CHAPTER 8 — Be Gentle with New Koekje
STEPHANIE
The smell of roasted tusked chicken is so good, my mouth started watering half an hour ago and hasn’t stopped.
Namak?ga came back, which is a huge relief because it means I’m not alone with slap-happy Ulda anymore, and it must be said that Namak?ga is a skilled go-between.
The three of us are in the middle—or tail end, now, I guess—of making Roarg’s lunch when Joktepitha returns, waltzing into the house, wearing Crushosh on her front instead of on her back.
She grandly announces, “Our husband will arrive shortly.” And her voice changes like she’s turned her head to her sisterwives, addressing them.
“If you have any need of him, be sure to attend to it the moment he arrives. You know he’ll be too preoccupied by the end of the day. ”
Pulling the green tops off of strawberries before they’re dumped in a dessert bowl (the greens themselves go onto a drying rack for tea), I look up. “What’s happening at the end of the day?”
Three smirks turn in my direction, making my face flame.
“Oh. Got it.”
Joktepitha saunters over and plops down on the mini bench beside my chair, hand supporting Crushosh’s back as she gets comfortable and grabs the basket of strawberries that still have tops on them, dragging them so they’re centered between us.
She plucks a handful out. “Roarg’s sure to drag you off again,” she confirms, in case I didn’t infer this. “New cunny, and all that.”
I drop my strawberry. “Ugh, you guys have to quit calling it a cunny.” I shake my head emphatically. “That’s a terrible word.”
Namak?ga, in quiet conversation with Ulda, stops whatever she was saying. She swivels her eyes from me to her sisterwives, then back at me. “Oh no. Do you call it something chaste? Like your petals of virtue or some such?”
“Good gravy, no.” I sputter a laugh. “We—we call it a vagina. Or if we’re being accurate, we’ll call it what it is. A vulva.” I wince as I say it.
All three Orc faces grimace. “Oh, the hellfire you’ll say that,” Ulda complains. She points a carrot at my nose. “Koekje. That’s the word you’ll use.”
Warily, I snatch the carrot out of her hand and ask, “Like the cream? What’s it mean?”
“Cookie.”
“Oh.” I nod. “Okay. We use cookie too.” I hand her back the carrot. “What’s the word for a dick?”
“Kyrp?,” everyone says together. “But that’s too vulgar for public,” Namak?ga notes.
“Use kúkr if you aren’t at home,” Joktepitha agrees. “And fine. We’ll use koekjes for your cunny if it doesn’t offend your other-realmer ears.”
“What,” a deep voice asks silkily, “is all this talk of koekjes?”
Roarg stands behind us, having entered silently—a remarkable feat for such a big man. He sends me a look that makes my insides quiver. And he turns an equally warm look on Ulda, Namak?ga, and finally Joktepitha, who winks at him before she kisses the top of their son’s head.
Roarg strides over to her and bends down to add his own kiss to Crushosh’s crown. Then he extracts his son from his mother’s sling—and to my shock, he hands Crushosh to me.
Stuttering, I drop the strawberries I’d been holding and accept him with a nervous, “Umm—I’m—”
Roarg cradles my face in one hand, looking deep into my eyes. “You are delightful.”
Heat fires up from my core. My whole body becomes instantaneous lava.
“I’ll be back for you later,” he promises. And then he kisses me.
Arms full of his baby that belongs to him and his other wife, I’m dazed stupid by the time he draws away, his eyes full of all the things he did to me last night and the whole dirty catalog of things he plans to do to me later.
His focus stays locked on me, his eyes growing hotter and hotter.
Joktepitha moves up behind him, and I think she squeezes his butt. “Be gentle with your new koekje, husband.”
Roarg abruptly turns, looking absolutely dangerous as his chest rises and falls, his tusked jaws parted slightly as he starts to pant. He blinks at Joktepitha, who’s grinning.
And then with no warning, he catches her by the hair.
I jump, hugging Crushosh tight.
Roarg’s eyes shoot to me, and I go stock still. There’s a feverishly bright edge to his eyes.
Joktepitha clears her throat and flattens her hand over the bulge distorting his trousers.
With a low growl, Roarg rips his gaze away from me and drags Joktepitha, laughing, from the room.
There’s silence in the kitchen.
“What was that?” I squawk.
“Our sisterwife has been teasing him mercilessly,” Namak?ga shares. Her eyes are happy. “He has an order he must complete for the Trogs. He doesn’t have the luxury of delay. So Joktepitha spent most of the morning in his forge, doing everything she could to drive him wild as he worked.”
I stare at her in incomprehension. “Why?”
Ulda snorts. Her smile surprises me. “For that.” She jerks her head to indicate the door Joktepitha was just dragged through. “Roarg’s blood is heated from thoughts of you last night, and now Joktepitha has had him in a state all morning. He’s going to plunder her so hard.”
I make a face. “How can it not bother you guys? It’s been, what, five hours since I was the one in his bed doing—” My eyes widen, and I look to the baby in my lap, then dart a quick look between the adults in the room. “It’s beyond weird you’re okay with this.”
Namak?ga shakes her head. “Ulda said she had you change the sheets, and no, he’ll have her on her bed in her room. You’ll see when you’re moved to your own. He’s happy to visit each of our rooms every day.”
That… wasn’t quite what I was weirded out about, but it is a valid concern. Everybody swimming around on the same bed under him? No thank you!
“But with you being so fresh for plowing, you’re likely to see the most of him,” Ulda shares.
“Although if you need recovery time, you need only tell Roarg so,” Namak?ga is quick to add. “Even tonight, if you’re not ready.” Her mouth tips to the side. “I could probably take him once.”
Ulda adds another log to the fire. “If my back stops complaining, I probably can go for a ride too.” She looks to me. “If you need the break.”
I give them both a blank face. Because this is too bizarre, how calmly they’re offering to split conjugal duties. How sincere they’re both being about this. About sharing their husband with me. It’s surreal.
Crushosh raises his hand and grips my lip. I catch his fingers, nomming them, making him smile shyly at me. Then I look back to Ulda. “Okay, so Joktepitha has been teasing him mercilessly so she’d be…” I glance quickly down at Crushosh, then back up at Ulda and mouth, “plundered?”
Ulda rolls her eyes at my reluctance to speak of intimate matters in front of Orc babies. “She’s been teasing him for you.”
My eyes go huge, and my head tips forward. “Say again?”
Namak?ga chuckles and checks the chickens, opening the wood-heated oven and releasing more of the scrumptious roasted meat aroma. “She’s blunting his kúkr—” She gives me a pointed look and a mocking grin. “His sword.”
Ulda carries her bowl of shredded carrots to a counter and returns to the table with a sack of beans, which she starts to snap.
“If not for her giving him a run, it’d be you underneath of him now—all his fire being pounded between your legs.
And he’d be back at you all night.” She shakes her head.
“The koekje cream is good, but it can’t work miracles.
Whatever you did to him last night has him stiff as a headsail caught in a tradewind.
Of the three of us, Joktepitha was the most available for his more heated attention, so she volunteered to take him this afternoon.
I just hope it’s enough. We want you to enjoy each other, and every bride deserves to revel in her Smekbryll—but you enflame him something fierce. Let’s hope you don’t end up crippled.”
Crushosh snuggles against my neck, and I snuggle him back, unable to believe that I’m holding him and smiling.
What I just heard should horrify me, not leave me amused.
I should want to smack somebody—or two somebody’s, since this baby’s mom is seducing the man I was in bed with all night—but yet, as Ulda and Namak?ga start making ribald comments about the koekje plundering that’s surly happening between the man I was intimate with and another woman.
.. I’m weirdly not upset. Not at all. I feel, somehow. .. included.
“This is crazy,” I say in disbelief.
“This is life married to an Orc,” Ulda corrects.
She glances at my hands, one of which is resting on Crushosh’s back to keep him steady to me, and the other which I guess doesn’t look like it’s doing enough.
“Is that a free hand I see?” She shoves a bowl of potatoes at me and hands me a squasher.
“Put it to good use, girl, before we all starve!”