Edge of Temptation

“Shut up,” Gunnar growled.

  And then he slammed his mouth to hers.

  6.

  There’s no kissing in the church.

  That was the thought that screeched through Maud’s brain. The only thought, a bright scrape of sin—

  And everything else was Gunnar.

  He devoured her.

  His mouth was like a brand, but this time around, that press of impossible heat thrilled her. Grim and perfect, he took her lips with no hesitation. His big, battered hand fisted in the chain beneath her chin, and he held her immobile, the heavy collar around her keeping her still even before he dropped what he’d been carrying and wrapped his free hand over her jaw and around to grip the back of her skull.

  Maybe kiss wasn’t the right word to describe what he did to her.

  He ate at her mouth. He consumed her whole.

  It was rage and lust and need and fire, and it all exploded through Maud like a hail of bullets, tearing her apart and shattering her bones, leaving her in pieces.

  He inhaled her like that too sweet smoke the bandits waved around between them, worse by far than the incense that had always made her eyes tear and go red during the high masses in the Great Lake Cathedral.

  But this, she liked. More than liked. Liked didn’t come close to describing the mad, dark wave that swept over her and through her, wringing her inside out and leaving her aching and hungry, pressing herself against him for more.

  More.

  Gunnar took her mouth as if he owned it. Her. As if she was his in ways the bishop had never taught her about, and she didn’t even have to kneel to prove it. It was as though the collar around her neck was the truth about the two of them, and no matter that she’d imagined it was nothing more than a costume. A costume that had made her feel safe in this awful crush. Tied up and taken care of, no matter who rushed them.

  Now the same collar made her feel wild. Needy. Lost and found in the same instant of brilliant sensation, his tongue against hers and his beard a scrape against her skin, so hot and so deep and so perfect she thought she might burst.

  He kissed her as though she were his to do with as he liked, no different from the creatures she’d seen auctioned off around her. Bought and sold in little knots of flat-eyed people with things stuck in their faces—all over their brows and noses and lips and ears and nipples—that they looked like monsters in the flickering light of the torches. Metallic and terrifying.

  He kissed her as if this wasn’t new, this hungry taking. As if she had never been anything in all her life but his.

  His to toy with and taste, deep and rough and wet and hot. His to hold between his hands in an unspoken show of complete and utter command that made her tremble all over … then melt into the sweet, bright safety of another total surrender.

  He thrust his way into her untutored mouth in a kind of carnal demand that Maud couldn’t help but obey. Over and over again she obeyed him and met him and matched him, while his hard hands held her exactly where he wanted her, his big body a wall between her and the danger swirling all around them.

  It was wicked. It was shocking. It was too much to bear.

  Kissing was strictly forbidden in the church. The senior nuns thundered on against it at every opportunity. A nun had been sent to an extended “retreat” in the red desert after being caught kissing one of the lower priests in the chapel; the priest had been sent off to the savage northern wastes to atone, assuming he lived. The priests punished any mention of kissing or gesture toward kissing, however small. Only the bravest novices dared so much as whisper of it, and then only in the dark, late at night in the dormitories, where everyone could safely pretend they didn’t hear such sacrilege or see who said it out loud.

  Your mouth has two uses, novice, the bishop had intoned, pacing around her as Maud made her deepest obeisance on the hard stone floor of the confessional. He’d had his belt in his hands and the slap of it against his palm had beat in her like her own pulse. Do you know what they are?

  I must obey—she’d begun, then cut herself as agony bloomed on her bottom, a stripe of heat that bled into hot, white sensation, then the duller edge of a nearly bearable pain. Nearly.

  She’d known better than to howl. She’d known enough to keep her sobs to herself by then.

  Prayer and penance, the bishop had told her, that smug note in his voice the way it always was when he was hurting her. On your knees with your mouth open to receive your blessings. Or on your knees with your sins on your lips to pave the way for your punishment. You do not talk unless addressed directly. You eat when directed and only then. That mouth belongs to the church, not to you.

  And Maud had learned to press her lips together, hard, and press her nose to the floor until it made her eyes water—anything to keep from making a noise that would inspire the bishop to keep going. Or worse than that, might please him.

  Kissing was a sin. It was about pleasure, not procreation. It was desire, not duty. And the church was clear on that subject. All decent people had an obligation to procreate. Passion and sensuality were distractions. Compliant people needed to push those considerations aside. Women were only fertile so very briefly in these dark times. They started bleeding late and stopped early and they owed it to the drowned world to do their part without losing themselves in outdated notions of absurdities like love or passion.

  And nuns were receptacles for the priests, a great and holy honor. Their bodies were never their own. Initiated nuns were available in the chapels to serve any and all needs of the weary men of god who sought comfort there. In places like the Great Lake Cathedral the nuns came running every time a priest rang one of the bells in the many chapel alcoves, to do whatever was required of them on the prayer benches.

  Their mouths were to drain holy men of their troubles, the best of all prayers, and nothing more. Maud had been taught that over and over and over again.

  But it was only here, in a bandit-held city in the torch-lit dark, that Maud understood why kissing was so dangerous the church forbade it outright.

  The more Gunnar took, the more she gave.

  The more she wanted to give.

  She met him as best as she could when her pussy was so wet and slippery it almost hurt, when her knees felt weak and trembly. If he wasn’t holding her there against him she thought she’d melt away into the hard ground at her feet. She played with his invading tongue, shivering when he made a low, growling sound of pleasure that arrowed all the way through her and turned into a pulsing heat in her pussy.

  He shifted, bending her back as he continued to feast on her mouth, so she felt off balance and at his mercy—and oh, the way that made her ache and shudder even more. The notion of finally, totally surrendering herself to this big, bold man made her long for a thousand dark and maddening things she couldn’t even name.

  But she could taste them on his tongue, rich and male and drugging. Her body knew them all, and clamored for them, until her breasts swelled against their binding and made it hard to breathe, and her nipples were little points of agony—the pain only making the fever in her worse.

  Still, Gunnar kept kissing her, dirty and deep.

  Maud’s bound wrists were stuck between them, rubbing up against his hard cock when he shifted again and dropped his free hand to the small of her back to haul her closer against him. She couldn’t hold him the way she wanted. She couldn’t wrap her fingers around that great big cock the way they itched to do. She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t do anything but accept the way he kissed her.

  Accept it. Surrender to it. Exult in it.

  Learn a new prayer, an intimate dance of tongue and teeth and mouth and his marvelous bearded jaw, while his huge body surrounded her and held her and made her brand-new.

  Brand-new and made entirely in his image. To his taste.

  This was what the church feared, she understood. Exactly this.

  And when he lifted his head, she whimpered.

  Then froze.

  She’d whimpered.
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  She, who never made an inadvertent sound no matter how hard the bishop had walloped her, with his hand or that belt or whatever evil little switch he’d picked up and whittled down to sting. She, who had prided herself on never, ever breaking. She never had. Not in all those years in the church. No matter how deeply she was shamed or how viciously she was beaten or how long and excruciating her penances were, in those endless confessionals when it was her great honor to revive the bishop’s cock and then drain it, over and over, no matter how many times he’d emptied himself down her throat. Her skin always bore the hard red marks of her inevitable failure, eventually. But she’d never broken down and cried about it. She’d never let out a sound.

  Until this raider kissed her, deeply and wildly, then stopped.

  And that made her whimper before she could stop herself.

  Maud wondered if she knew herself at all. Or if there was nothing to her but that blaze of heat between her legs and the raider who seemed to know exactly how to use it against her.

  Is he using it against you or do you only wish he was? a small voice inside of her asked. Because she had the terrible notion that she’d do anything he wanted her to do. Anything, anywhere—

  But Gunnar wasn’t paying any attention to her or her shock at her own actions. If he understood the lines they’d crossed or the sins they’d committed, he gave no sign. He dropped his head toward her shoulder and her head fell back as if she had no control over her own body, and then he set his mouth against the slope of her neck as if it belonged there.

  And it was like being set on fire, slow and hot and beautiful.

  “Don’t move,” he muttered, grazing her skin with his teeth and making her break out in goose bumps. Everywhere, like a drawn-out, half-glorious shiver. “Those bastards are still watching.”

  Reality slapped at her, making her stomach twist.

  What had she been thinking? That this harsh, forbidding man had suddenly been overcome with the need to kiss her, of all things, in the middle of a bandit city? With danger closing in on all sides?

  How had the most dangerous man she’d ever met turned her so unpardonably romantic? She, who had never harbored a single romantic bone in her body—unlike her roommate Edyth, who had been painfully and disastrously in love with her own confessor, Father Jin, since the moment he’d branded her at sixteen.

  But there was no time to truly beat herself up, because the chain fell between them, a heavy, silken rush, and the tug of it against her neck drew her closer to Gunnar and that wicked, terrible mouth of his that made her forget … everything. His shoulders were laden down with all the supplies he’d picked up tonight, but his clever hands were free. She didn’t realize what he was doing until he slid them around her to grab her ass in two fists, then drag her close to him again.

  He lifted his head. Their eyes met. His were dark and fierce, glittering so hot and so intense that it made a ribbon of fire unfurl inside of her and then rush straight to her clit where it knotted. And pulled. Her bound hands were awkward between them, but that made it all hotter, somehow. Hot and hard and impossible and perfect, and his masterful hands gripped her ass as if he was perfectly aware of what that did to her. How it raced through her and made everything clench, then throb.

  But she knew something, too. She knew that whatever this was, whatever he was doing, whatever game he’d been playing in front of those awful mercenaries, the kissing was messing with him as much as it was with her.

  “Gunnar…,” she whispered.

  He growled. It was a sound of rage, of need, and something far darker still. But to Maud, it was a song.

  He palmed her ass and he dragged her closer still, and then he took her mouth all over again.

  And Maud didn’t care who was watching or what they saw. She didn’t care that she’d betrayed herself before, or that she likely would again. She made a helpless noise in the back of her throat and everything got fiercer, hotter. Gunnar angled his lips over hers and went deeper, fucking her mouth with his.

  She might not have done any fucking herself, but she’d seen enough of it to know. So many nuns bent over the prayer benches that lined the cathedral alcoves or rocking dutifully on the laps of the grunting priests in the chapels. All that fascinating thrusting that the novices were told was a privilege reserved for the faithful and the good.

  And Gunnar was doing it with his mouth.

  Maud lost herself in the taste of him. She’d never sampled anything so good. So unapologetically male. Dark and hot, a hint of something spicy, and that masterful command that made her vibrate with longing for more.

  Whatever more was, she wanted it.

  She wanted to touch him. She wanted to rip her hands free of the rope and run her palms all over his broad, beautiful chest. She wanted to sink her fingers deep into the dark braids she knew were hidden away beneath his knit hat. She wanted to rub herself all over his beard, until she was shivering with the abrasion of it against the skin of her cheeks, her breasts, her belly. Her pussy.

  He dragged his hands up, then shoved them back down again, this time beneath the waistband of her jeans so there was nothing between his hard, callused palms and the tender skin of her ass. And it was too much. Too bright, too hot.

  Too good and not enough.

  Gunnar made that growling noise again, and then he began to knead her ass cheeks with his big hands. His fingers were long and hard, and they curled over the bottom of her ass, the tips grazing the lower edge of her pussy lips with each roll of his palms—mimicking the way she’d made herself come.

  Making her think she might tip right over the edge right here, where all the pierced hyenas around them could see her and hear her and watch her while she shook and shattered.

  She almost didn’t care.

  Gunnar hauled her up on her toes and pulled his mouth away, his own set in a hard, tough line. It only made that shuddering thing in her worse. It made her clit pulse. It made her rock against his hands and those almost there fingertips—

  “You’re not about to make yourself come without permission, are you, little nun?”

  He didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile. He was stern and gruff, and still, it poured through Maud like light.

  “Please…,” she whispered.

  A flash of his teeth, some kind of wolf’s smile in the dark.

  “No.”

  “Gunnar—”

  “That’s not the name I want to hear in that fuckable mouth of yours while you’re begging me to let you come. Try again.”

  She almost said it. It boiled in her, that impossible, irrevocable word. That name.

  Master.

  But that was much worse than the noises she’d made. It was worse than how easily and readily and happily she’d found herself on her knees in the desert. It was worse than the things she felt when she looked at him and how merrily she’d followed him, into his truck and down that highway and into this smoky, drunken mess of a city.

  Calling him master was a choice she wasn’t ready to make.

  His mouth curved, hard and cruel in that dark beard, and so delicious it made her shiver.

  “Greedy little nuns don’t get what they want, no matter how wet they are. No matter if I can feel you, creamy and hot, without even getting my hands deep into that tight little pussy the way I want.” That curve only deepened and it wound through her, curling around her need and her lust like smoke. “And especially when they have no goddamned manners.”

  And he pulled his hands out of her jeans and stepped back, leaving Maud feeling empty and wild and desperate. And with the distinct impression that her mouth had fallen open in a mix of shock and despair and that same sharp need.

  “Too bad,” Gunnar gritted out, as if she’d voiced a complaint. She shut her mouth with an audible click. “Consider this a lesson.”

  She watched his gaze shift to the scene around them. Or maybe he’d never stopped monitoring their surroundings. Maybe she’d been the only one so … lost. She stood there with
frustrated yearning pouring through her like a waterfall as his eyes tracked left and right in a cold, precise way that told her more about his capabilities than his strength or his blade had.

  And she couldn’t bear it. Any of it.

  That he could push her away so easily. That he could teach her how to kiss and then stop kissing her, without seeming to care either way.

  That all of this had been a ruse in the first place.

  And her whole life in the church had been about preparing herself for service. About waiting and receiving her blessings and giving herself to the church in whatever way was demanded of her. It was about downcast eyes and quiet acceptance. About gratitude for what was given to her, without any hope or expectation of more or different or other.

  But the Maud who’d done all of that, however imperfectly, wasn’t the Maud who had followed a desert fox into an uncertain twilight.

  She’d told herself she didn’t know why she’d followed it. She’d told herself she’d followed it in the first place, as if a feral desert creature was some kind of a sign. A portent. A guide. As if it had materialized there to lead her away.

  The reality was that she’d left.

  She’d walked out of the church and straight into Gunnar’s hands. And she’d gotten to her knees entirely of her own volition, for the first time in her life. Twice. Just as she’d climbed into that truck because she’d wanted to leave more than she’d wanted to stay, and more, because he’d intrigued her.

  Maud didn’t know how to think about her life in terms of choices because she’d never had any. She’d been sold. She’d been taken. She’d been branded.

  Well, she had choices now.

  So when Gunnar finally stopped scanning the crowd and turned his brooding, stirring attention back to her, Maud didn’t drop her head and wait to see what he’d tell her to do next.

  She lifted her bound hands and swayed toward him, and she saw a flash of surprise in his dark blue gaze as he caught her to him the way she knew he would, rather than let her fall, and that difference between him and the bishop echoed inside of her, telling her all sorts of things. Gunnar didn’t wait for her to crumple at his feet and get her face on the ground before him. He hauled her against his rock hard chest and he frowned down at her, but he kept her on her feet.