BONUS SCENE

One Fine Winter Morning with Tyr and Helena…

Helena wasn’t where she was supposed to be, which Tyr didn’t like at all.

He shook his head, letting the stinging ice water from the shitty November morning outside go wherever the hell it wanted, all over the stone floor. He wiped his face with his hands and then looked around the Lodge’s big hall again, but she still wasn’t there. He’d told his favorite not-so-compliant girl to wait for him after his slippery, frigid, brutal training run, tucked up next to the big ass fire in the hall of the Lodge. Wearing as little as possible, like his own, personal camp girl.

Because the long, gloomy, dark as fuck winter stretched out forever in front of him and it was easy to slip into routines. Ruts. Tyr was happy to let routine carry him through his training exercises, especially on grim days like today, all freezing rain and mud. But he didn’t much like routine when it involved his woman.

His cock was an adventurer, the greedy little shit. Always had been. And Tyr particularly liked fucking Helena in public, where she got off almost as much on the fact everyone could hear her lose it as whatever he might be doing to her to make her lose it. He’d greatly enjoyed playing around with that during the long September equinox celebration, where the clan gathered every night and got their heads around the coming dark with as much feasting and fucking as possible. But it was a long way to December and the next clan-wide party, so Tyr had figured, why not make the most of a random morning with the brotherhood looking on? His mouthy little mainlander had probably come at the very idea.

I want you waiting with a smile on your face and a hot drink for me, baby, he’d told her as he’d pulled on his weapons harness earlier this morning. The rain had been drumming against the windows, but that didn’t mean anything except he was going to get wet. And nothing else.

I’ll be sure to get right on that, Helena had replied, with that wise ass smile of hers curving her plush mouth. He was still obsessed with it. With her. She’d been stretched out naked in his furs, her arms up over her head, looking flushed and freshly-fucked after his favorite kind of early morning wake up. More than that, she looked like what she was. His. Oh great war chief, your every wish is my command.

Your ass better be down in the hall when I get back, Helena, he’d told her, because he never backed down from a challenge. Especially not when it was his woman who’d issued it. If I have to hunt you down in Gunnar’s basement of pain, I might let him deal with you.

That was a lie, of course. He wouldn’t let anybody touch her. He’d kill the bastard who tried. And if he ever fucking lost his mind and changed his position on that? It certainly wouldn’t be to let that kinky motherfucker Gunnar tie her up and play his dark games with her tight little ass. Hell, no.

Tyr nodded at the camp girls who passed him, clinging to each other and walking in a way that suggested they’d had a long night placating the cooped up brothers. He scanned the hall one more time just to make sure Helena really, truly was defying him, and then he grinned.

There were few things he liked more than teaching his woman lessons. It made his cock fucking jubilant, in fact, just thinking about the ways he could express his thoughts on being openly defied like this.

Tyr took the stairs from the lobby of the great hall two at a time, nodding at his brothers as he passed them but not letting any of them pull him into conversation. The rains were here and would be squatting down on top of the Eastern Islands for months, the way they did every year. All the brothers were all restless. They all missed the sea on their faces, the sting of the salt. Tyr was sure he wasn’t the only one missing the sheer, sweet pleasure of a raid. He missed swinging his blade and making the little mainland bitches cry as they scattered before him—but none of that was going to happen any time soon, which meant there were no conversations that couldn’t wait.

At least these days he had an alternate form of entertainment that was entirely his, unlike many of his brothers.

When he slammed open the door to the rooms he shared with Helena, he made sure there was no grin on his face. He shrugged out of his harness and left it on the big table in the main room, then headed down the hall. She wasn’t in the bathroom. She wasn’t in the bedroom. He was thinking about moving from happy anticipation to seriously pissed when he saw the little bit of movement on the other side of the glass doors that led out to the wide deck overlooking the island-studded harbor.

He kicked off his boots and peeled off his trousers, and when he shoved his way through the doors, he was naked.

Better yet, so was she.

Helena was as naked as she’d been when he’d left her earlier, something he got to really appreciate when she stood up in the bubbling tub where she’d been sitting. Waiting, if he had to guess. Then his head went a little fuzzy. The hot, scented water poured over her bare skin and steam came off of her as she stood there in the cold rain, like a wet dream. His favorite wet dream, in fact.

“You get lost?” he asked in a growl.

It should have scared her. It might have, once. But today she only smiled at him.

“Are you trying to intimidate me, war chief?” she asked in that snotty little voice of hers that they both knew only ever got her in trouble. The best kind of trouble.

“I have to try, now?” Tyr shook his head. “I must be slipping.”

He moved to the edge of the raised pool, never shifting his hard gaze from his woman. Her pretty tits, thrust up and waiting for his mouth, his hands. That snotty, smart mouth. The dark hair she’d piled high, wet and steaming too, which told him she’d dunked her head beneath the water to keep warm.

“Well,” Helena murmured, as if she was offering him her condolences. “It’s the off season. You can’t be a rampaging, bad ass raider every second of every day. Everyone needs a little a downtime.”

Tyr swung over the side and into the pool, letting the heat of the silky water close over his cold body. He sighed a little bit at the instant, deep pleasure of it, but made no move toward her. He settled down on one of the submerged benches, stretched his arms out along the sides of the pool, and studied her for a moment instead. Then another moment, because he liked the way she flushed a little bit at his scrutiny, but lifted her chin like she didn’t want him to see it.

“Was I unclear earlier?” he asked. Eventually.

Helena sank down into the water opposite him. “Not at all.”

“I’m pretty sure I told you exactly where I wanted you to be, sweetheart, and it wasn’t here.”

Helena shrugged, though there was a gleam in her smoky gray eyes that made the November day all around her seem dimmer. Even wetter. Darker by comparison. But that was just Helena, he knew. She’d never blended well. She never would.

“I didn’t feel like it,” she said.

He paused to really savor that bullshit. The fact she’d actually said that to him. Every part of him went tight in delicious anticipation—but he locked himself down. He made himself wait.

“What did you say to me? I didn’t get that. It sounded like you said you didn’t feel like doing what I fucking told you to do.”

He sounded furious. Almost cruel. But his woman only lounged back against the far side of the hot pool and smirked at him.

“Your ears are working just fine, Tyr. They always are.”

Tyr smiled then. The way he did in battle, slow and harsh, like he already knew how the fight was going to end. Which he always did.

“Helena.” He said her name like he was tasting it. Or maybe like he was already tasting her. “You have about three seconds to stop being an asshole and save yourself from the deep, dark hole you’ve dug for yourself over there.”

Helena looked bored. “You don’t get to have everything you want just because you want it, Tyr. You should know that by now. Life is short and hard and blah blah blah, that’s the raider way.”

“You’re just making it worse.” He shook his head as if that made him sad. A little bit sad, anyway. “Three.”

Her gaze flickered, but she didn’t look away. Or back down. “At a certain point, all the threats just stop being effective. You know that, right?”

“I think you know I don’t make threats. Two.”

“You make promises, right.” She rolled her eyes, but he could see the way her pulse was going wild in her neck, his little liar. “Very scary. I’m deeply cowed.”

“One.” He shook his head. “Time’s up, little girl. You going to give me a good reason for ignoring what I told you to do today?”

Her cheeks were stained with color that he knew she’d claim was the heat of the water if he asked, not how excited she was. So he didn’t ask.

“No,” she said. “It sounded boring.”

Tyr let out a little laugh at that. “You going to apologize for shooting off your mouth, Helena? This is your last chance.”

And his woman only smirked a little bit, her smoky gaze bright. It made his cock even harder. It made his chest tight. It fucking delighted him.

She pushed herself off her seat and moved across the floor of the tub until she was standing between his legs. The rain coursed down over her but she didn’t seem to notice. She was slick and wet and his. Even better, every line of her lush little body was an open challenge as she angled herself toward him like this was a fight she had a hope in hell of winning.

Sometimes he thought she’d already won. Everything.

“Make me,” she suggested, right in his face.

Tyr surged to his feet, hauling her up against him as he went, and let himself go. Completely.

He took her mouth, bold and sure, eating at her like a starving man. Helena wrapped her limbs around him and kissed him back. Again and again, as hot and as wild as he was. Her felt her tits against his chest. He felt her fingers on his braids. He dug his hands into her hair and held her head where he wanted it, and then he shifted her against him until the head of his cock found her pussy, soaking wet and ready for him.

Always so ready for him. Always so perfect.

He pulled his mouth away from hers then, dropping one hand to wrap over her hip and hold her immobile, a breath away from what he knew she wanted. What he thought he might die if he didn’t get. Soon.

“You need to learn how to obey me, Helena,” he growled.

She was panting, and trembling against him. She was sleek and soft and beautiful, and then she laughed, and he felt that everywhere. His feet. His cock. His heart.

“I would,” she told him, tilting her head back so he could see the smile that lit up her face. “I’d happily obey you. But you’d fucking hate it.”

She was right about that, of course. Tyr loved battle. He craved the fight. It shouldn’t keep surprising him that Helena knew that. Or that she kept contriving ways to make sure nothing came too easy all the time, on the off chance she could ever bore him.

But he hadn’t become the war chief of his clan by being a dumbass.

“Wrong answer, baby,” he said sternly. He let her begin to take him. She sank down on him, inch by slow inch, as he held her there above the water. “You know you’re going to have to pay.”

“Oh, no,” she said, breathless and deadpan at once, too much laughter in her gaze as it met his. “Not that.”

“And tomorrow your ass is going to be down by the fire where the whole clan can see you while they have a little breakfast. Naked and begging, Helena. I know how much you love to beg.”

“I love a lot of things,” she told him, and then they both groaned when he was finally fully lodged inside her. “My first winter without having to worry about compliance. So much food. All those furs. You.”

“Don’t try to wiggle out of the punishment you’ve earned, babe. It’s embarrassing.”

Helena didn’t look embarrassed. She moved her hips, rocking him in even deeper, and he sank down onto the bench, still holding her against him. The hot water was like an embrace, but she was scalding. He tested her, just to see, pulling out and going back in slow. Torturously slow, so he was gritting his teeth and her eyes were nearly shut when he was finally all the way inside her again.

He’d never loved anyone the way he loved this woman. He hadn’t imagined he could.

“I love you,” he told her gruffly then, in case there was any doubt.

Her eyes opened wider then. She smiled. “I know.”

He ran his hands down the perfect line of her spine to get his hands on her ass.

“And it’s with love that I tell you that if you don’t show up tomorrow morning, naked and ready to go when I get back from my run, I’m going to spank that ass of yours before I get started. Bright red, Helena. And I’ll keep it that way for a week.”

“Promises, promises.”

“You think you can play this game with me, but you have no idea what you’re doing. If I was a better man, I’d feel sorry for you. I really would.”

“So much talking,” she groaned. Then she clenched around him, hard, bearing down so the sleek glove of her pussy felt like sheer magic. He hissed in a breath and fought to keep himself in control. “It’s hard to feel properly intimidated when there’s nothing but endless words.

“Tomorrow morning, Helena.”

“Well, Tyr,” she replied, hooking her arms a little tighter around his neck and then taking matters into her own hands by swiveling her hips against him. He let her do it. They both knew he only gave her control for a little while, usually in the beginning. Because they both loved it when he grew impatient with that, and then finished. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see what happens, won’t you?”

Then she really started to move.

And Tyr decided he could plan what he’d do to her—spread out before the fire so his brothers could see what was his from a distance and watch him enjoy it—later. Much later.

Right after he enjoyed his hot little drink almost exactly the way he’d ordered it, after all.

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