CHAPTER 14 — Dances with Dire Wolves
STEPHANIE
“You should have seen them together last night,” Joktepitha crows at breakfast the next morning.
I give her a startled look, but there’s no hint of duplicity on her face.
For a second, I was going to wonder if she manufactured Crushosh’s crying jag last night, but Roarg didn’t seem surprised about his son’s need to see him, and Crushosh certainly acted like it was his God-given right to have his daddy rock him to sleep.
Plus, it was cute as heck. My ovaries pop out an egg just remembering the scene.
The overeager state of my reproductive organs aren’t helped by the fact that when Joktepitha rose this morning, Roarg gently played with his son while his mom got to enjoy going to the bathroom all by herself.
By the time she came back to take their boy, I was ready to jump a smug daddy Orc, and by Joktepitha’s smirk, she knew it.
Therefore, Roarg and I screwed like bunnies and I was late to breakfast. Again.
Ulda sets a jar of jam down in front of me with a clunk. “While I’d be the first to tell you to feed yourself up, try not to eat the entirety of this. At least not until the berries are ripe enough that we can harvest more. Substitute with honey when you can to stretch this out.”
She sits down in front of her own plate.
Apparently, everybody decided to delay breakfast until the two stragglers in the household quit mauling each other.
Awful nice of them to do. Their husband gets to enjoy breakfast with them and their kids, and despite having to wait for grub while we literally screwed off, nobody is complaining.
“‘Kay,” I tell her. “Hey, can I go get fitted for those dresses in town after all?”
Because I had a long time to think about it as I struggled to fall asleep sometime way too early this morning, and I decided I’m too susceptible to Orc daddy charms. I need to find Zuldana’s headquarters and zap out of here before I catch serious feelings.
“Stephanie, wait.” Roarg, sitting at the head of the table, also fashionably late to breakfast since he was with me making us both very late for breakfast, takes my hand in his big one, his lips brushing my knuckles amorously. “Come with me today. Help me work.”
Joktepitha snorts and pretends to whisper to Namak?ga and Ulda, “Help him work? Is that what we’re calling it now?”
Roarg’s grin widens as he stares into my eyes and doesn’t disagree with her assessment of his ultimate plan.
Spending a day with Roarg sounds like a very bad idea.
However, my body is all on board for this plan, because I must be easy for Orcs.
I flutter my free hand over my chest. “Just moi? I get you all to myself outside of the bedroom? Real couple—as in two—time? Careful what you start, Roarg,” I tease, tweaking his fingers.
“Don’t let me get used to this, or I might get jealous. ”
Everyone in the kitchen gasps. Even the babies might look startled. (Probably because the adults just sucked in half the world’s air.)
Roarg’s green face turns stony. It also might be turning purple. “Stephanie,” he says coolly, “jealousy has no place in an Orc home.”
I hold up my free hand and cast my gaze to the sisterwife troop who are staring at me in various stages of shock and horror. “All right, easy. That’s a swear word I will never again say, got it.”
Roarg’s eyes fire, and he tugs on my fingers like I’m a child who needs a pay attention signal. “Don’t be flippant.”
“Roarg,” Ulda says.
Roarg doesn’t spare her a glance. “Calling a woman jealous is the deepest insult—and you should never say it—or worse, feel it—in reference to yourself.”
I take a moment to control how he’s making me feel. “I was joking,” I tell him softly.
His face stays unforgiving, hard. “I’m not.”
I stare up at him.
He searches both my eyes. “With you, I will always try to be understanding. I would pay a thousand trespass fines for mistakes you make.” He takes my chin. “But you must never be envious. Never that. Jealousy and envy in an Orc home will eat away everything we try to build together.”
“That’s your rule?” I ask, keeping my voice controlled.
“Yes,” he says firmly.
“I have one too,” I say. I pull my chin out of his grasp.
“When you need to do this,” I gesture between us, “give me the courtesy of taking me somewhere private first. She can gripe at me,” I point to Ulda, “and she can chew me out,” I jerk my head at Joktepitha, “and Namak?ga can say something to me right here in front of God and everyone. But you’re different.
If you’re going to scold me, I’d appreciate it if I didn’t have an audience. ”
Roarg’s head tips back slowly. By degrees, his eyes soften as his gaze lowers, for all the world looking chastised. “That’s a fair request, and a wise protocol.”
“Etiquette he’s well familiar with already and should have thought to follow,” Ulda surprises me by saying, by admonishing him, however mildly.
Roarg mulls over her words for a moment. Then he bends his neck, leaning toward her like he’s inviting reprimand.
Ulda’s lips twitch and she swipes his shoulder. It’s the lightest cuff in the world, like a grizzly cuffing her mate when he gets pushy, but the fact that she does it to Roarg—to the towering Roarg of all Orcs—startles the bejeezus out of me.
With a tiny, contrite smile, Roarg straightens and inclines his head to me.
He opens his mouth—then closes it, his lips flattening into a line, his brows bunched.
His next words express his regret. “Stephanie, I humbly apologize. I do know better. Next time, when we have a discussion of that nature, we will step out of the room.” He swoops in, his big body easily stretching across the distance that separates us, and his lips meet mine, gently.
Appeased that he acknowledged that it wasn’t nice to take me to task at the breakfast table, no matter how light the rebuke, I let him kiss me.
But I still feel stung. I pull back after only a moment and move my attention to my jar of jam. Just my luck, I can’t break the seal. I twist with all the irritation at my mini injustice that I’m mightily trying to swallow—but I’m not strong enough.
Sighing in aggravated defeat, I hold the jar out to Roarg without looking at him, because I’m out of sorts now.
If Ulda hadn’t stepped in, I think I’d be feeling a little mad, and also a little…
hurt. To be honest, even with her stepping in, even with Roarg’s swift apology, I’m still feeling a bit hurt.
Or something, I don’t know. Whatever’s wrong, I can’t just shake it off. Not yet.
Bypassing the jar entirely, Roarg moves, wrapping me up in his huge arms and dragging me off the bench and over the table onto his lap, all without knocking over any cups, plates, or covered breakfast dishes.
It’s impressive. You have to wonder if this Orc has done this before.
He squeezes me to him with rib-creaking force. “You will accompany me today,” he declares. And he pops the lid off my jar like it’s nothing.
“I loosened that for you,” I say with a sniff.
Roarg throws his head back and shakes his gorgeous house with his laughter.
Strangely, I think this is what soothes me.
I’m further helped along by consuming my entire breakfast while being hugged on Roarg’s lap.
I’ve never had a man hold me while we eat before.
I would never have guessed I’d like it, and I definitely wouldn’t have thought it’d make me feel better.
It does, though. Especially because Roarg takes every opportunity to rub my arm, touch my back, press his nose to my hair.
He even feeds me bites from his plate, and steals bites from mine.
I like it. A lot.
The sisterwives watch us with sly glances, looking pleased.
I finish up breakfast—still perched on Roarg’s thick thigh—but find I haven’t quite sated my sweet tooth. Mindful of Ulda’s advice to make the jam last—freaking jam, the sweet staple that qualifies as the most decadent dessert in this place—I hit the jar of honey.
It’s good. But I miss chocolate so bad I’m seeing Hershey bar mirages.
“Don’t you people have cocoa beans?” I moan as I listlessly lick honey off my wrist where I somehow smeared it.
Roarg watches me do it with no small amount of interest. It’s clear from the hunger in his expression that he too is craving something sweet, and like me, he's not going to find the satisfaction he wants in the bottom of a honey jar.
There’s a honeypot joke I could make, but I’m too classy. I look around at the Orcs. “Don’t get me wrong. Honey and jams are great. But chocolate…”
Namak?ga wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. “We’ve tried those beans. We won’t waste our coppers on them again.”
Ulda nods smartly.
Joktepitha leans forward to meet gazes. “Maybe the Dragonkind traders sold us bad beans. What we tried was bitter, and when we took them home and boiled them, they still tasted bitter.”
My mouth is hanging open a little. I close it. “Did you add sugar, butter?”
Ulda reaches for the long loaf of bread, slicing a chunk off for herself. “That trader wanted more for a bag of sugar than you can fetch for ten jars of honey. And honey tastes better, in my opinion.”
“Well,” I start carefully, eyeing my mistrustful-of-cocoa beans audience, “I don’t think honey compliments cocoa like sugar does. Combining sugar and cocoa—and butter—makes for some mind-blowing treats, just so you know.”
Namak?ga sniffs and Joktepitha rolls her shoulder. “So the Dragonkind claimed.”
I bite my lip. “You guys really don’t like these dragon men and women.”
“Technically, we’ve no quarrel with their women,” Joktepitha says brightly.
“That’s because no one’s ever seen one,” Ulda mutters.
Roarg makes a humming noise.
My eyes widen, and I glance up at him and catch his unsettled expression before returning my attention to Ulda. “Is that true?”