Chapter 10 Kursk
KURSK
Restless doesn’t begin to cover it. I lie awake in the dim glow of Olivia’s cabin, staring at the ceiling boards that creak and sigh like old warhorses.
The spear rests across my chest; the Spiritslayer’s blade still pulses, faintly, as if it senses the enemy’s power swelling in the distance.
My muscles ache, memory of old battles and my brother’s gone eyes haunting every breath.
I shift; a heartbeat later I shift again.
The world beyond the Veil tugs. My home grows distant. My vows feel stretched.
Olivia sleeps nearby—soft rhythm of her breathing, the quiet tug of her hair against skin.
Her scent drifts: wet linen, lavender, woodsmoke, something like hope.
And something else—danger. The danger of letting someone form cracks in your heart.
I’ve seen loss. I know what happens when you allow hope.
Morning comes hot and sweet, like a promise.
I try to steady myself as sunlight filters through linen curtains.
Then she enters the room, dripping from her shower.
The shirt she wears is mine—or once was mine—soaked at the shoulders, clinging to her in a way that makes the air catch. I try to look away, but I don’t.
“Will you…?” she asks softly, turning so I can see the zipper at her back. Her hands reach, trembling just slightly.
I stand, but the air shifts. My muscles coil.
I cross the space. One hand reaches and grips the zipper tab; it’s cold.
I pull it down. Her skin is smooth, damp, shining faintly with water droplets that catch the light.
I should ask if she wants me to stop. But her eyes hold something—no panic. Consent. Trust. She wants help.
My fingers brush hers. My heart stutters.
I feel heat there, a wild heat—it’s not just her skin.
It’s everything between us, unspoken. When the fabric slides down, the dampness of her skin echoes with rain, with longing.
I close my eyes and inhale—salt, cedar, shampoo.
All of it mixing into a weight in my chest.
We stand too close. Her back to me. I can feel her breath at my wrist, the soft curve of her spine under my hand. I want to look—but I fear what I’ll see: vulnerability, need, something that means I’m no longer alone.
Then she turns, toward me. Her towel pressed tight. Our faces are inches apart. Eyes searching. Lips parted. The tension thrums like a string pulled too far.
I kiss her. Not like the spell, but with everything I’ve held back. My mouth on hers, hungry and cautious all at once. Her lips warm, trembling. The dampness of her skin mingles with sweat at my brow. She tastes of hope and fear.
She presses against me. I lift her chin with two fingers, the blade of the spear still tucked at my side.
“Olivia,” I whisper.
She parts my lips with hers, soft. I don’t want to stop. But I also know the line. Respect. Fear. Everything on edge.
Her hands find my arms—they don’t push. They don’t pull. They just hold.
But now— I let myself look.
I drink her in.
Olivia. Five foot four of pure flame and earth, red hair curling damply at her collarbone, green eyes burning with something wild and scared and unrelenting.
Her body is soft in a way that calls to my blood.
Her hips curve like poetry, her breasts pressed under the wet cotton of the shirt that still clings.
I can see the dark outlines of her nipples beneath it, peaked from chill or want, I cannot tell.
I want to taste her.
“Tell me to stop,” I whisper, mouth brushing her temple.
She doesn’t.
Her fingers tangle in the cords of my belt. She pulls me closer, trembling.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she says.
My hands slide over her waist, up her sides, until my thumbs rest under the hem of her shirt. I lift it slowly, watching her expression. She doesn't look away. She doesn’t flinch. She raises her arms, letting me strip the fabric away.
She is naked beneath.
My cock aches instantly, thick and heavy and already weeping with need.
I press my palm flat to her stomach. Her skin jumps beneath my hand. “You’re shaking,” I murmur.
“I’m not scared,” she whispers. “I’m just… full.”
“Of what?”
“You.”
I kiss her again. Deeper now. Hungrier.
Her hands explore me—up my chest, along the hard lines of muscle and scar, across the deep green planes of skin that no human man has ever worn. She traces my tusks when our mouths part, then cups my jaw with reverence and fire.
“You feel like stone and sun,” she murmurs.
“And you feel like moonlight on a battlefield,” I say. “Soft. And needed.”
We tumble back toward the bed. She gasps when I lift her with ease—light in my arms like smoke, legs wrapping around my waist. Her wet heat presses to my abdomen. I set her down on the bed, kneeling above her.
“Tell me how to love you,” I say.
“Touch me,” she breathes.
I do.
I kiss down her throat, her collarbone, tasting salt and skin. My tusks graze gently against the slope of her breasts before I take one nipple into my mouth and suck slowly, listening to her moan. She arches into me. Her fingers tangle in my braid.
I slide lower, dragging my mouth down the valley of her stomach, licking the fluttering muscles there. She’s already panting.
When I spread her legs, I see her—pink and wet and swollen with want. Her pussy glistens in the light. I growl.
“Gods,” I whisper. “You are... perfection.”
She blushes, but doesn’t close her legs.
I lean down and taste her.
She cries out, hips jerking. “Kursk—”
I lick again. Long and slow. Her slick coats my tongue, and I groan against her. I suck her clit gently, circling it with my tongue until her thighs shake.
Her hands grip the sheets. Her body rises and falls like a storm.
“Kursk—please—I need—”
I rise, cock hard and heavy, veins dark with desire. I watch her watch me as I stroke myself. Her eyes widen. “You’re… fuck, you’re huge.”
“I will go slow,” I promise. “But I will not stop.”
She nods. “I don’t want you to.”
I position myself between her thighs, tip at her entrance.
“Olivia,” I growl.
“Please,” she whispers.
I press in.
Her body takes me slowly, inch by inch, and her mouth parts in a soft cry.
She is tight. Hot. Perfect.
I sink in deeper.
She gasps, fingernails digging into my back. Her breath is shaky. “Oh, fuck…”
I still. “Too much?”
“No,” she moans. “More.”
I thrust deeper.
Her pussy clenches around me, welcoming every thick, stretching inch of my cock.
We move together, her hips rolling, her hands gripping me as I fuck her slow and deep. Each thrust is a promise, each groan a hymn.
“You feel like war,” she gasps.
“You feel like peace,” I growl.
She wraps her legs around me, pulling me in harder.
We fuck until the morning burns gold around us and all that exists is the heat, the hunger, and the fire we made.
We finish together—her cry tangled in my name, my roar breaking like thunder.
And when we collapse, sweat-slicked and shaking, she presses her forehead to mine and whispers, “You’re not alone.”
I hold her tight, heart slamming against hers.
Olivia’s fingers move slow, reverent. Not with fear. Not with pity. But with wonder.
Her touch maps the old battleground of my body—over the scorched scar above my ribs where the hellboar gored me, the jagged slash near my left shoulder where the sky-razor clipped my bone, and the faint, silvery brand on my collarbone, a relic of the Blood Moon Trials.
She traces them like a cartographer documenting lands she’s only just discovered.
“What’s this one?” she murmurs, brushing her thumb along the deep groove across my abdomen.
“First duel,” I answer. My voice is quieter than I mean for it to be, thick with memories. “I was fifteen summers old. Fought the Black Stone Clan over a hunting claim. They cheated. Threw mud in my eyes.”
Olivia snorts softly, still focused. “Did you win?”
“I broke his men’s leg. Then his pride. He never healed right.”
She laughs under her breath. “Orcs are hardcore.”
I grunt, smiling without meaning to. “We do not do soft well. But we endure.”
Her hand stills over my heart, fingers splayed like she’s trying to memorize its rhythm. “This one?”
I tense. It’s instinct, a reflex older than words. “That,” I say slowly, “was from the Vorfaluka. The night it killed my brother.”
Her lips part. She doesn’t say sorry. I’m grateful.
Instead, she leans her forehead to my chest, voice hushed. “Tell me.”
So I do.
I speak of Grothak. Of his laughter, louder than war drums. Of his blades, twin-curved and silver-bright.
Of the snowstorm where we hunted, where we found the beast, and the silence that followed.
I tell her about the black blood, the screaming winds, the way Grothak’s eyes went flat as the spear left his hand and failed to pierce the Vorfaluka’s heart.
“He didn’t scream,” I say. “Not once. Just… dropped. Like a tree in winter.”
Olivia stays pressed against me. “He was brave.”
“He was my better,” I whisper.
She tilts her head, and I meet her gaze. There’s no judgement in her eyes. Just a sadness I recognize too well.
“My dad,” she says. “Cancer. Slow and mean. Like it was chewing him up from the inside for sport. I was in college when he got diagnosed. Came home to take care of him. Never left again.”
The silence that follows is a different kind. It’s not awkward. It’s sacred. Like two war-scarred maps being laid side by side.
I brush a strand of damp hair from her face. “You stayed,” I say.
“I had to,” she replies, voice almost bitter. “He raised me. Even when he was sick, he tried to smile for me. I owed him that.”
“Duty,” I murmur. “Honor.”
“Something like that,” she says with a lopsided smirk.
We lie there for a while, breathing the same air, letting the world shrink down to the press of skin and the pulse beneath it.