Edge of Power Read online

  “There are people fucking in front of them and they’re looking at the bed?” He shook his head as if she’d told him something funny. “Compliants have no sense of priorities.”

  “The point is the white sheets,” Kathlyn said, perhaps a little severely. “If they’re not stained with virgin’s blood, no one ever believes that the girl was really a virgin, and the shame follows her. Forever.”

  “Walk me through this,” Wulf said, and then he moved. And that was far more compelling than anything she could possibly have been saying. He was all smooth, easy power, lean and deadly force hidden in plain view behind acres of tattooed golden skin. Her mouth felt dry as he took a step back, still staying close to her, but dropping that hand. It was just that now he was looking down the length of her body. And she could hardly help but do the same. And she was reminded all over again how very, very exposed she was. “They expect you to climb up on a bed in the middle of a room and spread your legs for some tool who paid your father for the privilege.”

  Kathlyn blinked. “Well. Yes. More or less.”

  “And you lie there and let this asshole fuck you in front of a crowd.”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t seem to make herself look away from him, no matter how hot her face felt. “That’s the point of a mounting ceremony. You’re delivering your maidenhead.” There was something about the way he was looking at her, stern and bright, that made her heartbeat thump wildly in her ears. She remembered the words she’d been taught. “It’s a beautiful gift that a girl gives her family and her kingdom. She puts her innocence in her father’s hands and allows him to steward her into a glorious future.”

  “If fucking random jackasses is your idea of a fulfilling life . . .” His mouth moved into a little curve that she knew, somehow, was far too dark and dangerous to be a smile. “But you don’t strike me as the public sex type, princess.”

  “Why are you obsessed with the public part?” she asked, forgetting herself. Something she seemed to do a lot around him. Not that she could blame him for that. The very idea of him had inspired her to dress beneath her station and sneak across the palace to find him. Maybe she was her own worst enemy after all. “I thought raiders loved things like that.”

  “Raiders like to have fun,” Wulf replied, and there was something lethal in his tone then. She didn’t know how she kept from flinching. “Nothing you’re saying sounds like fun. Let me guess. It’s all shitty and uncomfortable. You’re supposed to oil up and lie back and treat a good fuck like a chore while everybody watches you and pretends not to be titillated by some dickwad pumping away on a sweet, hot, virgin piece of ass right there in front of them.”

  Kathlyn couldn’t breathe. His words detonated inside of her and his gaze seemed to slam straight through her and there was something about the images he’d thrown at her that danced around inside of her, a pulse and a shudder and the blue of his gaze. When she’d tried to think about herself on the mounting stage as little as possible since she’d come of age.

  “There’s not that much to watch,” she found herself saying, keeping her gaze trained on his as if he was about to strike. “The men wear long shirts that cover their behinds, mostly. And the girls wear white gowns that are pushed out of the way but usually hide everything anyway. Except, you know. Her knee. Sometimes a little bit of thigh.” His expression was frigid again and she hurried on. “The only part that’s ever tricky is when a girl shames her father by fighting. Or crying. Or making too much noise. It’s supposed to hurt and we bleed to show our innocence, but we’re called on to be ladylike about it.” She realized her hands were in fists by her sides and opened them. “It’s not good when we’re not. That causes gossip, too, but about a girl’s family and how she was raised. And there are consequences for that.” She wasn’t sure she was breathing again, and she still couldn’t look away from him. “There are always consequences. It’s not about breaking the rules here. It’s about hoping and praying they don’t break you.”

  He was so still. It was disconcerting. There was nothing lazy about him now, and it was hard to imagine there ever had been. He looked like a creature made of stone and threat. The lethal edge of a terrible blade. She couldn’t read his face at all. There were those glittering blue eyes and that fascinating mouth, but everything else was a mystery. A cipher.

  Your doom, a small voice inside her whispered. Like a prophecy.

  She told herself she was terrified. That she was ill. And maybe she was. Maybe that was why her limbs felt so heavy and she wanted nothing more than to melt into the wall behind her. To be a puddle at his feet.

  Maybe she was afraid that she would do exactly that.

  But the funny thing was, it didn’t feel like fear. It was too hot and strange between her legs, for one thing.

  “Listen to this, if nothing else,” Wulf said, in a voice that seemed to shudder through her, deep into her bones. Straight to that hot place between her legs. She couldn’t help thinking he knew. He knew. “It’s not supposed to hurt.”

  That was heresy, she knew. That was against everything the church and all the older women had gone to such pains to teach her. And Kathlyn had watched too many girls decide those were lies that the older, already-mounted women told, lies to somehow make their own positions stronger. Yet one after the next they went, submitted the way they were all called to do, and had nothing good to report about their experiences.

  It hurt. It was supposed to hurt. They were supposed to bleed. How could that not hurt?

  I don’t want it to hurt, she’d said to her own mother when she was still small and her mother was still alive.

  I know, sweet, her mother had said, rubbing oil into Kathlyn’s hair, back when it had been allowed to grow naturally. But the pain doesn’t last long. What lasts is your transformation. You go into the ceremony a girl and come out a woman.

  “The entire point is that it hurts,” Kathlyn said now. She made herself stand up straight against the melting heat and that look in his eyes, stern and much too bright, that was making her chest ache. “It’s about duty, and there’s a joy in that. And it’s how a girl becomes a woman.”

  He shook his head and she had the strangest notion that he was indulging her. “Remember how wet you were before? Slippery and hot?”

  She thought she died then. Or maybe Kathlyn only wanted to die. There was a flame that burst to life all around her or maybe inside her, consuming her. Incinerating her. Burning her down into nothing but ash, and still too hot. Hot and damp between her legs, the way he’d left her.

  “No,” she lied. “I don’t.”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to feel,” he told her, in that voice of his that left no doubt that he commanded whole armies of dangerous men and she was nothing but a silly female he could see straight through. Right to that place that seemed lit with a new fire, far hotter than before. “Only much, much better. Don’t worry. I’ll show you.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but this time, nothing came out.

  His hard mouth crooked a little behind that blond beard of his, but she cautioned herself not to read too much into what might have been a smile on someone else. His eyes were the clue, and just then they were cool. And entirely too direct.

  “But first,” the raider king murmured, as if he didn’t care at all when she could see that he did, stamped into every lean line of his powerful body and in that intense blue stare, “tell me about my gracious host. Your dickhead father.”

  4.

  Wulf had no idea how he’d become a fucking sex counselor to the ruined world’s last remaining virgin, but that shit had to stop. Now. If he wasn’t going to get the nice, restorative fuck he’d thought was coming his way when she’d walked in, fine. That bare pussy might haunt him, but there was no tactical advantage to using King Athenian’s daughter as a throwaway comfort fuck. He needed to spend more than an hour in this palace to figure out his strategy, no matter how his cock urged him to just get in there and get deep and wet, no matter that he m
ight be able to use her as leverage. Especially if her virginity was considered some kind of prize around here.

  He was a raider after all. There were few things he loved more than the spoils he collected from the summer raids.

  What this girl did or didn’t do with her strange, confined life—or her mounting ceremony, which sounded like yet another bullshit opportunity for creepy mainland douchebags to control all the local pussy—had nothing to do with him. Still, it was more difficult than he wanted to admit to move further away from her and all that temptation, right there, sweet and essentially naked and in his face. He threw himself back on the couch and let himself sink into it again as if he was boneless and halfway to bored. He kept his gaze lazy and trained on her, watching with entirely too much interest when she stayed exactly where she was against the wall. Exactly where he’d left her.

  As if she was displaying herself to him like a piece of art, a notion that made his cock perk up even more. The horny fucker was nothing if not a dedicated student of that kind of creative expression.

  But it wasn’t the right time to give her the handy little demonstration of his own creative impulses, despite the fact every part of him clamored for it, greedy and demanding. He still didn’t know enough about this weird-ass kingdom. Or Princess Kathlyn’s place in it. Or any of the dark, murky undercurrents he could sense in and around the things she’d told him so far.

  “My father is not gracious in the least,” she said now, still plastered to the wall, and there were those undercurrents again. This time, there was an edge of something like bitterness in her voice, and a cool gleam in her dark eyes as she regarded him from across the room. “Or much of a host. There’s no need to extend hospitality to people who fear for their lives in your presence, after all. You can simply kill them instead.”

  She was still standing there with her tits on display and that see-through thing wrapped around her hips, hiding nothing. In case he wasn’t already hard as shit and tied up in knots about that bare pussy of hers like he’d never gotten his dick wet in his life. And it hadn’t escaped his notice that she was leaning back against the wall not only like art, but like she needed it to hold her up. Like he’d rocked her world a little bit. Or scared the crap out of her.

  Either one was more than fine with Wulf. A little healthy application of fear only made it better. Sharper. Hotter.

  He ordered himself to stop slavering over her like an adolescent jackass.

  “Look at this wonderful accommodation your father’s offered me.” He smiled faintly. “How can you doubt his hospitality under such fine conditions?”

  His princess stared at him for a moment. He watched, fascinated, as that fluttering pulse in her neck warred with the wary disbelief in her eyes. And then, as that disbelief turned into something else. Something that made her stand taller. Steadier.

  The real princess coming out, he thought, and that intrigued him, too. He could tell she was used to power, in her own way, whatever little power it was that women in this part of the world claimed as their own. A weak-ass, insipid sort of power, in his opinion, but Wulf knew better than to move on a trapped or cornered animal no matter how little chance the thing had of escaping its fate. As far as he could tell, these mainland women were no different from any other prey in a trap—and likely just as vicious when necessary.

  She smiled then, and he admired it. It was a cool, serene sort of smile he figured she used to great effect in her usual circles. It suggested she was wearing one of those gold dresses he’d heard so much about instead of what passed for courtesan clothes with her junk hanging out. It was impressive.

  But all he could think about was that he’d made her wet. And the need to get his mouth on that plump little cunt and taste her was still storming through him like he’d never had any pussy before in his life. It was more than a little disconcerting.

  Wulf did not particularly care for the sensation.

  “Surely you realize that this is a cell.”

  She didn’t actually look down her nose at him as she said that, but she gave off the impression that she was about to. Another impressive feat. Every inch of her was high ranked and royal and well used to handling others below her, if he had to guess.

  But Wulf was below no one. Ever. He smiled, leaned back, and toyed with his beard as he waited to see how far she’d go.

  “It might not look like the sort of prisons you’re used to, dungeons or caves or whatever it is you raiders use to cow your enemies.”

  “I don’t believe in dungeons,” Wulf murmured. He made no attempt to keep the lethal bite from his voice. “I believe in blood.”

  She swallowed nervously, drawing his gaze to the elegant brown column of her throat and that flighty pulse that told him truths about her no matter what aristocratic act she put on.

  “Of course you do. I suppose that’s only to be expected from a raider.” She made a sound somewhere between a cough and a dry sort of laugh. “Excuse me. I meant a raider king.”

  Wulf let himself relax even further into the couch, turning over the way she’d said king. Not in a reverent tone of voice, to put it mildly. “In the eastern islands, hospitality doesn’t require a lot of interpretation. You’re either welcome or you’re dead.”

  She gathered herself. Visibly. “That sounds very civilized.”

  “As opposed to your father’s reign of terror? Is that the standard?”

  “You will find that here in the western highlands,” Kathlyn replied after a moment, and he thought her tone was a little more careful, “nothing is ever quite what it seems. Games within games to while away the winters. Gossip disguised as politics and intrigue. After all, the aristocracy must amuse itself. Or it might eat itself whole.” Her face seemed to tighten. “Everything that happens here is for show. Remember that and you might live.”

  Wulf had to remind himself that she didn’t know any better. She likely had no idea that she’d just insulted him with that offhanded remark. You might live. As if there were any asshole here who could take him. But he shoved that aside with a great force of will, because he doubted a princess knew the first thing about what a real warrior looked like.

  He reminded himself that she would be as unable to handle his temper as she’d been unequipped to deal with his greedy, pressing need for pussy. And really, she shouldn’t have been able to get to him no matter what foolishness came out of her mouth. What was up with that?

  “I don’t put on shows, princess,” he told her, his voice low and lazy to hide the temper in it. And the steel. “This is a diplomatic mission, nothing more and nothing less. But I don’t know that I expect someone like you to understand the difference.”

  “Someone like me?”

  “There are no princesses where I come from.” He tilted his head slightly to one side as he kept his gaze trained on her. “Raider women are never that delicate. Or unmarked.”

  That offended her. He saw her pull in a breath, then straighten her shoulders, a tactic that probably worked better for her when her pretty tits weren’t hanging there in plain view, nipples hard and a little bit of sway every time she breathed.

  He had no intention of making her aware of that. If he couldn’t get his dick wet just yet, he’d happily watch her little show instead, intentional or not.

  “I apologize for my delicate, unscarred lack of understanding,” she said, in a voice that was not apologetic in the least, and made him pay her even closer attention. “I keep forgetting that you, too, are a king.”

  “Then you are the first,” Wulf murmured. “Ever.”

  Her eyes flashed. “I’m sure you know best what it is that amuses you in your hard, tough, very dangerous raider world. Blood, I think you said. Or is that less an amusing pastime and more a feature of your diplomacy that we can look forward to experiencing here?”

  Wulf smiled at that, more entertained than he should have been. Than he’d been in some time, for that matter. Because while combat was in his blood and called out to the warr
ior’s soul he’d forged in too many battles to count, preparing for this long skirmish and the required camouflage hadn’t exactly thrilled him. Too many variables outside his control. Too many ways to die long before he reached this asshole’s palace—on the vicious seas, on the trek across the western mainland, maybe even at the gates of this stronghold—which would leave his people vulnerable to King Athenian’s planned attack. And once inside, there were too many ways for all the plans he’d laid out to blow up in his face. Wulf preferred the stillness in the heat of actual combat, when the planning and strategizing was over. The slowing down into the slick, bright fire of the moment. Where there was nothing in all the world but the swing of his blade.

  That was where he fucking dominated. He always had.

  Though he supposed this was a battle all its own, in its way, this odd interaction with a pretty girl wearing fuck me clothes. No wonder he was entertained.

  “I notice you haven’t told me shit about your father,” he pointed out. “Are protecting him? That seems like a strange-ass choice given how little you seem to think of him. But what the hell do I know? I don’t understand the father thing.”

  She blinked as if she was the one who was fascinated, then, and his cock found that an excellent reason to celebrate, rowdy asshole that it was.

  “I would have thought you inherited your throne from your own father. Isn’t that how it works in your islands? One king hands the throne to his son and so on?” She lifted her chin, somehow managing to encompass the palace all around them. And the western highlands stretching out in all directions, the safest and driest and most secure place in what was left of the world. Rich, greedy bastards had claimed the higher elevations long before the Storms finished kicking ass and changing coastlines, from the poisoned seas around the South Spanish Islands to the Mississippi Sea itself. Which had been land, way back when. Wulf had seen the old maps. “My father’s line dates back to well before the Storms. It’s the oldest kingdom in the highlands. He’s very, very proud of that fact.”