Chapter 21 #2
She shifted on the ground cloth, pulling her knees up beneath the blanket. The wind shifted outside, the howl rising to a shriek and then falling again. The fire guttered, flames bending sideways, then steadied.
"You are still shaking."
She was. Small tremors that ran through her despite the fire, despite the blanket, despite the warmth slowly returning to her fingers and toes. The cold had settled somewhere deeper than her skin.
"I'm fine."
But he was already reaching for his pack. "I have another blanket—"
"I don't need another blanket."
Targesh's eyes met hers across the fire. "Come here, then," he said.
She rose from her place by the fire and crossed the small distance between them. He opened his arms, and she settled against his chest, her back to his front, his heat surrounding her like a second fire.
His arms closed around her. She felt the rumble of his breath, the steady drum of his heart against her spine.
"Better?" His voice was low, close to her ear.
"Yes."
They sat like that for a while, watching the fire.
His hands rested on her stomach, fingers spread wide, palms warm through the layers of wool.
Verity leaned back into him, letting his heat seep deeper.
The cave's chill still nipped at her edges, but here, pressed against the solid wall of his body, it dulled to something bearable.
"You know," she said, "I read something once.
In a military field manual, I think. Or perhaps it was a healer's treatise on exposure injuries.
" She tilted her head back against his shoulder.
"The recommended treatment for severe cold was skin-to-skin contact.
Something about heat transfer being more efficient without barriers. "
His chest moved against her back. "Is that so."
"Apparently the body loses a significant amount of warmth through fabric. Even wool. Something about air pockets and moisture retention." She was aware that her voice had taken on the slightly too-casual tone of someone constructing an argument. "It was quite detailed. There were diagrams."
"Diagrams."
"Very thorough ones."
"Verity." His voice was amused. "Are you citing academic sources to get me to undress you?"
"I am citing academic sources to suggest a medically sound approach to our current situation." She kept her voice prim. "The fact that it would require undressing is incidental."
"Incidental."
"Entirely."
His hands moved to the hem of her tunic, and he pulled the garment over her head. The cold air hit her skin immediately, raising gooseflesh across her arms and shoulders, but his hands were there before she could shiver, spreading warmth across her stomach, her ribs, the undersides of her breasts.
"The diagrams," he said against her ear. "Did they specify positioning?"
"Several variations." She was having difficulty maintaining her scholarly tone. His thumbs had found her nipples, already peaked from the cold, and were tracing slow circles that made her breath catch. "The most efficient involved maximum surface contact."
He pulled her back against him, and she felt the hard length of him through his trousers, pressing against the curve of her backside. "Like this?"
"There are still barriers."
"There are." His hands left her breasts, moving to the laces of her trousers. "We should address that."
She lifted her hips to help him work the fabric down. The ground cloth was rough against her bare skin, but his hands were rougher, and warmer, and she found she did not care about the ground cloth at all.
He stripped her efficiently, each layer removed and set aside. When she was bare, he turned her in his arms so she faced him, her knees bracketing his hips, her hands braced on his shoulders.
"Your turn," she said.
He pulled his tunic over his head. The firelight caught the planes of his chest, the scars that mapped his history, the dark hair that trailed down his stomach.
She had seen him before, touched him before, but here in the cave with the storm raging outside, he looked different.
Elemental. Like something the mountain had made.
She helped with his trousers, her fingers clumsy with cold. When he was bare beneath her, she pressed herself against him, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, the length of him trapped between their bodies.
The heat was immediate and overwhelming. She gasped against his throat.
"Better?" His hands spread across her back, pulling her closer.
"The treatise was right."
His mouth found hers, the kiss deep and unhurried, his tusks pressing against her cheeks as his hands roamed her back, fingers digging into the soft flesh at her hips, pulling her down harder against him.
The ridges along its shaft pulsed faintly against her belly, a promise of friction she already knew by heart.
Verity shifted, grinding against him, the slickness between her thighs spreading as her body responded. The cave's chill nipped at her exposed skin, but where they touched, it was fire, his skin fever-hot, orc blood running like molten iron.
She broke the kiss to breathe, her forehead against his, and felt the low rumble start in his chest, vibrating through her breasts where they pressed heavy against him.
His hands slid lower, cupping the full curve of her ass.
"So much of you," he murmured, the words barely audible over the storm's distant roar.
He lifted her slightly, his strength effortless despite her size. Her thighs parted wider over his hips, the weight of her settling deeper, her folds parting around the base of his cock.
She reached down between them, wrapping her hand around his length. He was thick, the ridges firm and pronounced, swelling under her touch. A growl escaped him, vibrating through her palm, and she stroked once, feeling him throb.
His hands tightened on her ass, and Verity rocked against him, her hand still wrapped around the base where she could reach, stroking in time with the motion.
The ridges pulsed under her palm, hot and insistent, each one textured like corded muscle designed to ruin her.
She slid along him, her wetness coating his shaft, the friction building as her body took over, hips grinding down with a need that surprised her.
This wasn't the careful exploration of their nights in Northwatch. The storm had stripped away pretense; the cold had burned away hesitation. She needed him inside her now, the ache of it overriding the careful logic that had governed their previous nights.
She rose on her knees, positioned him at her entrance, and sank down.
The stretch was familiar now but no less overwhelming.
She sank lower, taking him inch by inch. The first ridge breached her fully, pressing outward. It was too much, always too much, and yet exactly what she craved.
Her body yielded to him, slick and ready from the friction of moments before, but the stretch burned, pulling a whimper from her throat as she seated herself fully. He was buried to the hilt, those ridges pulsing faintly inside her, locked against sensitive spots she hadn't known existed until him.
Targesh's hands gripped her hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh there, spanning the width of her with ease.
Verity rocked experimentally, lifting just enough to feel the ridges pull free, then sinking back down.
The sensation ripped through her, a bright, insistent pleasure that built with each motion.
She was wetter now, her arousal coating him, easing the way, but the friction remained, designed for this.
For her.
Surprise flickered through her: this boldness, this need to take what she wanted, here in a storm-lashed cave with the world howling outside.
Verity braced her hands on his shoulders, nails digging into the scarred green skin, and began to ride him in earnest. Up and down, grinding her clit against the base of him on each descent, the ridges catching inside her like hooks of pleasure.
Her thighs burned with the effort, her size making the movement powerful, each drop of her weight forcing him deeper, her belly pressing against his hard abdomen, her breasts bouncing with the rhythm.
He worshipped it all, one hand sliding up to cup the heavy swell of her breast, thumb rolling her nipple until it ached. The other stayed at her hip, guiding without controlling, letting her set the pace even as his growls grew deeper and more feral.
His hips began to move beneath her, meeting her rhythm with thrusts that drove him deeper still. The angle shifted, and she cried out as the ridges dragged across something inside her that made her vision white at the edges.
"There," she gasped, though she hadn't meant to speak. "There, there—"
His grip tightened on her hip, holding her at exactly that angle, and he thrust up into her with a precision that should have been impossible for something so primal.
Each stroke hit the same spot, the ridges swelling and catching, and she felt the pressure building low in her belly, coiling tighter with every motion.
The fire crackled. The storm raged. She rode him like the world outside had ceased to exist, like this cave was the only real place left, like his body beneath hers was the only solid ground.
The orgasm hit her like the storm had hit the mountain—sudden and overwhelming, stripping away everything but sensation. She clenched around him, her body seizing, her nails scoring lines down his shoulders as wave after wave rolled through her.
He followed her over. She felt his cock swell inside her, the ridges locking tight, and then the hot pulse of his release filling her.
His roar echoed off the cave walls, drowning out the wind, and his hands pulled her down hard against him, holding her there while his hips jerked through the aftershocks.
They stayed locked together, breathing ragged, sweat cooling on skin that had finally, finally stopped shaking from cold.
Verity collapsed against his chest. His arms wrapped around her, holding her close, one hand stroking slowly down her spine. The fire had burned low while they were otherwise occupied, but she couldn't bring herself to care. His body was furnace enough.
His heartbeat was a drum beneath her ear, slowing by degrees. She counted the beats without meaning to, the way she counted everything, catalogued everything, filed everything away in the endless archive of her mind.
Outside, the storm still raged. She could hear it now that the blood had stopped pounding in her ears—the wind's howl, the crack of ice against stone, the occasional groan of the mountain itself settling under the weight of weather. But the sounds had become distant. Abstract. Problems for later.
Eventually, his arms tightened around her, and she felt him shift, reaching for something without dislodging her. A moment later, a blanket settled over them both, rough wool against her bare back.
"Sleep," he said. "The storm will pass by morning."
"And then?"
"And then we reach the pass."
She closed her eyes. The fire crackled. The wind howled. Targesh's heartbeat counted time beneath her ear, steady as the mountain itself.