Chapter 15
Kael
The walk from the Great Lodge back to Korvak’s longhouse was the longest and shortest of my life.
The wild, triumphant sounds of the feast faded behind us, replaced by the quiet crunch of our boots on the hard-packed earth and the frantic, riotous drumming of my own heart.
The cool night air did nothing to calm the fire that had been lit inside me.
He pushed open the heavy door to his home, and we stepped from the public celebration into a cone of profound, intimate silence. The air was thick with it, a tangible, electric tension that made the hairs on my arms stand up.
The central hearth had been banked, its embers casting a low, sensual red glow over the hall. Furs had been piled high on the bed, and a jug of what smelled like spiced wine sat on a small table beside it. His mother had prepared the space for us.
I stood awkwardly in the center of the room, my hands clasped in front of me, a soldier waiting for orders.
I knew how to fight a war, strip a weapon blindfolded, and set a broken bone.
I did not know how to do… this. My body was a landscape I had dedicated to strength and survival, not to pleasure or intimacy.
Korvak stood by the door, his massive frame a silhouette against the moonlit world outside. He watched me, his expression unreadable in the dim light. He seemed… hesitant. He took a slow step toward me, his movements careful, deliberate, as if I were a frightened deer he was afraid of spooking.
"Kael," he rumbled, his voice a low, soft thing, stripped of all its command.
He reached out, his hand moving with an agonizing slowness, and gently tucked a stray strand of my red hair behind my ear.
His calloused fingertips, rough from a lifetime of holding an axe, brushed against my skin with an impossible gentleness.
He was treating me like I was made of spun glass. Like I might shatter.
And I hated it.
It was kind. I knew it was meant to be kind. But after everything—the battle, the poison, the defiance—this gentle, hesitant handling felt like a dismissal of the warrior he claimed to see in me. It made me feel small. Fragile. It made me feel like prey.
Something inside me, the part of me that had charged him in the square, that had spat defiance at Roric, snapped. I was not glass. And I would not be handled as such.
Before I could second-guess the impulse, I rose up on my toes, fisted my hands in the fur of his cloak, and pulled his head down to mine. I crushed my mouth against his.
For a heartbeat, he was completely still, a mountain of shocked, unmoving muscle.
His lips were firm, warm, tasting of mead and smoke.
I kissed him with all the pent-up frustration and fear and a desperate, terrifying want I hadn’t known how to name.
It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a brand, a claim, a demand.
And then, his control shattered.
A deep, guttural sound was torn from his chest, a groan that was half shock, half surrender.
His hesitation evaporated in a flash of pure, primal heat.
His arm, which had been hanging uselessly at his side, snaked around my waist, lifting me from my feet and slamming my body flush against his.
His other hand tangled in my hair, tilting my head back as his mouth took mine with a devouring, possessive hunger that stole the breath from my lungs.
This was not the careful General. This was the beast I had glimpsed in the training ring, unleashed by my own hand.
His tongue swept into my mouth, a hot, wet invasion that was both a conquest and a deep, intimate knowing.
He tasted of power and longing, and I met his every thrust with a desperate greed of my own.
When he finally broke the kiss, we were both gasping, our chests heaving. He didn’t put me down. He just held me there, pinned against his body, his forehead resting against mine.
“Little wolf,” he rasped, his voice raw with an emotion I couldn’t name. “You play with fire.”
“I’ve lived in the fire,” I breathed back. “I’m not afraid of it.”
Without another word, he strode to the bed, my body still held tight in his arms as if I weighed nothing.
He laid me down on the mountain of soft furs, his eyes, dark and burning with a possessive fire, never leaving mine.
Slowly, reverently, he began to undress me.
He unlaced the sides of my doe-skin tunic, his big, scarred fingers surprisingly deft.
He pushed the soft leather aside, and his breath hitched as he looked at my chest. At my breasts, unbound for the first time in his presence.
They felt small, inadequate, but the look in his eyes was one of pure, unadulterated awe.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, the word a prayer. He lowered his head and brushed a soft, open-mouthed kiss over the swell of my breast. His tusks, the fearsome weapons of a warrior, scraped gently against my skin, sending a jolt of shocking, dangerous pleasure straight to my core.
He stripped the tunic and breeches from my body with a worshipful slowness until I lay naked before him in the firelight.
I had never been naked in front of anyone.
I felt exposed, vulnerable, but his gaze held no judgment, only a deep, profound reverence that made me feel more beautiful than I had ever thought possible.
Then it was his turn. He stood and shed his own leathers.
First the heavy fur cloak, then the tunic, revealing a chest and shoulders that were a roadmap of old scars, a testament to a life of brutal warfare.
Each scar told a story, and I suddenly wanted to know all of them.
He unlaced his breeches, and my breath caught in my throat.
He was a god rendered in flesh and fury, and my body hummed with a terrified, electric anticipation.
“Sit,” I said, my voice coming out as a shaky whisper.
He looked at me, confused, but obeyed, sitting on the edge of the bed. His cock, thick and semi-hard, rested against his powerful thigh. It was already impossibly large.
Before my courage could fail me, I moved.
The Orcish women had shared stories, whispered advice during our lessons, their words frank and earthy.
And I remembered the crude talk of the grunts in the barracks.
I knelt before him on the furs, my heart hammering.
I reached out a trembling hand and touched him.
His skin was hot, like he was burning from the inside out. He was thick, heavy, a weapon of pure flesh. He swelled under my touch, rising to his full, magnificent, terrifying glory.
My eyes went wide. The barracks jokes had been understatements. He was… impossible. A monument. At least a foot of thick, purple-headed steel-hard flesh, with a girth that looked wider than my own wrist. Awe and a very real, very potent fear warred inside me.
I leaned forward and took him into my mouth. Or, I tried. I could barely take the thick, flared head past my lips. It was too much, a blunt, overwhelming reality my body was not equipped for. He let out a sharp, ragged hiss of breath, his hands fisting in the furs on either side of him.
Defeated in my first attempt, but not deterred, I did what I could.
I licked a slow, wet path up the thick, straining shaft.
A bead of clear, slick fluid wept from the tip, and I tasted it.
It was salty, musky, the very essence of him.
The taste sent a jolt of pure, primal lust through me. This was my mate. My husband.
“Kael,” he groaned, his voice a strained, agonized thing. His hips gave a small, involuntary jerk. “By the spirits… stop.”
He reached down and gently but firmly pulled me up by my shoulders. His eyes were glazed, dark with a pleasure so intense it was almost pain. “That is a weapon you do not yet know how to wield, little wolf,” he rasped. “And if you continue, this will be over before it begins.”
He laid me back on the furs, his body covering mine, his weight a comforting, possessive blanket. He propped himself up on his elbows, careful not to crush me.
“Is this… have you ever…” he began, his voice rough with an emotion I couldn’t place.
“No,” I whispered, the confession feeling both enormous and insignificant. “Never.”
The look that crossed his face was a complex tapestry of emotions: shock, awe, and a deep, shuddering sense of responsibility. “Gods,” he breathed, gently brushing my hair back from my face. “Untouched.” The word was a vow.
He lowered his head and took my nipple into his mouth.
The sensation was exquisite torment. He suckled, his tongue laving the peak until it was a hard, aching point of pleasure.
His free hand drifted down my stomach, through the curls of red hair at the juncture of my thighs, and found the slick, wet heat of me.
I gasped as his finger, thick as my thumb, slid inside.
It was an invasion, but a welcome one. He explored me gently, learning the shape of me, his touch both a question and a claim.
He found the small, hard nub of my clit and circled it with his thumb, and my world dissolved into pure, shocking sensation.
“So wet for me, Kael,” he growled against my breast, his voice a deep, vibrating rumble. “So tight.” He added a second finger, stretching me, moving in and out in a slow, deliberate rhythm. “I will not hurt you. But I will fill you. I will make you mine in every way a male can make a female his.”
He moved his attention between my breasts, his mouth a hot, wet brand, while his fingers worked their relentless magic inside me. The pressure was building, a tight, coiling knot deep in my belly. I was slick, ready, aching for something I didn’t know how to ask for.
He moved up, kissing me deeply, his tongue tangling with mine. “I am going to make you come on my hand first,” he murmured against my lips. “I want to feel you break for me.”
He found my rhythm, his fingers moving faster, deeper. The knot in my belly tightened until I thought I would snap. I was climbing, reaching for a peak I couldn’t see.
“That’s it, little wolf,” he growled, his own breath coming in ragged pants. “Come for me.”
And I did. With a sharp, shattered cry, my body convulsed. Waves of pure, unadulterated pleasure washed over me, so intense they bordered on pain. My back arched off the bed, and I felt my inner muscles clench around his fingers.
He held me through it, murmuring praises in Orcish, his voice a rough, soothing balm on my frayed nerves. When the last tremor had faded, he removed his fingers and positioned himself between my legs.
“Now,” he whispered, his voice thick with a need that bordered on holy. “Now I will make you mine.”
I looked down and saw the thick, blunt head of his cock pressing against my slick entrance. It looked impossible. A mountain trying to enter a cave. Fear, sharp and real, pierced through the haze of pleasure.
He must have scented it. “Look at me, Kael,” he commanded softly. I met his gaze. “Trust me. I will not break you.”
He held my hips, his grip firm, anchoring me. He pushed forward, so slowly, so carefully, and the tip of him slid inside me. I gasped. It was too much. A stretching, burning pressure that felt like I was being split in two.
“Breathe,” he growled, his tusks brushing the sensitive skin of my neck. “Just breathe. Take me. Your body was made for this. Made for me.”
He held himself there, just the tip, letting me adjust, letting my body stretch and yield around the incredible invasion.
Inch by agonizing, pleasurable inch, he worked his way deeper.
He was a force of nature, patient and relentless.
He filled me, stretching me, taking possession of my body in the most absolute way possible.
The burning slowly gave way to a feeling of profound, overwhelming fullness. I had never felt anything like it.
He was fully seated inside me, our bodies joined, and I could feel the frantic, heavy beat of his heart against my own.
“Mine,” he whispered, the single word a brand.
He began to move. Slow, deep, deliberate thrusts that sent waves of friction through my entire body. Each stroke was a lesson in pleasure and possession.
“I am going to fill you with my seed, Kael,” he growled, his hips picking up their rhythm. “I am going to put my son in your belly this night.”
The raw, primal words should have terrified me. Instead, they lit a fire deep in my womb. The pressure was building again, faster this time, more intense. I was on the edge of that cliff once more.
“Korvak,” I gasped, my fingers digging into his powerful shoulders.
He leaned down, his mouth near my ear. “Come again, wife,” he commanded, his voice a raw, guttural thing. “Come on my cock.”
He drove into me with a steady, punishing rhythm, and my second orgasm hit me like a tidal wave. It was a violent, shattering release that went on and on, my inner muscles clenching and pulsing around his massive shaft, milking him.
My climax was his undoing. The feeling of my cunt, so tight and wet, convulsing around him, shattered his control.
With a guttural roar that was torn from the very depths of his soul, he drove into me one last time, impossibly deep.
I felt the hot, heavy pulse of his release, a flood of seed that filled me to overflowing, a final, absolute act of possession.
He collapsed on top of me, his full weight a crushing, welcome burden. His body shuddered in the aftermath, and he buried his face in the curve of my neck, his breath coming in ragged, harsh pants.
I lay there, pinned beneath him, filled by him, my body aching and humming with a pleasure so profound it felt like a rewiring of my entire being.