But here, now, on her knees in the dirt because he’d told her to kneel, her hand deep in her own pussy because he’d ordered her to touch herself, Maud could see nothing but Gunnar.
And everything in her body tightened. She moved her hand faster, rubbing hard against her own soft flesh—
“Don’t come,” Gunnar said then. Almost lazily, though there was no mistaking the steel beneath it. The sheer, dizzying command that made her stomach turn delicious, delirious cartwheels.
“What?” She was breathless and she was close and she didn’t know what he meant. She stopped moving her hand, though she didn’t want to end this. She wanted to do anything in the world but end this.
“I didn’t tell you to stop.” His voice was so dark. So sure. “I told you not to come.”
A new flush washed over Maud then. It shook through her, then wound its way inside her, a bright, hot ribbon of sensation.
She moved her hand again, grinding the heel of her palm against her clit and feeling that twisting, coiling thing inside her pull tight. Too tight. And she fought it. She kept her eyes glued to his and she fought it.
For this grim man with the beautiful blue eyes, she fought it.
The shaking got worse. Her clit felt bigger than usual, something like desperate, and her whole pussy was slick and swollen and so very slippery. His blue gaze was calm and demanding at once, and she wanted nothing more than to do this for him—to do anything for him—and she fought.
She sweated and she shook and she fought.
“Maud.” Her name from his hard mouth was like another lick of sensation, shoving her closer to that edge, until she felt as if she was clinging to sanity with the ragged edge of her nails and that demanding gaze of his. If that. “Ask my permission to come. Beg me.”
She didn’t hesitate.
“Please,” she breathed, or maybe she cried. “Please, Gunnar.”
For a moment that stretched out, sharp like a knife, and he only watched her. He was entirely without mercy, and somehow that made it all hotter. Better.
Slicker. Sweeter.
“Come,” he ordered her, a million years later. “Now.”
And she did. She broke apart.
Maud heard herself cry out, when years ago she’d trained herself not to make a sound no matter what happened. And then she shook. She shook and she shook, so much harder than she ever had before, and when she was done she was in pieces.
She was surprised there was any of her left.
When the shaking slowed she crumpled forward, her hand still buried in her pussy, but she didn’t actually let herself fall all the way to the ground no matter how boneless she felt. And for a long while the only thing she could hear was her own wild breath, indistinguishable from the murmuring of the river behind her.
“Sit up.”
Maud shuddered at the sound of his voice. She knew what came next. There was always a punishment for pleasure, even pleasure far scanter than this had been. There were always consequences for the sweet reach into oblivion, however brief. Always.
But Gunnar still hadn’t moved. He didn’t raise his hand. He didn’t turn to fetch a belt or something else he could use as a switch or a lash. He stood there above her the way he had since he’d returned. His arms were crossed over that stunning chest and his face was so damned fierce, his blue gaze glittering and unreadable as he looked down at her. She felt her eyes prick with moisture and blinked it back, because if she’d displeased him there was no point crying about it. That would only make it worse.
She’d learned that lesson a long time ago. So long ago it might have occurred to her to be surprised she’d teared up again now, if she could think about anything but what Gunnar might do next.
“Thank me,” he ordered her, his voice low. But not at all soft.
Maud could see his cock, huge and ready in trousers—but she knew better, somehow, than to reach for him then. Even though her mouth watered to taste him again. To show him her appreciation the best way she knew.
Instead, she obeyed him.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
And that word he’d used earlier seemed to vibrate in the air between them.
Master.
She didn’t know why she didn’t say it, when it seemed she might as well have. When she thought they both could hear it, as loud and clear as the water of the river over the smooth, slick stones.
When she thought she felt it, deep inside of her, in that dark, delicious, throbbing place so far beyond sin or shame she didn’t know how to name it, save the word itself.
“Clean your hands, Maud,” he told her after a moment, and she thought his voice was thicker, as if he wanted her to say that word as much as she did. She shifted, rising to her feet in a single, fluid movement, and she didn’t miss the way his bright gaze gleamed hard as he watched her do it. But he shook his head when she started to turn toward the river, and she froze. “With your mouth.”
Her heartbeat was too loud again. It heaved and pounded against her ribs, leaving shuddering sorts of echoes in her throat, her temples. High between her legs.
It felt like a new sin, far better than those that had come before, and entirely divorced from anything like shame.
But she lifted her hand and licked her fingers. She tasted her own arousal, sweet and tangy at once, and she felt her pussy heat and run wet all over again as she did it. As he watched her do it.
When she was done, she did the same on her other hand, lavishing each finger. Making sure he watched the way she toyed with the tip of each, as if she was practicing for a chance at his cock again. Because she was. Of course she was.
She saw that burn in his eyes. That same wildfire that still coursed through her, keeping her breath shallow and her color high.
But he didn’t pull out his huge cock. He didn’t motion for her to drop before him again, or crawl over his lap to receive his hand. He wasn’t anything like the bishop, Maud realized. She couldn’t read him at all.
“Put on your clothes,” Gunnar said, his voice as calm as if he didn’t have a huge, likely painful erection he was apparently ignoring. Calm and commanding at once, and that dark thing within her that wanted to call him by a different name twisted in on itself, then around and around. It pulsed with a need she didn’t entirely recognize. “Because the next thing I’ll make you do will be a lot less fun, I promise you.”
He sounded as harsh as ever. Strict and stern and dark besides.
And still, Maud was smiling as she pulled the bundle of clothes toward her and started to dress.
* * *
It took a while to make it down out of the mountains, including some perilous wheelwork around a bullshit pile of suspiciously empty caravans blocking the road east of Cheyenne that smacked of an old-school highwayman setup even though Gunnar couldn’t see any bandits lurking there. The fact he couldn’t see them didn’t mean they weren’t there. And watching as he navigated a path around the barrier they’d thrown up. After that nonsense he settled into the long, straight shot across the prairie, taking the Eighty all the way until it led straight into the heart of bandit-held Lincoln on the shores of the Mississippi Sea. He drove it straight through. And fast.
In total, it took about twelve hours.
Twelve hours that Gunnar used to question why the hell he’d done what he had back by the banks of that Wyoming river. Sure, he hadn’t touched her, and the restraint that had required still roared through him like he was choking himself with iron chains. Breath after painful breath. So much restraint it hurt.
He hadn’t touched so much as a hair on her head—that time, anyway. But he was a fucking saint any way he looked at it. He hadn’t done anything that would keep him from performing his ritual as planned, using Maud as the centerpiece, and that was what mattered. It was the only thing that mattered until he got Audra back.
But who the hell was he kidding?
The sight of his little nun coming on command—his command—her hands between her legs
on that cherry of a cunt and that rapturous, hungry look on her face as she kept her eyes trained on him like he was her brand-new god, was burned into his brain.
Like a new brand, pressed deep into his flesh, with no salve to help it heal.
Once they hit the prairie, the Eighty was smooth and flat. The only thing Gunnar had to do was keep his eyes peeled for opportunistic bandits and latter-day highwaymen, who liked to lie in wait on the old overpasses and chase down anyone who didn’t stop and offer them whatever toll they demanded. It didn’t matter that Gunnar had paid off the current bandit king back in Lincoln, the way everyone had to do if they didn’t want to get chased all the way to the Wyoming border. Payoffs didn’t tend to make it farther than the immediate territory in question, and bandits on the whole weren’t precisely known for their understanding or trusting natures.
Gunnar would happily take down any bitch who came at him, but bandits couldn’t fight somebody they couldn’t catch. Their preferred targets were the caravans who used the Eighty to cut directly into the heart of the western highland kingdoms, not a tricked-out truck like Gunnar’s that could barrel right through them with spiked, armored wheels and keep on going.
Gunnar kept his blades close and the gas pedal to the floor.
Beside him, Maud gripped the oh-shit handles in the passenger door and looked nothing like a nun at all. She could have been any mainlander woman, if a whole lot prettier than most. It was exactly what he’d wanted. What amazed him was how little he liked the result. Sure, the jeans he’d found were the first pair of the stupid, stiff pants the mainlanders insisted on wearing that he’d ever liked the look of, but he was pretty certain that had more to do with Maud’s perfect ass. She’d wrapped her breasts tight and pulled on the bright red T-shirt that called attention to them anyway, and then she’d smiled at him out there in the sun. That wide, pretty smile that made the light dim everywhere else, in a T-shirt and jeans with her bare feet in the dirt.
It was more accurate to say he liked it too much. Way too fucking much.
He’d never known what a truly simple man he was until that moment. Until he’d honestly contemplated tipping the both of them right back down to the ground and getting his cock inside her at last, so he could pound this dangerous lust right out of him and who cared what that meant for his summer ritual and his plans to clear Audra’s name.
He hadn’t done it, of course. He’d hated himself for considering it.
And that terrible lust in him had turned dark and sunk deep, straight down into his bones.
She’d stamped her feet into the boots and laced them up, appearing wholly unaware of how precarious everything was for her, out there in the middle of nowhere, caught between a raider and a wide river. She’d pulled on the looser overshirt and let it hang open, and then she’d frowned at the other piece of fabric he’d brought.
Your hair. He’d still been standing there, stock still, and it had occurred to him to wonder what might happen if he really couldn’t move. If this inconvenient, outrageous longing nailed him to the ground where he stood. It infuriated him. Make it look like you have more.
His little nun had seemed to like the challenge. Gunnar had forced himself to tend to the fuel, making sure the secondary tank he’d lashed to the back of the truck would hold at the high speed he planned to travel. He’d checked all the armored tires and loathed himself more deeply and more passionately than usual while he did it, and when he’d come back around she was finishing up. Maud had wrapped the brighter colored scrap of fabric around her head, but left a bit of her straight blond hair visible in the front. She’d gathered it in the back like a ponytail, and if he hadn’t known that her hair was short all over, he’d have thought she’d simply tied hers back the way he had.
She’d looked too damned good. Too much like a regular woman, except far too beautiful in a way compliant, everyday women never were and much, much softer than any raider woman. Gunnar had wanted her—badly—when she’d been dressed in her drab little nun clothes. He hadn’t thought about the fact that putting her in the clothes any other woman in the western highlands might wear made it a little bit difficult to remember the reason he was supposed to keep his hands to himself.
His vows. His mate.
It didn’t matter that Audra was dead. That state was temporary, he was sure of it. He’d been sure of it almost since the moment he’d lost her. He wouldn’t accept any other outcome.
And in the meantime, he needed to keep his hands off random pussy.
Why the fuck would you do that? his blood brother Wulf, the mighty king of the raider clan, had asked him point blank last fall. Celibacy is for the little church mice, Gunnar. Not us.
Wulf had been lounging before the great stone fireplace that dominated the lowest level of the sturdy tower he lived in as raider king, high up on the roof of the Lodge—the central building where the brotherhood lived and the king of the clan reigned—back home in the eastern islands. The autumn rains had come in hard that last October, pounding at the thick stone walls and howling at the windows that lined the higher levels of the king’s tower. His blood brother’s home was deliberately airy and bright when the sun was out, as if the king’s will alone had hollowed out the center of the ancient-looking fortress and made it feel nearly as open as the greenhouse surrounding the tower on four sides. It had always been one of Gunnar’s favorite places.
But that day, Gunnar had felt claustrophobic. Hemmed in. Trapped and furious and a hair’s breadth away from doing something truly stupid, like drawing his blade on his blood brother the way he would have done if Wulf had been anything and anyone but his king.
He’d been poisoned straight through with that black, choking thing that had wormed its way deep into his gut and stayed there, rotting, ever since he’d lost Audra only a few months before. And ever since Wulf and the rest of the brotherhood had lined up to tell him she’d betrayed them all. With some little bitch piece of cannon fodder like Dandro, no less.
You’re the only one who sees me as I am, Audra had told him a few nights before her death, out in the woods in Kentucky. She’d crooned it into his ear as he’d pounded into her, her legs clamped tight around his hips and her back against a tree. Everyone thinks they know me, but only you really do, Gunnar. Only you.
He’d held on to that all summer, though he hadn’t had her. He’d lost his sanity and his temper, his friends and family alike in the wake of that terrible raid, but by god he’d held on to that. He’d gripped her words tight then, too, called there to stand before his blood brother like some kind of penitent bitch.
Riordan, the best tracker in the brotherhood who was often sent on errands involving the hunting of this or that, had trekked out to Gunnar’s far-off cabin through the fall rains. He’d dragged Gunnar back to the raider city with the help of Tyr, who was probably Wulf’s best friend—assuming either the war chief or the mighty raider king himself were capable of that kind of thing. No one had asked Gunnar what he might want. No had cared what Gunnar wanted. Riordan and Tyr had stalked out to Gunnar’s private cabin on the far side of the island and they’d hauled his ass back to the Lodge because his fucking blood brother had demanded his presence and they were his grateful little buttlickers, end of discussion.
And also because, Gunnar was aware, they’d all wanted to gauge his state of mind. Are they concerned? a little voice in him that sounded like Audra had asked, ripe with dark suspicion. Or are they checking to see if they can call you a traitor, too?
A parade of camp girls had waited for Gunnar the minute he’d stepped inside the great front door to the Lodge, all sweet smiles and concerned gazes and tits out to tempt him. It had been an insult. An abomination, and no matter that he knew all the camp girls, and well. He knew they meant to do nothing but offer him comfort—and that once they had, they’d likely do their part to probe him for possible treachery and report back to the king. Camp girls belonged to the clan, after all. Their loyalty was to the head of that clan like everyone el
se’s.
But Gunnar didn’t want comfort, much less informants to tell tales about him. He wanted his rage and he wanted vengeance. Above all he wanted vindication, and that wouldn’t come from getting his dick wet with camp girls, whose entire purpose in life was to act as an opiate. Gunnar didn’t want oblivion. He wanted Audra back. He’d brushed the women aside and growled at his brothers to take him to his goddamned blood brother, if that was the reason they’d wrenched him out of his home and marched him across all that rainy wilderness against his will.
This is your home, brother, Tyr had rumbled in his war chief’s trumpet of a voice, loud enough to carry across whole battlefields. Tyr was big and mean and tough as hell, tattoos all over his golden chest and up his arms that announced his many victories and the braids in his dark hair that proclaimed him one of the best combatants in the clan. But the main thing Gunnar knew about Tyr was that he’d been loyal to Wulf since they’d all been kids together. Unshakably, unquestionably loyal, even back when the only thing Wulf had been in charge of was his own punk ass.
Gunnar would have told Tyr to go fuck himself, but the war chief might not have taken that well. Instead, he’d ignored Tyr altogether and scowled at Riordan instead, because Riordan was a badass like every other warrior of the clan but he’d also been known to call Wulf on his shit now and then. He wasn’t all blind loyalty and epic ass-kissing, like every other bastard in the brotherhood.
Take me to Wulf or let me go, he’d growled.
Riordan had rubbed his hand over his brown jaw, his dark eyes narrow as he’d held Gunnar’s gaze.
Why don’t you relax? he’d suggested, nodding at the little knot of camp girls who still waited there, soft and sweet smelling and not one of them Audra. Not one of them even close. Bust a nut, calm the fuck down.
Fuck you.
Wulf it is, Riordan had replied, making Tyr belt out a laugh.