He didn’t look over at Eiryn again until the conversation swelled around them once more. The talk shifted from the more serious subject of what route to take to best access the western highlands—the bandit-ruled Eighty that reached from the shores of Lincoln, Nebraska, straight to the Pacific Ocean in Reno, or the less well-maintained but safer route from Kansas City with its western kingdom militias and security patrols—to the telling of tales about compliants and their silly, stuffy compounds filled with pregnant women and the strutting little kings who collected them.
When Wulf did look at her, his gaze was serious. His mouth was grim behind his blond beard. It made Eiryn feel cold all the way through, the way she knew it was meant to do.
“You have a winter, little sister,” Wulf told her, hard and dark and for her ears only. She understood him perfectly. She didn’t pretend otherwise, and she swallowed back the bile in her throat and the words that went with it that would force them both into a battle neither one of them wanted. Not tonight, anyway. “Fix your shit. Or don’t come back.”
He waited, every inch of him the undefeated warrior king of the raider clan, and the older brother she loved and hated in equal measure, despite herself. Eiryn didn’t trust herself to speak. She nodded once instead. A little jerkily, but it got the job done.
And only then did Wulf look away, releasing her from that electric blue grip. She still couldn’t breathe normally.
But then he summoned a camp girl with a lift of his chin, and it was done.
She was free.
For a winter, anyway.
It was enough. It would have to be.
Eiryn swore to herself that somehow, despite Riordan and the task they’d have in front of them, she would make sure this one winter she got to spend outside her chosen life would be enough to save it.
* * *
Much later that night, the usual shenanigans were still going on around the fire, though on a milder scale than earlier, when all the brothers had been agitated in the wake of the explosion. Eiryn sat her turn at watch, all alone on the top of a nearby hill where she could keep an eye on the whole of the beach and all the possible approaches and get her ass down to the fire to raise the alarm quickly enough if necessary.
She told herself she liked to be alone, because she always was. Whether down by the fire or up on a hill. In battle or back home in the Lodge. That was the way it was and always had been, because there weren’t camp girls for the female brothers who preferred their sex partners hot, cut, and male. No ripped and sculpted men walking around in tight little shorts for Eiryn’s amusement and titillation. No comfort dick to soothe her after a battle.
There were two people in the entire world who understood what it was like to want the same kind of man pretty much every raider woman did, but to also be stronger and tougher than most of them. Neither of those people were here on this beach tonight, because they were also members of the warrior brotherhood and had their own responsibilities to carry out in the waning days of summer. Emmalyn, tiny and viciously fast with her long, black hair hanging nearly to her knees and her dark eyes tipped up in the corners, was often challenged to arm-wrestling competitions by men when what she wanted was some conversation and a few orgasms, like anyone else. Redheaded Hedy stood six feet tall in her bare feet and attracted either larger raiders who wanted to dominate the hell out of her simply to brag that they’d done it or puny little men who wanted her to do the dominating and maybe act like their mama besides.
Eiryn, meanwhile, scared the shit out of men, even when she did the approaching and tried her best to act friendly. Burly farmers, strong shopkeepers, sturdy dock workers, it didn’t matter. They were all a little too worried about offending her. Or a little too careful, as if she might explode into a murderous rampage if they touched her nipple the wrong way.
It was exhausting. It made her want to do without sex altogether rather than wade through politics and so much male bullshit every time she wanted to get off. It got less and less worth it every time she tried.
I have my right hand for that, thanks, Hedy was known to say to the assholes who sidled up to her and asked if she wanted to go a few rounds, like sex was another battle and even in the middle of a clan celebration where everyone was letting off steam she should want nothing more than to fight it out before getting some.
And it was no better out on a raid, because having sex with another member of the brotherhood was always perilous in one way or another. There were too many ways it could go horribly wrong.
If a brother doesn’t get me off, Emmalyn had said once when the three of them had gone on one of their long runs together back in the eastern islands, can I really trust him to have my back in battle? It’s better not to know that he’s a selfish pig.
Eiryn was used to being alone. Her childhood hadn’t been any different, sequestered in the middle of nowhere with a deeply unhappy, embittered father to care for. She didn’t know why tonight, it scraped at her, as if that simple fact of her existence had become a wound, deep and raw, without her noticing it.
About an hour into her watch, she heard the sound of someone approaching her perch from a long way off. She heard the scrape of boots against the rocks below her and the shower of loose pebbles here and there, and understood that these were deliberate shout-outs, letting her know that someone was coming toward her without any murderous intent.
Because there wasn’t a single one of the brothers who would make that much damned noise creeping up on the nighttime sentry otherwise.
Especially not Riordan, who she’d seen follow enemies so closely they should have been able to hear him breathe, or feel it on the back of their necks, yet they’d never guessed he was there.
Because of course it was Riordan. Eiryn knew it before she saw him, with a certainty that might have unnerved her if she’d had the time to really think about what that meant.
He crested the side of the hill a moment later, moving with that easy grace of his that never failed to make her stomach curl in on itself. Stupid stomach. Eiryn wanted to point her blade at him again, if not run him straight through, but she didn’t—and then she felt very virtuous and even a bit like a martyr for keeping it so civil.
Not that Riordan was looking at her, or appreciating her great sacrifice for civility’s sake. He didn’t spare her so much as a glance. He stood there for a moment on the edge of the hill’s steep slope, his swift, warrior’s gaze taking in the view and doing a quick visual sweep of the area.
Eiryn did the same from her place, hunkered down on a rock that was too cold to be quite comfortable, the better to keep her wide awake and glaring into the darkness. The fire from the explosion still flickered and flamed high up on the mountain as the last of the temple burned itself out, but the forest still stood, too wet from the summer rain to act as kindling this long after the initial blast. Down near the beach, the raiders were camped out around the bonfire. Most of them were lying down now, if not already sleeping, while the plump moon edged its way toward the far horizon, away from the coming dawn.
And then there was the sea, inky black and fathomless from this height, the nighttime wind making the lines on the anchored raider ships flap and echo while the waves surged against the shore. The seductive, merciless sea. Those maps that Tyr’s woman had brought them showed a completely different world, with so much more land stretching out across the water. It made Eiryn a strange kind of restless to think that there were once so many places a raider ship couldn’t reach. She preferred the majestic oceans—all of them. The intimate dance of a sail against the wind. Saltwater all around and the roll and crash of the waves. Miles and miles of rugged coast to explore and conquer.
Moments dragged by. The silence, never comfortable in the first place, curdled.
Riordan stayed silent, which she was certain was a deliberate tactic on his part, the dick. Still, Eiryn couldn’t take it. It clawed at her. Maybe it was the dark fact of his solidly built presence entirely too close to her up here on t
he top of an exposed hill. Maybe it was the itchy thing that wound its way down her spine because of it. Because of him. Either way, she wanted him gone.
“Just say what you hiked up here in the butt end of the night to say or go,” she gritted out, keeping her gaze trained on the rolling sea. “And if I have a vote? You can just go.”
“Why?” he asked in the next breath, as if he’d been waiting for her to break all along, tallying up her weaknesses on that scorecard he carried around in his head.
She didn’t pretend she didn’t know what he meant.
“Maybe it’s my life’s dream to pretend to be some weak-ass compliant woman,” she suggested, doing very, very little to contain that lash in her voice. “Or better yet, to have one of those winter marriages. Nothing better than bad sex on command. The entire mainland population can’t be wrong.”
She had the sense he shook his head, though she didn’t look over at him to confirm it. She kept her attention on the sea instead, as if she expected monsters to lurch from the depths at any moment and end this conversation. Maybe she just hoped they would.
“Why?” Riordan asked again, a little more resolve in that dark magic voice of his, and she couldn’t understand why she still wasn’t immune. After all this time, surely she should have built up some resistance to him. “You might as well tell me. I’m not leaving until you do.”
Eiryn blew out a breath and ignored all those licks of heat and that involuntary neediness that wound around inside her and made her hate herself for all that melting. She comforted herself with the knowledge that he didn’t know. He might suspect, but he couldn’t know. It was her secret shame—and it would stay that way.
“Why do you want to do it?” she asked him, maybe a little harsher than necessary. She didn’t wait for him to answer. “If that’s not a mystery, my volunteering shouldn’t be either. You know how this goes. Clan first, clan always, clan forever.”
He turned, and she realized with a scraping, hollow sensation in her stomach that Riordan—the clan’s happiest brother by far, not that she’d ever believed that or benefited from it—was seething mad. At her.
“I don’t want to do it. But it’s my job, so I will. See how that works?”
Eiryn shrugged, and opted to ignore the dig at her recent performance. “We’re all brothers. It’s our responsibility to protect the clan. All of our responsibility, not just yours.”
“You understand how this is going to go.”
He was more than simply mad, she realized with a sinking sensation in her stomach. She could see it coming off of him like smoke. He was straight up furious, so much so that he vibrated with it, and her curse was that she found that . . . fascinating. Riordan was usually all smiles and laughter and a hearty clap on the back. Not temper and too much fire beneath it. It reminded her of the raw version of him she’d thought she’d known a long time ago.
It was a problem, was what it was, and he was still talking to her through bared teeth. “What a winter marriage means.”
Somehow, Eiryn didn’t think he was worried about church teachings and mainland conventions and all the rest of that nonsense the raider clan ignored entirely, unless it was to mock it all.
“Is this about the sex?” She didn’t actually roll her eyes at him, because that was like pulling a blade on a man like him when he was in a temper, but she came pretty close. “Are you twelve years old?”
“Yes, Eiryn. This is about sex.” Riordan bit the words out, and there was nothing about him that was twelve years old. He was all man, sculpted muscles and those wide, solid shoulders, punching a silhouette against the night and making that awareness she didn’t want hum inside of her. “Every day. That’s their stupid law, isn’t it? Every. Fucking. Day. For six months.”
Eiryn didn’t want to think about that. Not directly. Because sex with Riordan had never been about getting off. And it had never been about politics or male bullshit. No wrestling matches to prove his dominance. Not Riordan. Sex with him had wrecked her and made her new, destroyed everything she’d thought she was and rendered her little more than a pathetic addict deep in his thrall, and she was glad that she’d never found that kind of dark, consuming intensity anywhere else. That it didn’t seem to exist anywhere but in the slick, heated spaces between their two bodies. She shouldn’t miss it.
Of course you don’t miss it, she snapped at herself. Because she couldn’t.
That would be like missing the Storms. No one could possibly be so foolish or so deeply, incomparably self-destructive. Not even her.
“I’ve always wondered about those laws,” she said instead of answering the question she didn’t want to address. She kept her voice conversational, as if this was a casual little chat they happened to be having in the middle of the night. Out of earshot of anyone else. On the chilly crest of a mainland hill. “Do they check up on everyone or is it more of an honor system? Do you think they have to perform their daily duties in public to prove they’re good and compliant? Like, right out in the open in one of those concrete courtyards? That sounds pretty unlikely, given the tight-assed compliant idiots we’ve come across over the years.”
“Maybe you should focus,” Riordan growled at her. “This isn’t a bullshit discussion around the fire with too much drink making your head spin. This is what you signed up for tonight. With me.”
“I’m aware, thank you.” She sighed, then made herself look at him with exaggerated patience. “Yes, Riordan. We’re going to have sex. We’ve had sex before, so it’s not really going to be a revolution. Deal with it.”
He paused for a moment, then let out that low, arrogant laugh of his that she hated. Or wanted to hate, anyway, even as it rolled through her like entirely too much heat, making her stomach flip over and her pussy clench.
“That’s not the problem, babe.” And she could feel his gaze all over her, too much like his battle-roughened hands all over her skin, damn him, which she didn’t want to remember. “The problem is the only once a day part. And the fact it’s supposed to suck.”
There were too many memories she didn’t want to face, or even acknowledge, still shimmering inside of her like brand-new need. His palms a callused crush against the sensitive flesh of her breasts. His mouth so hot against her neck. That beautiful body of his above her, crushing her into his furs while he thrust deep inside of her—so hard, so good—and turned her inside out. That gleaming, possessive look in his dark eyes when he’d made her come, again and again. The dirty, delicious things he’d whispered against her flushed skin while he’d driven her over the edge. And then did it all over again, because he could.
Sex had always been a problem with them. Or for her, anyway, she thought—not that she cared to remember the day Riordan had claimed it was her relative inexperience that made her think so. It had never been the stress relief, the evening amusement, the fleeting pleasure that raider sex was meant to be, by all accounts. It had always been too damned good. Shattering, in fact.
But she thought she’d rather let Wulf call her a coward to her face and Tyr take her down in a blood-insult battle witnessed by the entire clan than ever admit that out loud.
“You know that it’s the camp girls’ job to come eight thousand times and pretend your cock is a magic wand, right?” she asked, holding his gaze in the fitful moonlight. “That’s what they do.”
Riordan’s grin flashed. “Please. My cock is much too thick to be any kind of wand. A tree trunk, sure.”
Eiryn sighed. “It’s not a great way to judge your skillset, is all I’m saying. It’s like practicing your bladecraft with kids in the nursery and crowning yourself a champion when you beat them, which any grown raider could do with a hand tied behind their back.”
“You realize that you give yourself away when you try to make this thing between us small and insignificant, right?” His voice was soft then. Dangerous. “Trying to provoke me isn’t the same as indifference, Eiryn. Do you think I don’t know it?”
“We’re both hi
gh-ranking members of the brotherhood,” she said, refusing to touch what he’d said there. And more than a little terrified that he’d just ripped her wide open. Again. Better to push on and let the wounds heal as they would. “We can carry out a mission, I hope, or we’re complete failures at our calling. Compliant sex isn’t any different from all the other training exercises we do.” She made her voice so arid her throat ached with it. “I’ll try my best not to fall apart while gripped by a hundred spontaneous orgasms and your magical tree trunk. I promise.”
He eyed her, the moonlight caressing his lean jaw and the muscle that leapt there. “Are you going to keep this up for all six months?”
“Somehow I doubt that if you were going on this little roadtrip with Ellis, you’d be up here firing all these questions at him,” Eiryn pointed out, keeping her voice dry. Like the blade she couldn’t use without giving herself away. “You’d assume that he could handle himself or he wouldn’t have stepped up in the first place.”
“Ellis and I haven’t fucked,” Riordan retorted.
She couldn’t have said why that made her so furious, only that she couldn’t see through the haze of it. “Are you afraid your cock made me less of a brother? Because if so, that would make you pretty much poisoned from within, wouldn’t it?”
“Not what I meant, babe.”
“What’s the real problem, then?” she demanded, because she wasn’t so sure that he hadn’t meant exactly that. “Are you nervous? A little bit afraid that maybe you can’t handle it? Worried—as you should be—that the next time you call me babe I’m going to cut your fucking throat?”
“Enough,” he bit out, and the look he threw at her then made her wonder if she’d hit a nerve . . . But that was a one-way trip to crazy. There was no point imagining that Riordan could ever be someone he’d proved a thousand times over he wasn’t. Nothing was ever hard for him—certainly not her. She knew that, if nothing else. “I’m not putting up with your shit for months on end. We’re dealing with this now.”