Chapter 9
Ralvar was burning alive.
Her mouth was soft against his and the taste of her was flooding his senses. His hands spread across her back, feeling the warmth of her through the thin fabric of his tunic.
She was solid in his arms. Real. The weight of her in his lap was grounding and maddening at the same time, and when she shifted just slightly, adjusting her position, he felt the press of her thighs against his hips and had to swallow a sound that would have terrified her.
Control.
The word was a drumbeat in his skull. Decades of discipline.
Years of mastering his body, his instincts, his responses.
He'd faced down war parties without flinching.
Had taken wounds that would have killed lesser warriors and kept fighting.
Had buried friends and burned enemies and never once lost his grip on himself.
And now a human woman was kissing him, and he was shaking.
Delia made a small sound against his mouth, and Ralvar's control slipped another notch. His fingers curled into the fabric at her lower back. He could feel the curve of her spine beneath his palm, the softness of her flesh, the way her body yielded against his harder edges.
Mine.
The thought rose unbidden, primal and absolute. He wanted to pull her closer. Wanted to press her down into the furs and learn every inch of her with his hands and mouth and tongue. Wanted to hear her make those sounds louder, wanted to drown in her scent—
He broke the kiss.
It took everything he had. Every shred of training, every year of hard-won discipline. His hands stayed on her back but his mouth pulled away, and he heard himself breathing like he'd just run from the border to the mountains without stopping.
"Ralvar?" Her voice was dazed, her lips swollen from his attention. She looked wrecked. She looked perfect.
"We need to stop."
He watched confusion flicker across her face, followed by something worse—doubt.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"No." He said quickly. "No. You did nothing wrong."
"Then why—"
"Because you are injured, and tired, and have been through more in the last two days than any person should endure."
She stared at him as she processed his words.
"Do not doubt that I want this. I have wanted this since I found you—" He cut himself off, jaw clenching. This was more than he'd meant to say. More than was wise.
But she needed to understand.
"The scent of you is in my blood," he said quietly.
"Every breath I take is full of you. When you move, I am aware of it.
When you speak, I feel it in my bones. And right now, with you in my lap, smelling of warmth and wanting.
.." He closed his eyes briefly. "Right now I am holding myself in check through will alone, and that will is not infinite. "
Silence stretched between them.
When she spoke again, her voice was less certain. "I've never... I don't know how this works. Any of this. I've never even—" She stopped. A flush crept up her neck. "No one has ever wanted me before. Not like this. Not... at all."
The admission hit him like a blade between the ribs.
He'd known, intellectually, what her life must have been. The fragments she'd shared—the shame, the invisibility, the way she made herself small to survive. But hearing her say it aloud, hearing the raw truth of it in her voice—
"Their blindness," he said, "does not diminish your worth."
"You keep saying things like that."
"Because they are true."
She laughed, but it was a small, broken sound that wasn't really laughter at all. "You've known me for two days. How can you be so certain?"
"Because I see you." His hand came up to cup her face again, tilting it toward the firelight. The flames cast shifting shadows across her features, highlighting the uncertainty in her eyes, the tremble of her lower lip. "And what I see is worthy of far more than you have been given."
Her eyes went bright with tears. Then she leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his chest, and the fight went out of her all at once.
Ralvar wrapped his arms around her. Held her close. She wasn't crying, but he could feel the tremors running through her, the way her hands fisted in his vest, the raggedness of her breathing.
He said nothing. Sometimes there were no words for the things that needed releasing. He simply held her, one hand stroking slowly down her spine, and let her shake apart in his arms.
The afternoon faded into evening.
At some point, Delia had climbed off his lap and returned to her place against the wall. Ralvar had let her go, though every instinct screamed at him to pull her back. To keep her close. To never let her out of arm's reach again.
But she needed space. He could see it in the way she held herself, the slight distance she put between them. She was processing. Thinking. And he would not crowd her while she did.
So he busied himself with tasks. Fed the fire.
Prepared the remaining rabbit for later.
Checked the door, the windows, the gaps in the walls where an enemy might slip through.
The watchtower was as secure as it could be, but the routine of checking helped him focus on anything but the woman across the room.
It didn't work particularly well.
He remained hyperaware of her. Her breathing.
The small sounds she made as she shifted position.
The way the firelight caught the brown of her hair, turned it almost gold in places.
She'd finished repairing his vest at some point, and now she was simply sitting, staring into the flames, lost in thoughts he couldn't read.
The scent of her desire had faded, but not disappeared. It lingered in the air like smoke, and every time he breathed, he tasted it.
Control.
Night fell slowly. The light through the ruined walls shifted from gray to purple to black, and the fire became the only illumination. Ralvar ate sparingly and watched Delia pick at the food he'd set aside for her.
"You should sleep," he said eventually. His voice sounded too loud in the quiet. "Your body needs rest to heal."
"I know." She didn't move. "I don't think I can."
"The furs are—"
"It's not the furs." She was staring at the fire, holding herself with that careful stillness.
"It's everything else. Every time I close my eyes, I see the wagon.
The guards. I feel the ropes on my wrists and hear them talking about the worksite and—" She stopped and drew a breath.
"I know I'm safe here. I know that, I believe it.
But my body doesn't seem to understand."
Ralvar was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "Would you like me to keep watch? I can stay awake while you try to rest. Nothing will reach you without going through me first."
"You did that last night."
"Yes."
"You can't stay awake forever."
"I can stay awake tonight." He met her eyes across the fire. "And tomorrow. And as many nights as you need, until your body learns that safety is not a lie."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned her face away, and he saw her throat move as she swallowed.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I'll try to sleep."
She arranged herself on the furs, pulling them up around her shoulders. Her back was to him, giving herself privacy. He watched her settle, then turned his attention to the fire, to the darkness beyond the walls, to anything except the woman he wanted to touch.
The night stretched on.
Ralvar did not sleep.
He sat against the wall opposite her, his back to the stone, his weapons within easy reach. The fire burned low, and the shadows in the watchtower grew long and strange.
Outside, the forest was quiet. No sound of pursuit. No crack of branches or muffled voices that might signal the guards' approach.
He should have been thinking about tactics.
About routes and defenses and contingency plans.
About how to get her to the outpost when she couldn't walk, how to explain her presence to his warriors, how to navigate the political complications of an orc captain protecting a human woman fleeing human law.
Instead, he thought about the taste of her mouth.
The soft weight of her in his lap.
The way she'd fisted her hand in his tunic and pulled him back for more.
He'd done the right thing. He knew that. She was injured, exhausted, traumatized. Taking her to his bed now would have been—
Not force. She would have come willingly. He'd seen it in her eyes, heard it in her voice, smelled it in the heat rising from her skin.
But it would have been wrong. Taking advantage of her vulnerability. Claiming her before she fully understood what she was choosing. Before she understood him.
He wanted more than a night.
The thought was dangerous. More dangerous than raider parties or border skirmishes or all the threats he'd faced in his years of service.
He'd never wanted more before. Had never let himself imagine a future beyond the next patrol, the next battle, the next lonely night in a watchtower with nothing but duty for company.
Now he imagined too much.
He imagined her in his quarters at the outpost. Imagined teaching her the orcish tongue, showing her the high passes, watching her learn that the world was bigger than the cruelty she'd known.
He imagined years stretching out ahead of them.
Quiet years, full years, years with her voice and her scent and her stubborn courage filling all the empty spaces he'd learned to ignore.
He imagined, and the imagining was worse than the wanting.
Because the wanting was simple. Primal. A fire that burned and demanded and could be controlled through will alone.
But the imagining was something else entirely.
It was hope.
And hope, Ralvar had learned long ago, was the most dangerous thing of all.
She was restless.
He noticed an hour before midnight—the small sounds of movement, the rustle of furs, the pattern of her breathing shifting from shallow sleep to wakefulness and back again.
She was fighting something in her dreams, and he watched helplessly from across the room, unable to go to her without being asked.
The restraint was its own particular torture.
He wanted to gather her up. Hold her close. Growl at the darkness until it understood that it could not have her.
But she hadn't asked.
So he sat and watched.
And then, just past midnight, she woke.
He heard the sharp intake of breath. The sudden stillness as consciousness flooded back. The rustle of furs as she pushed herself upright, one hand going to her chest like she was checking her own heartbeat.
"Ralvar?"
Her voice was thin. Small. Nothing like the woman who'd pulled him down for a second kiss.
"I'm here."
She turned toward him in the darkness. The fire had burned down to embers, and the room was full of shadows, but his eyes had no trouble finding the pale shape of her face.
She shifted toward him, dragging her furs with her, and pressed herself against his side.
The contact jolted through him like lightning. He felt the soft warmth of her body, the weight of her head as it came to rest against his chest. His arm came up around her automatically and drew her closer.
"Is this okay?" she whispered.
The question almost made him laugh. She was asking him if this was okay. As if he weren't fighting the urge to wrap himself around her completely, to shield her from every shadow and threat and memory that haunted her sleep.
"Yes."
He felt her exhale. Felt the tension begin to drain from her muscles. She went soft against him, and the feeling sparked more hope than he knew what to do with.
"You're warm," she murmured. "Like a furnace."
"Orc blood runs hot."
"I noticed."
Her breathing slowed. Deepened. The scent of fear faded, replaced by warmth. Contentment. The scent of safety, he realized. The scent of someone who finally, finally believed they weren't alone.
He didn't sleep.
But when her breath evened out into the rhythm of true rest, when her hand unclenched from his shirt and went slack against his chest, when she made a small sound and pressed her face more firmly into his shoulder—
He closed his eyes.
And let himself have this moment.
Just this.
For now.