Edge of Control: (Viking Dystopian Romance) (39 page)

“Eiryn.”

“—and those thoughts involve my blades. And there definitely can’t be any public sex unless I’m on top, in front of all those lecherous bastards who, you’re so right, already spend a lot of penis time with me in their—”

“Baby.”

She stopped, her heart going wild in her chest and her voice so scratchy she could feel it in her chest. But he was smiling then. That dark, rich curve of his mouth that made her turn to pure heat and need inside, hungry and wild. “You can be on top. You can be in any position you want, if you think that’s going to make a difference. Hell, we don’t need to put on a show for anyone ever again. I’ve had enough compliance to last me a lifetime.”

There was something inside her then, growing wide and going deep. Filling her up. And she didn’t know whether she should try to run toward it or away from it, when all she really knew how to do was fight.

She focused on Riordan instead.

“I spent all this time hating you,” she said, her voice rough again. “I cut you open, and I’m not even sorry. But all this time I was calling it the wrong thing.”

She didn’t realize she’d moved, but she was standing in front of him then. She slid her hands up his bare chest, reveling in the feel of him beneath her palms. Hot and smooth.
Alive.
And hers. At last, hers.

“I don’t know how to do it right,” she confessed. “I don’t know how to do anything that isn’t dark and violent and more than a little fucked up.”

Riordan’s mouth kicked up in the corner. “I told you I like you lethal. I meant it.”

She shook her head, aware on some distant level that she was shaking. For once, she didn’t care. “I’m not sure
I’ll
ever be normal.”

“I hope not,” he said gruffly. He smoothed his hands over her hair, holding her there before him. Eiryn wrapped her arms around his chest and let him tilt her face to his. “I like you, babe. All of you.”

“I hate it when you call me babe.”

“No,” Riordan said. “You don’t.”

He bent down, pressing his mouth to hers. He took his time, tasting her and tempting her, hot and deep and perfect.

Not like sex, though it hummed there between them, that shining, desperate, gleaming need that had always bound them together and always would. This kiss was more like a promise.

Until it shifted, making the hunger bloom and her pussy clench.

He moved as if to pick her up and she pushed him back, frowning up at him. “Your leg.”

“It’s my third leg you need to worry about,” he muttered, making her roll her eyes.

“Get up on the bed,” she told him. He slid himself onto her high mattress, pushing himself into the middle.

Eiryn let her towel drop and crawled up with him. She knelt beside him, her beautiful warrior stretched out on her bed for the first time. Her hands shook a little as she moved them to his waistband, helping him strip the cut-off shorts down and off his leg without hurting him. Too much.

She flicked a look at him. “Are you sure . . . ?”

“You have three seconds to climb up here and handle this situation,” he told her, all bossy-ass brother, and the truth was, she liked it. “Or I will.”

And who was she to refuse that cock of his, long and thick and dark, rearing up from his cut stomach and tempting her almost beyond bearing?

“Lie still,” she told him huskily. “And try not to be an idiot.”

Her thighs still hurt from her run, but she didn’t care. Her knees were scraped, but she ignored that. She swung her leg over his sculpted torso, much higher against him than she needed to go, and let him feel exactly how wet and hot her pussy was as she dragged herself down the length of him. Then she propped herself up with one arm and reached between them, wrapping her fingers around his thick, silken cock and working the fat head inside her slick sheath.

“Slow it down,” he rumbled at her. His hands came down to grab her ass, holding her in that firm grip she loved. “I’m not kidding.”

And because he was hurt, she went slow. She tortured them both, easing him in, taking him slow inch by slow inch until finally—
finally—
she had all of him inside her, so hard and huge it made her breath go funny.

She rolled her hips, long and slow and careful not to mess with his thigh. He sucked in a breath, so she did it again.

Riordan reached up and took her face in his hands again, pulling her down close. She kept up with her slow, hot roll, sending that glorious fire everywhere. Her mouth. The pulse in her neck. The greedy, hard points of her nipples that she shamelessly rubbed against his chest. And her hungry, demanding clit that she could rub against him in this position, throwing her so high and so close she almost burnt to a crisp right there.

But Riordan had that serious look on his face again. And his eyes were so dark she thought he could see straight through her. She didn’t hide. She didn’t deflect. She held his cock deep inside her, and she let him see exactly what that did to her.

Because here in his arms there were no divisions. She was as much a woman as she was a warrior, and Riordan knew both sides of her equally. Intimately. He’d fought with her and he’d fucked her silly and she imagined that if they were lucky they’d continue to do both of those things for a long, long time.

This time, when emotion pricked at the back of her eyes, she let it fall. Because she had nothing left to hide. Not from him.

His face changed. Softened.

“What’s this?” he asked, that dark magic voice of his a bare scrape of sound. He shifted and ran his thumb below her eye, catching the tear that fell there.

But Eiryn smiled at him, wide and true, and rolled her hips again, sending him so deep inside of her it should have hurt. It should have, but it didn’t. Just like them.

“I think I’m happy,” she whispered, and it came out like a vow.

Riordan levered himself up from the bed, still holding her close, his hands cradling her face again, his dark eyes intense.

“I thought I was going to die today,” he told her. “I thought I was ready. But when I looked up and saw you on that cliff, with all of our brothers behind you . . .”

She pressed her mouth to his. “I know.”

He slanted his mouth over hers, taking the kiss deep. Then he pulled back again, whole worlds of emotion right there in his dark eyes. She recognized it. She felt them in her, too. She felt him everywhere.

“Eiryn.” Her name was a promise. And something far more primitive. “You’re the only thing I love I haven’t killed.”

That washed over her, wild and beautiful, if not without its pain.

She pushed him back against the bed, and he let her. Then she sat up, picking up the pace a she worked his cock inside of her, making him groan.

“Good news,” she told him, looking down on him as she rode him, straight toward that glittering, gleaming edge, where she had every intention of taking them, together. “I’m a warrior of the brotherhood. You couldn’t kill me if you tried.”

And she planned to keep proving that.

Forever.

A few days later, Riordan found his king on the roof of the Lodge.

He stood under the glass of the greenhouse that spanned the length of the roof, stretching all the way down to the tower. He stared out at what little of the bay was visible today, far below. Fog clung to the cliffs and the trees, and the bay looked sullen and lost. Rain fell in lazy bursts on the glass above, stopping and starting fitfully.

Wulf looked like he was carved from stone. A statue of a raider king, whose leashed power emanated from him no matter that he was still and not acting the least bit lazy. He hadn’t done much of that since Eiryn and Riordan had told him the story of their weeks on the mainland. Especially what had happened in the Cathedral.

Riordan walked to Wulf’s side and stood with him, happy to soak in the quiet and the rich scent of the earth from the boxes all around them, filled with growing things. It reminded him of his parents. The farm. But for the first time since the spring when he’d been ten, it didn’t cause him pain to think of them.

He had grieved them his whole life, in his way. It was time to let them go.

Riordan felt like a new man. His leg was starting to feel better. He wasn’t on that godawful boat contemplating his imminent death or somewhere on the strange mainland, neck deep in their bizarre rituals and a stranger to himself.

He was home.

And he’d left Eiryn screaming out his name before he’d come up here, having made her come for him repeatedly while sharing a few of his favorite reasons why taking it in the ass was fun. For both of them.

He was fairly sure he had a convert.

And he was then equally sure that his king could read his mind and was about to kill him where he stood when Wulf turned his head and pinned him with that harsh blue stare.

“So, brother,” his king said quietly, which was . . . not good. “Explain to me what you think the word
complicated
means.”

He almost answered. But it wasn’t ten years ago. Wulf’s little sister could more than handle herself, and it wasn’t his business anyway.

Riordan considered his options. He met Wulf’s stare with his own, and he didn’t bother throwing out a grin to soften it.

“Are you asking as my king or her brother?”

Wulf didn’t smile. “I believe I’m both.”

Riordan took that in. Considered it some more. And decided that even here, when it could mean his head, he wasn’t about to be a little bitch. Not when it mattered.

Not even if it was Wulf he was talking to.

“I love my king,” he said, and he meant it. He would always mean it. “And I’m loyal to him always.” He held Wulf’s gaze. “But my woman’s interfering older brother can kiss my ass.”

Wulf looked at him for a long, taut moment. But when the king shifted his gaze back to the fog and the bay, Riordan had the strangest notion that he’d passed some kind of test.

“Tell me more about this princess,” Wulf said, as if the previous conversation hadn’t happened. Riordan had the feeling it never would again. “I want to know why she would betray her father to dangerous strangers.”

Riordan crossed his arms and settled in. “I don’t get the impression he’s a nice guy. In any capacity.”

“I hope not,” Wulf murmured, that rich current of fury and pure mayhem running through his voice. “Because I have every intention of killing him as painfully as possible. Him and his army. And his little toy bishop, too, while I’m at it.”

Riordan thought of that confessional in the Cathedral. That sick fuck and his minions. All the things the princess had said about her father and the kind of evil bastard he was. He thought of Eiryn taking the bishop down, her midnight gaze gleaming and that lethal smile on her face, and smiled himself. And he thought of that unspoiled, untested city, so garish with light that they wasted it. Overused it. Acted as if it was theirs by right.

As if they were protected there, behind their mountains, when all they really were was bait for a trap that no one had bothered to spring yet.

But they would. And soon.

“Bring it on,” Riordan told his king. “I can’t wait.”

USA Today
bestselling, RITA nominated, and critically acclaimed author Megan Crane has written a lot of books: from women’s fiction, chick lit, and work-for-hire young adult novels to Harlequin Presents, where she writes as Caitlin Crews. These days her focus is on contemporary romance, from small towns to international glamour, cowboys to bikers, and beyond. She’s taught creative writing classes in places like mediabistro.com and UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally utilizes the MA and PhD in English Literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with a husband who draws comics and animation storyboards and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

Author photography by Courtney Lindberg Photography

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