Oh, yes. It hurt. That was the point.
“I’m wondering how they do it without causing a revolt,” Gunnar said. “Or do they tell you it’s somehow holy and good to be marked like cattle?”
Her blue eyes flashed. “What did they tell you?”
“My brands,” Gunnar said, very distinctly, “are gifts. They are celebrations. I earned each and every one of them in battle. The pain is a tribute to the fallen and a reminder that we walk for them now they’ve gone.”
Maud’s eyes glittered in the dark, drowning out the night sky around her, and Gunnar still didn’t understand what he was doing here. Why he was making this worse. Why he couldn’t stop himself.
You don’t talk to captive pussy, boy, his father had always told him, especially when Gunnar was older and knew Amos was deliberately referring to Gunnar’s own mother when he discussed “captives.” You fuck it or believe me, it will fuck you. Talking is for little bitches, not warriors.
He couldn’t believe he was in a situation where his cruel jackass of a father’s thoughts on human interaction were actually sounding in the ballpark of reasonable. That had to be a low point in his life. Maybe the lowest point yet.
“The point of the branding ceremony is that we scream.” Maud’s voice was soft, which made the fact he’d had his father in his head seem that much sicker. “It’s the last emotion we’re allowed to show in public without having to atone for it in the confessionals. We scream it out. We cry. We can make as much noise as we like until it heals.” There was something hard in her gaze then. He thought he recognized it, though in the next instant he was sure he’d imagined that odd sense of connection. They had nothing in common. And it wouldn’t have mattered if they did. “But after that? Show anything but gratitude and you pay.”
“And how do you pay?”
Her gaze changed, becoming evasive. “The usual ways.”
“I’m not religious, little nun. The only thing I know about priests is that they’re shit fighters with big mouths and no sense of their own limitations.”
Her wide mouth curved. “It sounds like you know a lot of priests.”
“And that sounds like you’re about as religious as I am.”
Maud looked away again. Was it because she couldn’t admit that? Or because she was more religious than she seemed, out here in the dark alone with a raider she should have found terrifying?
“How do you pay?” he asked again, and he didn’t want to investigate that thing in him that was spurring him on. Making him quiz her when a raider like his own father would have gagged her and thrown her in the cargo area of his vehicle without blinking twice.
“Prayer and punishment,” she said, more to the nearest clump of sagebrush than to him. “Punishment and prayer. In these things are we made new.” She took a breath and looked at him again. “Which do you prefer?”
He let out a sound that would have been a laugh had he been another man. It clawed through him anyway, mirthless though it was, one more betrayal in a night full of them. He was a twisted fuck. He liked both, especially the way she prayed.
None of that mattered, he told himself then. What mattered was what he was going to do later this summer on a Kentucky battlefield under a full moon. And then what came after that—truths told and reputations restored, or he’d die trying. Nothing else was important.
“I have plans for you, Maud.” Her name on his tongue surprised him. It was one more thing he didn’t want to think about. “And you might find those distinctions don’t really mean shit.”
“That was always my position,” she said. Was that humor in her voice? How could she fail to notice how serious this was? “There never seemed like much of a distinction to me. But I was told that was further evidence of my pride and defiance and was likely proof I’d never be anything but a disappointment.”
Maybe the fact she tempted him was the point, Gunnar thought then, as he fought the urge—the need—to put his hands on her. He’d never wanted a woman he couldn’t have. He’d never wanted much of anything he couldn’t have. He was a raider. What he wanted, he took. But losing Audra had changed everything, and this was simply one more part of it. Maybe wanting the virgin he intended to sacrifice made the whole thing better, somehow. Because it should be hard. It should hurt.
Everything in this world that was worth having hurt. Gunnar knew that better than anyone.
“Show me your obedience,” Gunnar told her then, “and I might show you some mercy. Then again, I might not.” He reached over and took her chin in his hand again, touching her because it was a fire in him, a song in his blood and that heavy ache in his cock. Because it sucked. Because he was conflicted. That would make his inevitable victory over himself all the sweeter. That would make his resurrection of his mate the true triumph it was, in every possible way. “But I’m not a little douchebag priest who hides behind a church. My punishments will leave marks. And I don’t care how much you scream about it. As far as I’m concerned, that is gratitude.”
Her gaze was wide and blue, and he couldn’t tell if the glitter in them was coming from Maud herself or was the reflection of the desert sky above them or the fat, bright moon. He wanted to see nothing but a convenient vessel. A means to an end.
He told himself there was nothing in her eyes but moonlight.
“Don’t worry,” she said, as if she was still completely unaware of her own danger. It made him want to roar like an animal. It made him want to show her how scared she should have been, face-to-face with a man like him, raider-trained and desperate, all alone in the dark. “I’m really, really good at grateful.”
He dropped his hand from her chin and nodded toward his vehicle, half hidden in the shadowy mouth of a shallow cave. It was time to get the hell out of this desert. It was time to prove exactly how much temptation he could withstand. It was not time to take out all the things he wouldn’t let his cock have on a piece of virgin ass who had no idea how little time she had left.
That would come.
“I’ll remind you that you said that, little nun,” he promised her.
And then it was time to start the long trek home, no matter how tempted he was.
Or maybe because of it.
3.
“Climb in,” the raider ordered her in his same short, hard tone.
Maud didn’t wait to be asked twice, especially not by a man who’d already looked at her with murder in his eyes and his hand on his weapon at least once tonight. She had the dim, distant thought that she really shouldn’t throw herself in with some stranger—some raider—when she had no idea why he’d been out there in the desert, wandering around in the dark. But then, she wasn’t entirely sure why she’d been out there, either. The bored, vaguely sad, overheated person she’d been when she’d followed a desert fox off into the sunset earlier seemed as much a stranger to her as he did.
And besides, wandering around until she died of thirst or was set upon by coyotes did not sound quite as attractive to her now as it had then. She’d asked him to take her away, and the truth was, she didn’t care where they went or what happened when they got there. She’d felt that way at eleven when Father Tiero had showed up, with his warm smile, kind eyes, and promises of a better life. She hadn’t cared in the least where they went—she’d imagined anything, anywhere was more exciting than the caravan where she’d spent her childhood.
Maud felt it even more now. She’d never been sure she was cut out to be a nun. And if tonight was any indication, she’d had enough of the desert to last her a lifetime, too.
She told herself it had nothing to do with the way the raider felt in her mouth, surging so deep she’d wanted it to last forever, so hot and salty and male and hers, in that moment. Entirely hers. She’d known it on some deep, feminine level the church had spent years telling her didn’t exist. She’d known it in the way he’d stared down at her with such stark ferocity, his blue eyes nearly black with lust. And his face had twisted into something so abandoned and perfect whe
n he’d come that she’d been close to joining him. So damned close she still buzzed with it, and she couldn’t seem to care that it was a sin.
Getting on her knees for this man didn’t feel anything like kneeling. It felt a whole lot more like flying.
The raider stalked to the rear of the vehicle and started slamming heavy things around, which Maud took as her cue. He didn’t have to tell her that he’d considered leaving her behind. That was as obvious to her as the plump moon above, and she’d understood that she couldn’t let him do that. The same way she supposed she’d known she had to walk away from the temple no matter what happened next.
She climbed up into the dusty truck with the reinforced wheels, slipping more than she should have thanks to her silly temple shoes. She hoisted herself up the dirty side of the passenger door, wrenched it open, and then slid into place on the wide bench seat. She blew out a breath when she made it. She was a great deal closer to the controls and the steering wheel in this seat than she’d ever been on her few travels in a church vehicle, all of which had been cramped and closed in and had required the novices huddle together in the back to make room for the nuns in the middle and the priests up front.
Her raider swung in beside her, and suddenly the front of his truck seemed as close and crowded as the packed backs of the other vehicles she’d been in. As if he took up twice as much space as a regular person, and all the available air. He tossed his harness with all his blades into the narrow space behind his seat with a loud thud, then started the engine, and Maud was shocked when the roar of it didn’t split the night in half.
It didn’t roar at all. It practically purred.
“I’ve never heard an engine sound like that,” she said.
She blurted it out without thinking. The raider had made it clear in a thousand ways that he didn’t welcome conversation. How many times had she been taught this lesson, bent over to accept the bishop’s hard hand and as many blows as he felt she deserved?
Your role is to remain silent and serene, Maud, and to act giving and open when approached. And better by far if you were truly giving and open in your heart, Bishop Seph had told her after she’d “gotten mouthy” with some visiting clerics. Meaning, she’d spoken to them as they’d stood around talking about her. He’d said it in that deliberately overly friendly voice of his that she knew most of her fellow novices believed was real, while each strike against her exposed ass was as hard and as precise as the one before it. He never tired. He never eased. He was always, always exact. And not in the least bit friendly. You are not to interrogate every person you come into contact with. You are not here to ask questions, but to serve. Why can’t you remember that?
“You mean, not like shit?” the raider shot back at her.
He slammed his door shut as if it wasn’t the least bit heavy and Maud was aware, all over again, that he was a huge, strong man for all his whittled-down leanness. That he was big and lethal, and likely didn’t need a blade to end her—he could probably accomplish that with a finger. Her pulse surged at that, drumming through her veins and making her breath catch, and not because she was scared.
Beside her, he switched on the headlights and Bishop Seph melted out of her head as the light cut through the dark in front of them. The raider put the vehicle into gear with one of those deliciously hard hands he’d used to grip her face, and Maud had to clench her thighs together against the wave of sensation that far more delectable memory sent spinning through her. Thank god he was looking out the front of the vehicle and not at her any longer.
Though the truth was, she thought he knew everything anyway. He didn’t have to look.
“This is what it sounds like when you build your own engine,” he told her curtly. “Instead of hoping some rusted-out piece of crap that made it through the Storms will work if you throw enough gas at it. Assuming you can find any gas.”
“You build engines?” She stared out the front of the vehicle as if she could see the engine through the hood if she concentrated hard enough. “I thought raiders were about sharp blades and summer raids, not engine repair.”
Because she learned nothing, ever.
Maud told herself that breathless note in her voice was because of the uneven ride, the jolting way the vehicle slowly made its way over the desert floor with no road in sight. But she knew better. And she felt the searing look he tossed her way as he worked the gears to bring them over the crest of the next hill.
“You think we’re going to … what? Bond?” He let out a harsh noise. “Unless that’s a euphemism for another blowjob, I’ll pass. And it’s too bumpy here anyway. You want to suck on my dick to pass the time, wait until we make it back to the road. I don’t like teeth.”
Maud blinked out the window in front of her, the vehicle’s headlights picking up the sage and the undergrowth, huge towering boulders looming up out of the darkness, and the metallic green glint here and there that suggested watchful desert creatures with sharp teeth of their own.
“It’s about six hours back to the Great Lake Cathedral complex.” She kicked her shoes off in the well below her and then pulled her legs up onto the seat with her, crossing them beneath her as she braced herself for each bump. “How many blowjobs do you really think you can take? I’m sure raiders are terribly mighty, of course, rampaging over the drowned earth as they will, but the human body can only do so much. Even yours.”
He didn’t laugh. He was as grim faced as ever, his black beard and warrior’s braids making him look like some kind of angel of death sitting there beside her with his big, battered hands looped over the steering wheel. Still, she was sure there was some hint of amusement in the dark look he threw her way.
“Only one way to find out, little nun.”
And that sent something warm arrowing through her, making her chest feel a little bit tight.
Maud hoarded that close, his almost-smile, and tried to keep a real smile from her own face. She knew he wouldn’t appreciate seeing it. So she settled back against the seat and stared out into the dark of the desert all around them, not smiling.
Definitely, one hundred percent not smiling.
She didn’t know when she nodded off, only that the cab of the vehicle was warm and that the motion of the truck lulled her. She was vaguely aware of the road smoothing out beneath them, but that was the last she knew.
And when she woke up there was daylight everywhere, and none of it the pink of dawn. It cascaded all over her, hot and bright, and she blinked it away as she tried to make sense of where she was. She was used to waking in the temple, stretched out on her pallet on the floor with the latticework of old pipes above her and her fellow novices making their own waking noises all around her. The floors of the temples were smooth concrete and usually cold. They didn’t rock.
She shifted, the leather seat sticking to her skin as she started to sit up and figure out what was happening. And the very same split second she realized she was in a raider’s all-terrain vehicle was the instant she recognized that the pillow that had been beneath her head, more comforting than comfortable, was his thigh.
His rock hard, decidedly male thigh, much too close to that beautiful cock of his she thought she might have dreamed about while she slept.
Her heart exploded in her chest.
Maud scrambled back. She threw herself back into her original position in the passenger seat, aware as she did that he was turning the wheel sharply and pulling off whatever empty, twisty mountain road they were on. He drove across an open field, down to a winding river that gleamed in the sunlight, and parked in the shade of a grove of leafy trees that made her blink in confusion. It took her long moments to get her head around the fact they weren’t in the great red desert anymore, and that the air coming in her open window smelled of wildflowers and grass, not scorched red rocks. This place was far lusher on the ground despite thirsty-looking mountains standing the distance. There was water here, more than a few trees, and enough green to make it feel like a different world t
o someone used to salt and desert.
And she couldn’t seem to make her brain work the way it should. She hadn’t seen anything like this since she was a kid. Trees and water and so much deep, abiding quiet surrounding it.
“How long have we been driving?” she asked. She sounded as if she was still asleep. Thick and woozy.
He didn’t answer her. He handed her that carved water bottle of his again, and Maud drank from it obediently, happy to be doing something that wasn’t … cuddling up with a raider while she slept. Who did things like that? Did she have so little sense of self-preservation?
Maybe something really was wrong with her. Maybe the bishop had been right all along.
She held the carved bottle between her hands and frowned at the river and the large, flat-topped mountain that rose in the distance, a harsh square against the morning sky. It was better than staring at him. He’d put on a shirt at some point, and it was astonishing to her, how much that tiny little detail threw her off-balance. It made her feel light-headed and it was nothing more than a perfectly normal shirt. The kind she remembered her uncle wearing, more or less, though Mikolaj, with his reedy body and halo of wispy red curls, had certainly not had anything resembling a raider’s mighty build. It was a serviceable thermal that made her raider look … almost approachably gorgeous. Almost. It was too much; the way the white fabric clung to him and poured all over his lean form. It made her heart careen around inside her chest, threatening the structural integrity of her ribs.
Her throat still felt dry. “And do you have a name, or do you prefer to keep yourself mysterious? Is that a raider thing?”
He reached over and took the bottle from her. Then he opened his door and climbed out, pulling his harness of lethal weapons with him. Maud sat there and watched him as he cinched himself back in with an offhanded ease that suggested years of practice. He took all but two of the blades out of the harness, and then walked to the back of the vehicle. Maud heard him open up the cargo area, heard the sound of the blades as he dropped them in, and then the slam of the cargo door closing again.