Edge of Temptation

  But this was different. Maud was different. This thing between them, electric and bone melting and frustratingly unexpected, was theirs and theirs alone.

  And Gunnar understood that he could slam himself into her. That he could have done so without all the oil and preparation. She would take it and because she was bent like him, tangled up in all the same dark ways, some part of her would get off on the fact he liked it, even if it hurt her.

  That knowledge humbled him. That he could meant he had a far greater responsibility to her than he’d have felt for a simpler, more straightforward fuck with a woman who only wanted a hot, dirty orgasm.

  That he could meant he wouldn’t.

  He didn’t want her to take it. Not tonight. He wanted her to like it. He wanted her to crave it—and him. He wanted her to understand what he did, now—that they were twisted together. Braided into one, and who cared if there wasn’t much time left.

  There was tonight.

  “Reach down,” he ordered her. She blinked at that, the stern command cutting through whatever panic she was fighting like a blade. Because she needed to please him. Gunnar watched it happen. He understood it in the same way he understood that he needed to take care of her. That they were crooked mirror images of the same whole, the two of them. “Take the head of my cock and work it into your ass. Slowly but surely. Just the head.”

  When she only gazed back at him, some kind of slick shock in her blue eyes, he moved closer, rubbing his cock between her ass cheeks and against her tight little opening. He did it again, waiting for her breathing to slow. For her gaze to clear. For her body to grow supple again as he held her, no longer rigid and tight and panicked.

  “Now, Maud.” He didn’t do anything to make his voice sound less harsh, because he knew she needed his control, not his compassion. That those, too, were the same. “Don’t make me ask you a third time, or the next spanking I give you will involve very few orgasms and marks that last for a week.”

  She shuddered, and he knew he’d reached her. She began to pant again, her breath so loud it sounded more like a sob. But the next stroke of his cock between her rounded cheeks made her flush, red and hot, and she didn’t hesitate again. She reached between them, wriggling around until she could grab hold of his cock and press the thick, blunt head already beaded with precome against her puckered opening.

  Because she did better with a task, Gunnar understood. She was pliant against him, her skin warm and her pussy wet, spread out before him and his in every possible way. Still, she needed to follow his orders as much as he needed to give them. He almost came then and there. Instead, he shifted his hips, letting the blunt head of his cock press against the tight bud of her asshole while she gripped the shaft.

  She made a low, determined sound and she shifted, breaking out into a sweat as she worked the head of his cock past that tight ring at her entrance.

  Almost there.

  “You’re a good girl,” he told her, his voice dark and guttural, and he felt the words like a new vow, steel and stone, a brand against his flesh. He gritted his teeth. “Lie back, please.”

  She obeyed. Of course she obeyed.

  She was his.

  She was splayed wide and arched up toward him, the perfect offering. He had her knees propped on his arms, holding her open, and his hungry, needy cock was finally, finally breaching her tight entrance and working its way inside.

  It took more willpower than he’d ever known he possessed to take it slow, when everything inside him roared at him to slam himself home. That she was his to do with as he liked.

  But because of that, because he knew it in the same way he knew his own bones and the precise arc of his swing when he hefted his blade toward an enemy, he didn’t rush. He didn’t hurt her.

  He wanted her to beg for more, not for him to stop.

  More than that, he wanted her to spend the rest of her life empty and aching if he wasn’t inside of her. He would accept nothing less.

  Gunnar began to sweat with the need to thrust, to claim, to dominate, but he didn’t hurry.

  “This is no different from the plug,” he told her, sounding miraculously calm. And very certain.

  “It’s completely different.” She sounded high. Reedy. Completely thrown and not remotely calm or anything like serene, and he felt that like a hot, wet lick down the length of his cock. “You’re much bigger than that thing.”

  “And you’ll take me just the same.” He pushed in another inch and she groaned. “Because I wish it. Bear down.”

  When she only panted, her head moving a little too much on the coverlet, he lowered his voice.

  “Maud. Obey.”

  And he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so beautiful as the way she stilled. Her brow furrowed and she blew out a breath, her whole body loosening as she did. Then she did what he’d told her to do, bearing down so he could slide in farther in a slick, thick surge.

  “That’s my good girl,” he murmured, and she flushed with pleasure.

  And still he took it slow. He waited for her to remember herself and relax, to let him in. Gunnar slid farther each time, until finally he’d sunk completely inside her, his balls pressed against the hot, smooth curve of her cheeks and his cock buried deep in her ass.

  She was shivering, her eyes big and her legs shaking where he held them wide, keeping her tilted back and open to him.

  He stayed there for a moment, without moving, reveling in the tight, snug fit of her back passage. Owning her completely. Deep inside her where no one had ever been—and no one ever would be—but him. Her wicked, well-trained mouth was a joy, and he was a twisted motherfucker who liked to see a woman, particularly this woman, on her knees. He could imagine any number of ways he’d like to see her use that mouth because he commanded it, all to indulge his power over her and her beautifully dirty surrender. They’d both get off on it. He almost got off just thinking about it.

  But this virgin ass was entirely his.

  Something in him roared, dark and fierce and triumphant.

  She studied his face as she lay before him, her lower lip between her teeth again and her eyes huge, and he could feel every shuddering breath she took, poised there on the edge of something she probably thought was panic.

  He knew better.

  “Put your arms around my neck, little nun,” he told her, and she did, making a soft, pliant and hungry sort of noise as she gripped him. The wolves’ teeth he wore hung between them, sliding over the smooth skin of her chest and in between her breasts, yet one more way of getting himself all over her. He was a primitive man and Maud was his. His captive, his property. His. He knew it in the same way he sensed the approach of danger, in an itch between his shoulder blades and a tightening in his balls. She was in his blood, his bones, his cock. And he was going to fuck them both through the nearest goddamned wall, or die trying. “Now hold on.”

  That was as much a warning as an order. It was the only one he was going to give her, but he didn’t have to worry about this woman, his twisted match. His little nun. He felt her fingernails dig into his shoulders. He felt her clench down on his cock, slippery and hot.

  And then Gunnar began to move.

  * * *

  Gunnar was inside her.

  And somehow, Maud felt outside herself even as, with every slick, impossible surge of his huge, hard cock deep into her, she’d never felt more … fused. Alive. Tethered to Gunnar and this moment and what he was doing to her as surely as she’d been chained to him that night on the mainland.

  She felt … everything.

  He’d spanked her hard and well, and it had been a revelation. She’d finally experienced what all the spankings in the convent had hinted at. After all these years, she’d understood why some part of her had always felt that strange restlessness back in the church, why she’d always come away feeling the sting of a beating, a vague sense of dissatisfaction, and nothing like the remorse she should have. At last, she’d figured out why she’d never fit in
with the other novices.

  You want to be punished, the bishop had told her again and again. Some part of you craves it.

  And that was true, it turned out. But not from him or any other priest.

  What Maud craved—what Maud needed—was Gunnar.

  He’d made her cry. He’d made her come. He’d walloped her without mercy and then he’d stroked her sodden pussy with care.

  And the more she’d wept, the more she’d shattered, the safer she’d felt.

  The harder he hit her and the more tightly he held her, the more something sang inside her, sure that only here, only with him, could she fly.

  She didn’t think she could do it. She didn’t think she could take him, so huge and hard, no matter that she’d taken the plug. She didn’t think she’d survive it—

  But when he told her she could do it, that she would do it, she found she could.

  If he believed she could do it, she would.

  And now he was thrusting into her, each stroke thick and hard and intense. He wasn’t holding back. She could feel the edge in him, the ferocity. He shook her every time he sunk deep, holding her splayed open beneath him with his big, tough body and his wide warrior’s shoulders hewn from granite. She clung to him, but she couldn’t have writhed away from him even if she’d wanted to. Her legs were folded up and her knees were hooked over his forearms to keep them there. His thighs were coarse against hers, as hard as stone, and he drove her further into the bed with every deep, powerful, masterful stroke into her ass.

  She’d spent the past ten years on her knees to the church and she’d never felt so deliciously, completely, terrifyingly and perfectly dominated in all her life.

  He looked like an avenging angel, an ancient god. His dark blue gaze was electrifying, boring into hers as surely as he thrust into her with his cock. His dark braids moved with him, falling down around them and enclosing her in his scent, his embrace, his intense focus. His necklaces were as much a part of her as her own skin, moving between them, making her whole. His dark beard framed his mouth, and it wasn’t in its usual grim line. He looked fierce instead, gritting his teeth, so hard she could feel the tension in him where she clung to his shoulders.

  She dug her fingers into the rock-hard muscles beneath her hands. The more he held her down, the more he surged into her, the more she tried to meet his thrusts. Pleasure was a dark shadow, a glorious terror that danced just out of reach. It was a tingling thing that spun deep inside her, faster and faster. Tighter and tighter, pulling her inexorably toward something that hovered there, almost as huge and unyielding as Gunnar was above her.

  He kept up his pace, deep and hard and hot, and she realized that the sound she heard was her, moaning out loud every time he sunk inside her, so deep she could feel his balls slap against her. It was so dirty, so perfect. She wanted to fall apart. She wanted to last forever. She wanted everything.

  This. Him.

  She was terrified she wouldn’t survive either way. It felt too big. Too intense.

  His expression changed as he pounded into her. He looked harder, tougher. Almost savage.

  He didn’t slow at all, but he shifted his weight to one of the hands he’d flattened on the bed beside her, then used the other to pull her leg up higher, propping it on his shoulder. It should have felt awkward. She should have felt like some kind of pretzeled tangle of limbs, but he was still driving into her so deep, so good, and Maud would have done anything at all to keep going. To never stop. To chase that thing that waited for her no matter how it scared her.

  For a moment Gunnar only looked down at her, as if he was memorizing her. This. His handprints bright red and mottled on her ass. The way she jiggled with every powerful thrust that would have catapulted her across the bed if he hadn’t been holding her down. The way he braced himself above her, claiming her and taking her, and the way she gripped him as if she wanted to fuse them together.

  He muttered something she didn’t catch, and then he reached between them, grinding his clever, callused fingers against her clit.

  And Maud cried out. It was too much. It was too—

  “I can’t,” she panted.

  Maybe she cried it. She shook her head and she thrashed and it didn’t matter. His cock was a hard and glorious battering inside of her, sliding and scraping and slick and oh no. And his fingers were a terrible sin, a glorious horror, and he knew exactly how to touch her. He knew everything.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t. “I can’t. Please. I can’t.”

  “Maud.” Her name in that voice—his voice. She felt sobs in her throat and her eyes were wet, but she opened them. She made herself meet his gaze. So dark, so fierce. So endlessly blue. “You can. You will.”

  He kept that wicked hand on her clit, rubbing her wild, and if anything he pounded into her harder, his cock so big in her dark sheath that she felt him everywhere. And this time when she was thrown against that same unyielding wall with all of Gunnar’s force and will and dark, sensual skill, she surrendered.

  She surrendered, and then she disappeared into the wild and terrible storm of it.

  It was shattering unlike any other. Deep. Dark. A full-bodied rolling, twisting, falling thing that went on and on and on.

  Gunnar let out a roar, male and triumphant, and he gathered her closer. He pulled her other leg up to his free shoulder, then he bent down closer, put his face in her neck, and he let himself go. She felt his teeth against the tender skin in the crook of her neck as he pounded into her, no rhythm now, no finesse, just a wild, dark, endless taking while she convulsed all around him.

  She felt him tense, the whole of his big, strong, warrior’s body, and then he was jerking into her, coming with another roar against her skin and the drag of his teeth against her neck and she was still falling, still shattering, tumbling with him over and over and over into nothing.

  She woke when he lifted her from the bed. He arranged her against his hard chest and didn’t say a word when she tangled her fingers in the leather that held his wolves’ teeth. He carried her into the vast bathroom where the shower was already running, steam billowing from the smooth stone and glass enclosure, making the whole room feel close. Intimate and unreal at once.

  Maud felt fragile. Boneless. And oddly hesitant.

  Gunnar set her down on one of the benches inside the shower, easing her onto the stone as if he thought she was breakable. But the sting in her ass, the tenderness where he’d spanked her, reminded her who she was. It made her feel safe, strong. She tipped her head back to meet his gaze.

  He didn’t speak. He made her heart leap when he laughed, this grim and forbidding man, but it was when he looked at her like this, so quiet and fierce, that everything inside her simply … glowed. He didn’t wait for her to find words, which was as well, since Maud thought her tongue was tangled and her head was cracked into a thousand pieces and she might never utter a single word again.

  He rubbed her down. His hands weren’t precisely gentle on her as they soaped her and scrubbed her, but they were kind. He was thorough. He washed and rinsed her hair with same efficiency as he probed her tender asshole, and he left her warm and pink and clean all over, inside and out.

  When he was done, he carried her from the shower and wrapped her in a warm, fluffy towel made of a material she didn’t recognize. It was softer than wool and made her feel as if he’d bundled her in a cloud. He sat her on the counter near the deep sinks as he dried himself with far less care than he’d showed her, and Maud didn’t know why she simply lolled there, waiting.

  She felt so different. So utterly changed from head to toe. Altered in a way that had nothing to do with sex and then again, maybe everything to do with it. The way he’d taken her over. The way she’d surrendered. The way he’d thrown her over that edge. The way he’d followed.

  Her mind danced toward all of those things, then away. She felt as precarious and uncertain as she had so long ago after her first confessional. Before she’d learned how to toughen up
and take what was given to her. How to hide her feelings and steel her heart. She felt skinless and brand-new, and she couldn’t think of anything more unwise than that kind of vulnerable, here with this man who had every intention of killing her.

  But she couldn’t seem to do a thing to stop it. Not even when Gunnar tossed his towel aside and came for her again, so harsh and male and beautifully naked. She let her gaze run over his tattoos and his scars. The brands that marked his golden skin, the braids that shouted his status, the wolves’ teeth around his neck. And little raw marks that it took her a moment to realize were from her own hands, where she’d dug her nails into his shoulders.

  Something quaked in her, long and low, at the idea she could leave her mark on this man. This raider whose plans for her—

  But she couldn’t think about that now. She lifted her chin as he drew near, and still she didn’t say a word, not even when he paused there before her and fit his hand carefully to her cheek. So carefully she felt something like precious, and her eyes filled with emotion.

  A shadow moved over his face, and his blue gaze was a thunderstorm, but he only dropped his hand and gathered her to him again, picking her up as easily as if she were one of his towels. She felt too much, all of it jangling and noisy and contradictory, and only when he guided her head to the crook of his neck as he walked back toward the bed did she let out a shaky breath.

  Calm stole over her and her eyes grew heavy, exhaustion already pulling her under as he settled her in the center of his bed and then crawled in beside her, tucking her in the curve of his body as he yanked the covers and furs up around them.

  And when Maud woke in the usual predawn gloom, she was curled on her side with Gunnar behind her, just like every other day since they’d come to the eastern islands.

  But this morning, he wasn’t pretending to be asleep. His hard cock was nestled between her ass cheeks as if it belonged there, rude and hot and ready. He was laying a trail of fire along her neck with his wicked, inventive mouth, while his talented fingers traced lazy patterns around and around her clit. Her pussy was already ready for him, swollen and molten for all the good it would do her. She hardly had time to process all of that sensation, all of that fire, before she felt the blunt, commanding head of his cock press against her tender, pursed bud from behind.