11. Esme
Eleven
Esme
We’re off the Ferris wheel, heading toward the games again because I want to win Gary a friend.
Sven’s a few steps behind me carrying my things, and I’m happy, so damn happy.
I’m holding a stuffed orca in a crowd full of fair lights with the best male I’ve ever met, and I’m not thinking about anything except all that joy.
But then I feel a rough hand on my arm.
“Hey. Hey. Slow down, sweetheart.”
I turn and there’s an alpha in my space… orc, big, broad, holding a beer and with three more clearly already in him, grinning droopily, and the second I turn to face him he leans in and fucking scents me, dragging in a breath at my throat like he has any fucking right to.
“Knew it,” he slurs, sounding pleased. “Smelled you from the beer tent. Unmated little omega all by herself. Where you been hiding…”
I try to shake him off. “Let go of my arm!”
“Aw, don’t be like…”
I don’t get to find out what I’m not supposed to be like because the temperature drops, and the crowd around us goes quiet.
The alpha’s grin falters, and a sound comes from behind me I have never heard before.
It’s not a growl. It’s lower than a growl…
I feel it from my sternum to the soles of my feet, and it is the most terrifying thing I have ever heard in my life.
The alpha’s hand goes loose on my arm. And Sven steps around me.
He puts himself between me and the orc. I’ve spent weeks watching my guy move carefully around me and I forgot…
I fucking forget what he actually is. Who he is.
Seven feet of alpha orc. The one people go quiet around.
And right now, all that careful is gone!
What’s left is enormous and absolutely freaking lethal!
And the drunken orc, who is not small, looks like a lanky teenager compared to Sven.
“You put your hand on my mate,” Sven growls.
Oh shit! Did he call me his fucking mate?!!
His voice is not loud. It’s low, gravelly, and there’s bark in it, alpha command. I watch it hit every freaking one in earshot… grown males in the crowd flinch, drop their eyes and physically step back in a gesture of submission. Their primal instincts taking over.
“Hey, man, I didn’t…” The orc’s eyes are wide; he’s shaking. “I didn’t know she was…I didn’t smell you on her, she didn’t have a…”
“You scented her.” Sven takes one more step forward. The guy takes two back. “You put your hand on my girl, and fucking scented her.” Another step. His growl is constantly rolling out of his barrel-sized chest now; the crowd is frozen in place, staring.
Then Sven moves so fast it’s a blur. One massive green hand closes around the orc’s throat and lifts him off the ground, feet dangling.
His beer drops and spills on the dirt. The guy’s hands fly up to Sven’s wrist, clawing, but he might as well be scratching granite.
Sven brings him closer, their faces just inches apart.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t break every fucking finger you touched my omega with. ”
The other alpha can’t talk. His eyes are starting to bulge, his legs kicking, and people just stand there frozen.
“Sven.” My voice is shaking. He’s so big, so tall, eyes blazing, muscles tight, veins popping at his forearm, fucking exuding feral rage. Goddamn magnificent. My pussy throbs, my clit tingles, my nipples are hard, I feel slick starting to drip out of me. Oh, God… “Baby, I’m okay,” I blurt out.
At the word baby, Sven turns to look at me. His dark eyes are intense; the haze of anger morphing into something else. Something just as big, strong, and powerful. Hunger, possession. Oh, shit, I liked me calling him, baby… He really liked it.
He turns back and holds the orc there for two more seconds, then he drops him like a goddamn sack of potatoes. The alpha crumples, hitting the ground on his hands and knees. He’s gasping, coughing. Sven stands over him, looking so beautiful I want to climb him right here and now.
“Say sorry,” he growls.
“I’m…” The orc looks anywhere but at him. “I’m sorry. Ma’am. I’m sorry, I…”
“Run,” my male adds in a disgusted tone.
He scrambles up and bolts into the night, tripping over himself, and doesn’t look back. Not a single time. The crowd swallows him, the whole fair staring, and I’m standing there with Gary clutched to my chest, my heart slamming and my whole body lit up with something that is absolutely not fear…
Then Sven turns back to me, and it all just… drops out of him. The lethal energy radiating off him just… gone, the second his eyes land on me, and what’s left is just my Sven. Still stern and frowning, but attentive, worried, scanning me from head to toe.
“Did he hurt you? ”
I shake my head, smiling gently. “I’m good, baby.”
“Let me see.”
He gently takes my arm with his huge hand, that was a weapon just seconds ago, and turns it to look where the drunk alpha held me, and the growl comes back for a second before he swallows it down.
Then he pulls me into his arms, wrapping me in his warmth, the solid wall of him, drops his face into my hair and breathes me in.
And I feel the rumble change… it shifts from that low warning into something else, something deeper, the sound that rolls through me and loosens every fucking thing.
Sven is fucking purring. I realize it when my cheek hits his chest. This scary, lethal, giant alpha orc is purring to calm me down, and it’s fucking working.
My body goes soft against his, the adrenaline draining out of me.
“I got you,” he rumbles into my hair. “I got you. Nobody touches you. Fucking nobody.”
I can feel people looking at us. They watched the most frightening alpha in the county nearly take a guy apart for putting a hand on me and then fucking purr for me, holding me in the middle of the fairground.
And I couldn’t care less. I bury my face into his broad chest, inhale his amazing scent, and let him put me back together.
After a while, I look up into his dark eyes and whisper, “Take me home, handsome.”
He blinks. “Esme…”
I let out a small laugh. “Not like that.” Although, seeing him go all caveman really did a number on my panties. “Or… yeah, like that, but I just… I need to not be here right now. Please, take me home, Sven.”
He looks at me for a long second, his control visibly only hanging by a thread, then he wraps an arm around me and walks us to the parking lot, not letting go the whole way.
We don’t make it home. We make it to the truck…
and thank God it’s parked on the side of the field that’s away from the lights.
The second the doors, I don’t know which one of us moves first. Sven gets a hand in my hair and hauls me across the seat into his lap.
His mouth crashes down on mine, and his intoxicating taste floods me…
honey, dark chocolate, smoke… and I moan into it and grind down against him, feeling how hard he is under me.
He growls against my lips, his hands shoving my coat off my shoulders.
“His fucking hand on you. His scent, near you. And I wasn’t right fucking there to protect you.
Fucking lost my mind, Esme, I wanted to…
” He kisses down my throat, rough, hungry, his tusks dragging over my skin.
“Need to get my scent back on you. All over you. Wanna fucking taste you…”
“Yes,” I breathe, pulling my shirt off. “Please, Sven…”
He shoves my bra out of the way, then his mouth is on my breast and I cry out before slapping a hand over my mouth.
Sven’s tongue is long, thick, rough, and hot.
He sucks my nipple deep into his mouth, rolls it, grazes the soft underside of my breast with the edge of a tusk.
I arch into him, my hands fisting in his hair, grabbing his horns and holding him there, right fucking there.
He palms my other breast in one huge hand, kneading the full flesh, his thumb working the hard bud; the sounds coming out of me are embarrassing, but ask me if I fucking care.
My slick is already soaking through my jeans, my hips rolling to meet the hard ridge of him on their own volition.
“Look at you,” he rumbles against my skin, switching to my other breast, dragging his magical tongue across it before he sucks.
“Fucking falling apart already. So goddamn responsive. So fucking sweet.” He gets a hand between us and pops the button of my jeans.
“Let me feel you, baby. Let me make it better… make you come and put my fucking scent all over you so every fucking alpha you pass knows who you fucking belong to.”
He works his hand down the front of my jeans, into my soaked underwear, and groans when he feels how wet I am.
“Fuck… sweetheart…” His voice is low, dark, ragged, fucking wrecked. His fingers slide through my swollen folds, find my throbbing clit, and circle. “So fucking wet for your alpha. You fucking like that I’d tear a male apart for you.”
“Yes,” I sob, past pretending. “Oh, God… Yes… Sven!”
“Good fucking girl,” he rumbles into my ear.
And then he’s pushing into me… two fingers this time, and I gasp at the stretch, the burn, my body fighting and giving. He works them in slowly, little by little, his mouth back on my breast, licking, sucking, biting, making me fucking melt, until I’m stuffed and stretched and shaking in his lap.
“That’s it, love,” he says low against my skin. “Feel that? You’re taking two of my thick, long fingers now.” He curls them deep inside me and I see fucking stars. “You’re doing so good. So fucking good for your alpha.”
Sven finger-fucks me slow and deep, his thumb rolling over my clit, his mouth on my tits.
I ride his hand in the dark of his truck with the fair lights blurry through the windshield and come embarrassingly fast, fucking primed since I watch him hammer that bell, go all alpha on that stupid drunk orc, then whisper good girl in my ear.
My orgasm crashes through me hard and long, and I clench around his giant-sized fingers, shaking, fucking coming apart in his lap, chanting his name over and over in hoarse cries.
Everything feels so damn good. He feels so damn good.
Warm, big, hard, powerful. The way he smells.
The taste of him. How he looks at me. The way he touches me… God!
Sven works me through it until I’m limp against him, panting, wrecked.
And when he eases his fingers out of me, I protest,“No,” I whine, before I can stop myself.
Lets out a chuckle but it’s strained. “Not yet, sweetheart.” His forehead drops to my shoulder, breathing hard, shaking, and so fucking hard under me my mouth waters.
“You keep saying that,” I moan. “You fucking stop every time… I’m ready…”
He frames my face in his massive hands. “Esme, I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my whole fucking life.
” His voice is rough with need and impossible restraint.
“When I take you, you’re going to be ready for me.
All of me.” His jaw works. “Trust me just a little longer, sweetheart. I know what I’m doing. ”
Then he helps me put my bra and shirt back on, and pulls me into his chest, his purr rolling through my body.
“Okay,” I whisper. “But just a tiny bit longer.”
Sven chuckles and kisses my forehead. Gah!