Edge of Power

  Kathlyn decided to find that liberating.

  There was a certain light dancing in his eyes then, that made her feel . . . hot. Entirely too hot, as if she was immersed in a deep, hot bath. And she had the distinct impression he knew perfectly well what was making her feel that way, with that look.

  “Good,” he said. He was still kneeling by the side of the couch, and at that he rocked back and rose in the same swift motion. She told herself that there was no particular reason it should make her breathless. More breathless. “Stay with me.”

  It was another one of his commands, she knew. She more than knew it, she could feel it. Everywhere. Everywhere he touched. Everywhere he had yet to touch. From the hard, insistent points of her nipples all the way down to her bare feet, her toes pointed and clenched into the carpet.

  But even if she’d had it in her to protest a command of his, which she didn’t think she did, she lost her train of thought as he pulled the skintight T-shirt he wore up and over his head. Because his bare chest was even more captivating tonight. The firelight kissed him the way she wanted to, moving over the scars and brands and tattoos he wore. Kathlyn wanted to run her tongue all over the tattoos that ran down his right arm and made a sleeve. She felt lit up with this need to taste him the way that he’d tasted her, no matter that it was exactly the kind of thing the church expressly forbade. Or maybe because it was forbidden. All she knew was that her mouth watered at the notion.

  And then he reached down and opened the waistband of his trousers. Then peeled them down and kicked them off.

  This shouldn’t have been the punch it was, hard and swift and deep into her gut. She’d already seen him naked. She’d met him while he was naked. This should have been nothing.

  But there wasn’t a single thing about Wulf, the raider king, that any person with eyes would describe as nothing.

  Kathlyn felt flushed. Overheated. And as if that shuddering, shaking, earthshattering thing he’d done to her with his mouth was happening all over again. When all he was doing was standing there in front of her. Watching her with what she was certain must have been amusement tipping up the corner of his mouth.

  And this time she didn’t try to hold herself back. She let her eyes travel down that great, lean expanse of his torso, and then, feeling as guilty as if she was being watched by a squad of priests, she dragged her gaze lower.

  Where he was big. Huge. Entirely too big to do any of the things she’d ever seen happen in a mounting ceremony.

  Her head spun. “Um . . . I don’t really think . . .”

  Wulf laughed. An actual laugh, she thought, and she forgot her concerns about that massive part of him she was sure he intended to try to put inside of her. Because his laughter was a marvel. It was brighter and richer and silkier here, somehow, than the firelight that shifted and swayed through the room. It fell all over her, like so much more sensation, bringing that shivering inside her closer and closer to the boiling point.

  “I don’t need any help with my ego, baby,” he told her. “But you’re blowing it up. You’re going to make me fucking insufferable.”

  His hard and beautiful face was still changed from his laughter. Still different. Less armored, she thought, and she didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her until this very moment that regardless of how powerful he was, he was still in prison here. He was still all alone in her father’s treacherous palace. As alone as she’d always been.

  Maybe alone looked different on a man who could kill scores of guards without breaking a sweat, but it was still alone. And something inside of her flipped over. Then shimmered, as if a new fire had sparked and jumped into life.

  Who protects you? she wanted to ask him. But she didn’t dare.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed, her heart doing that strange, slow beating thing again. “I’m not trying to blow anything up.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about,” he told her, his laughter still rich in his voice. “And there’s nothing you need to do. I’ll take care of you. And yes, my sweet little virgin, it will fit.”

  But she didn’t believe him. And she was sure it showed on her face, because Wulf laughed again.

  He was still laughing as he came down on the couch. She thought he was going to come over her, and he did, but he scooped her up with one arm and shifted her around until she was laid out beneath him. And she could feel his rich laughter. Right there, beneath her hands when she propped them against his sculpted wonder of a chest.

  She didn’t think she’d ever felt anything so magical in her life as laughter moving beneath all those lean, smooth muscles. Moving out of him and into her, as if he was already inside of her.

  But then she felt the broad head of him, blunt and smooth, rubbing all over the place he’d learned so thoroughly with his mouth.

  “Breathe,” he told her, the laughter fading from his voice as he propped himself above her.

  She frowned at him. “How do you know if I’m breathing or not?”

  His eyes gleamed. “I know.”

  He moved his hips and she gulped in a little bit of air, then defiantly held her breath. Until she realized he was waiting for her to release it. She obeyed him, a little shakily, and then he moved again, rubbing himself all over her, making her soft and wet and shivery.

  It wasn’t until he shifted his position and reached between them to tug them off that she realized she was digging her fingernails into his broad shoulders.

  “Use your words, princess,” he urged her, his voice low, moving her hand so it laid flat against his pectoral muscle. “I can’t translate your fingernails. You need to tell me what they mean.”

  She didn’t know if she was embarrassed by that, or afraid.

  “I don’t . . .”

  Too many things were happening, everywhere, and she was suddenly pathetically relieved that he hadn’t taken off her nightgown. That she still had something that passed for a kind of armor. Somewhere to hide, a little bit, with this huge man between her legs.

  “I can suffer through anything,” she told him, as if she was making a vow, but it was true. It had been tested a hundred times, maybe more. And she’d been preparing to lose her virginity her whole life, but no one ever answered the most important question to her satisfaction. Everyone agreed it would hurt. “But how much will it hurt?”

  She felt his breath leave him, as if he blew it out. He took a moment to look up from the place where he still rubbed against her, rude and physical and still entirely too big.

  And when his gaze met hers, it was curiously blank.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Kathlyn,” he told her, and it was only when she heard that rough note in his voice that she realized he was furious, and not in the cold way she’d seen him furious before. This was the hotter version. The far more dangerous version, and she was a lot closer to it now. “No one is going to hurt you again. You don’t have to suffer through anything, especially not this.”

  She could see that he was trying to hide his temper from her, and that was novel enough to get her attention. It was almost as if he wasn’t angry at her—but she pushed that away and concentrated on the huge, hard body pressing her down into the cushions.

  Nothing that had gone before made any sense to her, but she recognized this position. This was the way mounting ceremonies happened. Exactly like this.

  “It’s okay,” she told him solemnly, caught again by the idea that no one ever bothered to try to take care of a man as fierce and strong as he was. But surely she could try. “I know it hurts. I’ve watched enough mounting ceremonies to know that much. You thrust in, hard, and I’ll try not to flinch. I won’t even bleed. One of my attendants took care of it.”

  And for the first time since she’d laid eyes on him, the raider king appeared to be at a loss.

  He stared down at her for what seemed like a very long time.

  Then he shifted, looking resolved and something like grim.

  “I’m sorry if—”

  “Qui
et, baby,” he told her, dark and low. “Quiet.”

  And he set his mouth to hers.

  He kissed her again and again. He smoothed his hands down the front of her dress and then up beneath it, sending fire streaking all through her. And he didn’t move his hips again. He just stayed where he was, hard and huge and pressed against her.

  Kathlyn lost herself in the storm of it. Sensation in too many places. Sensation sweeping her away. Fire and need and longing and that endless, tumbling, exhilarating yearning making her feel as if she was falling from a great height.

  But he caught her.

  Over and over again, he caught her. He threw her off into space and then he centered her there beneath him with every slide of his tongue or touch of his teeth, with those wicked and rough and infinitely clever hands that stirred up fire wherever he touched her.

  And it was only when she was mindless beneath him, arching herself against him and begging him for . . . something that he moved again.

  She was aware of it when he began to work that big, hard thing inside of her, one hand between them to guide himself in, holding himself up on his other hand. And she thought on some level that she should protest that. Or do . . . something.

  But instead she smiled at him. She couldn’t help it. It was as if she couldn’t think of anything else to do that came close to expressing all the competing things rolling around inside of her and knotting there, deep and low in her belly where she was nothing but an endless, honeyed ache.

  It made his face go tight. Harsh. But the way his eyes glittered made it clear he wasn’t mad again. He was something else that had her shivering all over again, a new fire bursting into life inside of her with every silken inch he pressed into her.

  And that knotted thing hummed brighter and wilder and tighter inside of her with every bit more he slid into her, long after she was sure he should have run out of room.

  He didn’t.

  “Tell me when it hurts.” His voice was a gritty sort of rasp.

  He dropped his head next to hers even as he slid in deep below, so deep she could feel that broad head inside her as if he’d finally reached the limit. She shuddered at that, while Wulf settled his mouth against her collarbone. She felt the scrape of his beard and the touch of his teeth, as if he was marking her.

  Something gripped her, hard and tight, as if there was a fist around her heart.

  And she was . . . full. Stretched. Every breath seemed to rush straight to a part of her she’d never known was there, and was now accommodating him. Holding him. Fitting him. Somehow.

  But there was no pain. It was odd and it was new and she had no idea why she thought she might burst into tears when she wasn’t even sad, but there was no pain.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she whispered. “Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

  He nipped her on her collarbone and she bucked in surprise, but that was a whole different thing. It made her pant. It made that odd fullness . . . expand.

  When he lifted his head, his blue eyes glittered—and she had no idea why that made a kind of giddiness sweep over her, bringing up goose bumps in its wake.

  “Maybe not,” he said, an odd note in his voice. “It’s been a strange drought.”

  She patted him awkwardly. “I’m sure you’re doing your best.”

  And the noise he made then wasn’t quite a laugh, though his eyes seemed almost wild with what she was pretty sure was amusement, as if she’d said something entertaining—

  But then he was moving. He pulled out slowly, then pushed back in again, and that was intense. Still, it didn’t hurt. It sent the strangest feeling flooding through her, winding up into her limbs from that strange, slick connection. She wondered if it was all that wild, wet heat that was making things so surprisingly painless, and then he did it again. And again.

  And she found herself slipping off into space again.

  Wulf fell into a lazy sort of tempo, deep and intense and slow, a quietly ruthless rhythm that threw her, that built a wildfire and threw her straight into the center of it.

  And then burned her, again and again and again.

  This time, when he found her nipple through the thin material of her nightgown and sucked, hard, she shattered all over again.

  And then she did it once more, hardly catching her breath, when he picked up his pace, slamming into her harder each time while she fell into pieces and kept on falling. And then when she hummed along, somehow broken and whole at once while he moved like that, liquid and demanding, rough and smooth.

  Her whole world. As if nothing had ever existed, or ever could, but this. Him. And that wild magic he kept building and exploding inside of her.

  He dropped down, holding her tight against him, his hips working as he kept going, driving her back up toward the edge no matter how she chanted that she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She was sure it wasn’t possible.

  “You can,” he told her, his mouth at her ear. “You will.”

  And as if she needed the order, direct and sure, she did.

  Harder this time. Longer and more luxurious, as if she might truly break apart.

  He followed in the next breath, roaring out his release into the crook of her neck.

  And that was it, she thought as she floated back to earth. She was well and truly ruined, at last. But for a moment, with a raider king sprawled all over her and still lodged deep inside of her, she was sure it was worth it.

  He moved off of her and she still lay there a moment, not sure if the room was spinning or she was. She sat up slowly. Carefully. Her body didn’t feel like her own anymore and she didn’t know what to do about that. Her hands moved of their own accord to pull her nightgown back into place.

  “Well,” she said briskly. “Thank you. That was a terrific mounting—”

  “Kathlyn.” She blinked at his abrupt tone. “Shut up.”

  He bent and swept her up again, holding her high against his chest as he moved across the living room and into the bathroom. He set her on her feet, then stripped her of her nightgown, tugging it up and over her head. She let him, she even helped him by obediently raising her arms, because she was far too boneless to protest even if she’d wanted to. And then his gaze was intense as it swept over her, all over her, as if he was looking to make sure she wasn’t hurt.

  Concern, she thought. Actual concern.

  It made her knees go a little weak.

  He held on to her a moment, as if he knew she might topple over. As if he could feel her knees give. When she was steadier, he bent and started the bath. Soon there was steam and hot water, and he was urging her into it.

  “Soak,” he told her as she climbed in, squatting down beside the tub.

  “Are you—” But her voice cracked and she didn’t know what she meant to ask anyway. She only knew there was too much emotion rolling this way and that inside of her. And worse, she thought he could see it. And the world was all turned around now, and she knew how his beard felt against the tender skin of her inner thighs, and she was truly ruined and—

  “Baby, breathe.” He reached over and fit his hand to her face, his fingers wrapping around her head. The very opposite of the way her father had gripped her, and that made things dizzier for a moment. “You’re going to pass out.”

  She didn’t ask him how he knew she felt dizzy. She breathed. And after a few breaths, felt a little more solid.

  “Sit in this tub until the water cools,” he told her gruffly, his cool gaze at odds with the heat of his palm. “You’re going to be sore. Hot water will help.”

  She nodded, very seriously, aware that once again she was about to weep.

  He saw that, too. He saw everything, and Kathlyn knew that should have scared her more than it did. He ran his free thumb beneath each eye, collecting the moisture there.

  “I’m going to leave you a decent blade.” He fixed that serious blue gaze on her. “Don’t use it unless you have to. Unlike yours, it’s sharp as fuck, but if you run at someone with it and
they’re not a complete dumbass, they’ll take it from you. You’re better off letting a situation develop and using it when they least expect it. Do you understand me?”

  “No combat,” she managed to say. “Stab him in the neck when he’s on top of me. Got it.”

  Wulf regarded her for a long, intense moment. “Anyone who touches you will answer to me, Kathlyn. Know that.”

  She could only nod. Jerkily.

  His hand tightened against her cheek, and then he pulled it away. He stood, that same play of muscle and power as before, and just as mesmerizing. And it was so different now, to look at him and know him in this shockingly intimate way. To know that he’d been inside of her. That they’d put their mouths on each other and shared parts and fluids and—

  “You look like your heart is broken,” he said gruffly, towering there above the bath.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I just . . . I thought sex would be like anything else. You know. Like a long walk—uphill, maybe. Not so . . .” She let out her breath, which, yes, she was holding. She tried to imagine trotting off to do that every night with a new man, picked out by her father every autumn. She didn’t think she could. “How is everyone so casual about it?”

  His gaze was too blue then, and something in her chest flipped over.

  “I told you,” he murmured. “There is nothing soft left. Only you, Kathlyn.”

  She thought he meant to close the distance between them again, maybe touch her again the way every part of her longed for him to do—but he didn’t. He looked at her for a long while, as if he was troubled, and then he turned and silently melted off into the living room.

  And when the water was finally too cold to sit in any longer without shivering, Kathlyn climbed out of the tub. The sun was starting to come up outside her inward-facing windows, which meant she could see the courtyard gleam a little gray instead of being pitch black, and her rooms were empty.

  As if Wulf had been nothing but a dream.

  But deep between her legs, there was a faint tug when she moved, and Kathlyn held on to that like it was sacred.