His girl was a fast learner.

And as it turned out, Tait was a fast boat builder.

Those things didn’t necessarily go together. Because as much as Tait wanted to get the hell off the fucking Raft, he also wanted to spend as much time as possible with Elenthea. He wanted to learn her, backward and forward. He wanted to solve every single mystery she presented.

He knew that he was supposed to be the teacher in this scenario, but the way she gave herself to him made him crazy. It made him want her more, no matter how many times he’d had her. It made him wonder how he’d lived this long without her in the first place. He’d always enjoyed the camp girls back home, of course, in all their sweetly giving glory. He was used to pussy freely offered, happily taken, and greedily shared with his brothers. But this was different.

Because camp girls were about cock. Elenthea was about Tait.

It was amazing to him what a difference it made, when he would have said he wasn’t built to care about that kind of thing. About such a tiny little shift in perspective. It made a raider used to free sex on demand, from any number of willing participants, feel something a whole lot like possessive in return. Of this one ridiculously beautiful girl in particular.

Whatever the hell that was.

As one week turned into the next, a cold and bitter January easing into a stormy February, Tait found that he was slowing himself down unnecessarily. Taking too much time to do things that should have already been done, if he was going to be honest about it. As if he was dragging his feet about getting off this shitty raft when he knew perfectly well that Wulf was planning to hit the mainland early in March rather than wait for the attack they knew was coming from the worst of the western kings, whose ancestors had holed up on higher ground to ride out the Storms way back when.

Tait had every intention of either being in that war party or getting back to raider city so he could help hold it should Wulf fall. He had every intention of doing what he’d been put on this ruined old earth to do—protect his clan however possible.

He’d finished working on the boat he’d made his, as much as it could be finished with rudimentary tools and supplies in this place that obviously didn’t care about the form and function of shipbuilding the way raiders did. He’d cannibalized all he could from the sad ships bobbing around in this boatyard, waiting for spring and what fishermen there were here to take them out into the deep. He’d fashioned the best vessel he could, under the circumstances, and while he wouldn’t exactly claim the thing as his best work or try to race a raider ship he was confident the dinky old thing would make it across the Atlantic. Back and forth, if necessary, and if not exactly speedily.

It certainly wasn’t up to minimum raider standards. There was no pretending otherwise. His own father would have been appalled and possibly insulted at the sight, given the old man’s life’s work was about refining raider ships until they sang through the water like the angels of death they were. But then again, the point of this boat wasn’t to awe the mainlanders and slip away in the night after a good raid. The point of this boat was to get his ass home to the eastern islands. To bring him back from the dead.

He knew that this boat he’d pieced together into something far better than the fat-assed fishing boat it had been would be safe. It would get the job done. It would take him home in one relatively dry piece and weather just about anything that bitch of a sea threw at him.

But he wasn’t getting his ass in gear and getting the hell out of there the way he knew he should have been. He was dragging his feet.

“I need to start packing and laying in provisions,” he said one afternoon in the middle of February, lying with Elenthea in a panting heap of skin against skin in his bunk. Because he’d ordered himself to start this process today—no matter that she’d taken his head off with that blow job she’d been practicing with all the zeal of a newly minted camp girl.

Elenthea had snuck out to see him today the way she always did, light and easy over the pontoons, no matter what grim shit the weather was doing. She’d run to him, swinging herself up and onto the boat as if she been doing it all her life when he knew very well she’d never been on one of these boats before she’d met him. Then she’d catapulted herself straight into his waiting arms.

He didn’t have a place to put how much he liked that.

She was always laughing. She started the moment she saw him, as if she couldn’t keep it inside another second. As if that was simply the effect he had on her. And sure, Tait had never been a gloomy fucker like Gunnar, that brooding ass of a brother who’d lost his first mate and wandered around like a ghost for a while there. Not that a griefless Gunnar had been all that sunny before his loss, truth be told. Or even now that he’d moved on with the nun he’d captured and claimed from the church last spring.

Tait had never gotten off on that kind of personal darkness. But he’d certainly never been described by anyone who wanted to live as particularly happy-go-lucky, either. What warrior brother was? Warriors dealt in war and death by trade and honor and inclination. That much blood left shadows on a man even in the bright light of day. There was no running around like a fool, pretending everything was all sunshine and fucking flowers.

And he should have been particularly pissed off that he was shipwrecked on this floating garbage heap that was filled with more terrible examples of what happened when the world ended but people kept right on ruining shit. He was only guessing which direction he needed to go once he set off. He was only mostly sure that this stupid boat would get him home. He should have been focused on getting the hell out of here and making it back, allowing no distractions, which was the way he’d always functioned in the heat of battle.

What was being washed out to sea if not the most important battle of his life?

And yet when Elenthea started laughing upon catching sight of him, he did too, because the moment she appeared it was like he forgot about everything else.

It never took long for him to get inside her, no matter how many times he’d taken her the day before. Today she’d gone down on her knees right there on the in the drizzle on deck and worshipped him a little with that hot mouth of hers. He’d picked her up afterward and carried her down into the cabin, where he’d taken his time with her, burying his face in her fine pussy and making her come again and again, crying out his name each time. Then he rolled her on top of him and let her ride them both to a spectacular fucking finish.

When he was inside her, he realized as they both lay there, panting, it was the only time he felt like he could breathe easily in this place, so far away from everything he knew.

And the line had blurred, somewhere. He knew that. Tait was supposed to be setting her up for whatever passed for an ambitious life here after he left. He was supposed to be saving her the way she’d saved him. He was supposed to be teaching her tricks that she could use on the soft, pansy men who ruled things here, the better to improve her position once he was gone.

Too bad the very idea made him want to tear apart this boat he’d spent all this time improving. With his bare hands.

“What provisions do you need?” she asked, her lips pressed against his chest. It reminded him that he’d forced himself to say the thing that would shove them closer to the inevitable. To the day he got the hell off this floating pile of crap and left her behind, as planned.

“The usual,” he muttered, but he was preoccupied. He played with her hair and tried not to think about how well she fit there against his chest. Like she’d been crafted specifically to sprawl there above him, his cock deep inside of her and her head beneath his chin. “Food that will last weeks. Water. I need to be able to survive if it turns out the Raft isn’t where I think it is and the trip is longer.”

She moved against him, making him grit his teeth at the feel of that tight cunt clenching all around his cock again. Making him stir when he should have been more than done. For the moment.

Elenthea was like a drug. And he liked the buzz of her a lot more than he should have.

She propped her chin on her hands and gazed down at him, her blue eyes solemn and her lush mouth a firm line.

“When are you leaving?”

Take didn’t like any of this. He didn’t like the question. He told himself he didn’t like the implication behind it or that melting gleam in her eyes when she asked it, as if the very idea hurt her. But he suspected that what he really didn’t like was the part of him that immediately wanted to make her feel better. Keep her from worrying however he could. Do something about that set line of her lips and that shade of blue he didn’t much like in her gaze.

Or do something much, much crazier and take her with him.

But that was bullshit. He rejected that thought instantly, and with prejudice. He wasn’t just a member of the raider clan, he was a brother. And the brotherhood wasn’t the place for soft and fragile little things like Elenthea. He was pretty sure the raider city alone would chew her up and spit her out, by virtue of its peculiar blend of harshness and practicality.

It was home, but there was no pretending it wasn’t a hard place. The sea was always cold and deadly, a seething gray that wrapped around the islands and whispered its litany of threats and seductions with every wave. The wind was a bitch. He couldn’t imagine his girl there, wrapped up in her many lengths of wool and set against the scrape of the evergreens and bold thrust of the raider lodge against the press of so much winter. He couldn’t imagine a creature so breakable and gauzy in the midst of so many matter-of-fact raiders with their blades and frank sex and constant provocation. It was as if the very thought of her back home with his people was the same as seeing her there, surrounded by danger she wouldn’t even be able to identify, when she was used to the relative softness and security of this place untethered to the rest of the planet, nothing like safe at all.

He hated that, too, and it was only in his own head.

Besides, the warrior brothers of the clan typically didn’t take mates. They fought and often died. They needed to keep their minds clear in battle. They needed to think about the clan as a whole, not their own flesh and blood, or they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs. Or that was how Tait had always learned it, growing up watching his mother care for the odd babies of various brothers over the years because the brothers certainly weren’t around to do it. If they weren’t off on raids or sent to keep settlements safe over the winters, they were in the raider city all the dark months—and training. Always training. Always ready for war, any time of the year.

There was no space in that for the claiming of mates.

Though it had been a weird summer for that kind of thing, now that he considered it.

First Tyr had come back from a raid with a mainland girl he’d asserted was more than just a fuck. She was important to the world somehow, or that was the impression the war chief had given when he’d declined to share her out and had then gone ahead and formally claimed her. That had turned out to be true, thanks to the information Helena carried about how to give the mainland back the electric lights that been lost since the Storms, leaving most regular people in darkness. Most of the brothers had thought it made sense that a hard and canny warrior like Tyr would find himself perhaps the most strategic female in what was left of the world.

Mad genius and noted asshole Gunnar, meanwhile, had made no particular proclamations about his little nun being necessary to the world. He’d just claimed her and dared anyone to say or do anything about either his claim or the particular brand of fucked up sex he practiced with her. Openly, because the motherfucker loved to rub his kinky shit in everyone else’s face. He got off on it. And so did his nun, as far as anyone could tell, since she liked to parade around wearing that heavy collar on her neck and very little else. Tait figured it was nice that the two of them had found each other and got to live out a happily sadomasochistic ever after in Gunnar’s basement paradise of pain, as the brother’s lair beneath the Lodge was known.

There was also the bizarre relationship between Eiryn and Riordan, both equal members of the brotherhood. Eiryn was the king’s personal bodyguard and half-sister while Riordan was the clan’s best tracker and Wulf’s friend. They were both decidedly, terrifyingly lethal, and neither one had ever seemed the slightest bit interested in staking claims before, much less on each other. They’d been sent off on a mission late last summer barely able to tolerate each other and then they’d come back after the September rains had started a whole lot closer. Together all the time during the long, cold, and wet nights of fall, when most of the male brothers availed themselves of the abundant camp girl pussy all around and the female brothers did their thing with the men in the raider city because not a one of them liked to shit where she ate.

It was all fucking weird, if he was honest. He didn’t get it.

But he didn’t have to get it. Tait wasn’t like any of them. He’d never been part of the king’s inner circle, which was fine by him. He wasn’t related to Wulf by blood, he didn’t hang out with the war chief like they were best friends because most of the time that prick was kicking his ass all over the training green, and his claims to greatness had more to do with the solid way he acquitted himself on the battlefield than any bursts of glory.

Some people weren’t meant to lead the charge, all heroic and theatrical and big, so there would be songs sung about them and stories told breathlessly around every fire until the end of time. Tait was sure that was nice. But some men were built to take up the rear of a charge, hard and merciless at his brothers’ backs, cleaning up the fucking trash as he went.

There was nobody better at that than Tait.

He saw no reason why any of that should change. He was who he was and he was great at it.

But the life he’d worked so hard for didn’t come with a mate.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Elenthea’s gaze had gone troubled. Tait realized he was scowling at her.

“Is this where we start talking about feelings?” He made no particular attempt to strip that mocking note from his voice, or make himself sound any less aggressive, and he told himself he was doing her a favor.

“I’m guessing that’s not a real question.”

“This was never anything but sex, baby. I thought you knew that. I’m teaching you, not taking you.”

He couldn’t read her expression then, but she certainly wasn’t smiling. That line of her lips looked tenser than before. He decided that was a gift, too.

“I only asked when you were leaving.”

She made as if to lift herself up and off him, and he was a perverse fucker, because he held her fast. He couldn’t even have said why. She struggled against his hold, very briefly, and he knew he wasn’t the only one to feel that fire roar through him again when his cock dragged over the sensitive flesh inside her as she moved. He saw something flash in her gaze, stark and still darker.

Maybe that was what Elenthea looked like mad. Maybe his little kitten had claws after all.

He told himself he didn’t care. Because he shouldn’t.

He didn’t.

“I’m leaving soon. As soon as possible.”

“That’s all you had to say. I don’t understand . . . “ She shook her head, her throat working as if words were stuck there. As if she didn’t know what to say.

That made two of them.

“This is the thing about sex, Elenthea. It gets intense. I told you it would. But that doesn’t mean you should take it any more seriously than the strength of your last orgasm. Are you hearing me?”

“Is that the trick you’ve been trying to show me all this time? Is this is how I should climb my way up the hierarchy in any house I enter?” She nodded, a little jerkily, and there was no getting around it. This was her temper. It should have underscored everything Tait was saying. Instead, it just made him hard. “I should just fuck a lot, as hard as possible, and just make sure it’s intense?”

“Don’t confuse intensity with anything more,” he ordered her. He heard that gruffness in his voice. He was certain she did, too, and if he’d had any doubt about it he could feel her tremble, too. He told himself that there was absolutely no reason that he should feel guilty about it. There was nothing to feel guilty about. He was a man solitary in all things, save his brotherhood.

There was no room in his life for a woman. Particularly not one like Elenthea, who he knew already could never be casual about sex. Or him. Not now that he’d showed her how good it could be.

Not now that he’d ruined them both.

And if there was a part of him that felt nothing short of murderous at the thought of her practicing her particular brand of intensity with one of those fat fucks in the center of this raft? He kept that shit to himself.

“I should get back,” she said coolly, as if she thought she could shut him out.

He knew he should let her. Let her go, let her shut that door on him to hide whatever she felt she needed to hide. He’d put this into motion. He needed to let it happen.

But he couldn’t do it.

“You never leave this quickly. Why today?” He shifted his hand from where it had gripped her at the hip to trail it up that fascinating line of her spine. “This feels emotional, baby. You need to let that go.”

He was being a dick. He could tell by the way she stiffened that she knew it as well as he did. But it was as if Elenthea knew that he wanted her to admit it. To call him a name, call him out somehow, and give herself away as being exactly what he’d accused her.

Maybe that was why she didn’t do it. She only gazed at him, showing a lot more spine than he’d expected in such a soft, gleaming girl.

“You said you needed provisions. I can’t simply pack up a wheelbarrow of things you might need and push it out here, can I? It will take a little planning to get my hands on anything in bulk this late in the winter. The stores start to get thin.” And he realized how little he really knew her when she aimed a cool blue look at him that showed him absolutely nothing. Nothing but a mask he wanted to tear off with his fingers. “I can’t do anything to help you while I’m naked, hiding out here in the marina.”

Tait knew she was lying. Or anyway, hiding things from him. The way anyone would after what he’d said to her, of course. He got the distinct impression that she was challenging him to do something about it, because, of course, there was no way he could. Not without showing that she wasn’t alone in these feelings he’d made it so clear neither one of them was supposed to have.

Tait didn’t like it at all.

But he let her go.