CHAPTER 3 — Where’s the Harm ? #7
At the sight of my face and my chest getting splattered with his seed, Roarg groans and works his shaft faster—and meaner.
He jerks himself like he’s angry, and I have a moment of introspective alarm wondering if it’s because I told him I didn’t want him to cum in me—so I’m wholly unprepared for him to lower himself and gently kiss my belly, his eyes screwed closed as he squeezes himself dry.
Tentatively, my hand finds his damp hair and brushes it back from his sweaty face.
His whole body slumps with relief, crushing me beneath him. His cock softens between us for a few moments before he moves again, easing off me so I can breathe. He leans over me and kisses my knee tenderly.
It makes my eyes sting for some reason.
Why have I never had a lover do this before? Not kiss my knee, but show me affection after? The M.O. is always get off and get out and get back to his cell phone.
Is this the difference between a hookup and… a husband?
I’m covered in his thickening ejaculate when Roarg, still breathing hard, meets my gaze and declares, “You have joined with me.”
I want to retort, duh—but I’m frozen beneath him, my brain four shades of alarmed. Joined…
“You are now and forever a member of the Hammerfist house,” Roarg informs me with a proprietary look that my body has no business responding to. If he weren’t still laying on me, I’d slap myself in the cooter. “May your life weave long and happily with ours.”
I’m distracted by the flare of a light in the corner.
I turn my head to glance over and make sure the candle hasn’t caught the drapes on fire, but Roarg wants all my attention.
He takes my face in his massive hand and angles my head so we can kiss, whereupon I promptly forget all about the strange light.
(Hey, what can I say? This man is no slacker in the kissing department.)
At least I do until the shimmering light at the edge of my vision expands into the fully formed shape of a man.
I jerk back from Roarg. I suck in a startled breath, and my lungs instinctively tighten as I prepare to shriek—
Roarg covers my mouth with his hand.
My eyes fly wildly up to his—and I find the most murderous expression in history spreading over his face. It steals my breath. He cuts a glance at me, and for the briefest moment, his eyes soften.
But just as quickly, protectiveness surges anew in his eyes, and he rises off the bed silent and swift, his attention locking on the intruder as his hand slides along the bed frame and comes up with a freaking sword.
The intruder is completely unaware. His head is down, a puzzled frown marring his forehead, his gaze focused on something in his hands, and he steps forward toward us, seemingly mindlessly.
He’s human.
Adrenaline pounding into my blood, I’m crap at noticing anything but the way his gaze stays perfectly distant with distraction as Roarg advances on him.
The man glances up.
Roarg’s sword makes a whistling sound as it slices through the air to slice into his neck—
It would have sliced into his neck. It would have, if the stranger hadn’t dropped to the floor with a terrified screech. “SHIT!”
Papers flutter around us; that’s what he’d been holding in his hand.
That’s what my racing mind focuses on. The papers. They aren’t parchment, like you’d expect in a place that holds public beheadings and drives people around in horse-drawn carriages.
They’re bright white and uniformly cut. The words on them don’t look to be calligraphy or even handwritten, but lettered unmistakably by the precision of a computer. The sheets are modern printer paper.
“Oh my gosh,” I breathe.
With a roar, a still totally naked, über-green Roarg reaches down and clamps his hand on the man’s shoulder.
He hauls him upright and slams him against the bedroom wall hard enough to rattle my teeth—and then Roarg lays the blade against the man’s throat and snarls, “You have trespassed in my house. And you have seen my wife naked—now you. Shall. Die.”
I drop the hand that I’d been covering my mouth with.
“Wait!” I cry. I quickly grapple with the bed, gathering more than the fistful of sheets I’d managed to grab up high enough to cover me.
I wrestle the topmost sheet free, trying to jerk it around myself like a towel so I’m decent.
I swipe frantically at my chin and throat, trying to clean Roarg’s cum off of me.
“Listen to her!” the stranger squeaks, eyes darting to me, pleadingly.
“Don’t look at my—” Roarg starts to shout. But he seems to think better of yelling and instead, simply brings his sword up and plants the hilt on the center of the man’s head, clonking him in punishment.
With a muffled exclamation that involves God and damning one Orc in particular, the man sprawls at Roarg’s feet. And I’m struck at the details I should have been able to process long before this, if the situation hadn’t been so charged: he’s not from this place.
He’s from mine.
His hair is highlighted with blond and styled with gel.
His face doesn’t have the width of a man yet, at least not a mature beast of a man like Roarg, making the human look to be maybe in his early twenties.
He’s dressed in a lime-colored polo shirt and khaki pants, and he’s wearing a weird wristwatch.
With a curse as he rubs the top of his obviously smarting head, he slaps his other hand on the floor angrily.
“Do not take the Eternal’s holy name in vain in front of my wife, and certainly not when you’re trespassing in my home,” Roarg warns in a perfectly civil voice as he points a sword at the young man’s face. “You should be begging for His mercy. And moreover, you should be begging for mine.”
“F-F-Fine,” the guy says. “Just put the freaking sword down, please!” He holds up his empty hands.
Roarg’s eyes narrow, not looking convinced.
Gosh, he’s still so naked. His buns are amazing, a lighter green than the rest of him. Not that that’s important to focus on right now. “Roarg!” I whisper urgently.
He doesn’t turn away from the intruder, but he’s listening to me. “Yes, my doe?”
Never having been called a doe in my life, my jaw works for a second. By the time I gather myself—I swear, it only takes me a second—the man on the floor has had enough of being held at swordpoint by an angry creature with a literal swinging dick.
“That’s it!” the guy declares, hunching into a sitting position.
“I am sick and tired of getting threatened—and freakin’ attacked!
—by you overprotective freaks! Psycho werewolves.
Stupid hick cowboys. Killer Orcs! This job sucks,” the man adds, spitting the words through his teeth.
And with a disgusted glare up at Roarg, who, killer sword in hand, is glowering down at him with deadly intent, the guy fishes into his pocket.
He pulls out something glowy and gold, and without looking where it might go, he sends it hurtling across the room, a metallic clink ringing out when it connects with some random thing.
Then he looks between us both and shouts, “I QUIT!”
And with that, he squeezes his wristwatch and disappears.
Frowning fiercely, Roarg pokes the empty spot with his sword. When he doesn’t encounter an invisible body, he starts stabbing around like he intends to find where the invisible man is hiding.
I stare, unseeing. Because the heartbeat before that guy poofed out of existence, in that second when he straightened to look at me, I saw the front of his shirt. In big writing, it read GAME GUIDE.
“Roarg…” I breathe, eyes wide.
Roarg moves so swiftly he’s in front of me before I can blink.
He brushes a soothing touch over my hair before he catches me by the nape.
He brings my cheek to his chest, offering comfort as he securely grips his sword in his fighting hand.
He brings one knee up on the bed as he scans his room, checking for other threats.
“Don’t move,” he orders. Then he’s stalking for the door.
He rips it open and rushes out, weapon ready to cut down any other foes he encounters.
Part of me thinks I should follow him. Make sure he doesn’t kill anyone he shouldn’t. But I’m still frozen in shock.
The house, I can see from the bed, is dark.
This whole time, I was half concerned that three crazy Orc wives were parked outside the door while their husband bedded me, but it appears that they went to bed themselves.
With two of them pregnant and one of them recovering from childbirth, I guess they probably take advantage of the chance to sleep when they can.
Evidently, Roarg encounters no one on his quest. He storms back in, looking calmer but still deadly.
“The house is secure,” he rumbles. “But then, I would have sworn that my bedchamber was safe from threat.” Clearly troubled, he moves to me and caresses my jaw with a light touch.
“Good girl for staying put as I asked you to. Thank you.”
I don’t even touch that. I definitely don’t look closely at the reaction his praise elicits in my core.
Let’s say it complements Roarg’s now stiff-as-a-pike state; the aftereffects of adrenaline are really strange.
Fixing his sheet around me so it’s less a towel and more a toga, I scramble off the bed, diving for the—
I’m hauled right back to the bed, my body planted flat out in its center, a massive Orc man poised protectively above me. “What has you panicked?” Roarg growls, sword held off to the side of us.
I point my hand to indicate the floor below us. “Nothing. I just need to see what’s on those papers!”
Sending an unsettled look around his room one more time, Roarg lets me up. And he moves with me, covering me with his body and sword arm should anyone else wink into existence from out of nowhere as I hunker down and collect a handful of strange printouts.
“You can read?” Roarg asks gruffly.
I glance up at him, surprised. “Yeah—can’t you?”
He looks down at the papers, nostrils flaring. “Some.”