Edge of Temptation

  She wasn’t foolish enough to disobey him, and the truth she didn’t quite want to face was that she didn’t want to disobey him, so she squatted down to see what he’d brought her. A pair of leather boots. Faded jeans, which thrilled her, because jeans were what regular, compliant girls wore. Novices were given looser clothes with far more stretch, more easily shoved out of the way when it was time to practice their service and perform their penance. Nuns wore their zipper dresses in the colors that announced their rank and designation, cook, teacher, mother superior, and so on. And the zippers made it easy for the priests who liked a little more skin with their service.

  But Gunnar had brought her a red T-shirt with writing on it, a bigger long-sleeved shirt to cover over it, and the jeans. Sturdy boots and two lengths of fabric. She assumed one was to bind her breasts, something the church did not allow, as binding inhibited access. Finally, Maud would be like everyone else in the world. She would blend in with normal people, not stand out as a novice nun. She stood then, sweeping her tunic up and over her head and letting it drop, then skimming her loose, wide trousers down to the ground before she stepped out of them. She bent to hook the jeans with her finger when she heard a very low, very male sound.

  She jerked her head up and found Gunnar where she’d left him, standing there like a sentry, that tautly muscled body of his a work of ruthless art.

  But his gaze burned, a hot and relentless blue—and that was when she realized she was completely naked.

  Completely naked and not in the convent, that was, where no one paid the slightest mind to nudity in any form. The bodies of novices belonged to the church and were as unexceptional as the furniture. Tables, chair, a naked girl, whatever. Sometimes the novices performed their chores without clothes. Sometimes priests would come and add or subtract clothes as they worked, ate, prayed. The goal was for every girl to think of herself as a tool, nothing more. An item of use for the church.

  But the way Gunnar was looking at her made it clear that he didn’t view her as a piece of furniture.

  That he saw her as a woman. That he was very much a man, looking at a woman, and all the things that implied in places where the church’s rules were not law, but merely suggestion.

  Something inside of Maud shifted then. Hard. Like tilting and then toppling off a high ledge to splinter into pieces far below, when all she did was stand up.

  Gunnar didn’t move. Not a single muscle. It was as if he turned to stone there before her. Dark, forbidding stone.

  Maud shook into awareness, as melting hot as the sun above her. She flushed a deep, crawling red. It swept from her cheeks down to her navel, and seemed to hum between her legs as if it were making her pussy sing. She was too hot. She could feel the wet heat of it, everywhere.

  The fact that Gunnar could clearly see all of this as it happened—the fact that his blue eyes narrowed and tracked the redness as it swept down her neck and between her breasts, then lower—didn’t help. It made her feel restless. Impossible. It made her nipples pinch and poke out from breasts that suddenly felt too heavy. It made her clit ache and her stomach twist.

  “We don’t believe in privacy in the convent,” she said. Or she tried to say it. She could hear her voice, thick and shaking. Obvious. “I forgot that other people do.”

  “I don’t give a shit about privacy.” Gunnar’s voice was a dark rasp across the summer morning, and far more addictive than the sunlight that beat down on him. “That’s for rich fucks and psychos with shit to hide. Naked women, on the other hand, have always interested me.”

  Maud was aware of everything. The sun above. The rush of the river behind her. The solid, squat mountain in the distance and the sweet smell of some kind of flower she’d never encountered before perfuming the breeze that seemed to sweep down from the stone heights.

  And none of that seemed as real as the powerful man who still stood there before her, every part of him taut and hard and rock solid. Or that gaze of his that was a bolt of sensation through her, lighting her up and making her hair feel as if it should stand on end. Maybe it did. She couldn’t look away from him long enough to find out.

  “Maud.” Was he whispering her name? Or was it that she couldn’t really hear him over the blood in her ears and the roar in her head? “You need to put on your clothes.”

  She heard him. She heard that, very distinctly.

  So there was absolutely no reason why she drifted closer to him instead. Her eyes felt too big in her own face. She couldn’t look away from him. She couldn’t seem to do anything but follow that hard, unmistakable command in his gaze, no matter what he said.

  “You don’t listen very well, do you?” he asked, and that slid over her, pricking at her, warning her. But she inched closer still. “I thought that was the point of the church. To tell people what to do and make up a thousand reasons they’ll burn in hell if they don’t.”

  “Hell already happened. It was the Storms.” She was even closer to him then, letting her gaze roam over that magnificent chest of his and the white shirt that still strained over his muscles, engaged in an epic, losing battle with his biceps. She hardly paid attention to church doctrine as it fell from her mouth. “This is the consequence of sin. This whole world. We’re living in it.”

  He let out a derisive sound. “Some people live in it. The church wallows in it.”

  “We’re already damned,” Maud told him. Piously. The way she’d learned to parrot her responses back to whatever nun or priest asked, as if she were merely a conduit for scripture. “That’s the point of the church. To make the best of what remains.”

  “The best of hell?” Gunnar shook his head. His blue eyes were so hard and so cold, glittering as they focused on her. “Let me tell you something about hell, girl. It doesn’t matter what pompous dickheads who weathered the Storms above the waterline say about it. What lukewarm lectures they give. They only make it worse. No one who’s spent actual time in any kind of real hell wants to hear that shit.”

  He sounded so bitter, so sure. But then, he didn’t have to open up and tell her his life story—or anything, for that matter—for Maud to get that this man was tortured. It bled out of him. It poisoned the air around him. He was like that thunderstorm in her childhood, a great, deep bruised thing rumbling there with the promise of a thousand nightmares tucked away in its harsh depths.

  She knew all of that. Maybe she’d known it when she’d first seen him, in that breathless moment when she’d realized he wasn’t a tree, but a man.

  Gunnar was so strong, so powerful. He was a raider warrior and every inch of him shouted that out. He didn’t have to say a word. He was danger personified. He somehow had his own all-range vehicle when they were very rare commodities, usually the province of churches and kings, and the gas to go with it, which was even harder to come by. He didn’t seem the least bit afraid of anything, the night or coyotes or whatever might have been waiting in that town he’d strolled into—nothing.

  And yet he was just like her, Maud thought, with certainty that should have scared her, or at least surprised her. Broken. In ruined little pieces where it counted.

  Maybe that was why when he scowled at her, ferocious and harsh, she smiled.

  “That’s why they focus on the sex,” she told him. She told herself she was simply being helpful. “Everyone pays a lot more attention.”

  Gunnar only stared back at her, something as naked as she was and three times hotter burning in his blue gaze.

  Everything slowed then. Her breath. The world.

  His mouth was so grim. Why she found that achingly, inexpressible beautiful Maud couldn’t imagine, and yet she did. It lodged inside of her like a weight. Like a sob. And he was so close now that she could almost feel the heat she knew radiated off him. His scent teased at her nose, clean and male with only a hint of the salty muskiness she was sure she could still taste against her tongue.

  She didn’t know what to do, so she lifted her hand, thinking maybe she’d dare to trace the
lower edge of that fascinating, complicated tattoo he wore over his heart, even though she couldn’t see it through his shirt—

  “No.” Gunnar bit out the word. “Don’t touch me.”

  Maud was conditioned to obey. But with this man, it felt less like her training and more … something else. Something that flooded through her, soft and raw at once, making her pussy clench, then ache.

  And when Maud looked down, she could see the heavy weight of his cock pushing against his fly. It made her feel liquid and hot, all the way to her toes. It made her shudder, then shift her weight from one foot to the other, unable to stand still.

  “How often do you pray?” he asked.

  She dragged her gaze back to his. “All day, every day, in the convent. That’s kind of the point.”

  “On your knees? With a dick in your mouth every time?”

  Maud considered. “Do you actually want me to count?”

  “And how many times do you get to come while you’re busy sucking cock and calling it holy?”

  “Oh.” Maud felt red again, but this time, from shame. She recognized it all too well. It had long been her constant companion on the bishop’s hard floor. “We’re not— I mean, it’s a sin. For nuns.”

  “What a great shock.”

  She dropped her hand back to her side, overly aware of her own bare skin and the faint touch of the spring breeze all over her body. His dark tone was the same, prickling as it moved over her.

  “The role of a nun is to serve,” Maud intoned from memory. She’d chanted these words daily. “She is to make herself useful. She is to be of open heart and giving demeanor. She is to make herself available. She is to make no demands. She is to give herself fully unto the church and its priests. Amen.”

  The fact that he stood there, as immoveable as stone, was starting to make her skin feel too tight for her body.

  “So none of those jackass priests ever got you off?” Gunnar asked, his dark voice even. Unhurried. It made a very dark ribbon of sensation coil deep within her. When she only stared back at him, mute and embarrassed, he cocked his head to one side. He didn’t have to issue an order. She felt it go through her like a searchlight.

  “Every now and again the bishop would let me, ah … surrender to my sinful nature,” Maud admitted, barely above a whisper. “When it couldn’t be helped.”

  “I bet he did.” Gunnar’s uncompromising gaze rested on hers for a long time. Or maybe it only felt that way.

  “But he always punished me much more severely afterward,” Maud hurried to assure him. “It was a test and I failed it. Every time.”

  Gunnar’s mouth curved into something far too fierce to be a smile. And Maud felt it all over her, slippery and hot, twisting around inside of her and ending up in a kind of bright, throbbing knot low in her belly.

  “Show me,” he said.

  4.

  Maud’s mouth dropped open and she couldn’t seem to summon the necessary force of will to shut it again. She swayed slightly on her feet while her mind went entirely blank, and then started to race wildly.

  She couldn’t show him. It was shameful. It was sinful.

  This had to be a trap—even if Gunnar didn’t strike her as one to bother trapping anything he could take directly. He couldn’t have meant for her to show him … that. That expression of her own failure. Of her inability to focus on the things that truly mattered. Of her callous disregard for the needs of others above her own base hunger.

  He couldn’t possibly mean that.

  But she couldn’t quite convince herself he’d meant anything but exactly what she thought he meant.

  And meanwhile, she was standing there naked before him by the side of a river while he did nothing at all but wait for her to do as he’d asked. As resolute and unmoving as the mountains in the distance, as if he would stand there forever, just as they did, until she did what she’d been told.

  It made her quiver. He did.

  “I have to kneel,” she said after a long moment, trying to sound matter-of-fact while her pulse went wild. As if what they were discussing wasn’t the most shameful part of her, something she’d stuff down deep and pretend didn’t exist if she could. As if she hadn’t suffered through any number of lashings for doing exactly what he’d asked her to do here.

  But she’d always taken the orgasm when it was offered, no matter how grudging and terrible the offer or how harsh the beating that would inevitably follow. The pain had always been worth the pleasure, she’d decided a long time ago, no matter how deep that current of shame and self-disgust ran in her at her weakness.

  And she’d never felt half as molten or wild or needy in her confessionals as she did here, now.

  Because some part of her wanted to do what he told her to do, whatever it was. That yearning prickled through her, nameless and strange. And another part of her simply wanted to ease that ache between her legs that had been there since the moment she’d seen him last night. No matter what Gunnar did about it afterward.

  No matter how much it hurt.

  “Then kneel.” His voice was as uncompromising as ever, and she couldn’t help herself. It rolled through her, delicious and dark, and she had her knees on the soft dirt before she knew she meant to move.

  That was what his voice did. It got under her skin. It messed with her insides.

  It felt entirely too good to obey him.

  Maud moved her hands to her thighs and discovered they were shaking, or her legs were shaking, or maybe her whole body was simply shaking. Everywhere. And his eyes were so blue and so tough, slicing straight through her and leaving her in ribbons, she only shook more.

  “Put your hands on that cunt,” Gunnar growled. “Stop playing around.”

  “But I—”

  Maud couldn’t finish that sentence. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know anything, it seemed, except the way he looked at her, his eyes as bright as the June sky stretched out above him.

  “Don’t touch those tits,” he continued in the same low rumble, all command and yet Maud knew, somehow, that he had no doubt whatsoever that she’d do exactly as he asked. “Don’t put on a show. Just make yourself come, fast and hard. Now.”

  Fire roared inside of her, lighting her up and making her feel heavy. Languid and lush. She settled back on her heels, spread her thighs open, and then she ran her hand down between them to cup her pussy.

  God, she was wet. Molten hot and swollen, so that even such a mild touch sent sensation storming through her, lighting her on fire.

  “Let me see.”

  That voice of his was so hard, so certain. It brooked no argument. It didn’t occur to Maud to ignore him or disobey him. She couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted more in the world just then than to please him.

  So she did what he told her to do.

  She widened her thighs and arched her back, thrusting her breasts toward him and presenting her pussy to him as he’d asked. Commanded, more like. And she knew he could see when his nostrils flared slightly and his gaze went bluer. Harder. She lost herself in that scant evidence that he was more than a man made of stone, that he was happy with her on some level, that he felt the same hunger that was wrenching her apart.

  And then she began to move her hand. She used a slow, slick, kneading motion, rolling her index finger firmly over her clit on the down stroke and sending the pressure of her whole palm streaking like a current of pure fire deep into her.

  It had never felt like this on the hard, cold convent floor, pleasuring herself with her eyes shut tight to block everything else out for a few moments, the coming lash and her shame and the bishop’s sneer. It had never felt so … big, as if she might die if she didn’t do this. As if it would tear her apart and eat her whole.

  She pretended it was Gunnar touching her, with those huge, battered raider hands of his, so well trained and capable. She had done this before, of course, though never quite like this. The bishop had always watched her with that disdainful pity of his as
she’d hurried herself toward her inevitable fall from grace at his feet. She’d felt as awash in shame as in sensation, and she’d been aware with every press of her hands against her pussy that the moment she felt that too-brief rush of release, she would pay for it under the bishop’s lash—the sting of it almost as sharp as his barely contained glee.

  This was different.

  If there was shame in this, down on her knees in the soft dirt with a raider towering above her as if he was as consumed by this as she was, she didn’t feel it.

  Gunnar stared down at her, his hard face set but that glitter in his gaze telling her that whatever he might be feeling, it wasn’t pity. Or anything like disdain. That alone made her arch harder and higher, so he could see the way her breasts peaked hard and hear how wet she was as she moved her hand, for him.

  All for him.

  Maud set her own rhythm. She rocked her hips, riding her own busy fingers, and felt her breasts sway the faster she moved. She lost herself in that commanding gaze of his, and she worked her hand between her legs, rubbing hard against her clit—

  “You better not sneak a finger into that greedy little pussy,” Gunnar told her, the rasp of his voice electric against her overheated flesh. “Who does your sweet virgin cunt belong to, Maud? Whose is it?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but could only pant out her response, as if he controlled her voice, too. As if those hands of his were wrapped tight around her throat.

  That notion—and the instant, vivid image it conjured up in her head—sent a separate thrill spiraling through her.

  “Yours,” she managed to croak out. “All yours.”

  It shouldn’t have been true. There was a brand on the nape of her neck and a decade of training to remind her that she belonged to the church. That they had serious plans for her virginity the way they did for all the second-phase novices. The big, annual ceremony in the Great Lake Cathedral, where the girls were tested by their confessors and the higher level priests and then divided. The devoted on one side all set to take their places as full nuns, the disgraced bound for the desert on the other. She’d been bought from her mother and uncle ten years ago for exactly that purpose. The church owned her. She knew that better than she knew her own name.