Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Dakvaar
I’d never felt my Kteer howling like this; unsatisfied, confused, angry. She loved me—she loved me! It was more than I could have hoped for, and now I had to pray to the gods that she’d accept our Mate Bond.
I was pacing in the bedroom, after having managed to pull on a pair of cotton pants over my ridiculous erection, when she burst out of the bathroom, little wisps of hair curling in the dampness of her temples and nape, flushed from the heat, and still smelling of the orgasms I’d given her.
Groaning, I turned away, scrubbing my hand down my face.
“Dakvaar, what is going on?”
“You’re wrapped in a towel, wet and aroused,” I growled, staring hard at the wall. “It’s taking everything I have not to chew it off you and make you come four more times.”
“I mean…” I could feel her crossing closer even as her tone turned teasing.
“I wouldn’t mind that. But for what it’s worth, as much as I want your cock in me again, I really, really want to hear what you claim you’ve been hiding all this time.
” When she exhaled a little huff of laughter, I swear I could smell her.
“And I know that if I tell you I just want to talk, you’re going to respect that. ”
She knew me well.
I could control my cock and my Kteer. Maybe not my heart, though.
“You asked about my eyes. It’s something that happens to orc males when they’re gripped in a strong emotion.”
“More orc biology, huh?” I could hear the worry underlying her teasing and closed my eyes on a silent curse.
“My eyes started doing this weeks ago, when my Kteer knew…” It wasn’t until I felt the pain that I realized my claws were digging into my chest, as if I could scratch away the longing. I glanced down at myself ruefully. “I should have told you then.”
“Mierda,” she breathed, sounding terrified. “Told me what?”
I took a deep breath and turned around…
“We are Mated, Sofia. I’ve known for at least a month now.
It was why I started coming to the café so regularly—I couldn’t not see you each day!
” Gods, my heart was trying to pound out of my chest, and I was desperate to make her understand.
“You are my Mate, the one the gods chose for me, and I am yours.”
Her expression told me she didn’t understand.
Of course she didn’t understand. I’d said it like a male dropping a boulder on a rock outcropping—here, this is yours now, mind your feet.
“Mated,” she repeated. The towel slipped a half-inch, and she caught it without looking, the way she’d juggled everything for years—Rosa, her job, her past. “Like—married? Is that an orc word for—”
“No.” I stopped. Started over, slower, the way my mother had done for me when I was a kitling and had asked why my father watched her cross a room like she hung the moon. “Sit. Please.” I blew out a breath and rubbed the back of my neck. “Let me do this right.”
She lowered herself onto the little loveseat under the window, knees together, towel tucked, watching me with big, trusting eyes that seemed to be pleading not to prove her wrong. Not to be a threat.
I did not want to be a threat.
So I crossed the room and knelt at her feet.
It brought me down below her eyeline—me, looking up at her, my Sofia, small and damp and wary on a loveseat built for a human. Her breath hitched. I felt the exact moment she understood I wasn’t going to loom.
“There’s a thing among my people,” I said.
“A knowing. That’s what we call it, because there’s no better word, not in your language or mine.
When an orc finds his Mate, his Kteer—” I pressed a fist to my sternum.
“It recognizes her. Not chooses. Recognizes. Like it already knew her and was only waiting to catch up.”
“Your—cah-teer.” She stumbled on it, and gods, even mangled it did something to me.
“My instinct. My hunting-heart. The oldest part of me.” I reached out slowly, and when she didn’t pull back, I took one of her bare feet in my hands. “May I?”
She blinked. “You’re going to—what, rub my feet, while you tell me the universe assigned me to you?”
“Yes.” I pressed my thumb into her arch, and she made a sound that nearly undid all my careful control. “Because if I don’t put my hands somewhere useful, I’m going to put them somewhere greedy, and you asked to talk.”
“Okay.” It came out breathy. “Okay, that’s—yeah. Talk. Feet. Good plan.”
Good plan, the smug part of me agreed. I worked my thumb down toward her heel and kept my voice level.
“It’s not love,” I said. “That’s the part I need you to hear.
I love you—that’s a separate thing, and it’s true, and I’ll say it as often as you let me.
But the Mate Bond isn’t the love. The bond is—” I searched for it.
“You know your own heartbeat. You don’t feel it most days, but if it stopped, you’d know before you hit the floor.
That’s what you are to me. I don’t feel you every second.
But if you were gone, I’d know before I hit the floor. ”
Her toes curled in my grip.
“That’s terrifying,” she whispered.
“I know.” I moved to her other foot. “It terrified me the first time I understood it, and it hit me even harder when I carried you from that parking lot. I laid you in the bed in our medical wing, and my whole life became about a woman who flinched when I got too close, and I thought—” I huffed.
“I thought, of all the females in all the world, the gods gave me one who has every reason not to want me.”
She laughed, half startled, half sincere. “That’s not—I don’t not want—” She stopped, then shook her head. “All this time? You said you’ve known for weeks.”
And there it was. I made myself hold her gaze.
“Yes.”
“You’ve known for weeks that I’m your—your fated whatever, cosmically-assigned-mind-body-soul person, and you didn’t tell me?” Her voice climbed. “I’ve been lying awake wondering if I was insane for falling this fast, if I was just—just grateful, or scared, or making it up, and you knew—”
“I knew.” I didn’t flinch from her frustration; I’d earned every condemnation. “And I didn’t tell you, and I’m sorry. Torrk had to sit me down in a locker room and call it what it was before I understood how badly I’d gotten it wrong.”
“Which was?”
I kept my hands moving on her calf now, gentle, grounding. She was melting into it despite herself, her spine going soft against the cushions, even as her eyes stayed sharp on mine.
“I thought I was giving you what you needed, what was best for you. I didn’t want you to think I was like your stepfather or Anthony, just handing you a future without giving you a choice.
I was afraid that if I told you the gods have decided you’re mine, it’s done—” I shook my head.
“I thought I’d be building you another cage.
So I told myself I was protecting you by giving you the choice.
Letting you decide whether to stay, whether to make my coffee, whether to let Rosa call me Dak. ”
“Is that what you were doing?” Her voice was small.
I winced. “I think so. Torrk had to point it out to me; I was letting you choose, but they were small choices while I hoarded the big one. It was like I was deciding for you that you couldn’t handle the truth.” My jaw tightened. “Which is the exact thing Anthony did. Just dressed nicer.”
She was quiet. My hands kept moving. Outside, snow-laced wind ticked against the window.
“So this is me,” I said, “giving you the whole truth. You’re my Mate.
That means I will protect you and Rosa with everything I am, not because I’m noble or something, but because you’re mine, and an orc does not let harm come to what’s his.
Anthony could bring an army. He’d get through me when I’m ash and not before. ”
I exhaled and pressed my forehead, briefly, to her knee. “You’re mine, Sofia. And I’m yours, if you’ll have me. That part’s still your choice. It’ll always be your choice.”
When I lifted my head, her eyes were bright.
“I don’t think I understand it,” she admitted. “The—knowing. The heartbeat thing. I mean, I feel something, but…I don’t know if I can know it the way you know it.”
“You don’t have to.” Relief loosened something in my chest anyway, because she hadn’t run, hadn’t shuttered, hadn’t looked at me like I’d handed her a leash.
“You don’t have to feel it the way I do.
You don’t have to let me claim you. You just have to let me stay close enough for you to find out if that’s what you want. ”
Because I couldn’t claim her—not completely—until that happened.
She looked at me for a long moment. My ridiculous, brilliant human, turning it over, testing the floor.
“Then I accept it,” she said. “Your Mate Bond. Whatever it is. I don’t get it yet, but—” Her mouth curved, shy and certain at once. “I want to find out.”
My Kteer stopped howling.
For the first time in weeks, it simply…purred.
Thank fuck.
Until she was ready to accept me completely, I couldn’t claim her, couldn’t make her unequivocally mine…but I could show her what her words meant to me.
I came up off my knees, and she was already reaching for me, the towel forgotten, and I gathered her up against my chest where she fit like the gods had measured her for it.
“I have so many questions,” she murmured against my throat. “Like what a cah-teer is.”
I sucked in a breath when her blunt little human teeth nipped at my skin like she was going to give me a Mating mark. “Sofia, I cannot wait to teach you.” I carried her to the bed. “We’re going to have fun.”
She was chuckling when I pressed her into the mattress, and what male could ask for anything more?
Sofia
Mierda, sex with Dakvaar was everything I could’ve hoped for, and more.
Who the hell knew about these instant-Os, and why weren’t more women clamoring to be boned by orcs?
I guarantee if the secret of ridged cocks and the ability to give instant orgasms became known, human females would be lining up.
The point was: I liked his cock. A lot.