She was breathing as heavily as if she was hauling ass up a hill. Maybe she was. She could feel herself, overheated and tense, go rigid against him—but his hand still didn’t move.
Maybe she would hate herself if she let him continue. Maybe she would hate herself more if she made him stop.
Her whole life was one big maybe and Eiryn was sick of it. Maybe she wouldn’t make it through this winter. Maybe Wulf would kill her anyway when she did. Maybe she would leave the brotherhood and walk off to become a hermit on some mountaintop somewhere. Maybe she would stage a goddamned coup for the sole purpose of teaching her arrogant blood brother a few hard truths.
Maybe this was the only shot she had at something—anything—that wasn’t one more grim object lesson about her own bad choices. Or then again, maybe this was the worst possible choice of all.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself, her own voice like a shout in her head. It’s much too dark to matter.
That was the excuse she gave when she forced herself to pull in a long breath, then let it out. And then she went with the dark all around her and the man waiting there, hard and sure, behind her. She buried her face against the tough steel arm that cradled her head. She took a sharp little breath, then shifted to give him better access, not to deny him.
And this was Riordan, a raider through and through. He took it.
He stroked his way into her jeans as if he’d never paused in the first place, then growled against her neck as his blunt, tough fingers found their way deep into her pussy, so slippery and hot.
And everything seemed to slide into the dark. Become it. Eiryn lost herself in it. In Riordan’s big, callused hand as he made room for himself between her thighs, pulling her back against him so he could rub that huge cock of his against her ass. Harder this time.
With intent.
He didn’t say a word, and that made it hotter. Better. He found her clit and pinched it, laughing slightly when she jerked against him. Then he slid through her wet folds to thrust two fingers inside her. Deep.
“When’s the last time you came, baby?” he asked her, his voice a dark and terrible thing at her ear, the heel of his hand a delicious torment against her pussy and his fingers a demanding thrust deep inside her. “How long have you been holding it in?”
She didn’t answer him. That would be admitting this was happening, and she couldn’t. Or she wouldn’t. Instead, she kept her mouth shut as she pressed it into his granite bicep, and she surrendered to the fire. The long, slow burn.
And to him.
Riordan set a lazy pace with his great, big, and battered hand, his fingers long and blunt and talented. So damned talented. It was as if he knew her cunt better than she did. As if he’d had it made swollen and juicy like this, to his precise specifications, and now he was reaping the benefits. He knew exactly how to touch her. He always had. He found that spot inside her that made her shake and he rubbed it, over and over again, then made a low, approving noise when she shuddered. He stroked her clit with every thrust, and when she started to breathe too hard and writhe against him he pulled her head back toward his shoulder and wrapped his other hand over her mouth.
“You only get to come if you’re quiet,” he told her, his mouth against her ear, as darkly demanding as the blackness all around them. “Can you do that?”
He sank his fingers deep into her to hit that spot that drove her wildest, then twisted them on the way out, dragging against her oversensitive clit before he thrust into her again.
And again. And again.
And she was nodding wildly in his grasp, her mouth open against the palm he’d pressed against it.
Anything, she thought. She’d do anything at all.
He laughed as if she’d spoken out loud. It was low and dark and only for her, and then he stopped playing.
Riordan plunged his fingers deep inside her pussy, making her arch back against him. She stopped pretending this wasn’t happening and ground herself against him, desperate and shameless, anything to throw herself at that immense and marvelous wave that was coming at her. Hard.
There was nothing but the dark. And his massive arms wrapped around her, holding her exactly where he wanted her. The steel wall of his chest at her back and the huge, hot bar of his cock against her ass. And his hands.
His hands.
She didn’t care that she could hear their own bedsprings moan and shriek. She didn’t care about anything but the fingers inside her and the madness only he ever let loose in her. It swamped her. It ate her alive. It made her rock against his hand, mindless and desperate.
He had one hand over her mouth and the other thrust deep in her pussy, and then he bent to her ear again.
“Come,” he ordered her, dark and thrilling. “Now.”
And she did. It pulsed through her, crashing from sheer sensation into an all-out blaze. She went stiff in his arms, her mouth open against his palm as she shook and shook, rocking it out as her body was torn apart.
Silent. Totally, wreckingly silent.
She felt his mouth against her ear. The faintest touch, as if it was a kiss he’d thought better of giving her halfway through.
And then he eased his hand back, pulling his fingers from the deep, wet clench of her pussy and then out from her jeans. He did nothing to hide the fact that he put them straight into his mouth. Then sucked.
She shook again, as if he’d put his mouth between her legs.
“You still taste as good as I remember,” he told her, his voice little more than a growl.
He shouldn’t have said that. Because she remembered, too. Everything.
Reality asserted itself with a slap Eiryn was pretty sure was audible.
She pushed his other hand from her mouth and rolled as far away from him as possible—which was about half an inch. If that. That intense and disastrous pleasure was storming through her still, making her arms and legs feel distressingly weak. Her pussy ached even more than before, and she knew the only thing that could possibly help was that heavy cock she could still feel against her ass. He made no attempt to move away from her. She could feel him, tense and hot and hard.
As beautiful as he was lethal. Especially for her. She didn’t have to see him to know that.
Eiryn was wrecked. Horrified at herself. No amount of creaking bedsprings around them could hide that. She was gasping for air and trying to be quiet, but she could still feel his faintly rough fingers on her and in her and what the hell was the matter with her? How could she have let this happen?
How could she have wanted this to happen?
“So far,” Riordan said softly, and he ran his hand down her side as if he owned her again the way he almost had, once, “I have to say that compliance isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
It was the hand that did it. So proprietary. It catapulted her back ten years and it was too much, suddenly, to lie here in the aftermath of an orgasm she should never have allowed herself and let him touch her as if everything was fine.
As if she hadn’t just crashed and burned and splintered into a million pieces.
She couldn’t get away from him, the way she would if they were anywhere else. But Eiryn had always preferred offense to defense. This was like any other battlefield.
“Fine,” she bit out. She reached down and shoved her jeans down over her hips, pushing them down to her knees to bare her ass and thighs. Riordan went very, very still behind her. She pressed her ass back against the hard ridge of his cock in his too-tight trousers, twisting her head around so she could whisper to him and not the whole damned bunkhouse. “Go on. I said I would. It’s the perk of doing this, right? You get your daily bang. Have at it, then.”
He was quiet for too long. A hard, vibrating fury of quiet, and it occurred to her that she should have picked a better venue for this. Like, any other venue. There was no putting space between them here. There was no backing off or backtracking or even facing him directly, all of which would give her some control.
But she’d given up control when she’d taken out her braids. She should have known better.
Riordan didn’t speak. He rolled. He hauled her beneath him, tossing her face down on the mattress. He was on top of her in the next instant, pressing her down into a deeply submissive position even as one big arm circled her hips and lifted them, tilting her ass up and back and ready.
“Do you think I won’t take you up on it?” he asked, low and furious, right there against her ear again. And there was something else threaded through that voice of his that she didn’t want to identify. “Do you really think you can shame me? A hate fuck is still a fuck, Eiryn. I’ll take what I can get.”
And she didn’t know what was happening inside of her. Hate and despair and something far more raw and lethal collided hard with all that fire and hunger, as if she hadn’t just come. As if she hadn’t come in years.
As if he was the only one who could ever make her come at all.
He shifted, getting his mouth on that tender spot behind her ear as if it belonged there. She could feel his breath, his beard, his remarkable jaw. She could almost taste him, even though the weight of his big body was pressing her into the mattress—and the messed up thing was that after all her years of insisting she stay on top and demanding that her authority be recognized in sex as well as everywhere else, she loved it. She craved it. She reveled in the crush of him against her. The inexorable strength that kept her immobilized, exactly where he’d put her, here in the dark where no one could see it.
She almost came again from that alone.
“Your problem is we both know you don’t hate me,” he whispered right there against her ear. Eiryn went ice cold with shame, because he could read her too well. He always had. Then she burned hot with something far more dangerous. “You never have and you never will.”
She felt him reach between them. She heard the faint sound of his trousers opening, and then he was right there. He didn’t wait any longer. He didn’t pause. The huge, smooth head of his cock pressed into her cunt, stretching her wide despite how wet she already was. She had to bite her own arm to keep from screaming, crying, begging him to hurry—she didn’t know. She didn’t care.
She just wanted more.
Riordan was bigger than she remembered and a whole lot angrier tonight. The arm around her hips yanked her into a more intense angle, shoving her face even harder against the mattress to make his entry that much smoother and more inevitable.
And then he took his time.
He worked his way into her, none of that oil the other women had talked about at all necessary, and that made it worse. Better. Whatever this thing was that stormed through her, crashing and tearing and ripping her apart.
Riordan sank in an inch, then dragged that big cock of his back out. He did it again and again, pushing in a little further each time. Making a space for himself. Slowly, relentlessly, letting her get used to his long, thick cock until she was trembling everywhere, uncontrollably.
There was no more hiding it. Eiryn didn’t think to try.
Riordan didn’t stop until he was sunk deep inside her, that enormous cock of his filling her up to the edge of too much. Her breath was a shallow, panting thing, and she couldn’t tell if she was shaking in reaction to the simple act of taking all of him or if her body couldn’t tell the difference between coming and not coming when it came to Riordan and so shook. And shook. And kept shaking.
For a moment he stayed like that, huge and hard so deep inside her, his hips pressed up against her ass and his thick, muscled thighs faintly scratchy against the back of hers. He was so powerful. All granite and steel, cut and heavily-muscled and beyond intense. A weapon of a man. How had she pretended to overlook that all this time? He was mighty and he was dangerous and that cock of his was so deep inside her it bordered on pain.
But only until he shifted position.
He settled against her, the steel wall of his chest pressing her down, keeping her still, which she knew she should have hated. If there had been any light, she would have acted as if she did. But she didn’t. He braced himself with one hand on the mattress and wrapped the other over her belly, holding her up and keeping her where he wanted her.
“Tell me how much you hate me, babe,” he gritted out against her ear. “Remind me how much I suck.”
And then he moved. He didn’t ease her into it with a lazy pace like before. He didn’t start slow. He hammered into her, hard and furious, as if they’d been having sex all night and this was the chaser.
He pounded into her as if he didn’t care if she came again or not. Or more, as if it didn’t matter either way, because she couldn’t move. She was pinned beneath him and entirely at his mercy. The world spun off into nothing, then narrowed to that heavy cock and the man behind her as he surged in and out, each thrust as slick and deep and totally annihilating as the last.
As if he could do it forever. As if he was one of those lost machines.
And that wild, lush thing in her that had never left her, not in all these years, burst free again and took her over. She was all sensation and greed. Her nipples were too hard and felt scraped raw against the mattress beneath her as he thrust into her with all that glorious, untamed aggression. She reveled in it. In him. She felt liquid and free.
And every time he slammed back into her, she met him.
Her pussy had never played the games she had. It wanted Riordan and only Riordan, and the truth of that was a glowing, expansive thing inside her as he pounded into her. And there was no point pretending otherwise when he was filling her again at last, making her ache and writhe and clench down hard to get as much of him as she could.
“Greedy,” he muttered, and she knew he could feel the way she clung to him. The way she thrust her hips back to meet him.
She knew it and she liked it. She wanted more.
He pounded into her from behind, dark and intent and furious. Their bed wailed beneath them, the springs unable to keep up with Riordan’s focused intensity.
Then he dropped his head beside hers and put his mouth on her neck.
And bit down. Not gently.
And Eiryn was lost.
She broke apart, burying her mouth against her own arm as Riordan bit her neck, the ferocious, bone-rattling orgasm ripping through her like a storm, tearing her to pieces while he pounded his way after her.
She felt him come hard, flooding her with his heat and his fury.
Still silent. Still in the dark.
And for a long time they stayed like that, his cock only slightly softer inside of her. Her face buried in her own arm. His heart pounding like a drum behind her while his body crushed her into the mattress, her own so raucous she was surprised no one else could hear it.
Once more, she was grateful for the dark. She wished they could stay like this, lost in it with no repercussions whatsoever, forever.
But that wasn’t how life worked. Not her life, anyway. Not ever.
He pulled out eventually, and her curse was that she wanted to pull him back inside her. How could she want that when she knew what would happen if she let it? Riordan was an exercise in defeat and self-loathing who happened to have the one cock in all the world that fit her perfectly and tore her up with a single stroke. He always had been.
And yet.
She heard him zip himself up. Then he shifted around on the narrow bed, forcing her to move with him again or find herself flung off onto the floor. Eiryn tugged up her jeans, and didn’t try very hard to keep her elbows to herself as she did up her fly, because he wasn’t the only one who was feeling edgy.
But then she had to lie there in the dark, edgy and pissed or not, pressed up against him in some hideous parody of cuddling again. She was happy that it was so black around them that he couldn’t see her face. Because she could feel the heat and emotion flooding it, and that was bad enough.
“You came all over me exactly like someone with a blood grudge, babe,” Riordan said, quiet and sarcastic and devastati
ng, a soft taunt into her hair. “That was the first thing I noticed.”
Eiryn felt a searing heat scorch the back of her eyes, but she blinked it away, because she didn’t cry and she wasn’t going to start tonight. Not over him. Not over this. She reminded herself he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t know, he could only guess. So she made her breath even by sheer force of will. She waited until there was no constriction whatsoever in her throat.
Then she sighed as if she was terribly bored.
“It’s all the same in the dark, babe.” She felt his temper spike as he tensed beneath her, and smiled. “But I appreciate the effort. You know I like a little comfort dick as much as the next girl.”
He didn’t reply, and she knew—she knew—it was because he wanted to respond in ways that would break their cover and expose them to everyone in this bunkhouse. She could feel him prickle with all his dark and repressed fury right there, wrapped around her, his damned arms too tight.
Compliance, it turned out, cut both ways. And left marks.
They lay there like that, trapped in their own little game of pretend and the scars it left on both of them, for a long, long time.
He eventually dropped off to sleep the way men always did, the douchebags, but Eiryn still had to lie awake and serve out the first watch in this alien place. She’d taken her watch dutifully in any number of unpleasant if not outright dangerous spots over the years, but she thought this might be the worst yet. She was plastered all over this man she’d just let fuck her silly in a crowded bunkhouse filled with compliants, and not, as she planned to claim come the morning, because it was part of their cover.
No one could see them in here. No one would have known if they’d done their duty or not.
She’d given herself away. Completely. No matter what she’d claim tomorrow.
And she had hours and hours to lie awake in the suffocating dark, listening intently for any approaching thieves and wondering how the hell she was going to face Riordan—or herself—come the morning.
Or ever again.
* * *
He should not have had sex with Eiryn.
Not the way he had that night, too furious to really settle in and indulge himself in her perfect body the way he’d wanted to do for a long, long time. The way Riordan had been imagining in vivid detail ever since she’d thrown herself into the ring and decided to take part in this mission they’d both known would mean sex, sooner or later.