Chapter 6 #2
What the fuck was he going on about now? Bjorn was having a hard time keeping up with this, but maybe it was the rage that was still making his fingers shake with a need to tear the king’s head off his body.
“Oh!” Astrid said, her face turning scarlet. “I don’t know how to make it sound that loud.”
One of the female trolls next to her snorted. “Have you ever eaten whipped cream?”
“Like... milk beaten until it’s frothy?”
“With sugar mixed in.”
“Right, yes, of course I have.”
“Over strawberries?” The troll woman’s eyes went a little glassy at the thought, and Bjorn hated that she’d been kept away from something she so clearly loved.
The priestess opened her mouth, closed it, and then nodded. “Understood. That’s easy enough.”
She settled onto her knees. She looked very much like she was about to pray, with her bottom resting against her feet and her hands neatly settled onto her thighs.
Even smeared in mud and blood as she was, he understood why they called her priestess.
She looked like she was made of starlight, a being sent by the gods themselves for him to remember that he did not deserve to touch perfection.
Then the priestess let out the loudest, most ungodly moan he had ever heard in his life.
His mouth dropped open at the pure pleasure that seemingly ripped out of her.
It was a moan unlike anything he’d ever heard.
Although there were perhaps sparks of memory where he knew that was the correct sound for a woman to make, not the screams or cries for mercy that he heard echoing down the cell halls.
He was staring. Most of the men were as she closed her eyes for concentration and did it again.
Bjorn was suddenly very, very uncomfortable.
Until Rabbit hit him over the back of the head and hissed, “Now it’s your turn! No one’s going to believe you’re just silent through the whole thing. You’re damn loud killing people, you might as well be loud here too.”
But he didn’t... He didn’t know how to do that. He had no memory of pleasure, only pain. And it felt wrong to make sounds of pain when she was making sounds like that.
Perhaps one of his brothers understood that Bjorn simply wasn’t going to be able to make that noise. Another troll did it for him, groaning deep in an exaggerated fashion that was as ridiculous as it was embarrassing.
And then another troll wriggled their arm into the midst of them all and started smacking their thigh. Mimicking the sound of... of...
He was certain he turned a very deep shade of green.
This was horrible. This wasn’t the first impression he wanted to give her of himself or his people.
When he had first seen her in that room, he’d thought she looked like the kind of woman who could become a troll wife.
She was made to be decorated in jewelry that had been created with careful hands, as only trolls could do.
But now, they were pretending to fuck so a king wouldn’t kill them, and this was just... all wrong.
His breathing escalated. The rage that always seemed to get him in trouble bubbled up again.
He couldn’t breathe with bodies so close to him.
The only thing he knew to do in situations like this was to kill.
His claws suddenly ached, whispering that he could get out if he wanted.
All he had to do was hack and slash at these bodies, it didn’t matter if they were trolls.
He’d done it before. He could do it again.
But then she reached out and grabbed his clawed hand. He stared down at her pale little fingers, wrapped around his, avoiding his claws with such deft expertise. She squeezed his fingers, and he swore there wasn’t even a touch of magic in her grip, but he could feel his anger melting away.
Bit by bit, she eased the fear that threatened to burst inside him. All by just being there. With him.
He stared at her, watching her lips shape around the sounds of those moans, growing faster and more frequent until they stopped. The troll making noise for him let out an answering, deep guttural sound, and then someone had to press their hand over his mouth as he chuckled afterward.
Rabbit leaned forward, running clawed hands through her hair and messing it up. “That’s... No. One more thing.”
Bjorn growled under his breath as Rabbit hooked a claw beneath the delicate pearls at her shoulder and snipped them. They tumbled onto the ground, little pings that were all he could focus on. He hated that they were ruining her like this. Hated that her pretty things were now broken.
Rabbit turned to him next, tugging on his loin cloth and tilting it a little bit. Then he looked at his hair and sighed. Clearly he wanted to tussle that as well, but there wasn’t much worse it could get.
And then they all parted, revealing a mussed priestess who looked like she had just been unraveled by a troll. How had she made her cheeks so pink?
Oh, she was pinching them. She lifted her hands, and it looked like she was trying to cover her face so people couldn’t see her, but she was pinching her cheeks so hard they were getting redder and redder.
King James started clapping, and the entire stadium applauded what they thought was the rape of a priestess.
They applauded.
Snarling, Bjorn shook his head like an animal and chuffed out a loud exhale. “Open the doors, King. We are done here.”
For once, the human king didn’t mind the order.