Chapter 10
Delia woke slowly.
The first thing she became aware of was the solid, encompassing warmth that seemed to radiate through her entire body.
The second was a heartbeat that wasn't her own, steady and strong beneath her ear.
The third was the arm wrapped around her back, holding her against a chest that rose and fell in the rhythm of deep sleep.
Ralvar.
She didn't move. Didn't want to break whatever spell had allowed the orc warrior to finally rest. Morning light was seeping through the gaps in the watchtower walls, and she could hear birds calling somewhere in the distance.
Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
She tilted her head back slowly, careful not to wake him, and studied his face in the early light.
Asleep, the ferocity was muted. His features were still harsh—the strong jaw, the prominent brow, the tusks curving up from his lower lip—but the tension she'd grown accustomed to seeing had faded. He looked... peaceful. Almost vulnerable.
He stayed awake for me. Both nights. Watched over me while I slept.
She shifted slightly, adjusting her position against him, and his arm tightened automatically.His face turned toward her, nose pressing into her hair, and she felt him inhale deeply.
"You're awake," he said. His voice was rough with sleep, deeper than usual.
"So are you."
"I felt you move." His eyes opened, finding her face. "Did you sleep?"
"Some." More than she'd expected, actually. More than she had in days. "Did you?"
"Some."
They were still pressed together. His arm was around her. Her head was resting on his chest, her hand splayed against the hard muscle beneath his shirt. She should move. Should put distance between them, give him space, stop taking up so much of—
His thumb traced a slow line down her spine.
Delia's breath caught.
"How is your ankle?" he asked.
"I... what?"
"Your ankle." The corner of his mouth twitched. "The injury. Does it pain you?"
She'd forgotten about her ankle. Completely, utterly forgotten. "It's... fine. Better, I think."
"Good."
His thumb continued its slow path. Up and down, up and down, tracing the length of her spine through the thin fabric of his tunic.
"Ralvar."
"Mm."
"What are we doing?"
His hand stilled on her back, then resumed its gentle motion. "What do you want us to be doing?"
What do you want?
The question he kept asking. The one no one had ever asked before him. The one she still didn't know how to answer.
Except—
Maybe she did.
Delia pushed herself up on one elbow. The movement brought her face closer to his, putting them nearly eye to eye. She could see the gold flecks in his irises and the old scar that cut through his left eyebrow.
"I want—" She stopped. Swallowed. The words felt too big for her throat. "I want to feel what it's like. To be wanted."
The look he gave her was hungry, fierce, but carefully controlled.
"You are wanted."
"I know you've said that. I know you've shown me." She reached up, hesitant, and touched his face. The skin was warm and slightly rough beneath her fingers, textured like weathered leather. "But I want to feel it."
He didn't move. Didn't speak. Just looked at her with those burning amber eyes while his chest rose and fell in measured breaths.
Then his hand came up to cup the back of her head, and he pulled her down to his mouth.
The kiss was deeper than the night before. More demanding. When her mouth opened on a gasp, his tongue swept inside. It was thick and slightly rough, like velvet over stone, and the press of his tusks against her lips sent a thrill through her—strange, foreign, exhilarating.
She moaned and felt his answering growl vibrate through both of them.
His hands slid down her back, found her hips, and lifted her as easily as if she weighed nothing. Suddenly she was straddling him again, her thighs bracketing his hips, and she could feel—
Oh.
She could feel him. Hard and hot even through layers of fabric. Her body clenched involuntarily, and the movement pressed her more firmly against him.
Ralvar broke the kiss with something that sounded like a snarl.
"Careful," he gritted out.
"What if I don't want to be careful?"
Heat flashed in his gaze, and his fingers tightened on her hips. "Then you will undo me, little human. And I am trying very hard to maintain some control."
"Maybe I don't want you controlled."
The words hung between them, bold and reckless. The kind of words she never would have spoken before last night. Before him.
Ralvar's expression shifted. The hunger was still there, but tenderness joined it. Wonder, almost reverent.
"If we do this," he said quietly, "we do it properly. You understand?"
"What does properly mean?"
"It means—" He released her hip with one hand and brought it up to brush a strand of hair from her face. His touch was impossibly gentle for hands so large. "It means I worship you. Every inch. Until you understand what I see when I look at you."
Her heart stuttered. "Ralvar—"
"Lie back."
She hesitated for only a moment before shifting off him, settling back against the furs, her injured ankle carefully extended.
He rose over her like a mountain, massive and imposing. Blocking out the dim morning light until all she could see was him. Deep green skin stretched over rippling muscle, amber eyes and tusks that should have terrified her but instead made her blood run hot with a forbidden thrill.
"Tell me if you want to stop," he said. "At any point. For any reason. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"Words, Delia."
"I understand."
"Good."
He found the hem of the tunic she was wearing and he drew the fabric up slowly. Inch by inch, exposing her thighs, her hips, her stomach. The cool air hit her skin and she shivered, from cold or anticipation, she couldn't tell anymore.
He stopped when the tunic reached just below her breasts.
And then he looked at her.
Delia fought the urge to cover herself. Her hands twitched toward her belly. Every instinct she'd developed over twenty-three years of being too much screamed at her to hide.
But Ralvar was staring at her like she was a revelation.
"Beautiful," he breathed.
She felt herself flush. "You don't have to—"
"I am not saying what I have to say." His hand hovered over her stomach without touching. "I am saying what is true. You are beautiful. Every part of you."
His palm finally made contact, and Delia's breath left her in a rush.
His hand was so large. It spanned nearly the entire width of her belly, warm and rough against her skin. He didn't squeeze or grip or do anything that might suggest her softness displeased him. He simply... touched. Explored. Let his fingers trace the curves of her with something like wonder.
"Here," he murmured, palm sliding to her hip. "This is abundance. Strength. A body that endures."
He traced her waist, found the dip there, followed it up toward her ribs.
"Here. Softness that warriors would kill to protect."
His thumb brushed the underside of her breast through the bunched fabric, and Delia gasped, but he didn't stop. He drew the tunic over her head and tossed it aside, and she was bare before him.
For one terrible moment, she waited for the disgust. The dismissal. The moment when he would see all of her and realize that the stories he'd been told about orc preferences were wrong, that she was too much, too soft, too—
"Blessed," Ralvar said hoarsely.
He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to her stomach. His lips were hot against her skin, tracing a path across her belly that left fire in its wake. She felt the press of his tusks—smooth, hard, strange—and the contrast made her shiver.
"What—" Her voice came out breathless. "What are you doing?"
"Showing you." He kissed her hip. The curve of her waist. The soft flesh beneath her ribs. "What you deserve."
Each word was punctuated by another kiss. Another touch. His hands roamed her body, mapping every inch of her he could reach, lingering on the places she'd learned to hate. He cupped her breasts, ran his palms down her thighs, pressed his face into the soft swell of her belly and inhaled.
"The scent of you," he growled against her skin. "Do you know what it does to me?"
She shook her head, beyond words.
"It drives me mad." His mouth moved lower, kissing a trail down her stomach. "Every moment. Every breath. You smell like everything I never knew I wanted."
When he pressed her thighs apart, Delia tensed.
He lifted his head to look at her. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No." The word came out too fast, too desperate. "No, I just—I've never—"
His thumb stroked soothingly over her hip. "We go slowly. As slowly as you need."
He lowered his head again, pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh, and Delia's head fell back against the furs.
His mouth was devastating. Hot and wet and impossibly skilled, tracing patterns on her sensitive skin that made her writhe. He kissed his way up one thigh, then the other, always stopping just short of where she was beginning to ache for him.
"Please," she heard herself whisper. "Ralvar, please—"
His growl vibrated against her core.
And then his mouth was there.
The first touch of his tongue wrenched a shocked sound from her throat.
It was nothing like she'd imagined, nothing like the whispered stories she'd heard from other village girls about fumbling encounters in haylofts.
His tongue moved against her like he was savoring her, parting her with slow strokes that made her hips buck.
He tasted her deeply, his tusks pressing against her outer lips, framing the heat of his mouth in a way that felt both dangerous and divine.
"Oh—" Her hands scrabbled for purchase, found his hair, gripped hard. "Oh—"
His hands tightened on her thighs, spreading her wider, holding her open for his mouth. His tongue found the swollen bud at her center and circled it, pressing with just enough force to make her see stars.
Delia's hips bucked up involuntarily. The world narrowed down to the feel of his mouth, his hands, the heat of his breath against her most sensitive flesh. Pleasure coiled in her belly, tight and building, unlike anything she'd ever felt before.
"That's it," he rumbled against her. "Let go. I have you."
One of his hands left her thigh. She felt him shift, felt his finger brush against her entrance, impossibly thick, circling gently before pressing inside.
The stretch stole her breath. His finger felt enormous, filling her in a way that bordered on uncomfortable but didn't quite cross into pain. She clenched around him, and felt him pause.
"Too much?"
"No." She panted, trying to adjust. "No, just—different. It's—oh—"
He'd curled his finger, found something inside her that she hadn't known existed, and the world exploded into sensation. Her back arched off the furs. Her grip on his hair went white-knuckled. A sound tore out of her that might have been his name.
And through it all, his mouth never stopped moving, his tongue lashing against her bud, his tusks pressing into her folds, his growls vibrating through her as he drank her in.
The pleasure was too much. Too big. Too overwhelming. It crashed over her in waves, each one higher than the last, and she could feel herself climbing toward something terrifying and inevitable.
"I can't—" The words came out broken. "Ralvar, I can't—"
"You can."
His tongue pressed hard against her center. His finger crooked inside her, hitting that spot again and again. The coil in her belly wound tighter, tighter, and suddenly—
She shattered.
The orgasm hit her like a wave breaking.
Pleasure crashed through her, so intense it was almost painful, and she heard herself cry out, a raw, wordless sound that echoed off the stone walls.
Her whole body clenched and released, clenched and released, and through it all Ralvar held her, worked her, drew every last tremor from her until she collapsed against the furs, wrung out and gasping.
She couldn't move. Couldn't think. Could only lie there, trembling in the aftermath, as Ralvar withdrew his finger gently and pressed a final kiss to her inner thigh.
Then he crawled up her body and pulled her into his arms.
"There," he murmured against her hair. "There."
The tears came without warning.
They spilled down her cheeks in hot streams, and she didn't understand why. Didn't understand why this gentle aftermath had broken something in her that the pleasure itself had only cracked. She buried her face against his chest and sobbed.
Ralvar held her through it. Stroked her back. Made soft, soothing sounds that she didn't recognize but understood anyway.
"I don't—" She gasped for air. "I don't know why I'm—"
"You don't need to know." His voice was gentle. "Sometimes the body releases what the mind cannot hold."
She clung to him. This massive, terrifying creature who could have taken anything he wanted, who could have ignored her tears or been annoyed by them or demanded something in return for what he'd given. Instead, he simply held her.
The tears slowed eventually. Drying to sniffles, then hiccoughs, then just the occasional shudder as her breathing evened out. She stayed pressed against his chest, unwilling to move, unwilling to lose his solid warmth.
"What about you?" she asked finally, her voice hoarse.
She felt his answering exhale. Could feel, too, the hard length of him still pressing against her hip. His body was clearly unsatisfied, but he made no move to address it.
"What about me?"
"You didn't—" She stumbled over the words. "Don't you want to—"
"I want many things." He stroked slowly down her back. "But not yet. Not today."
"Why?"
He pulled back slightly, just enough to look at her. His eyes were still hot with want, but the tenderness there made her chest ache.
"Because you have never done this before," he said quietly. "And I would not take more than you are ready to give."
Of course. Of course he would know. She hadn't said it out loud, but he would have felt her tightness and recognized the signs of inexperience.
"We will go slowly," he continued. "At your pace. When you want more, you will tell me. Until then—" His thumb traced her cheekbone, wiping away the last traces of tears. "This is enough. More than enough. Having you in my arms, making you shake apart for me... I could live on this for days."
She stared at him. At this impossible creature who defied everything she'd been taught, everything she'd believed.
"You're really not like the stories," she whispered.
His mouth curved slightly. Not quite a smile, but close. "Neither are you."
He pulled her closer, tucking her head beneath his chin, and she let herself melt into him.