Chapter 13
Brannock
I wrap my arms around Rapunzel as she stands in the window with the moonlight on her face. Her hair rises like a tide, and the living vines answer, uncoiling from the sill, testing the air, then braiding themselves into a wide, green ribbon.
“Ready?” I murmur against her temple.
“I am and I’m not. Catch me if I faint.”
“Always.”
We climb over the sill together. The vine cradles our weight and lowers us slowly.
The tower stones glide past. I see claw marks from the roots; the ghost of Rapunzel’s old life etched into the mortar.
A second vine slides across our backs like a safety bar.
A third loops her hair into a tidy knot at the nape of her neck so it won’t dangle.
“Someone’s showing off,” I rumble.
She beams at me. “Isn’t it amazing?”
I laugh softly. “Yes, you are.”
We drift below the branches, then into them. The leaves shiver as the canopy parts like a curtain. Fireflies gather like lanterns on strings. The ground rises to meet us, the moss as thick as a mattress, and fern fronds extend like helpful hands.
Rapunzel’s feet touch the earth for the first time.
The vines loosen and slide away, pausing long enough to squeeze her waist in what looks like a hug. She presses her palm to the warm soil, and the forest hums under her hand. Straightening, she looks up at the tower, her expression hard to read.
“You okay?”
“No. Yes.” She grimaces. “I may throw up.”
I thread my fingers through hers, rubbing my thumb over her knuckles. “We can breathe now.”
She does, pulling the sweet-scented air deep into her lungs.
A nosy squirrel creeps down a branch to get a look at the escaped prisoners. A willow swishes its slender branches, and the squirrel scampers off.
“We’re going to need a little privacy,” she tells the trees.
I frown. “For what?”
Her violet eyes darken with lust, and her cheeks flush with color. “Because I’m about to climb you like that tower.”
Leaves answer with a green ripple. Branches tilt and knit, weaving a low bower in the small clearing like fingers lacing in prayer. Honeysuckle releases perfume into the air. Fireflies drift closer to form a chandelier.
“Thank you,” she whispers as the bower settles around us.
I pull her into my arms, my heart kicking against my breastbone in a wild beat. She burrows into me with a soft sigh of contentment, as if she finally knows peace. The world is still and quiet around us, giving us the privacy she requested.
“Say it again,” she whispers, craning her head back until her violet eyes meet mine.
I know what she’s asking for—what she wants to hear.
My hand slips into her hair, anchoring her to me as I dip my head. My lips run down the side of her cheek, tracking toward her mouth. I press those three little words right there, breathing them into her. “I love you.”
She shivers, and it’s like the woods quiver with her. Her mouth seams to mine, her breath sweet and triumphant. The salty remnants of her tears break my heart and mend it too. She wept for me in a way no one ever has. And then she breathed me back to life.
Gods, she’s incredible.
“I love you,” I murmur again, tugging at the fabric still clinging to her body with impatient hands. It slips and tears beneath my fingers, but she only laughs in response, a teasing sound I feel in my balls.
The fabric lands in a pool at our feet, quickly covered by the moss growing to create a bed. I’m not sure if that’s her doing or if it’s the forest, but I take advantage of the situation and tumble her to her back beneath me.
“Brannock,” she moans, arching into me, as if she can’t stand to separate even an inch.
“I know, princess.” I claim her mouth in a deep kiss, my hands trailing down her sides. We kiss until I can’t breathe, until she’s undulating beneath me, little whimpers falling from her lips. When I pull back, her cheeks are flushed, violet eyes wild.
I nip her collarbone, starting a lazy journey down her body. Everywhere my lips touch, she trembles. She sighs. She melts for me.
“You still taste like me, Rapunzel.”
“Because I’m yours, Bran.” Her wide eyes meet mine, full of devotion. “I love you.”
I bury my face between her legs, my hands splayed across her thighs to keep them spread wide for me. With the entire forest watching, I devour her, lips and tusks and tongue wreaking havoc on her pretty body. And when she cries out, shattering for me, it’s like the forest cries out too.
The ground hums beneath us, seeming to beat in time with her wild heartbeat. Leaves rain down from overhead, trembling and shaking from branches bent to provide cover.
Fable Forest feels what I do to her, and it rejoices.
She falls limp beneath me, panting for breath. But she doesn’t stay there for long. Within moments, she’s rising like smoke, all sin and intention. It glitters in her eyes when she pushes me backward, her hands firm against my chest. Vines make handcuffs, looping around my wrists.
“What are you doing, princess?” I ask, eyeing her warily as she crawls over me.
“Climbing you like that tower,” she says sweetly, a stubborn tilt to her chin that has my cock throbbing in response.
It throbs again when she sets to work on my clothing, stripping them from my body with determination. Her hands run across me in featherlight, teasing strokes, setting fire to my skin that I feel in my soul.
“Rapunzel,” I growl, pulling against the vines she’s locked around my wrists. I want my hands on her. I want to make her quiver and moan again. But my little dryad is not playing fair. “Release me, princess.”
“Not yet.” The smile on her lips is pure sex. “I haven’t had my way with you.”
She dips her head, the tip of her tongue flicking out. I feel it against my abdomen, raking trails of fire across my heated skin. She shifts lower, lower, lower.
“Oh, Gods,” I groan, hips arching toward her eager, curious mouth. Her breath blows hot against my aching flesh. Her mouth around the head of my cock is sin and salvation at once, ruining and saving me in the same breath.
She’s tentative and unsure, but somehow perfect as she sucks me deep, using her lips and tongue to drive me higher. What she can’t fit, she strokes with one perfect hand. The other cups my heavy balls, rolling them in a way that has the entire forest listening to me growl and curse.
“Please,” I gasp. It’s the first time I’ve ever begged for anything. I’m an orc warrior. We don’t beg. We slash and hack and maim and take, never beg. But right here? Right now? With Rapunzel’s mouth wreaking havoc on me? I beg. I whimper.
She brings me right to the edge with fire in her eyes and my cock in her mouth, but she doesn’t send me over. Instead, she rises over me, triumphant and sure. I strain against the vines again, desperate to touch and take and claim. Gods, do I want to claim.
But she isn’t mine to claim now. I’m hers.
“Rapunzel!” My voice echoes around the forest, a full-throated roar of surrender as she sinks down on me, taking me deep inside.
Her perfect breasts bob in my face, her head thrown back. Her hair is a tangle of perfection around her, vines wild and grasping as she rides me, lifting and then slamming back down in a way I feel all the way to my soul.
I strain against the vines binding my hands, but they only pull tighter, holding me captive to her.
“You’re going to pay when you release me, little dryad,” I growl.
She falls forward across my chest, her lips against my ear. “Maybe that’s the plan, Brannock.”
I groan her name when I feel her tongue against the shell of my ear.
I intend to tell her… something. But when she slams down on me again, rational thought spirals away.
All that’s left is the way she rides me on our bed of moss with the forest alive around us.
All that’s left is the hot clutch of her body around mine and the sweet rasp of her breath in my ear. All that’s left is her.
And somehow, that’s everything I need. Just her. Always her.
I know she’s going to fall before she does. I feel it in the way she trembles, hear it in the way she gasps. Her pleasure is in the air around us, shimmering and alive. So is my name, shouted into the forest as if she intends every creature within to know it and the pleasure I give her.
I roar hers, too, telling this world what mine never knew. I belong here. I’m hers.
The forest responds to our pleasure, leaves and petals raining down on us from above, the ground humming beneath us. The trees quiver and tremble around us like we do on the moss below, sated and complete. Finally free.
If there’s a better bed than moss that has very specifically decided your woman deserves a pillow, I haven’t met it.
She’s sprawled half on me, half on a fern that refuses to stop offering coverage (decency, apparently, has a union). Her hair glows green and gold at the tips. I want to touch every inch of her and never move again.
I lift my head and catch her expression. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like you’re a miracle?”
“Like you’re planning things,” I say, poking her in the ribs.
“I’m thinking we make a place like this,” she admits, “at the edge of Screaming Woods. Near the old trail so we can get to the river. I can sing the garden to life. You can keep the neighbors from stealing our tools.”
“Who will our neighbors be?” I ask warily. “You haven’t forgotten I’m an orc.”
She cups my cheek. “My gorgeous, sexy orc. Screaming Woods is perfect. Our neighbors will be ogres, shapeshifters, griffins, fairies, and dragons. Maybe the occasional hydra.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Sounds… lively.”
She laughs, then sobers, violet eyes shining with love as they find mine. “Home.”
The word settles something in my chest. “Home.”
Something tugs at my peripheral vision. A sapling is budding beyond the bower, its leaves glossy and new, and a small dogwood blossom opens like a wink.
“You did that,” I murmur.
“We did,” she corrects because she likes to ruin me.
A trickle becomes a small stream at the bower’s edge. I fetch water, and she washes pollen I didn’t know I’d acquired from my jaw, tutting like the queen she is.
I press my mouth to her knuckles. “You need to sleep.”
“I’ve slept my whole life,” she says, but she’s already softening where she’s tucked against me, lashes lowering, breath slowing.
The forest adjusts, cooling the air and smudging the edges of the world.
“Tomorrow,” I murmur into her hair, “we head to Screaming Woods. We’ll build the house. Scare the neighbors. Plant too many flowers.”
“Too many,” she agrees sleepily. “And we need a big bed we can roll around in.”
I smile. “The biggest.”
I lie there with a heart that no longer feels like a weapon and a future I never could have imagined. I silently thank the forest. It chose well when it led me to my love.
When I finally close my eyes, the moss lifts an extra inch under my spine as if it heard me.