Chapter 11
The drag of Varek leaving her body made Mab whimper into the silk. Every ridge caught against swollen flesh, a sensation that hovered somewhere between too much and not enough, and by the time he was fully out of her she felt hollowed. Empty in a way that had nothing to do with satisfaction.
His hand pressed flat against the base of her spine, holding her still while the evidence of what they'd done slipped down her thighs.
"Don't move yet."
Mab couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to. Her arms had stopped working somewhere around the third orgasm. Her knees were the only thing keeping her hips in the air, and even those were trembling.
The mattress shifted. She heard him cross the room, heard water splash, and then he was back. A warm cloth pressed between her thighs.
"I can do that," she said.
"You can." The cloth dragged slowly up her inner thigh. "You won't."
He cleaned the slick from her thighs, the crease where her leg met her body, the swollen flesh that flinched at even that gentle pressure. When he finished, the cloth disappeared and his hands returned to her hips.
"On your back now."
Mab let him turn her. Her body moved where he put it, loose-limbed and unresisting, and when her back hit the mattress she stared up at the canopy without really seeing it. The pale blue hangings looked different from this angle. Softer.
Varek stretched out beside her. The bed was built for a human lord and lady, not for a seven-foot orc warrior, and his feet hung off the end. He didn't seem to notice. His hand settled on her belly, broad palm spanning the soft curve of it.
"Soft belly. Full tits. Thighs I could spend a week between." He stroked his hand up and down. "And this cunt that just took every inch of me like it was made for it."
Heat crawled up Mab's face. "You can't just say things like that."
"I can say whatever I want." His hand slid lower, fingers brushing the top of the curls between her thighs. "You're mine. Going to keep you this way. Dripping with my seed."
The words landed somewhere low in her belly, a pulse of heat that had no business existing after what he'd just wrung out of her. She should be empty. Spent. Instead, the thought made her clench between her thighs, a flutter of muscle that his fingers must have felt because his hand stilled.
"Already?" His voice was rough with something that sounded like satisfaction. "I've barely pulled out of you."
"I didn't—" She stopped. Swallowed. "That wasn't on purpose."
"Wasn't it?"
Mab turned her face toward him. He was propped on one elbow, watching her.
The silver threading in his beard was more visible this close.
So were the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the old scar that cut through his left eyebrow, the way his tusks curved up past lips that had been between her thighs not long ago.
She had never looked at a man's face this long. Had never been allowed to.
Mab's bladder chose that moment to make itself known.
She stiffened. The need was sudden and undeniable, cutting through the haze of aftermath with brutal practicality.
"What is it?"
"Nothing." The word came out too fast.
His hand stilled. "Mab."
She squeezed her eyes shut. "I need the garderobe."
"Then go."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because you're looking at me."
She kept her eyes on the canopy, because looking at him while she said this was impossible.
"I'm going to be looking at you for the rest of our lives." His hand hadn't moved from her belly. "You'll need to piss during some of it."
Her whole face prickled. "That's not—I can't just—"
"You can't walk across a room while I'm in it?"
"Not like this." She gestured vaguely at herself. At the nakedness, the mess on her thighs, the swollen feeling between her legs that made her aware of every inch of skin she had. "Not with you watching."
"You think I haven't already looked at you?"
"That was different."
"How?"
"You were—" She stopped. "I was—"
"You were on your back with your thighs spread and my mouth between them." His thumb traced her jaw. "You were on your hands and knees with my cock buried inside you. And now you're worried about walking across a room?"
Put like that, it sounded absurd. It was absurd. But the fear didn't care about logic. The fear had been with her all her life, and it didn't release its grip just because an orc warlord had made her come four times.
Varek sat up. The movement was sudden enough that she gasped, her hand flying out to catch herself as his chest disappeared from beneath her cheek. Before she could process what was happening, his hands were under her and he was lifting her.
"What are you—"
"Taking you to the garderobe." He held her to his chest. "Since you won't take yourself."
"I can walk."
"But will you?"
Mab opened her mouth to argue. Closed it. The honest answer was no. If he set her down right now, she would pull the bedding over herself and hold it until her bladder burst rather than walk naked across the room while he watched.
He knew it too. She could see it in the way his mouth didn't quite move, the small tug at the corner that meant he was amused and choosing not to show it.
"I hate you," she said.
"No you don't."
He carried her to the garderobe. The stone floor was cold under the door, but the room itself held some warmth from the pipes that ran beneath the keep. He set her on the wooden seat and stepped back.
"I'll wait outside," he said, pulling the door closed behind him.
Mab sat in the dim light, her thighs aching, her body still throbbing with the memory of what he'd done to it, and tried to make sense of the last hour of her life.
She had been carried to a privy by an orc warrior who had just fucked her senseless. An orc warrior who was now standing on the other side of a door, waiting for her to finish, so he could presumably carry her back to bed.
The absurdity of it hit her all at once, and she pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound that came out. It might have been a laugh. It might have been something closer to a sob. She couldn't tell the difference anymore.
When she finished and cleaned herself with the cloth beside the basin, she caught a glimpse of herself in the silver-backed mirror above the stand.
The woman looking back was a stranger.
Her hair was a wild tangle of red curls. Her lips were swollen, darker than usual, bruised-looking. Her skin was flushed pink in places, beard-burned in others.
Lower. She made herself look lower.
Her breasts hung heavy, the nipples still peaked and reddened from his mouth. Her belly curved soft beneath them, pale where the sun never reached, and below that—
Bruises on her hips. She could see them already forming, purple shadows in the shape of his fingers. Evidence. Proof that someone had gripped her hard enough to leave marks. That someone had wanted her badly enough to forget to be careful.
She touched one of the bruises. Pressed. The ache that answered was sweet.
"What do you see?"
His voice came from directly behind her.
She hadn't heard him open the door, but he was there now, his chest against her back, his chin hovering above her shoulder.
Their reflections filled the mirror together—her pale and soft and marked, him green and massive and watching her with an intensity that made her breath catch.
"I see..." She stopped. "I see a mess. My hair is—and my face is—and I'm—"
"You're what?"
She couldn't say it. Couldn't list all the things she was that she shouldn't be. Too much. Too soft. Too everything.
Varek's hands settled on her hips, directly over the bruises. The pressure made her gasp, but he didn't let go. His thumbs traced the marks he'd left, and his eyes in the mirror were molten amber.
"I'll tell you what I see." His voice was low.
"I see a woman who took everything I gave her and asked for more.
I see my marks on her skin. I see her body—" His hands slid up her sides, over the curve of her waist, cupping her breasts.
"Built to be held. Built to be fucked. Built to carry my children, if she wants them. "
The tears came without warning.
She tried to stop it. Tried to swallow it down the way she'd always swallowed everything. But her body wasn't obeying her anymore, and the sob that escaped was raw and ugly and completely beyond her control.
Varek turned her in his arms. She buried her face against his chest and cried.
Not pretty tears. Not delicate sniffles.
The kind of crying that came from somewhere deep and wounded, that shook her whole body and soaked his skin and sounded like something dying.
She cried for the ribbon Iris had cut. For Hester's hands that would never touch her again.
For a lifetime of being invisible and the terrifying, unthinkable possibility that she might not have to be anymore.
He didn't try to stop her.
His arms wrapped around her back and he held her while she fell apart. One hand cradled her head against his chest. The other pressed flat between her shoulder blades, solid and warm. He didn't say anything. Didn't tell her it was all right, didn't try to fix it, didn't ask her what was wrong.
He just held her.
When the sobs finally slowed, when her breathing evened out into hiccups and shudders, he lifted her. Carried her back to the bed. Laid her down on the ruined silk.
"Stay here," he said. "I'm going to get food."
"Don't—" Her hand flew to his arm, gripping before she could stop herself.
He went still. "Don't what?"
"Don't go." The words came out cracked and pathetic. "Not yet. Please."
Varek looked at her hand on his arm. At her face, blotched and swollen from crying. At her fingers digging into his skin.
He pulled her hand off his arm, and for one terrible moment she thought he was leaving anyway. Then he was on the bed, on his back, and his hands were hauling her on top of him.
"Ten minutes," he said. "Then I'm getting food whether you've let go of me or not."
Mab pressed her cheek to his chest and closed her eyes.
His heartbeat was slower than hers. Steadier. A drum beneath her ear that didn't rush or stutter, just kept its rhythm like it had never learned to panic. She matched her breathing to it without meaning to. In on the beat. Out on the next.
Her eyes drifted closed.
She never slept during the day. She hadn't napped since she was a child sick with fever and Hester had sat beside her cot through the night. Sleeping meant letting go, and letting go meant trusting, and she didn't know how to do that with anyone anymore.
But his hand was warm on her head, and his heartbeat was even beneath her ear.
Safe.
She was safe now.
Varek's hand stilled on her head. His breathing had slowed, deep and even, but she could feel the alertness in him. The way his body stayed ready even at rest, a predator's instinct that never fully switched off.
He was watching over her.
Mab slept.