4. Krog
KROG
The water is hot enough to loosen the dried blood from my skin, dark ribbons curling away from my knuckles and dissolving into nothing. Goros’ life reduced to sediment. I do not mourn the loss.
I scrub fast, efficiently. The cloth drags across my chest, my arms, my neck, stripping the remnants of the kill from my skin the way I would clean a blade after use. The water clouds dark around me, though the filtration system soon clears it again.
The heat soothes the knots in my shoulders, eases the tension that has been coiled in my gut since the Lottery. But I do not linger. Cleaning myself is maintenance. It is not the reason I am here.
Layla is.
She stands near the door, reluctantly working the ties of the ruined silk she wears. The fabric loosens, slips from one shoulder, then the other, and pools at her feet.
Per Lottery rules, she wears nothing underneath. And the sight of her bare unmakes me.
“Layla.” Her name slips through my lips in a reverent whisper.
Pale skin is stretched over sharp angles, the ladder of her ribs visible beneath breasts that are small and round and tipped with pink that darkens in the steam. Her waist is a narrow thing I could circle with both hands while her hips flare gently, the bones too prominent.
Even half-starved she is breathtakingly beautiful, and the beast inside roars at those two truths, inciting desire and rage tangled so tightly I cannot separate them.
The Wastes did this to her, stripped the softness from her body just as it strips life from the soil. The rage I feel is not aimed at her. It is aimed at everything that came before me that failed to feed her, shelter her, protect her.
But she is mine now. And I will fix what is broken, fill what is hollow.
She steps into the water, and her breath catches—a small, involuntary sound that travels across the surface and vibrates against my skin.
She lowers herself slowly, arms crossed over her chest, knees drawn tight.
She sits on the far side of the tub and presses her spine against the stone edge, putting the maximum distance between us.
I will not allow it.
The water follows me as I move toward her.
I am not a creature built for stealth in water, I displace too much of it.
The wave I create laps against her collarbone and makes her flinch.
But I do not stop. I cross the distance between us with the same unhurried certainty I used to cross the weapons bay toward Goros, though the purpose of my movement here is entirely different.
There I went to destroy. Here I move to tend.
Taking the block of soap from the ledge, the same one I use to scrub the grime of combat from my own skin, I work it into the cloth until it lathers.
She watches me with wide, nervous eyes. Her heart is a frantic drumbeat I can feel through the water, each pulse sending tiny vibrations against my chest. Fear, but not the sharp, acrid fear of the Lottery floor. This is softer. Warmer. Fear of the unknown.
I begin with her arms. The cloth drags across her skin, washing away the dust of the Great Hall, the salt of her terror, the traces of hands that are not mine.
She is rigid beneath my touch, muscles locked tight, tendons standing out in her neck like bowstrings. I move to her shoulders. Her collarbones. The hollow of her throat where her pulse hammers so hard I can see it
“Do not be afraid.” My voice is low, and I try not to growl. But the vibration lives in my chest, a low-frequency hum that I cannot silence, especially when she is this close.
Turning her, I position her between my legs, her back to my front. Then I move her hair and press the cloth against her skin, my fingers curling over the sharp wings of her shoulder blades. She is so small beneath my hand, so seemingly fragile.
The cloth rasps against her skin, creating a friction that makes her breath stutter. At first, she flinches. Then she does something that makes the beast go perfectly, dangerously still.
She leans into my touch.
A fraction of an inch. A tilt of her spine toward my palm instead of away from it.
A movement so small that an ordinary human would miss it entirely.
But I am not human. I feel the slight shift of her weight through the water, the easing of tension in the muscles beneath my hand.
I recognize the moment her body decides, against every rational thought in her mind, that my touch is not a threat.
The beast wants to roar. I contain it. Barely.
My hand with the cloth moves down, tracing the curve of her lower back, then over the swell of her hip and along the outside of her thigh.
Her skin is impossibly smooth here, warm from the water and flushed pink from the heat.
When I reach around her small body to her inner thigh, the cloth grazes the soft skin where her leg meets her body.
Her scent changes, and it hits me.
The fear is not gone completely, but it recedes some. And as it does, a new scent perfumes the air between us. Heavy. Biological. Unmistakable. The salt-sweet musk of her arousal coats my lungs with every breath.
My cock stiffens so fast it aches. The pressure builds against my abdomen, throbbing in time with her fluttering heart. The beast screams for release, uttering a single word in my mind that makes my claws extend involuntarily.
Take.
But I do not. Not yet. She is too small, too fragile, too new. The beast does not understand these things or the difference between desire and readiness. The Commander understands that if I take her now, I will break her. And broken things do not last.
Dropping the cloth, I allow my fingers to brush the crease of her inner thigh. She gasps. Not with fear or pain, but a sound that is breathier and wanting. Her legs part, a subtle involuntary offer, one she is not likely aware she is making.
My fingers find her folds, slick with more than water, swollen and wanting. When I stroke her, the sound she makes is a quiet, strangled gasp that destroys my restraint.
“You are slick with need.” The words whispered against her ear come out rough. Blunt. I do not know how to soften them.
She tries to deny it. “I’m not—that’s the water—”
“Your body does not lie, Layla.” I lean closer, inhaling deeply. The perfume of her arousal is everywhere now, thick and sweet and intoxicating. “Even if I could not feel your desire, I could smell it.”
She starts to argue as I grip her waist and lift her from the water, my hands spanning her easily, my fingers nearly meeting at her spine.
She makes a sound between a yelp and a moan as I set her on the wide stone ledge of the tub, her body steaming in the cooler air.
My hands move to her thighs, spreading them wide so I can admire her warm, glistening cunt.
Then my head is between them, my shoulders pushing her legs wider still, my hands wrapped around the outside of her hips with fingers that curl into her buttocks.
She looks at me with an expression caught between terror and hunger, her chest heaving, her nipples peaked and flushed dark.
“Krog, what are you doing?”
“Feasting.” The growl comes from the beast, though the word is mine. “Let me taste you.”
She tries to close her legs. Instinct. Modesty. The last barrier between surrender and the thing that waits on the other side. My shoulders hold her open, gently but immovable, waiting for her to give in to what we both want.
When the pressure of her thighs against my shoulders eases, I lower my mouth to her. The first taste of her is exquisite, a mix of salt and nectar and need.
My tongue is broad, the surface rough like a rasp. I use it to lick her back to front, drawing a sound from her throat that I will hear in my sleep for the rest of my existence.
I lap at her slowly. Deliberately. Learning the landscape of her body, the hood that shelters the swollen bead that brings her much pleasure, the slick folds that willingly part under my tongue, the deep channel that clenches when my finger slips inside.
She is soon trembling, her muscles taut.
Her hands find my head, threading through my hair with a strength that surprises me.
She does not push me away, but draws me closer, deeper.
While fucking her with my finger, I growl against her. The vibration travels into her core, stimulating the nerve endings there. She cries out, arching her back, her thighs trembling against me.
My tongue works in broad, relentless strokes. Flat, then pointed, then circling the swollen, hooded nub. Her arousal coats my lips, my cheeks, my chin, the taste so divine I wonder how I survived this long without it.
The sounds she makes are almost as good as her taste. Broken, gasping, keening sounds that have no language yet speak clearly of her complete surrender.
“Krog, please.” My name in her throat. Not protesting but begging. “I’m close…so close.”
I suck on her sensitive nub and hum, a deep, resonant vibration that comes from the same place in my chest as the growl. The effect is immediate.
She shatters against my mouth, flooding my tongue with her delicious release. Her cry echoes off the chamber walls, the sound raw and unraveled and satisfied. A sound that feeds the beast like nothing it has ever consumed.
Holding her hips tight throughout her climax, my tongue still working, I devour every shudder and spasm until her body sags and her grip on my hair loosens.
I withdraw slowly, the beast filled with possessive satisfaction.
My cock is still rock hard, painfully so, begging for its own release. It wants to be buried deep in her warm, wet channel, to drive into her until sated.
I deny it. Pleasuring her was enough for now. The rut will come soon, triggered by her nearness. And when it does, I will prepare her body and take what is mine.
Tonight, I gave her a gift, a first offering. Proof that the hands that kill for her can also bring her pleasure.
Standing, I lift her from the edge of the tub.
She is boneless, limp, her head lolling against my chest as I carry her from the bathing chamber.
Steam and water droplets trail from our bodies as I cross the room and lower her onto the furs.
She curls instinctively, knees drawing up, and I pull the heaviest pelt over her before settling in behind her.
My arm curves around her waist, my chest against her back. She smells like the lingering sweetness of her release and my soap now. Much better.
Her heartrate slows as she settles into the deep, even rhythm of sleep. She is fed and clean and pleasured and warm, and the beast purrs with deep satisfaction.
A fight is coming, this I know. But Layla belongs to me now, and I will do whatever it takes to keep her safe.