Grat

Chapter 5 #2

I likely couldn’t take his massive cock, anyway. I was glad it remained out of sight under water. But I’d do anything for him to keep his large, warm hands on me.

He looked doubtful for a moment, and I feared he’d deny me. It was so new to me to want a man’s hands on me when all my life I’d wished them off. But his hesitation only added to my desire.

I buried my face in his shoulder and begged, “Please.”

“There, there…” he soothed, wrapping his burly arm around my shoulders and bringing me closer. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll take care of you if that’s what you want.”

My heart soared, and my desire spiked when he slipped his hand between my thighs and pressed a thick finger to my most sensitive spot.

I moaned, hooking my arm around his neck and pressed my breasts to his wide chest. His chest hair tickled my hardened nipples. My inner muscles spasmed with another surge of arousal. I’d never wanted anyone so badly before.

“More,” I moaned, pressing my thighs together and trapping his hand between them.

“An impatient little thing, aren’t you?” he chuckled, finding my breast with his other hand.

He squeezed it a little too hard, making me gasp and jerk away.

“Sorry,” he drawled apologetically. “I’m new to this gentle thing, Khala. And you…you look so delicate compared to me.” He spread out his fingers, displaying his hand the size of a shovel. “Let me try it again.”

He splayed his hand on my chest, almost covering it all at once.

“Such a dainty little thing you are,” he murmured, exploring me by touch. “Just look at these little tits. Their tips are smaller than cranberries.” He gingerly took my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, plucking at it lightly as if afraid I’d break.

Another hot wave of arousal rushed through me, pooling heavily in my lower belly. I rocked my hips against his hand trapped between my thighs. He curled a finger, flicking my clit.

“Oh, gods…” I gasped as my hips bucked.

“Come here now.” He leaned back in the tub and dragged me closer to straddle his hard, thick thighs.

His hand remained between my legs, protecting me from contact with his cock.

Lifting me slightly, he bent his head and dragged his tongue over my nipple, then rolled it between his teeth.

I stiffened at the press of his curved tusks on each side of my breast, but he seemed to be trying hard to remain as gentle as possible.

“It doesn’t taste like a cranberry.” He grinned, smacking his lips. “More like the pine soap. But I like how sweetly you moan when I do this.” He sucked the nipple between his lips again, eliciting another moan from me.

I cradled his large head in my arms, riding his hand while he sucked on my nipples. Lust rolled through my body in waves, swelling thicker and hotter.

“Harder…” I rolled my hips against his fingers.

He groaned softly in approval. His cock bumped against my thigh.

He was hard. Hard as a rock.

The realization exploded through my body with heat. Pleasure surged, tipping me over the edge. I gripped his neck harder, riding the most incredible orgasm.

“Good girl,” he murmured, reaping more shudders of pleasure from me with his huge but oh so very deft fingers. “Just like that, sweetheart. Just like that.”

His words, said in his deep rumbling voice, resonated through my body with another spasm of ecstasy.

I struggled to breathe, choked by the emotions I couldn’t immediately name.

There was an overwhelming sense of relief at no longer fearing for my life.

I felt grateful to Grat for giving me a modicum of safety in this world filled with so much uncertainty and fear.

And most of all, I was perplexed how an orc, practically a stranger, had shown me more kindness, patience, and support than any human in my life had.

Another shudder ran through me, only this one wasn’t caused by the orgasm but by a sob. I’d spent so much time gripped by fear, and only now, the tension finally eased, leaving me vulnerable and exposed. Tears rushed me, and I had no strength to hold them back.

Grat wrapped me into a tight hug. He didn’t ask me why I was crying, for which I was grateful. He simply held me while I broke to pieces in his arms.

“Hush, sweetheart,” he cooed soothingly, gently rocking me in his burly arms. “You’re safe now.”

Safe.

It was such a wonderful word. And in his arms, I finally understood the true meaning of it. With him, I truly felt safe.

“You have an awful lot of hair,” Grat stated, trying to undo my messy braid.

It proved a challenge to untangle the thick rope that my braid had become over the past weeks, but Grat carefully worked through it, strand by strand, separating them and combing through them with his fingers.

“I didn’t even know that your folks braided their hair,” he said.

“My folks?”

“The wild things,” he clarified.

“Oh, well…we do, I guess…” I mumbled, remembering that for Grat, I was an apewoman.

I had severely disappointed my parents by growing short in stature, with narrow hips, and a smaller chest. They would’ve far preferred a stately tall daughter with curves to attract any man they wished.

My long, thick, wavy black hair, however, had been my mother’s pride. When I was sixteen, the court poet composed a poem about it. My mother had it styled in luxurious waves draped over my shoulders for the portrait that she then sent out to all potential suitors.

Reizon had said that my hair was meant to showcase diamonds because it was dark like night and made the diamonds braided in it look like stars.

Reizon was a handsome man with beautiful words and ugly actions.

I realized it long ago and treated him accordingly.

Unfortunately, that didn’t save me from his attention because he believed a marriage with me would give him everything that he wanted.

Now, the bog orc in the woods thought I was “a wild thing”, a creature below him in every way, yet he treated me better than Reizon ever did, without asking for anything in return.

“Have you met any wild things before?” I asked, sitting with my back to Grat as he battled with my braid.

“No,” he said. “But my grandpa did.”

That was concerning if I wished to keep my disguise.

“Where is your grandfather?” I asked carefully.

“Dead. For seven years now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No need to be.” He shrugged. “Grandpa lived a long life and died like a true warrior, in battle.”

“In battle with the wild things?”

“No,” he chuckled. “We don’t go to wars with your kind. There is no honor in victories against animals—” he stopped abruptly.

I glanced over my shoulder at him.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “That’s what my grandpa used to call your kind. He told stories about wild things coming to the Wetlands before I was born. They stole food from the keep, attacked our cattle, and dug through our gardens, like animals would do.”

Well, I stole his food too. I even growled at him when he tried to take it away from me. I had acted very much like an animal, no wonder he’d thought I was one.

“Grandpa never said that apemen could speak though,” he added.

“Maybe the wild things never got a chance to say anything to him while they were here?”

He laughed. “True. I don’t think Grandpa tried to have a conversation with your folks.”

“Or give them a bath,” I added, making him laugh even more heartily.

The back of his fingers stroked the skin over my spine, eliciting a shiver of pleasure in their wake.

I sighed softly.

“What happened to your family, Khala?” Grat asked.

“I just…don’t have one.”

With Rolly’s death two months ago, I lost the only real family I’d ever had.

Roland, or Rolly as he preferred being called, was almost fifty years old when he died from fever, but he was born with what some called an affliction and others claimed to be a curse.

Rolly’s mind remained on the level of a small child, no matter how old he grew.

We became good friends during my marriage to the High Lord of Renya, Rolly’s father.

Rolly was the only soul in this world who loved me simply for being me.

With his death, I lost the only person who truly cared for me.

“How about your tribe? Your clan? Your community?” Grat kept asking.

After Rolly’s death, his father’s estate that had been my home for thirteen years became the property of the crown, and all the people who lived and worked there were no longer my “tribe.”

“No… No community, either,” I said.

That seemed to disturb him even more than my lack of a family.

“I can help you find them,” he offered, “if you want to return.”

My throat closed for a moment.

“No. I don’t wish to return,” I croaked.

I’d stabbed a man with a dagger and left him bleeding in his tent. Nothing good waited for me if I came back. But I couldn’t tell that to Grat. The less he knew, the better off we both were.

“Where is your tribe?” I asked, eager to shift the focus of our conversation from me to him.

“Back in our keep.”

“Why are you alone here? Did they send you away?”

He laughed. “They wish! But I’m not that easy to get rid of.

I love my keep. My clan is my family, every single orc in it, regardless if they’re related to me by blood or not.

Usually, I don’t leave the keep for long.

But I’ve been hunting here every autumn since I was a kid.

Grandpa used to bring me here, me and Agor. ”

“Who is Agor?”

“My best friend. We grew up together.”

“Why is he not here this year?”

He grunted, shifting uneasily behind me.

“Agor is a busy man,” he said. “He’s our High Chief. He also got married last year. His wife Becca is his best friend now, so…”

“Why aren’t you married?” I asked.

He reached for the soap and lathered my hair before replying. “I haven’t met a woman yet that would convince me to give up all other women for her sake.”

“Do you have to give up other women after getting married?”

“Of course. Why get married otherwise?”

His answer surprised me. None of the men in my life cared about loyalty to their wives, though they demanded it from all their women.

My late husband was so obsessed with leaving an heir of his blood that he had bedded every female of a child-bearing age he could get his hands on, both before and after our wedding.

My father had so many mistresses, I could never keep up with their names.

“So you’re enjoying a lot of women while you’re single then?” I asked, curious to learn more about him.

“When I can. Sure.”

“Why only when you can? Are women not jumping in bed with you?”

“Frankly, I don’t have as many women as most people think,” he confessed. “I like having fun at the parties when the folks from other keeps come over. I drink and dance with a lot of women. So everyone thinks I fuck everyone I dance with every week.”

“But you don’t?” I prodded.

He heaved a breath. “One or two, sure, but I’m not exactly the most handsome orc in the keep. Orc women have plenty of other, less scarred options. And human girls? Most of them find bog orcs ugly, even without the scars.”

Where I came from, bog orcs were definitely considered ugly, and I could see why. Grat’s large, brawny body looked like a mountain came to life. Every part of him was wide, thick, and solid like a rock.

His facial features were also far from being conventionally handsome.

In addition to his ghastly scar, his prominent eyebrow ridges, the high, protruding cheekbones, and gleaming white tusks that jutted out from his lower jaw gave him a fierce, menacing look that many would fear and no one I knew would call good-looking.

Sitting with my back to him, however, I couldn’t see his face. I felt only the caring touch of his large hands as he massaged my skull, washing my hair.

“Good looks aren’t everything,” I said. “In fact, they mean nothing at all.”

“For wild things maybe,” he dismissed. “Lean down this way. Let me rinse the suds out of your hair.”

I let him lower me backwards into the water as he leaned over me. His face was now directly over me, but he didn’t look into my eyes, focusing on pouring the water and rinsing the soap out of my hair.

His brows moved closer in concentration. His lips parted slightly, with the tip of his tongue poking out by his right tusk. He looked as fierce as ever, and many would still find him ugly. But there was something endearing in the way he gave all his attention to the task of washing my hair.

“How did you get your scar, Grat?”

He flinched, then covered it up with a grin. “If anyone asks, you tell them I got it in battle, deal?”

“Deal,” I agreed. “But how did it actually happen?”

“I was a kid and stupidly believed I could get a boar on my own. It was a good thing that Grandpa happened to be close by to intervene just in time. Otherwise, the boar would’ve taken my entire head off with his tusks.

Wild boars are vicious in the Wetlands. They eat mostly plants and mushrooms, but they would kill anything just for fun.

All done.” He helped me to set up again and smiled brightly.

“I bet you’re now the cleanest wild thing in the world. ”

“Thank you.” I wrung the water out of my hair. The warm, peaceful feeling that settled over me proved too hard to contain inside my chest as it erupted from me in soft, unexpected giggle.

“Well…” Grat lifted me out of the water and reached for the towel. “Let’s get you dry, dressed, and ready for bed now.”