Chapter 14
The kiss broke something open in both of them.
One moment they were pressed together in the dim cave, foreheads touching, her hands cradling his tear-streaked face. The next, the grief that had cracked him open gave way to hunger. To need. His mouth found hers again, and this time there was no hesitation. No holding back.
Delia kissed him back with everything she had.
A growl rumbled through his chest, vibrating into her. His hands slid from her face down her neck, her shoulders, her sides. Every touch burned. Every brush of his fingers left fire in its wake.
"I have thought of nothing else," he said against her mouth. "Every moment since I found you. You. Here. With me. Mine."
Mine.
The word shot through her like lightning. "I'm here," she managed. "I'm—"
He kissed her again, swallowing whatever she'd been about to say. His hands found her hips and lifted, and suddenly she was in his lap, her legs wrapping around his waist as he turned them, lowering her onto the furs he'd spread across the cave floor.
The pelts were soft beneath her back when he laid her down. He loomed over her, braced on his arms, and for a moment he just looked at her. His chest heaved with each breath.
"I told you," he said roughly, "that when we were safe, I would worship you properly."
"I remember."
"I do not want to wait. I do not want to lose another day."
She reached up and touched his face. Traced the scar that cut through his eyebrow. Let her fingers trail down to his mouth, feeling the smoothness of his tusks beneath her fingertips.
"I don't want to wait, either," she whispered. "I want everything."
The shift showed in his eyes. Not control breaking—that was already broken, had shattered when he'd wept in her arms—but deeper walls crumbling. Permission granted. Restraint released.
"Then you will have it," he said. "All of it. Every piece of me."
He sat back on his heels and reached for the hem of his tunic. In one fluid motion, he pulled it over his head and cast it aside.
Delia's breath caught.
She'd seen him without a shirt before, glimpses during the journey. But not like this. Not with him kneeling over her, firelight dancing across every plane and hollow of his torso, watching her with those burning eyes.
He was massive. His chest was a wall of muscle, his shoulders so broad they seemed to block out the world.
Scars crisscrossed his green skin, some thin and white with age, others darker and more recent.
War-marks climbed his arms and wrapped around his ribs, patterns she didn't recognize but understood instinctively as significant.
A ridge of darker tissue ran down his sternum, and his stomach was ridged with muscle, tapering to narrow hips and—
Her eyes dropped lower and she felt heat flood her face.
The bulge straining against his breeches was impossible to miss. Even through the leather, she could see the outline of him—thick, heavy, huge.
"You can touch me," he said quietly. "If you want."
She wanted.
Her hand trembled as she reached out. Her fingers made contact with his chest, and his whole body shuddered. The skin was warm and textured differently, like sun-warmed stone.
She let her palm flatten against him. Felt his heart pounding beneath her hand, the rhythm as wild as her own.
"I've never—" She stopped. Swallowed. "I don't know what I'm doing."
"You don't need to know." He covered her hand with his own, pressing it more firmly against his chest. "There is no wrong way to touch me. Every place your hands find will be welcome."
She let him guide her exploration. Down across his chest, feeling the hard planes of muscle. Around the curve of his ribs, where the war-marks swirled like water. Down to his stomach, the ridges there clenching beneath her touch.
When her fingers reached the waist of his breeches, she hesitated.
"May I?" she whispered.
His laugh was strained. "You never need to ask that."
Her hands shook as she worked at the laces. The leather was soft, well-worn, and the knots gave way easily enough. She pulled the laces free, and he helped her push the breeches down, kicking them away.
And then he was bare before her, and Delia forgot how to breathe.
He was… not like a human man. Similar enough that the basic shape registered, but every detail screamed other. Larger. Rougher. Built for something primal.
His cock jutted thick and heavy from a dense thatch of coarse black hair, and there were deliberate, sculpted bands of firmer flesh, four or five of them spaced along the length from just below the head to the swollen root.
Each ridge was thick and rounded, slightly raised, like the segments of some ancient, armored creature.
The head was broad and blunt, slightly mushroomed, a shade lighter green than the shaft, with a wide slit already weeping a thick bead of precum that slid slowly down the first ridge and disappeared into the next valley.
Below that, his balls hung low and heavy in a dusky, slightly textured sac.
She couldn’t look away. The sheer scale of him sent a fresh wave of slick heat pooling between her legs. He could split her open. He could fill her until she couldn't breathe. And the terrifying, intoxicating truth was that she wanted him to try.
He wrapped one massive hand around the base and gave himself a slow, deliberate stroke. The ridges flexed and shifted under his grip.
“You’re staring,” he said, voice rough with amusement and barely-leashed want.
“I—” She swallowed hard, cheeks burning. “I’ve never… seen anything like that.”
His thumb brushed over the first ridge, smearing the bead of precum down the length. “They’re for pleasure,” he told her, eyes locked on hers. “They’ll stretch you open slowly. Make you come harder than you thought possible.”
"It's..." She didn't have words. "You're..."
"I know." His voice was rough with something that might have been uncertainty. "If you've changed your mind—"
"No." The word came out fast, fierce. "No, I haven't. I just—" She looked up at him, met his eyes. "I don't know how... I mean, I'm not sure I can..."
Understanding dawned in his expression, softening the hard lines of desire.
"You can," he said quietly. "But we will go slowly. And if at any point you truly cannot, we stop." He lowered himself over her again, bracing on one arm while his free hand stroked her cheek. "I will not hurt you. I would rather die unfulfilled than cause you pain."
"Some pain is—" She bit her lip. "I've heard it's normal. The first time."
"Perhaps. For humans with humans." His thumb traced her lower lip, tugging it free from her teeth. "But I am not human. And I will not accept 'normal.' I will prepare you until your body welcomes me. Until there is nothing but pleasure." His voice dropped lower. "Trust me."
She did. That was the thing she couldn't quite believe. After everything—after a lifetime of being given reasons not to trust, after the grief she'd just witnessed pouring out of him—she trusted this orc warrior absolutely.
"I trust you," she said.
He kissed her again, softer this time. A promise rather than a demand.
Then his mouth began to travel.
He kissed her jaw. The hollow of her throat. The pulse point at the base of her neck. He drew back just enough to hook fingers under the hem of her tunic. One smooth tug, and it was gone, tossed into the shadows. Cool air hit her bare skin, and then his gaze raked over her.
"Gods," he breathed. "Look at you."
She fought the urge to cover herself. Instead she watched him watch her, cataloging the flex of his jaw, the faint flare of nostrils as he drew in her scent.
His hands rose slowly, settling on her ribs with startling gentleness, thumbs tracing the undersides of her breasts in lazy arcs.
When his thumbs finally brushed her nipples, the contact was so light it felt like static, then firmer, circling until the peaks drew tight under the callused pads.
He bent then, breath ghosting over one breast before his mouth closed around the nipple.
Not a gentle suck at first; a firm pull, lips sealing, tongue flat and broad as it dragged over the tip.
Then the careful scrape, one tusk sliding along the sensitive underside, the other bracketing so she felt caged by him even in this small way.
She bit down on her knuckle to stifle the moan that rose in her throat. The guards were still out there somewhere in the darkness, and sound carried far in these hills.
He lifted his head, eyes glinting in the low light. "Quiet," he whispered against her skin, though there was a thread of satisfaction in his voice. "Though it pleases me that you must fight to stay silent. It tells me I am doing this right."
She nodded, not trusting her voice. Her free hand found his shoulder, fingers digging into the dense muscle there as he continued his slow exploration. Every touch was unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world, as if danger wasn't lurking beyond the cave's entrance.
Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps this was its own kind of defiance.
He lavished attention on her breasts until she was writhing, until her hips were moving of their own accord, seeking pressure she couldn't find. Then his mouth moved lower. Across her ribs. Over the soft curve of her belly.
She tensed instinctively when he reached the fullest part of her stomach—old shame flaring even now—but he pressed his lips to that softness with reverence.
"Here," he said against her skin. "Here is where I want to bury myself. Here is abundance. Here is life." He kissed her again, open-mouthed, tasting her. "In my clan, women like you are celebrated. Courted. Fought over. If the warriors at Northwatch could see you now—"
"Ralvar—"
"—they would weep with jealousy that you are mine." He lifted his head, met her eyes with fierce intensity. "You are not too much. You are exactly enough. You are everything."
She felt tears prick at her eyes. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Make me believe you."