Maybe that was why it finally—belatedly—occurred to her to fight him.
She rocked against him, trying to break his hold. He ignored it. She twisted and rolled and tried to use her muddy clothes to help her. He ignored that, too.
Tyr finally slanted a look down at her as she shoved hard against at his chest, using her clothes like a battering ram. But she couldn’t read a goddamned thing on that face of his, so harsh and fascinating in the dark.
“Really?” He almost sounded amused. “You haven’t learned not to shove me yet? They don’t make you mainland girls very bright, do they?”
“Let go of me!” Helena threw at him, as if the ferocity in her voice might do what her hands couldn’t.
As if it might erase all the things she’d learned about herself tonight, and all the things he could do to her. All the things you want him to do, that terrible voice inside of her whispered. The more noncompliant the better.
Tyr’s mouth curved. “Sure thing, sweetheart.”
Then he simply lifted her up and tossed her away from him, toward the open water and the raider ships out there on their moorings, dark and bold and fearsome in the stormy summer night.
And Helena heard him laughing right before she sank beneath the waves.
4
She went under hard, his little liar with the agenda she obviously thought she’d managed to hide. Helena might as well have shouted out the fact she was concealing some shit, back there at the fire, and Tyr really didn’t like that she wasn’t merely a piece of ass he could amuse himself with—but he’d known that, hadn’t he? No piece of ass who was angling for a boat ride to the eastern islands and all the raider cock that came with that life would have deliberately poked at a brother like that.
Just like no pissant little bitch of a perimeter guard shot at a raider minding his own business. It was sheer insanity. That was why Tyr had thought he’d found Krajic’s lair when that bullet had grazed him. It didn’t make any sense for the weak men at that compound to provoke a raider attack.
Which meant these things were probably connected, staggering coincidences being as unlikely as they were. Which also meant that getting his rocks off with this one wasn’t going to be simple, no matter how easily she’d come for him back there in the woods. Tyr didn’t think that she could be in league with Krajic, because the butchering sadist wasn’t exactly known for his soft feelings toward women, fertile or otherwise, and Tyr was more than a little inclined to run with his gut on that. But the look Wulf had given him at the bonfire had been perfectly clear. The mystery of Helena, who was hiding something while potentially being protected for no apparent reason by the red-faced kinglet, was clan business until and unless there was some proof her secrets couldn’t affect them.
He didn’t like that at all.
He’d never liked mysteries.
Tyr dunked his own head and let the salt water steal the battle from his skin. Then he waited there in the embrace of the dark, moody night, letting that sweet bitch of a sea churn around him, dangerous and mercurial and eternally complicated. Not unlike the woman he’d already spent more time thinking about than any other female in his memory, which wasn’t exactly the happiest thought he’d ever had.
And it didn’t make his dick any less hard, did it?
When waiting for Helena to surface started to annoy him, Tyr reached down, fished around until he found her, and then hauled her back up onto her feet.
And when she looked furious instead of panicked, he told himself that thing that flared in him was nothing but a grudging sort of relief that he hadn’t inadvertently killed this hostage who was proving to be more and more interesting by the moment. Wulf liked mysteries, the twisted bastard. He got off on solving them. He’d hate it if this one died without giving up her secrets, and Tyr didn’t like to disappoint his king.
Not that she needed to know any of that.
“If you drown it will piss me off,” Tyr gritted at her once he’d set her back on her feet. “I thought you understood by now that pissing me off isn’t something you want to do.”
He saw that what she actually wanted was to hit him, even as the water streamed over her and her dark hair was plastered to her skull. It made his cock twitch. That and the fact she was still clutching her wet clothes, like some part of her wanted to obey him whether she knew she did or not. It made him want to get his hands back in that sweet little pussy of hers and see how far that went. It made him want to taste her, fuck her, a whole lot more than twice. Ride them both hard enough and long enough to keep this hunger from sinking its claws any deeper into his gut.
But Wulf wanted her secrets, and what his king wanted, Tyr gave him. More than that, he liked the devious bastard he’d chosen to follow back when they were all little more than boys, Gunnar not quite as crazy and Zyron still with them. I will kill you with my own hands, Krajic, he vowed, as he always did when he thought of his lost blood brother. He would not allow that mercenary whore to define him.
First, though, he wanted to see what his compliant girl looked like without all that mud and rain and a crazy pregnant bitch all over her.
“What if I couldn’t swim?” Helena demanded. “What if I’d never been in the sea before?”
Of course, he thought. Because one thing he’d already learned about this woman, she didn’t know when it would be wise to shut her mouth. Not even when she was standing there butt naked in a deserted cove with a raider who’d already finger-banged her once tonight.
He didn’t know whether to marvel at that bravery of hers that he was pretty sure was at least ninety percent sheer stupidity, or pound himself into her until the conundrum went away. Well. Scratch that. He knew what he wanted. What he didn’t know was whether that was cock logic or an actual strategy.
“Then you better hope you’re smart enough to hold your breath. Or maybe stand up.”
She gathered her clothes in the crook of one arm and slicked her hair back with her free hand, but she didn’t stop scowling at him. Tyr couldn’t remember the last woman—hell, the last person—who had dared.
“I could have died from the sheer terror of being tossed into the sea in the middle of the night with no warning.”
“The warning was when we walked out into the water. What did you want? A round of trumpets?”
She ignored that—and people really didn’t ignore Tyr, generally speaking. It wasn’t a particularly healthy choice.
“I could have inhaled water on the way down by accident. It’s dark out here, by the way, and therefore who can even tell which way is up toward the surface and which way is a certain watery death?”
Tyr indulged an urge he didn’t care to examine and reached for her, running his palms over the inky weight of her hair. Her face was washed clean of mud now, and it was as bad as it had been back in that otherwise boring bunker. Delicately formed, if pale, and way too pretty. Those damned eyes of her, big and smart and too gray for his peace of mind. Too much like the sea. Unpredictable and certain to kick his ass at any moment.
It was like adrenaline, a straight shot to the balls, making him ready. To fight, to fuck—it didn’t matter which.
“Maybe less talking the next time you find yourself under water,” he suggested, fitting his hand to the curve of her skull. “More floating. It works better.”
He thought she meant to hurl something at him with that mouth of hers, and he didn’t understand the thing in him that wanted that. Enjoyed it, even. And that didn’t make any kind of sense. He, who tolerated no disrespect from any man alive, could not possibly enjoy it when it came from one small female with an attitude problem and a story she didn’t want to tell. It was impossible.
But here he was, waist deep in the water with a hard-on and a woman who was still glaring at him instead of handling it. What the hell was that? Other than a problem?
“I had no idea that swimming was a raider pastime,” she said, which wasn’t exactly the verbal assault he’d expected. As if she’d thought bet
ter of shooting her mouth off, and he couldn’t tell if he liked that or not. Maybe he liked it better when she didn’t think, when she wasn’t cautious. “I imagine your badass raider reputations would take a hit if anyone knew that what you all really like isn’t leaving a trail of dead bodies in your wake across the mainland, but a lovely communal bath.”
There she was. Sharp and prickly and a little bit spicy, too. He felt his mouth curve.
“Wash the mud out of your clothes,” he told her. She glared at him and he shrugged, dropping his hand. “Or don’t. I don’t give a crap. But it’s a long boat ride even when you’re not covered in mud.”
She blinked as if it hadn’t occurred to her that he was going to take her back to the eastern islands with him, and Tyr couldn’t have said what that tightening was that made his ribs ache a bit. He crossed his arms over his chest like that might tamp it down, and watched her as she swallowed a little too convulsively. Then she ducked her head and pulled her T-shirt from the tangle of her clothes. She let the waves toss it around on the edge of her fingers, and then bent it back on itself to scrub the worst of the mud out.
He took it from her when she was done and hung it over his shoulder.
“Note to self,” Helena said tartly. “Raiders are excellent drying racks for laundry.”
Tyr said nothing, because it wasn’t his mouth that wanted to express itself just then. She swallowed again, in that same way, and fought with her jeans in the water, using her hands as scrubbing brushes once she’d untangled the legs and pulled them right-side out again. When she was finished, he took the jeans, too, and threw them over his shoulder.
“Now what?” He saw bravado in the way she tilted her chin up, but her lush mouth looked vulnerable. “Do you have a floor I could sweep? Some dusting?”
He didn’t answer her. He reached over and curled a hand around her shoulder and tugged her closer. The waves swelled between them, then dropped, and he could hear the way they crashed into the beach. And still he was sure he could hear the thud of her heart. Or maybe he could see it, even in the dark. He slid his hand over the delicate ridge of her collarbone until he could feel the wild flutter of her pulse.
He hadn’t needed confirmation, but he liked having it—another weird thing that had never crossed his mind before this woman. Because in his experience, he looked at women and they were wet, so he had sex with them. Or they weren’t, so he didn’t. The end.
Uncertainty was not his strong suit.
“Service comes in all kinds of forms, sweetheart,” he said in a low voice.
He tugged her closer still, then settled his hands around her rib cage at the indentation of her waist, just there below her tiny little tits. He smiled faintly when she shuddered, when her breath caught so loud it sounded more like a shout. Then he simply lifted her up against him, high into the air, and fastened his mouth to one of those tight little nipples that had been taunting him since back in the courtyard.
She made an inarticulate noise and then she arched into him, hard.
And Tyr indulged himself. He sucked on her until she writhed in his grip. He licked and he teased. She rocked and shuddered, and her hands gripped his hair—but she couldn’t seem to make up her mind whether she wanted to tug him off her or pull him closer.
Both, maybe. So he did as he pleased.
He rubbed against her with his beard until she shuddered. He tormented her with his teeth, going back and forth between her two small, absurdly sensitive tits, tasting the salt of the sea and her own sweetness, until she was making a soft, high sort of sound that he could feel in his cock like the sweep of her tongue down the length of it.
He laughed, then set her back down. And he enjoyed that destroyed look on her face. Lost and ruined and entirely his.
Exactly the way he wanted her, no matter what secrets she was hiding away behind those stormy gray eyes of hers.
“Let’s go,” he said, and he made no particular effort to modify his tone. It sounded as raw and as rough as he felt just then and he watched the way it rolled over her like one more slap of the sea against her back, making her sway slightly.
Tyr turned and headed back toward shore. He expected her to follow him and she did, though when he glanced back at her as he made it to the beach there was a certain mutinous set to her jaw that made him imagine that had been a fight for her. But what other option did she have? Swimming off butt naked into the night and hoping for the best?
He found himself maybe a little more psyched than he should have been that Helena was proving to be as practical as she was smoking hot.
He reached the place where he’d left his shit and dug around in his pack. He pulled out the big, flat sheet of tight-knit wool he used as a towel, a coat, an easy sleeping bag, whatever, and shook it out as Helena drew closer to him. He watched the way her gaze lingered on the pack, where he’d stashed that old computer tablet of hers, instead of on the far more significant threat that was him standing there in front of her with a giant hard-on.
Good information to have, no matter his cock’s opinion on the subject. Tyr filed it away, and then, when she finally dragged her gaze away from her tablet, just stared at her a while without letting much of anything show on his face. Purely for the pleasure of watching her flush hot, then shift her feet in the sand. Then wince, of course, because she’d walked herself raw rather than ask him for help, like an idiot.
“Feet hurt?”
She frowned at him. “Why do you keep asking me that? Do you have a thing about feet?”
He almost smiled at that. “Don’t worry, little girl. You’re not going to have to ask what I’m into. You’ll know.” He watched her eyes widen and those nipples harden all over again, like they were begging for his mouth. “Was that a yes?”
Helena studied him, wrapping her arms around herself, either because she was cold or because she was scared, and he was enough of a dick that he didn’t really care which, because he could see that she was also turned on.
“Yes,” she said after a moment, her voice subdued, like it had been another fight inside of her to admit something he already knew was true. “They’re a little banged up.”
“You’re not bleeding,” he said gruffly. “Bruised, maybe.”
“I think I’m—” She cut herself off. “How do you know that?”
“The question you should be asking, sweetheart, is why you didn’t ask for help when you realized I expected you to walk on bare feet through the woods in the middle of the night. I’m a raider. I’m betting it crossed your mind we were heading for the water. You knew it was going to be more than a five-minute stroll.”
Her arms tightened there across her middle, and that fuck you gleam in her eyes was perfect. She was the least tough thing he’d ever seen, naked and slender and dripping wet with the wind slapping at her, and she was still braver than every last moron at that compound. How could Tyr not love that shit?
“The next time I’m abducted and literally carted off over the shoulder of a terrifying man covered in blood and a selection of very sharp blades,” she said in that edgy voice of hers that made his pulse roar at him, “I’ll be sure to stop and demand that my captor provide me with adequate footwear for the forced march in the darkness.”
“You don’t ask for help, guess what? You don’t get any. This is a raider camp, not a nursery, and it’s even harsher back home on the islands.” He considered the goose bumps rising all over her, imagined the sting of the wind on her tender flesh after the warmer seawater. “Do you want to dry yourself off, Helena?”
And she was never boring, this one. She scowled at him, even harder than before, and she thought about it. He could see the calculation in her gaze, the way she took the measure of him—keeping her compliant eyes above the waist, he noticed to his amusement—and then, when she’d started to edge toward actually shivering from the cold, she cleared her throat.
“What are my options?”
Tyr had assumed she’d outright surrender to get out o
f the wind, like every other woman he’d ever met would have—and a lot sooner. That she hadn’t done that made his cock so hard it bordered on pain.
He shrugged. “You can take this and use it as a towel or you can go up there and warm yourself by the fire.”
Tyr could have stood there all night, watching her gray eyes move from her wet clothes hanging over his shoulder to the wool wrap in his fist to the bag at his feet. Especially because her eyes blazed with fury and resentment when they finally met his again.
“Thank you,” she said in that same snotty tone she’d used in the woods. “I’d love to use your towel.”
He laughed at that and moved closer to her, draping the wool over her shoulders and then wrapping around her so it covered at much of her as possible. As he pulled it tight, he got his mouth near her ear.
“I keep telling you to watch that mouth,” he growled, and saw the new and different set of goose bumps that shivered to life at the sound of his words. “Next step is me watching it for you. Think you’ll like that?” He laughed again when she shuddered against him. “Because I know I will.”
He let her stand there and think about that while he tugged his trousers back on and stamped his way back into his boots. He secured his weapons again, pulling the leather tight over his chest. Then he threw his bag of shit over his shoulder and jutted his chin toward the fire, a wordless command for her to start walking.
She jerked at that, hopefully because she’d been a little lost in the idea of him watching her mouth for her, and she tugged the wool tighter around her. Like she thought it was armor.
“What? I’m not—I’m naked under this.”
“Believe me, sweetheart. I haven’t forgotten.” She looked scandalized, and it was the most entertainment he’d had in ages. “Are you blushing?”
“I…”
Helena, lost for words. Tyr found he savored it.
It didn’t last. “I can’t just … walk up there, obviously naked.”