Chapter 13
The corridor to his quarters was longer than she remembered.
Verity counted the torches as she passed them. Seven. Eight. Nine. Her footsteps echoed against the stone, too loud in the evening quiet, announcing her approach to anyone who might be listening.
No one was listening. The fortress had settled into its after-dinner rhythms—warriors in the great hall, guards at their posts, the distant clang of the smithy working late.
She was alone with the torchlight and the thud of her own pulse and the growing certainty that she had no idea what she was doing.
She had read about this. Extensively. The Royal Archive contained a surprisingly comprehensive collection of personal correspondence, medical treatises disguised as philosophy, and even a few scandalous illustrated manuals.
She knew in precise, anatomical detail what happened between bodies.
She could recite the stages of arousal, the mechanics of penetration, the average duration of male refractory periods. Theory was comprehensive.
Theory was not going to prepare her for seven-and-a-half feet of orc warchief.
She stopped outside his door. The same heavy oak, the same iron bands. She raised her fist to knock, but the door opened before her knuckles connected.
Targesh stood in the frame, and the sight of him drove every prepared sentence out of her head.
He had bathed. His hair was damp, loose around his shoulders, and he wore a simple tunic unlaced at the throat. The firelight behind him caught the wet strands and turned them copper-dark. He looked less like a warchief and more like—
A man. Waiting for her.
Without a word, he stepped aside. She walked past him into the room, and the door closed behind her.
The fire was built higher than before. The table had been cleared. There were no plates, no reports, nothing between them and whatever was about to happen. The door to his sleeping chamber stood open, and through it she could see the edge of a massive bed piled with furs.
Her mouth went dry.
"Verity."
She turned. He had not moved from the door. He was watching her with an intensity that made her skin prickle, his eyes tracking the flush she could feel climbing her throat.
"You have questions," he said. "Ask."
It was absurd and the only right thing he could have said in that moment, and she exhaled through her nose in a quiet huff.
"How does this work?" Her voice held steady; her fingers were twisting the wool of her skirt behind her back. "Is there—are there expectations I should know about?"
He moved away from the door. Not toward her, but toward the hearth, where he stood with his back to the flames, watching her across the room's width.
"I expect nothing." His voice was low and calm.
She pressed her palms against her thighs, feeling the wool of her dress bunch beneath her fingers. He watched the small motion.
"You have not been with a man," he said. Not a question.
"No."
He nodded once. "What do you want to know?"
She wanted to understand the mechanics so she could stop being afraid of them. She wanted to stop thinking entirely and let her body make decisions her mind kept second-guessing.
"Will it hurt?"
"It can." He did not soften the answer. "The first time. With care, less. Without care, more."
"And you would—"
"I would take care." His jaw shifted, tusks catching the firelight. "I would take more care than you can imagine."
She believed him. Not because he had promised, but because she had watched him for weeks now. She had seen the precision of his movements, the attention he gave to everything that mattered.
She would matter.
"What else?" he said.
"I don't know what to ask." A laugh scraped out of her, barely a sound.
"I know what happens. Technically. I have read very detailed correspondence from people who were not nearly as private as they believed themselves to be.
I know the stages of tumescence, the role of lubrication, the average girth-to-depth ratios.
But knowing what happens and knowing what it—" She made the helpless circular gesture.
"What it feels like. Those are different. "
He crossed the room, closing the distance between them until he stood before her, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
"I cannot tell you what it feels like," he said. "That is not something words carry."
"Then how—"
"I can show you."
His hand rose to her face, palm curving around her cheek, fingers extending past her temple, thumb resting near the corner of her mouth. She turned her face into his palm and pressed her lips against the rough center of it.
"Show me, then," she said.
He kissed her.
He kissed her like he had been waiting four days to do exactly this, and the waiting had worn his restraint to a wire that was not going to hold tonight.
His other hand found the small of her back and pulled her against him.
The length of her body met the length of his, and the difference in scale should have been alarming, but it wasn't. It was shelter.
Her soft, full breasts pressed against the hard planes of his abdomen; her generous hips fit into the cradle of his palms like they belonged there.
His mouth found her throat. She gasped, her hands fisting in his tunic, and he made a sound against her skin, a low rumbling that vibrated through her collarbone, down her spine, and settled somewhere hot and heavy between her thighs.
"What is that?" she asked breathlessly. "That sound?"
"Pleasure." His mouth moved lower, tracing the line of her collarbone where her dress left skin bare. "Satisfaction." His teeth grazed the curve of her shoulder, and the rumble deepened. "You."
She had no response to that. Her hands were still fisted in his tunic, knuckles pressed against the hard planes of his chest, and she could feel the vibration traveling through the fabric into her palms. Her spine curved toward him, her weight tipping forward, her fingers pulling at the cloth to close whatever distance remained.
He lifted her.
One arm hooked beneath her thighs, the other braced across her back, and then she was off the ground entirely, cradled against his chest like she weighed nothing at all.
The room tilted. She grabbed his shoulders for balance, fingers digging into muscle, and he carried her through the open doorway into the sleeping chamber.
The bed was enormous. Furs piled deep enough to sink into, the frame built from timber that could have supported a siege engine. He set her down on the edge of it, and she sat there looking up at him while he stood between her knees, his hands braced on either side of her hips.
"Your dress," he said.
She reached for the laces at her side, but her fingers were clumsy, fumbling with knots she had tied a hundred times. He watched her struggle for exactly three seconds before his hand closed over hers, dwarfing it completely.
"Let me."
The laces came apart under his fingers. She felt the bodice loosen around her ribs, felt the fabric gap and shift. Cool air touched skin that had been covered, and she shivered.
He paused. "Cold?"
"No." She was burning. "Nervous."
"I know." His hand slid inside the loosened fabric, palm flat against her ribs. "I can smell it."
His eyes met hers. The iron-gray had gone darker, pupils wide in the low light.
"Stop thinking."
She laughed softly. "I don't know how."
"Then I will help you."
His mouth found hers again, and this time there was nothing careful in it. His hand spread wide across her ribs, thumb brushing the underside of her breast through the thin fabric of her shift, and the sound she made was swallowed by his kiss.
The dress pooled at her waist. His fingers found the ties of her shift and pulled, and then that was gone too, sliding off her shoulders, and she was bare from the waist up in the firelight, full breasts swaying slightly with her quick breaths, nipples already tight and aching under his gaze.
She should have felt exposed. Vulnerable. All the words she had associated with nakedness her entire life.
Instead, she felt seen.
His gaze moved over her breasts, the soft curve of her belly, the way her flesh yielded under his palms when he cupped her. The rumble in his chest deepened until she could feel it in her teeth.
He lowered his head.
His mouth closed over her nipple, and Verity's spine arched off the bed. Her hands flew to his head, fingers tangling in damp hair, and the sound that tore out of her was high and broken and she didn't recognize it as her own voice.
His tongue traced circles. His tusks framed her breast, pressing into soft flesh without breaking skin, and she writhed beneath him, her hips grinding upward against nothing.
He pressed her back down. One massive hand flat on her belly, holding her still, while his mouth moved to her other breast and repeated everything until she was shaking.
"Targesh—"
He lifted his head. His eyes were nearly black now, his breath coming harsh, and when he spoke his voice was gravel.
"More?"
She nodded. She couldn't have formed a word if her life depended on it.
He pulled the dress the rest of the way off. Her smallclothes followed. She was naked on his bed, thighs parted, the soft curls between them damp and dark with arousal.
Then he dropped to his knees.
The Warchief of the Mountain Clan was on his knees between her thighs. Her mind went white. She tried to sit up, to say something, but his hands closed around her hips and pulled her to the edge of the bed, spreading her wide.
His mouth was on her inner thigh. He kissed up the soft flesh, teeth scraping, tongue soothing. She could feel his breath against her center, and her fingers were digging into the furs, her thighs shaking, the ache between her legs so sharp she could taste it at the back of her throat.
His thumbs spread her open, and the first stroke of his tongue tore a cry from her throat.
The wet heat of his mouth obliterated every word she had ever read on the subject.
The impossible intimacy, the way his tongue licked into her like she was something to be savored.
Long, slow strokes that parted her folds and curled against her entrance.
Tusks pressing cool and smooth against the soft inner skin of her thighs.
She grabbed fistfuls of fur, her knuckles aching, the tendons in her forearms standing taut.
He growled against her, and the sound traveled straight through her clit. Her hips bucked against his grip; he held her down effortlessly, one massive forearm across her hips, the other sliding up to palm her breast, thumb rolling her nipple in time with his tongue.
The pressure built, coiling low in her belly, tightening with every pass of his tongue, every rumbling vibration. She was panting, whimpering, her head thrown back and her mouth open and the sounds coming out of her had no words in them at all.
His lips closed around the swollen bud at the apex of her sex and sucked.
She shattered, her back arching, her thighs clamping around his head, his name cracking apart on her tongue. He drank her down with low, satisfied rumbles, gentling his touch but never stopping until the spasms turned to helpless flutters and she collapsed boneless against the furs.
She was still shaking when he rose over her. His mouth was wet. His eyes were savage. The laces of his trousers were straining, and she could see the outline of his cock pressing against the fabric, and she wanted—
A knock at the outer door.
Targesh went still.
Verity's arms flew across her chest. Her thighs pressed together, knees twisting, her whole body contracting into the smallest possible shape, the old reflexes surging up through the haze of pleasure like cold water.
His hand closed around her wrists.
He pulled her arms away from her chest, pinned them against the furs above her head, and held them there. His grip was iron. His eyes never left her face.
The knock came again. Harder.
"Warchief." Kethrak's voice, muffled through oak and iron. "The River Clan delegation. There's been an incident at the trading post."
Targesh lowered his head and dragged his mouth along her collarbone, his tusks tracing cool lines across her flushed skin.
"What kind of incident?"
His tongue found the hollow of her throat. Verity bit down on her lip to keep from making a sound.
"Accusations of short weight on the iron shipment. Tormund is threatening to void the contract. Grukash is holding him off, but—"
"But Tormund wants to speak to me directly." Targesh's teeth grazed her pulse point. She shivered, her fingers curling uselessly above her head. "Of course he does."
His mouth moved lower. The curve of her breast. The soft swell of flesh that spilled over his grip when he released one wrist to cup her. His thumb traced her nipple, and she arched into the touch before she could stop herself.
"Warchief?"
"I heard you." He pressed his lips to the underside of her breast, then lower, following the soft line of her belly.
His tusk dragged across the sensitive skin below her navel, and her hips lifted off the furs.
"Tell Grukash I will be there shortly. Have Tormund brought to the council chamber. Wine. The good cask."
A pause. "The good cask, Warchief?"
"He'll be easier to manage drunk." Targesh's mouth found the crease of her thigh. She made a strangled sound, and his hand clamped over her hip, holding her still. "Go."
Footsteps retreated down the corridor.
Targesh lifted his head. His jaw was tight, a muscle ticking beneath the scar on his cheekbone. His nostrils flared once, hard, like a man breathing through something he did not intend to name.
"I have to go," he said.
"I know." Her voice came out breathless. "I'll—"
She started to sit up. His hand pressed flat against her sternum, pushing her back down into the furs.
"You," he said, "will stay exactly where you are."
"But—"
"I will handle Tormund." He rose to his feet, and the loss of his warmth left her shivering despite the fire. "It will not take long. Trade disputes are simple. Then I will come back here."
He looked down at her. The firelight caught the sheen of her skin, the rise and fall of her breasts, the damp curls between her thighs still swollen from his mouth.
"And we will finish what we started."
He crossed to the doorway, pausing with one hand on the frame. His shoulders filled the space, blocking the light from the outer chamber.
"Do not dress," he said. "Do not leave this bed. Do not—" His voice roughened. "Do not touch yourself. That is mine tonight."
He was gone before she could respond.
Verity lay in the tangle of furs, staring at the ceiling, her pulse still hammering in her throat, his taste still on her lips.
She pressed her palms flat against the furs.
She did not dress. She did not leave. She did not touch herself.
She waited.