Edge of Temptation

  She thought that might have made her a little teary, if she’d been capable of it. If her head could do anything other than spin.

  He shifted closer to her, pressing the small pot into her grasp and folding his rough and callused hands around hers when she would have dropped it.

  “You need to get this down.” The sky behind him was nothing but gray and his eyes were so blue and were steady on hers. His voice was calm. Certain. “You can sip at it yourself or I can feed it to you, but Maud, you will have all of it. Do you understand?”

  She didn’t know what that was, then. That part of her that woke up, deep inside, and hummed into awareness. It still had nothing to do with sex. It had nothing at all to do with that astonishing hunger that had claimed her so fully since the moment she’d laid eyes on him, that she could only remember faintly now that she felt so ill. It was something else entirely, that had to do with that unfaltering blue gaze of his, as if he had not one shred of doubt that she would do precisely what he wanted.

  Which meant she had no doubt either.

  She couldn’t let him down. She couldn’t.

  Maud pressed the pot to her lips and sipped.

  “Good girl,” Gunnar murmured, his voice little more than a rumble, and his blue eyes gleamed.

  It warmed her everywhere, like a sweet glow from deep within. Maud took another sip. And another.

  She didn’t know what he’d made for her. It was thick and pungent. Herbs and spices, some kind of liquid, but not unpleasant to the taste. And oddly enough, it went down easily, too. She couldn’t tell if that was because the concoction itself was magically not upsetting to her stomach or if it was because he stayed where he was, squatting there before her on the deck. His blue gaze was trained on her, so calmly expectant, and she thought she’d do anything to make sure she didn’t disappoint him. She knew she would.

  She did.

  Halfway through, she paused. Gunnar took the pot from her to stir it some more while she breathed and let it all settle. She felt less dizzy, she noticed. Less lurching and spinning inside and in her head. She took a deeper breath than she’d dared take in a long time, and was amazed when her stomach didn’t twist horribly in response.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  Neither of them pointed out that any curiosity from her at all at this point was its own victory.

  “A little bit southwest of Atlanta.”

  His attention was on the pot, so she studied him. He’d changed into a different shirt and lost his harness and weapons. She hardly knew what to make of him, bent there before her with his dark braids caught in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck and his fierce attention on his concoction. She’d never seen a man as mighty as this one, certainly not so close, and never engaged in something other than violence. It made her warm again, so warm she stopped looking at him to see if the sun had broken through the clouds above them. But it was still gray and close.

  “You’re staring at Cape Chattahoochee in all its glory,” he told her. “The southernmost point of the eastern shore of the Mississippi Sea.”

  “We crossed the Mississippi Sea? All of it?”

  When Gunnar nodded, Maud squinted out toward the horizon, trying to imagine the distance. Trying to imagine where that lonely stretch of beach in Oklahoma was from here. She could hardly get her head around the fact she was now on the other side of the very horizon she’d stared at throughout her childhood. “I never thought I’d leave the west mainland. I thought I’d die in that desert, to be honest.” She sniffed. “So did everyone else.”

  He shifted, handing her the pot again, and she sipped at it dutifully. He didn’t say anything as she worked at it, only watched her as if he was keeping a vigil, his elbows on his thighs as he squatted there, his hands dangling big and loose before him. She should have felt self-conscious. She should have felt something other than safe and taken care of by this man. But she didn’t.

  When she was finished with the pot he took it from her and set it aside. Then he rose to his feet in a swift motion and stood her up, too. He stripped the overshirt she’d forgotten she was wearing from her and tossed it to the deck. Then he frowned down at her. He put his hand on her forehead, as if testing the heat of her skin, and then he skimmed his fingers down her neck and she knew, somehow, that his touch was impersonal. Not the way a man touched a woman.

  “You’re a healer?” she asked.

  “I spend a lot of time by myself.” He sounded as if he hadn’t wanted to say that, maybe. But she was too busy enjoying that settled, full-but-not-ill feeling in her belly to pay too much attention. “I know a few tricks.”

  He produced a damp cloth from somewhere. Then he held her close to him, propping her against his chest, while he wiped her down, the cloth as brisk against her skin as it was sweet. Maud thought she should have felt like an object. A piece of furniture. But instead, she let her eyes drift shut and felt something close to peaceful instead.

  When he was done he set her back down on the bench and handed her a small vial. She sniffed it.

  “Wash your mouth out,” he ordered her.

  She did, then spit it over the side of the boat, and when she sat back from that she thought maybe she should just slide over on her side and sleep a little bit.

  “I’m tired,” she told him, to be polite. It seemed critical that she be polite.

  “I know you are, little nun.”

  This time when Gunnar picked her up, holding her high against his chest, she nestled her face into the crook between his neck and his shoulder and breathed in, deep.

  “Who knew the grim reaper would smell so good,” she whispered into the smooth heat of his skin.

  And she could have sworn that he muttered something, though she didn’t hear the words. She felt his skin prickle beneath her, and had the distant thought that she was surprised raiders got goose bumps.

  “They don’t,” he retorted. It took Maud a minute to realize that he hadn’t read her mind. She’d said that out loud. “You’re half asleep.”

  “Okay.”

  He made her stand again when they were back in the cabin, and that seemed to take up what little energy she had left. He stripped the bed and threw new bedding on it while she waited, and then he sat her on the edge of it.

  “Drink this.”

  It was automatic to take what he offered. This time it was a carved wood mug of something that smelled sharp. She frowned at it.

  “Maud.” That voice again. Stern and patient at once. “You will drink it. Now.”

  So she did. She tilted it back and let it slide down her throat and this time, she shuddered as it went down.

  “I didn’t like that,” she said. Reproachfully. And her eyes stung from the sharpness and the strange taste coating her tongue, like metal.

  “I know.” He reached over to fit his palm to her cheek, and she thought she must have been imagining things again. That careful touch. And more, the way he looked at her, grim and fierce at once. “You did it for me.”

  “I did.”

  “You’re a good, brave girl, little nun,” he said in that dark and quiet way that made her want to let out a breath and fall straight into him.

  “Gunnar—”

  “Quiet.”

  He moved, or maybe it was that he moved her. Either way, she was no longer sitting. The bed was beneath her and it wasn’t spinning, thank god. The new blankets smelled like sunshine. And she was drifting off, with his hand on her back, hot and hard and warm, to keep her safe.

  “Now sleep,” she heard him say.

  And she obeyed him then, too.

  * * *

  Days passed, or she thought they did.

  He woke her or she woke up herself. She relieved herself while he fixed her another pot of his strange herbal concoction. She drank it down, more easily each time, and then he gave her the other liquid and she slept.

  Her dreams were vivid and shockingly loud, but when she woke it was to the relative quiet of the boat in the
sea. The rush of water against the hull. The purr of the motor, because, she thought at one point, anything Gunnar touched seemed to purr, sooner or later. Or the clank and slap of the sails when he raised them.

  She would have said she was unconscious more than she was awake, but still, she learned to identify whether they were sailing or using the motor the instant she became aware of her surroundings. It wasn’t only the sound. It was the tilt of the cabin. If the front was tipped up, it was the motor. If the sides were steep, they were sailing.

  “What if I don’t want to sleep anymore?” she asked once as he stood over her, his mouth in that flat line she wanted to trace with her fingers, as if he wasn’t sure she’d drink her sleeping potion unless he handed it to her and watched her gulp it down. “I’ve slept half my life away already. Particularly since it’s ending soon.”

  “Careful, little nun,” was his gruff reply, though she thought there was something warmer in his blue gaze. “I don’t like whining.”

  Maud resolved on the spot to never, ever whine again. And then she dreamed about the consequences of whining anyway, complicated dreams that rolled one into the next, ripe with heat and longing and that insidious hunger that lurked inside her as if it was waiting only for her to feel better.

  He let her walk out of the cabin once, into a warm June afternoon somewhere off the coast of New York. The sea air still had a chill in it despite the sun, and when she sat down—hard—on the bench he wrapped her in one of his seemingly endless supply of wool lengths, his hard hands brushing against her as he tucked her in, making her feel vulnerable and precious at once.

  She told herself that was her lingering illness, nothing more. And she looked out at the east mainland slipping by on shore instead of at her dark and silent raider, who still commanded every bit of her attention even when she wasn’t looking at him. Maybe especially then.

  Old, rolling mountains stretched out in the distance and the ragged coastline was a living map of loss. The ruins of ancient cities, some half submerged, some set back from the water and fortified with guards and guns, still others losing the battle with the encroaching forest. There was the suggestion of people, though look all she liked, Maud never saw any. Only the smoke from fires in the air, and now and again, far-off sounds that could have been human. Laughter, perhaps. Screams, more likely.

  Gunnar seemed unmoved by any of it. He stood at ship’s great wheel and guided it with an ease that spoke to his raider upbringing—as if the ship were as much a part of him as his arms, his hands.

  She thought he looked lonely, though she didn’t dare say it out loud.

  And when she woke up the next time, she was tucked away in the cabin again, and they were out at sea. That was what he’d told her, in his usual dark way, when he’d woken her up.

  “More out at sea than before?” she asked, as cross as she was confused. She’d staggered to the toilet and handled her business, and now she stood braced in the opening door, glaring at him through eyes that hardly opened. “A second sea? How many seas do you plan to cross?”

  “Get back in bed.”

  “I don’t want to get back in bed.” She scowled at him as the boat seemed to roll beneath her and her stomach mimicked it. “I don’t want to be out at sea, either.”

  “Tough.”

  That was it. That was all he said—a short, hard syllable, but wrapped up in it, a glimpse of that fierce certainty of his that she was as brave and as capable as he wanted her to be. For him.

  And somehow, that gave Maud the courage to let go of the toilet door and take the sleeping drink he handed her. That ferocious look on his face made it easy to tip her head back and drink it.

  Then she coughed. “That was worse than usual.”

  “That was the last one you’ll need.”

  And then he reached for her, which was how she knew she was getting dizzy again.

  “Are you psychic?” she murmured. “How do you do that?”

  “Magic,” he told her, his mouth against her ear as he lowered her to the bed. “It’s not all bullshit, little nun. Not when it’s mine.”

  And when she woke up, the boat wasn’t moving anymore.

  That took a moment or two to really penetrate.

  Maud sat up carefully. Gingerly. Her mouth was dry enough to make her wonder if she was dreaming all of this from a slow death in the red desert. Her limbs felt brittle. Unused. She rubbed her hands over her face, but her eyes still felt sticky. Still, her stomach felt completely normal, and that was what mattered. It was all that mattered, after so long being held hostage to it. She swung her feet over the side of the bed she’d grown to view as yet another prison, and took a minute to steady herself as she stood.

  She couldn’t hear anything from outside. A faint sound that might have been water, but could have been wind. Either way, it wasn’t the boat’s motor and it wasn’t the sails. The floor of the boat was perfectly straight, not on a tilt.

  Evidence suggested they were no longer on the water.

  Maud didn’t know quite what to do with that. She ran her hands through her hair, noting it felt a little longer than the last time she remembered doing that, and she had the wild thought that no one would cut it again. That sent a jolt through her. She’d always hated the monthly haircutting day in the convent. All the thundering sermons about vanity and obedience, and then that show-offy shuffle through the chapel to submit to the scissors. It took all day. There were usually various novices and blackmarked nuns who took heavy beatings right there on the altar to liven things up—the bishop claimed it was to open our hearts and make us all concentrate on repentance—and even that always seemed to turn into yet another round of holier than thou, a favorite convent pastime.

  Needless to say, Maud had never won that game, not in the years she’d been paraded out for a shaming public spanking and not in the years she’d stood with everyone else, pretending every extra inch of hair on her head made her heart feel as heavy as she was told it should. We mark ourselves so we are known. We are called to set ourselves apart. We belong to the church. The wailing and melodramatic begging for forgiveness for sins real and imagined was just a bonus.

  She dropped her hands to her sides now and made her way out of the cabin, climbing up toward the deck. None of that church nonsense mattered now, of course. She’d been carried off by a raider, who so far appeared to have no particular interest in breaking her—though she’d learned the hard way that when men took a girl off somewhere, what they wanted from it was always more complicated than it appeared on the surface. In Father Tiero’s case, he’d wanted to add to his annual quota of fresh, new nuns for the church. Maud’s own spiritual salvation—and well-being—had been significantly lower on his list of concerns.

  Maud pushed through the door and took those last few stairs to find herself on the deck, then stopped.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

  The boat was not at sea any longer. She’d been right about that. But it took her a breath, then another, to understand what she was looking at. At first she thought it was a cathedral like the one she’d left behind, this one stark and plain, made of heavy stone—but then she understood. She’d assumed it was a cathedral because the Great Lake Cathedral was the biggest enclosed space she’d ever been in. But it wasn’t. This was … a cavern.

  A great big cave, with lights hanging here and there that she thought were different kinds of torches until she took a second look and realized that they were connected by wires and likely electric. Electric. When she’d always thought electricity was the province of great kings and Bishop Seph himself, to be doled out only to those too grand for candles. Not the barbarian raiders she’d half thought were nothing more than the stories adults told around the fires at night to keep the children in line.

  She spun around in a circle, trying to take it all in. The cavern was partially submerged, with docks running around the boats and leading to land—because there were at least three boats in
this place, of varying sizes—and up to higher ground, where she could see what looked like a selection of clothes, and tools, and strange, small vehicles that defied description. Almost as if they weren’t entirely built yet. The boat she stood on was lifted up out of the water on a complicated pulley system, then braced on either side by some kind of metal apparatus that placed the back of the boat flush with the dock. Something that immediately made sense when she saw Gunnar’s truck parked nearby.

  But as for her raider himself, he was nowhere in sight.

  And she needed to get the hell off the damned boat.

  Right now.

  Before her stomach remembered its aversion to boats, and started twisting and cramping again.

  Maud moved to the side of the deck and swung up onto the gunwale, balancing herself there for a moment before she twisted around and got her feet on the rungs of the nearest metal support, which seemed to be as much a ladder as anything else. It occurred to her that she was weak and this was foolish, but she didn’t stop. She wanted to be off this boat from hell. No matter if she fell off it.

  She didn’t look down until her bare feet hit the smooth wood of the dock, and only then did she acknowledge that she was shaking. And she couldn’t tell if it was that same weakness after being so sick and sleeping so much, or if it was something that felt a lot like fear, but more … buzzy, somehow.

  “Going somewhere, little nun?”

  Maud knew that voice, now. It was a part of her. It was lodged so deep inside her it might as well be her flesh, her blood, her very bones.