Elenthea had never had a secret before.

Life on the Raft was out there in the open for everyone to see and judge and rank, right there as it happened. She’d never imagined there could be something like this—quiet moments snatched from her days to sneak food and drink and wool to a brooding, beautiful man who not only wanted to leave, but thought he actually could. And more, took steps to make that happen.

Elenthea had always believed that the only way off the Raft was over the side, to drown or get eaten by sharks. No one had ever simply chosen to leave. Not as long as she’d been around.

But her bold raider only laughed when she told him that.

“I’m not staying on a fucking raft, baby,” Tait said, and there was something about the way his strong brown throat looked when he laughed. Something about the way his gaze settled on her and stayed there. It made her mouth feel dry. It made her head spin as if she was ill when she knew very well she wasn’t.

“Everyone else does. There’s nowhere else to go.”

She’d started racing through her usual morning chores instead of hoping they’d get done by someone else, all to claim a few extra moments out here with him. Her fascinating, beautiful secret.

“You don’t know what’s out there, Elenthea,” he said quietly. “I do. It’s a whole big world, ruined piece of shit that it is, and it doesn’t float around in the sea like a pile of garbage.”

It had never occurred to Elenthea to dream of bigger, better. Other. The notion pricked at her even as it scared her.

She’d been taught that there was only one kind of ambition, and it came in the form of the favor of round men who were always surrounded by other women who wanted the exact same thing from them. No one had ever even hinted at the possibility that there was anything else.

Here on the Raft, there wasn’t anything else.

Tait didn’t just hint at possibilities. He showed her. Because he didn’t just sit around, waiting for her to come to him the way the Houses would do. The way all the men she’d ever met did. Not this raider.

At first she didn’t understand what he was doing.

“You shouldn’t be in one of the fishing boats,” she said the first day she found him outside that little floating log of his that he called a canoe, messing around with one of the fishing boats tied up for the winter. “That’s a serious offense.”

“This is barely a fucking fishing boat,” he muttered, barely looking over his huge, hard shoulder as he worked on something in the rear of the vessel in question. “A block of wood would be faster.”

“No one can see you in the marina. No one can know you’re here.”

He looked at her and his mouth moved, as if he was trying not to laugh. “Does anyone come out here? It looks deserted.”

“No,” she replied, almost against her will, as if he was demanding a difficult concession. “Not when it’s cold. The docks get busy again in the spring.”

Tait only smiled a little bit at that, and kept doing what he was doing. As if he’d never had a doubt.

It was still winter, which meant that only Elenthea snuck away from the protected pontoons. Everyone else stayed huddled inside. That meant there was no one to notice that there was unusual activity in the boatyards. Just as there was no one but Elenthea to see it when Tait stripped down to the waist every time he got hot, which seemed to be fairly often. She felt it would somehow be rude not to admire all those planes of hard muscle and fascinating ridges dug into his torso. To say nothing of the bold art that covered him. Marks and figures. Circles and words.

She’d never seen anything like it. It made her feel hot from her scalp to her knees. Hot and too loose, as if her body was doing things of its own volition, and shivering all the while.

Usually she had to sit down on the dock with her knees drawn up under her chin to deal with all that shivering.

And every time she did, she had the oddest notion that he knew why.

Tait was so active. That was as surprising as the stories he told. He talked of the cold islands he called home, to the west and north of where he suspected the Raft was, far across the sea. He talked of a childhood spent swimming and sailing no matter the weather, and fighting all the rest of the time. Learning bladecraft and battle the way Elenthea had learned to sew garments together to clothe the rest of the house, because that was the responsibility of all the ranked girls. Except the way Tait talked about his life, it all seemed so bright and captivating. Not like here. She had the distinct impression he enjoyed his life, a concept that baffled her.

And all the while he talked, he did things. He climbed all over the boats in the marina, taking parts and refashioning them on his favorite fishing boat. Sometimes he hung off the side of taller boats and then pulled himself up, over and over, without ever swinging his legs up to actually climb aboard, as if the pulling up was the point. Sometimes he threw himself on the ground and caught himself on his fists, then levered himself up and down, again and again, until his thick arms looked even wider and stronger.

All of it was mesmerizing. Elenthea had the notion that the man could sit silent and motionless and she would still find him almost too compelling to be real.

Every day she brought him food and drink, and her reward was getting to watch him do these odd—and oddly appealing—things all over the boatyard. She got to sit there as he made it clear that contrary to what everyone had always said with such authority here, there really was a whole world out there. Maybe a whole lot less of it than there was before the Storms ripped everything apart and reshaped it all, but still. Lives and people and places that had nothing to do with the Raft.

It sounded like heaven to Elenthea. Even the scary, upsetting parts that Tait seemed to find fun—like the raids he and the men he called his brothers went on, pouring over the walls of mainland encampments to fight and steal and win—fascinated her because it was all different. New. Exciting, somehow, even if it was a bit violent for her tastes.

Maybe it wasn’t that the violence bothered her. Tait looked like he could handle it, and easily. Maybe it was that this man was clearly alive in a way Elenthea hadn’t known was possible.

“You’ve actually been on the land?” she asked one afternoon, when it was finally clear which mainland he was talking about. The bigger one, that Elenthea knew of only in the vaguest terms as being near the Appalachian Mountains, and not the same as the smaller mainland clustered around the Alps. Both of which were stories her people told. She’d never seen either herself.

“Of course I’ve been on the land.”

“You say ‘of course,’” Elenthea murmured, “but I’ve never been off the Raft. No one leaves the Raft by choice.”

“Why not?” He laughed when she stared at him. “It clearly sucks here. Why stay?”

She blinked at him. “Where else is there to go?”

Tait eyed her as he carved a piece of wood with one of his many wicked blades, that curve to his mouth that made her heart careen about unevenly in her chest. Today his braids were tied back in a messy knot and he was wearing that shirt he called a thermal that she knew he washed out and rewore often. On brighter, drier days she’d seen him hang things out to dry in the weak winter sun.

She had no idea why she found every last thing this man did so fascinating. More than fascinating. It was as if it might hurt her—physically—if she didn’t bear witness to every move he made.

Maybe she was as crazy as everyone had always told her she was.

“Anywhere,” he replied, low and rough and compelling. “Everywhere. A home is a prison if you don’t see enough of the world to appreciate it.”

And as the days passed, Elenthea got a little bit lost in him. The way he moved. The low hum of his voice. That bold laugh of his that made her flash hot with a kind of fierce joy. The things he did with his hands, like rebuilding a boat that had looked perfectly decent to her because he saw something else in it. Something better.

He was so much stronger than when she’d found him in that log he called a canoe. He’d filled out a bit, which only served to make her realize that he’d been gaunt when she’d first seen him. When she’d thought he was the most beautiful dead man she’d ever laid eyes on.

Also the only dead man she’d ever seen up close, though she didn’t share that with him. She had the suspicion that he wouldn’t appreciate the stories of most Raft funerals, where people were either weighted and tossed overboard to drown, or simply taken away in the night and slid overboard, leaving nothing behind, not even a ripple.

Rituals were for the highly-ranked alone.

Tait was telling her a story about some or other great battle and the king he called Wulf one afternoon when he stopped, tilting his head slightly to one side, his whole big, tough body going on alert.

Elenthea held her breath, She didn’t even know why. But she couldn’t bring herself to look away from him.

“Why do they blow those horns?” he asked. “I hear them all the time.”

Elenthea jolted, then scrambled to her feet. How had she lost track of the hour? But she knew how. He was lounging there in the cabin of the boat he’d claimed as his, kicked back on the bunk. She’d been perched there at his feet the way she often was, wanting nothing more than to investigate every facet of him. Like the way his battered old boot fit his shockingly large foot. Or the way his trousers clung to his legs, showing her muscles in places she’d had no idea could be anything at all but soft flesh.

“It’s the afternoon call,” she said nervously when he did nothing but settle that dark gaze of his on her, still half-reclining in that way of his. She felt breathless and slippery, and this time she wasn’t holding her breath. This time she couldn’t quite catch it. “I have to get back.”

“Or they’ll start looking for you?”

Her hands shook, but she couldn’t tell if it was because of the horns when she should have been back already, or because of the thick, sharp thing that seemed to crowd the air in the cabin. Elenthea wrapped her long length of wool around her like a cloak and tugged it tight, as if that was an answer. Or a kind of armor, anyway.

“Everyone is expected to be in their proper place in their houses at nightfall,” she said when she was reasonably sure she wouldn’t stutter. Or sound as knocked-back as she felt. “The House Mistresses do a count then and again at dawn. Otherwise people might get swept overboard and no one would know.”

He studied her, then rose, and that was . . . worse? Better? Dangerous? Elenthea didn’t know, and then he was right there. Standing over her. So close she could almost feel the heat he gave off. So close she could smell him, a kind of salt mixed with the fresh scent of the sea, but warmer, somehow. It made her mouth water. It made her feel things she couldn’t possibly name.

And he was so much bigger when he was closer. So much taller and more . . . everything, something in her whispered. More of everything. Everything and then some.

He took up the whole of the cabin. But Elenthea knew it wasn’t because the cabin was small. If they were outside, he’d block out the sky. That was what Tait did.

“Why do you look afraid, baby?” His voice wasn’t exactly soft. It was low, but there were hints of those darker things in him that he seemed to embrace. It made her wish she had darker things in her, too. It made her want to hum like an ember, hot and bright and deep, the way he did.

Or just be near him while he did it. Either one worked.

“I’m not afraid.” She made herself smile. “I don’t want them to start paying too much attention to me, and they will if I miss checking in at the call. I don’t want them to notice the food I take from the kitchens or how quickly I rush through things so I can—”

There was no reason for her to stop herself then, but she did. As if she was confessing something rather than telling him a simple truth. Why did she feel as if she was?

“And if they catch you?”

His gaze was so dark. That full, mesmerizing mouth of his a line. And all she wanted to do was touch it.

“That would not be good. Let’s hope they don’t.”

“What’s the penalty if they do?” he asked, and there was no reason she should be standing there, rooted to the floor beneath her as if her feet wouldn’t work until he was ready for them to move.

She needed to leave. She should have left an hour ago. But all she did was stare back at him as if she was nothing more than the wood he worked with and made do as he pleased. Exactly as he pleased.

Oh, how she wanted to please this man.

“The Council would be called to make a recommendation about my fate, but there isn’t much wiggle room.” She smiled again, but she didn’t think she was fooling him. She could feel the strain in her cheeks. “All citizens must earn their place here or they’re set adrift.”

“Is that what they do if there are too many baby boys?” Tait asked. Something flashed in his dark eyes when her mouth dropped open. “You said there are very, very few boys. And a whole lot of pansy excuses for men sitting around on their fat asses, enjoying all the hot and cold running pussy they can handle.”

“No one would throw a baby away,” Elenthea whispered, scandalized. Her heart thumped at her. Her stomach lurched. “We need all the babies we can get. Surely raiders do too.”

“We don’t build whole societies of bullshit around it.”

“The only time something like that happens is when there are horrible birth defects or the child is already dead when born,” Elenthea said hurriedly, but there was another question worming its way through her that she didn’t want to admit was there. Tearing her up. Making her wonder all manner of dark things about this place—the only place she’d ever known.

As if they’d been inside her all along.

Then Tait reached over and took her chin in his hard, blunt fingers, and there was no room left inside of her for shadows and dark. There was only the great, bright shine of it. Of him. Of his touch. A rolling light that stormed through her and made her buzz, everywhere. From the place he touched her to her breasts and then below, until it pooled hot and wild between her legs.

Elenthea thought maybe she was dying, but she didn’t care. Not when this fierce warrior stood so close to her, blocking out what little of the fading January sun she could see through the portholes and the brooding, terrible sea all around.

“Don’t get caught,” he ordered her, his voice fierce. As if he would brook no disobedience.

And when he dropped his hand—after a long, breathless moment when she thought he wouldn’t—she ran.

Not because she was reacting to him, she assured herself as she scrambled down to the dock, then raced from the boatyards over the outer pontoons, racing the waning light as she moved. Not because she could feel the press of his fingers against her flesh as if he’d burned her and left marks. Not for any reason at all except she needed to get back before she was found missing.

Because there could be no other reason.

But she was a liar. She knew it. She could feel the way her blood roared through her veins in a way she knew—she knew—had nothing to do with exercise.

She knew it when she managed to slip inside her house and slink into place near the outer doors just as the House Mistress finished her rounds, which was almost as risky as being marked missing. It called attention to her. It made her noticeable.

“Why are you out here and not back with the rest of the ranked girls?” Mistress Annet asked, frowning at her. “I marked you missing.”

“I was back there . . .” Elenthea frowned back, trying to emanate confusion. “You counted me already, Mistress.”

And if she’d ever wondered about her real, true worth, it was obvious in the way Mistress Annet blinked at that, then stared at her blankly. Because, Elenthea realized, she couldn’t remember either way.

“I suppose I did,” she murmured, and then left Elenthea sitting there where she could see out the doors, as if she’d come up to the outermost part of the house to take in the sunset, the way people sometimes did.

Because you’re that meaningless, Elenthea told herself, trying to get her heart to stop beating quite so quickly. That absolutely and utterly pointless to every person on this raft. Except the one person who doesn’t belong here.

But she didn’t care, really, because she’d managed to save herself tonight. Something that wouldn’t work again, she was well aware. Mistress Annet might not pay much attention to Elenthea in the general scheme of things, but she would start if Elenthea wasn’t careful.

And she had to be careful, because she had her secret to protect. She had Tait to keep hidden.

Mine, she thought then, thinking of the way his fingers had held her chin still. And that fierce gaze of his, so dark and deep. She felt that deep, delicious shudder work its way through her again. All mine.

She’d never had anything that was hers. She liked the idea that Tait was the first.

It made her whole life feel different around her. As if it really was a life, after all, instead of just a collection of days tumbling one after the next, one as pointless any other, until they were all a great blur and she was tossed overboard anyway to make room for someone with more promise.

Tait had touched her. More than that, he talked to her—and no one ever talked to her. They chastised her in passing, or they berated her because she happened to be in front of them, or they said arch things above her as if she couldn’t understand them, but they never talked to her. She wasn’t ranked high enough to merit that kind of conversation by rote, and she wasn’t ambitious enough to go around sparkling delightfully on the off chance that someone might notice her and start.

But Tait didn’t even know what rank was when she told him that, some days later, when she was trying to be much more careful about the time that passed when she was out there with him.

And more than that, trying to pretend that it was normal that she was telling this raider—this fantastical gift from the sea who she still couldn’t quite believe was real—things she’d never said out loud. Things she’d never dared tell herself before.

Maybe the fact she still half-thought he was a dream was why he was so easy to talk to.

“You mean you have to be ranked to open your mouth?” He shook his head and made the sea seem a little less wild around them, because suddenly, he seemed infinitely more ruthless than the seething water. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means I have a specific place. Everyone has their place. That’s how the Raft works.” She eyed him. “You said not everyone in your raider city is a soldier.”

“A brother, not a soldier. Soldiers fight a specific war or two and then retire. Brothers are family who defend the clan until their very last breath.” He inclined his head. “But no. Not all clan members are in the brotherhood.”

“They have different places, then. It’s the same.”

“I had to fight my way into the brotherhood.” Tait didn’t sound particularly fierce when he said that but still, she felt it. Everywhere. “It took years. If I hadn’t made it in, I would have built ships with my father, a skill that’s been handed down in his family since his ancestors built cars before the Storms fucked up all the roads. Every drop of blood in my body comes from men who worked with their hands. That’s how I know my place, baby. What about you?”

Elenthea swallowed hard, as if she was scared again. When she refused to be scared.

“The House Mistresses determine everyone’s rank. That’s one of their jobs.” She frowned at him. “I don’t think your clan is any different. You just said yourself that your brotherhood is higher than the rest of the clan.”

“I would never call it higher,” Tait objected. “That’s the kind of thinking that leads to fat assholes lounging around letting their women tend to their round, plucked bullshit like it’s a privilege.” He shook his head as if that was absurd when it was just . . . life. “The brotherhood has different things to do. The clan member who fishes and the clan member who farms are equal, even though they do different jobs for the clan. A woman who runs a shop and a woman who cleans fish give back to the clan, each in her own way. Camp girls offer comfort pussy and an escape for the brothers who fight too much to live in families. There is no rank. There is only clan.” He reached up and touched his fist to his chest, right over that intricate, circular tattoo he called a sigil. “Clan first, clan always. Clan forever.”

“You don’t have a Council? A ruling body of some kind?”

“The brotherhood advises the king’s council and the king’s council advises the king,” Tait said roughly. “And Wulf doesn’t round up the weak and kick them off the island. That’s bullshit. He protects the island and everyone on it. That’s his job, and it’s our job to do the same. The only people who need to worry about getting booted off the eastern islands are those who shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

Elenthea shook her head as if she’d never heard something so silly. Because she hadn’t. “But surely if you have this role to play in your clan, you receive something in return. No one works for nothing.”

Tait’s gaze seemed to land a bit too hard on her as he worked on the sail draped over his lap, making neat stitches that put hers to shame with his hands that dwarfed her own. Elenthea might have been embarrassed if she wasn’t so mesmerized by the sight. And a bit shaken by the way he looked at her.

“That’s a dirty little mercenary view of the world. Newsflash, Elenthea. No one likes fucking mercenaries.”

“Here, a woman earns her keep. She performs tasks. It’s hardly mercenary. It’s her responsibility.”

“You mean she earns her keep on her back?” When she nodded, something strangely hot and uncomfortable worming its way through her belly, Tait’s mouth hardened. “What happens if a woman refuses?”

“Don’t be silly. No one refuses.”

She laughed at the notion, the way she had before. A low-ranked girl like her had two sessions with the House a month, while higher-ranked women had more. There was no argument about that. If anything, there was intense competition to get a higher ranking. If a case of the sniffles meant a girl couldn’t perform, there were throngs of others begging to take her place. The House Mistress kept the schedule—and chose the substitutes if necessary—and no one contradicted a House Mistress. That was a great way to find yourself hauled before the Council.

“People are people no matter how fucked up the place they live,” Tait rumbled at her. “Even if they float around on pontoons and hope the dried fish lasts through the winter like you do. And wherever there are places like this that make up bullshit rules, there are going to be rule followers and rule breakers. That’s how it works.”

“No one refuses,” Elenthea said again, her head spinning. She explained the frequency of visits with the House to him. “It’s the law. Why would I break it? The consequences are extreme.”

“Let me guess,” Tait said then, something dark and light at once moving through his gaze. Something that made her chest feel tight and her lungs hollow. “Following the law twice a month isn’t a whole lot of fun.”

“Fun?” she echoed.

“Fun,” he said again, and then his mouth crooked in that dangerous way that made everything inside of her seem to skip off to the side. “It’s supposed to be fun.”

“Sex?” She stared at him, astonished. “Sex isn’t fun. Why would it be fun?”

But Tait laughed at that.

A very thorough, very male laugh that Elenthea was sure she’d feel hours later when she was curled up in her patchy furs in her dutiful place in the central pontoons. Because she felt it everywhere.

And something glittered in those dark eyes of his as he watched her. It was as if, when he looked at her, he felt all those strange, tight things that worked in her every time she saw him.

And Elenthea had most amazing idea.

“Will you help me?” she asked.

He tilted his head slightly to one side, and shoved the sail off of his lap. He was wearing his thermal today, his arms almost bursting through its seams as he reached up to twist his braids into a knot. There was a faint curl in the corner of his mouth that she was very much afraid she was becoming obsessed with. There was that breath-stealing gleam in his dark eyes. And there was that whole, glorious body of his that made her so restless. All those flat planes of muscle and brutal, leashed strength.

It had never occurred to her that a man could be beautiful like this, like the lightning storms that scraped the horizon in summer and made the hair on her body shiver into alertness.

Elemental. Overwhelming.

“Of course,” Tait said quietly. “I’m very helpful. Ask anyone.”

Elenthea knew he was mocking her. She didn’t care. The idea had seized hold, and she could hardly contain herself.

“I don’t know why didn’t occur to me before,” she said hurriedly, as if she couldn’t allow herself the time to form each word properly. She was too excited to get them all out. “When you were talking about sex.”

“If it’s about sex,” Tait said with a laugh, “then I’m even more interested.”

There was a different kind of heat in that. Something deep inside of her pinged into awareness, but she didn’t understand it. So she shunted it aside.

“Everyone keeps telling me that I have to distinguish myself. Gain the House’s notice. But I can never bring myself to do it.” She shrugged. “The truth is that I know how to do it. Or I was taught, anyway. I just always find sex so . . .”

She didn’t finish. She couldn’t have said why not. There was too much fire in Tait’s steady, dark gaze, and matching flames inside of her, licking all over her as she sat there.

“Boring?” he supplied, with another one of those little laughs that seemed directly wired to that increasingly soft and slippery place between Elenthea’s legs, especially when it took on that lazy note.

“Not boring,” she heard herself say. “Not anything. But everyone knows that the way to get the House’s attention is to perform in bed. To do, I don’t know, tricks.”

Tait wasn’t even trying to control his smile any longer, clearly. “Tricks. Like a pit wolf after a bone.”

“Yes, tricks. Positions. Something more than just lying there, doing the bare minimum.”

She didn’t know when they’d drifted so close together. She was sure she didn’t move, and she didn’t see him do it, but suddenly he was leaning into her from his side of the bunk. And then his fingers were brushing over her cheek. Then her mouth, as if he needed to test her lips with the pad of his thumb.

Once. Again.

And the world caught fire.

“Remind me what we’re talking about.”

His voice had gone scratchy and Elenthea didn’t understand why she could feel that everywhere. As if he was that shuddering thing inside her. As if he was already much too deep inside of her and he hadn’t even agreed yet.

“Sex,” she said softly, because for some reason she could hardly speak. “You know about sex, don’t you?”

Tait let out a breath that sounded like a laugh, only paler. And still, somehow, catastrophic.

“I know about sex,” he agreed. Like it hurt him, when he was so huge and strong that Elenthea couldn’t believe that there was anything that could hurt him. Not really.

And that wasn’t pain that blazed across his face as he looked down at her. She was sure of it.

“I know about a lot of tricks, but I’ve never done them,” she told him, she had no idea why her throat was so dry. And why she could feel her pulse there, like a taut, impossible drum. “I want you to teach me.”