these mainland strongholds with too many goddamn people and lived with a thousand annoying rules to tell him how to jerk his own dick, and when.
But he hadn’t shoved her away. He’d dozed his allotted few hours, then he’d shifted her so she was covered and protected from the wind and he wasn’t thinking about that urge any closer, and then he’d taken the last watch. He’d been sitting on the highest rocky outcropping over the cove when the sky had started to show the faintest dark blue signs of the coming day, his hard gaze moving up and down the tree line, scanning for movement.
Wulf had appeared the way he always did, like an apparition out of nowhere, when anyone else would have made a racket climbing up those rocks. Tyr had pivoted with his hand on his favorite blade in the split second before he recognized who had snuck up on him. He dropped his hand when he saw Wulf’s usual shadow, his bodyguard and half-sister Eiryn, right behind him—her blade already drawn and ready and eager to cut Tyr’s arm right the hell off.
Eiryn was swift death on supple feet. She liked to aim her dark, hateful gaze straight at Tyr, especially when his hand on his weapon might constitute a threat to Wulf she could neutralize first and ask questions about later, if at all. She was also the fastest blade in the clan, or she wouldn’t have won her position at Wulf’s side the way she had years back, no matter her blood tie to him.
She’d looked deeply disappointed in the fact Tyr hadn’t been startled enough to draw on Wulf, giving her the chance to gut him the way she’d been jonesing for all these years. The bloodthirsty little asshole.
“You’re a spooky motherfucker,” Tyr had growled at Wulf.
His king had acknowledged that with his usual faint smile. He’d crouched down beside Tyr to watch the sky lighten and the waves crash into the cove’s sandy beach for a while, as if he, too, was waiting for something—Krajic—to come out of the trees at them after the heavy fist of the stormy night finally opened up to a little daylight.
Tyr hadn’t acknowledged Eiryn, who he’d felt looming there behind him in that too still, too intent way of hers, her dark blue gaze l
ike a sharp, poisoned spike in the back of his neck. He hated leaving his back exposed. Eiryn was the only person alive he’d let stand there, and not only because they both served Wulf, body and soul. But because he didn’t care if she hated him for what had needed doing, and he didn’t spend a single moment of his time regretting the fact that the war chief he’d crippled to ensure Wulf’s success as king happened to be the piece of shit asshole of a father she and Wulf and Gunnar shared.
And an easy way to make that point as crystal clear as it should have been was to show the deadly bitch his back like he didn’t know she was fantasizing about skewering him straight through.
But he knew. He could feel it the way he always did.
When the sky began lightening in earnest, Tyr had given the sign to the other brothers on watch down below. Then Tyr had followed his king with his lethal shadow back down to the beach where everyone had been starting to stir—washing off the night, dressing themselves, getting in a quick morning-wood fuck, packing up their makeshift camp, whatever.
He’d pulled Helena’s old-ass computer out of his pocket and had handed it to Wulf as they’d walked. Wulf had taken it, flipped it this way and that in his warrior’s battered hands, but hadn’t tried to open the plastic case. He also hadn’t asked where Tyr had found it, because he didn’t need the dots connected for him.
“Whatever her deal is, it has something to do with this,” Tyr had said. He hadn’t known why some part of him was reluctant to share that bit of information, that hunch of his he hadn’t actually confirmed. Why the hell should he have cared? He hadn’t liked it. “Krajic has never struck me as all that into tech when a blade would do.”
Eiryn spat on the ground at the mention of the enemy’s name, which was an appropriate response. It was him she hated, Tyr reminded himself, and for a specific reason. Not Zyron, who had also been a brother.
“Maybe she’s sentimental and it’s filled with pictures of her lost loved ones and childhood haunts,” Wulf had murmured, handing the tablet back. He didn’t sound as if he imagined that was likely.