Chapter 6
Chapter Six
OGRAM
After a long day, I drive the tractor into the drop-off area outside the barn, pulling a wagon carrying full bins from this afternoon’s apple harvesting.
My farmworkers are deservedly on their way home, and I intend to fill my remaining waking hours with jobs I can do alone.
Much like any other day, aside from my mind not being focused on the tasks at hand.
All I can think about is Hope. Her spirit and honesty and humor.
Her beautiful smile and voice and laughter.
The silkiness of her hair and softness of her skin.
How sweet her lips and breath tasted when we kissed.
How desperately I wanted to taste the rest of her before sinking my cock into her well-satisfied, willing body, where I’d rut until my cum didn’t just fill her, it overflowed from her thoroughly fucked cunt. Then I’d do it all over again.
Now I never will. Any chance I had of claiming my mate is gone.
I knew it the moment I admitted the entirety of my desires.
Too much troll truth, far too soon. The shock on her face when she looked at me was only surpassed by her quietness during the walk to her cabin.
Silence in opposition to her natural tendency for conversation.
I didn’t kiss her goodnight or ask for another date. Nor did she.
Finding my mate, the most important event of my life, and I ruined it on our first date.
I climb down from the tractor, shaking my head as I walk toward the drive shed to get the forklift. Halfway there, I freeze on the spot, tilting my head back to catch a scent on the evening breeze. Her scent.
“Hi.” She gives a little wave as I turn in her direction. Today she’s wearing jeans and a floral shirt that’s tied in a knot at her waist, and white sneakers that have no place on a farm. Much like their wearer, even though I want nothing more than to see her here every day until forever runs out.
“I didn’t expect to see you today.” Or ever again, though I keep those words to myself. I would rather have her disgust than her pity.
“I was here earlier. Well, not here, here. In the Harmony Market store. I thought you’d be there on a Saturday, but your employees told me you were working in the field all day.”
“Farming doesn’t care about weekends, especially in harvest season. We wait months for crops to be ready, then have a brief window to reap everything before poor weather and cool temperatures arrive.”
“And right now, it’s apple season.”
“Other things too, but apples are among the more sought-after crops we farm here.”
“You say ‘we’ often when you’re talking about the farm. I thought you were the sole owner.”
“Owner is just a name on a deed. Everyone who works here is an equally important part of the farm.”
“I love that,” she says, moving toward me until she’s so close, she has to tip her head back to smile up at me. “You have a green leaf in your hair. A little branch piece too.”
“Probably more than one of each and maybe some bugs.” I can’t help chuckling when her eyes open wide and she takes a step back. City folks. “We pick apples by hand. Have to get right in the trees.”
“That sounds fun. Except for the bugs in the hair part. And the having to do it all day part.”
“We have a pick-your-own area if you want to give it a try while you’re in town. Stop into the market store and they’ll get you sorted, tell you where to go and how to pick.”
“Or…maybe you could show me? I’d say ‘sometime when you’re not busy,’ but—”
“Tell me when you’d like to do it and I’ll make time.” The words leave my lips before my brain has a chance to catch up. If I sound desperate, it’s because I am. I don’t expect another chance to have her as my mate, but I’ll take any kind of moment with her I can get.
“It could be our next date.” When I fail to respond with words, she fidgets with the knot at her waist and the lock of hair already tucked tidily in place behind one ear. “Unless that’s too much like work for you to have a good time.”
“I would sit and stare at dirt with you if that’s what you wanted, and enjoy every second. Any time spent with you is much better than good.”
Her relief is almost tangible when she blows out a breath. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought you might not feel that way after I barely spoke to you during the walk back to my cabin last night, and the way we left things.”
“It is I who caused the tone of our evening to shift, not you.”
“I think we both did. The information you shared was a lot to digest, no question. And that’s what I had to do—digest it. Repeatedly, like a cow, until I’d thoroughly processed it all.”
“Were you able to do that?”
“Yes.” She nods. “I think so.”
I have no right to feel optimistic, but the feeling rises regardless. Not enough to question her further, though. Whatever she might say must be on her timeline.
“You said the rut often happens when a female partner is fertile, and you told me—” Color floods her cheeks, painting them like summer roses.
“You told me that my scent was affecting you enough to send you into a rut if we had sex. So, does that mean you can smell me ovulating? Because I checked my calendar when I was back at the cabin last night, and it was day thirteen of my cycle, which the internet seems to agree is go time if you’re trying to get pregnant. ”
There is no willing my cock to remain flaccid. Tucked inside my pant leg, it grows thick and hard and ready for her, precum rolling down my inner thigh. “Yes, your scent holds distinct markers, including your body’s fertility.”
“No wonder you don’t care to be out among groups of people. Being bombarded by the smell of fertile females must be overwhelming and um,” her gaze lowers to the obvious bulge of my hard cock, “uncomfortable.”
Shaking my head sends the debris from the apple trees floating to the ground. “That is not how it is. Though our sense of smell is more heightened than a human’s, male trolls aren’t attuned to the markers of every female’s scent.”
“Only the ones you’re attracted to?”
“Yes.” The simplest answer, and the safest. “I apologize for scaring you. I was far too forthcoming last night. I realize you don’t know me well enough to be assured by words, but I promise you that I would never act on my desires without consent.”
“I believe you. I trust you. And I wasn’t scared.
Not in the way you mean,” she says, stepping closer again.
“I don’t understand it, honestly. If any other man said even a fraction of the things you did, I would’ve ended the date on the spot.
But from you, with you, I wasn’t turned off, I was turned on.
I didn’t want to run home and lock the door and maybe get a restraining order.
I wanted you to rut with me. On me? Whichever.
I wanted everything you told me would happen.
That’s what scared me. I just met you, yet I wanted you to indulge your primal instincts and…
breed me.” The last two words come out quieter than the others. Breathier.
Rosy pink flushes her skin and the scent of her arousal perfumes the air. Even without inhaling deeply, I can almost taste her on the back of my tongue.
“Those feelings, they shocked me,” she says. “I needed time to think without my hormones distracting me. Giving in to the heat of the moment would’ve been incredible, but after that moment, the consequences…”
Becoming pregnant with our child. Becoming my mate. She considers those things consequences.
“I can barely support myself on my income, and that’s if I’ll even have a job waiting when I go back, because I didn’t leave on the best of terms with my boss. Or my community.”
Stunned that she thinks I would put the responsibility and gift of raising our child entirely on her, I just stare. Wait, because I can tell she has more to say, and that she’s unaware of the affront to my honor.
“I’m not ready for that, so I stopped at one of the stores and bought some contraceptives. Not condoms, obviously, after what you said about being, um,” again, her gaze drops to the prominent bulge of my cock, “large.” Her cheeks deepen to red when she meets my eyes. “So I bought sponges.”
“Cleaning products are used to prevent pregnancy in humans?”
She sputters and snorts, her lips curving into a glorious, full smile. “Not cleaning sponges. Vaginal sponges. One is inserted before sex.”
“I am not familiar with this item, but if it was designed to absorb human semen, one will be inadequate with me. You would need to insert many sponges if you hope to absorb the full volume of my ejaculate.”
By the time I finish speaking, tears are running down her cheeks and her body is shaking with amusement. “It doesn’t work by absorbing all the cum,” she says, gripping my arm for support as she bends at the waist, giggling uncontrollably.
“But that’s what sponges do—absorb liquid.”
“Oh, my stomach,” she groans, folding her other arm across her middle. She gasps when I scoop her off her feet, wrapping her arms behind my neck as I carry her into the drive shed, where I set her carefully on a large storage box.
Crouching in front of her, I gently smooth her hair from her face. “Do you need medical assistance?”
She catches my hand and presses her cheek against my palm, smiling at me. “It’s just a stitch from laughing. You’re so sweet.” Turning her face, she presses a kiss to my work-roughened skin before breathing me in. “You even smell sweet.”
“From the apples. I haven’t washed up yet.”
Her gaze travels to the top of my head, then she releases my hand so she can carefully extract another remnant from working in the orchard. Dropping the leaf to the ground, she threads her fingers through my hair, first one hand, then both. Her gentle, deliberate touch renders me powerless.
Unable to resist, I groan at the like rake of her nails against my scalp. Close my eyes when she switches to a massaging motion with her fingertips.