CHAPTER 20 — So Do I
ROARG
“Ahhh, now that’s fetching,” I say admiringly, reaching out instinctively for the sparkle of the gemstone in Stephanie’s nose.
“Don’t touch it!” she squeals, pushing my hand away from her face.
I hold up both hands to show her I mean no harm. My gaze moves over her, a smile splitting my face as my attention lights on something else.
“Your hair,” I utter low, and hover my hand over her head, overcome by the sight of her in proper kwa?ara braids and tres?s. I hum appreciatively.
“You can touch that,” she informs me with a sullen sniff.
Immediately, she cups her nose.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
“Not after the cookie cream,” she allows. “But I’m still trying to be careful. Where I’m from, it takes months for a nose piercing to heal.”
“I hope you don’t suffer that long,” I say. “Here, once the cream is applied, you should be nearly healed.” My eyes skip all over her. “You’re even lovelier,” I venture. “And I’m pleased you gave your husband permission to touch your hair.”
“Are you smiling? Don’t smile!” she warns me, eyes flashing—and her show of feistiness instantly makes my cock stiffen. “Those women are crazy!”
I’m doing a rather piss-poor job of stifling my crooked smile. “You mean your sisterwives?” I ask her, petting down her plaited hair.
She relaxes under my touch, and sighs. Her eyes slide closed. “Yes,” she agrees with no small resignation. “My sisterwives.”
Elation blooms in my chest.
Stephanie’s eyes pop open, her senses keen to me.
I want to crow my praise for her, that she’s accepting her new family and her place in it. But actions, I believe, speak more strongly than words. I pull her into my arms and haul her right up against my heart.
“They’re wearing me down,” she shares.
“Your sisterwives?” I ask mildly, also doing my part to wear down her defenses to this family arrangement she’s so well suited for. Yes, it started off seeming strange to her way of thinking. But look at how she fits here. She’s perfect.
We’re in her room; I found her here, meaning to have a tumble with her before dinner. I’m keen to follow this conversation even more than I am to ravage her, though.
“Yeah,” Stephanie grumbles. “You know your dear Ulda doesn’t understand the concept of missing home?”
I caress her hair. “She well understands homesickness. But Orc women are practical. It’s the women who are expected to leave their families at a tender age.
To marry a stranger picked out by her parents, or because some sisterwife saw her and made the arrangements.
” I rub along her back, enjoying the way her muscles relax under my touch.
“It’s normal for a new wife to yearn for home.
So you give your new helpmeet as many reasons as she needs to stay.
” Gently, I cup Stephanie’s face and kiss her.
When she pulls away, she sighs. “The sex is good,” she admits.
I tilt my head. “‘Good?’” I stare at her. The hellfire it’s ‘good’ or I’m not a Hammerfist. “I’ve made you scream until you went hoarse.”
She purses her lips, conceding my point. “Okay, the sex is earth-shattering, all right?”
“Better,” I say with a violent sniff, folding my arms around her.
She grabs my shirt, fisting the material, her eyes pleading. “But sex isn’t everything!”
“No,” I agree, bending down to nuzzle her neck just how she likes it. “It isn’t. What other needs do you have?”
“My ‘needs’ are met,” she says carefully, trying to resist the way her body wants to arch against mine. “There isn’t anything technically that I… that I need, it’s just…”
She’s melting into me. I pull back, finding her struggle to voice her desires too troubling to let alone. “Then what do you ‘technically’ need from me, my Stephanie? You only have to tell me.”
“Plumbing,” she blurts, waving a hand between us impulsively.
Thumb rubbing along the side of her throat, I consider her. “Explain.”
She licks her lips, eyes darting. “It’s where pipes carry water into the house.
For drinking, washing. There are even pipes that run to the bathroom so that waste gets flushed outside of the house.
No more carrying buckets of pee or… the other stuff.
No more tossing chamber pot contents out of the window. ”
I frown, pressing my tongue to my tusk. “Not to take you to task, but we do not toss our voiding water and waste out the window. We have a special garden for it.”
She blinks in surprise. “Oh. You know, Joktepitha might have said something about that. She said I impressed Ulda because I always had the privy pots empty before she had to remind me, and that the garden must be seeing a lot of me. I assumed she was jumping topics.”
I point in the direction she needs to aim herself next time. “The privy garden is that way. It’s entirely flowers that can withstand thinned-down privy water. Waste gets buried in a mulch pit.”
“Huh. Good to know.”
I run my hands up and down her arms. “I have heard of this plumbing you speak of. I would need to have a civil conversation with a Dragonkind to manage this—”
“So that’s never going to happen,” Stephanie says with finality, as if this is a fact, and as if this—no plumbing—is her sticking point.
I stare into her eyes. “I will look low and high until I find the one decent Dragonkind in the miserable pack of them. And I will get your plumbing installed if I’m able.”
She blinks up at me, stunned. “Why?”
“I want,” I say slowly, purposefully, “to make you happy. I mean to keep you, Stephanie. And I want you happy here for all of your days. What else would you have?”
She swallows, and the rims of her eyes fill with shine.
I still. “What ails thee, kwa?ara?”
Bowing her head, her shoulders seem to sink. “Just like that, you’ll get plumbing?”
“If I can, you have my word that we will,” I vow.
“Even though it means you’ll have to deal with Dragonkind.”
“Yes.” I twine an escaped lock of her hair around my finger, looking forward to using her braids to steer her in bed.
“You’ll give your gold to a Dragonkind?”
I tug on her hair and minimize my exhale to something that doesn’t blow down the house. “For you, I will.”
“You are,” she declares, finally raising her face, revealing tear streaks now. “The best husband I’ve ever seen.”
My heart clenches, hearing her say this. I rest my hands on her hips. “Oh?”
“It’s insane, because where I’m from, men who marry more than one woman end up on the news or with a TV deal that shows off every flaw in their very dysfunctional family.
But you…” she traces a fingertip along my arm, making all of my muscles tighten.
“You’re hijacking my brain. It would make you very happy to know how much time my mind dedicates to wondering what I’ll do when I go home and don’t have you anymore. ”
I swallow hard, not at all wanting to consider the possibility that she can leave.
I have very nearly visited the Elven Apothecary shop in town.
Before Stephanie, I believed it was wrong to buy a potion to coerce another.
Now dark ideas dance through my mind whenever I’m not keeping my hands busy enough: one little vial of Elven brewed magic could keep her here forever, surely.
But there’s danger in forcing a lover.
If I force her to stay, the love we’re building between us could curdle on her end like I’ve treated her to poison. And the threat of that unacceptable outcome is the only thing staying my hand.
“There’s so much stuff I’ve left behind,” she’s saying. “Electricity! Microwaves that cook food in moments.”
“Our food is cooked in moments,” I point out, puzzled.
“Way less moments,” she contends. “WAAAAY less. And there are lights that turn on with a switch.”
I gesture to the lamps hanging from their hooks on the wall. “Oil lamps need only to be lit once, and as long as the reservoir is full, it will continue burning at the level you adjust it to.”
“Very different thing,” she says, shaking her head as if I can’t comprehend light. Not like she can. “Just believe me when I say my lights are brighter and bigger and just—more.”
I shrug. “Then we’ll install more lamp hooks and buy more lamps.”
“Roarg, some lights turn on and off if you talk at them in my world. You could tell them to dim themselves and everything and they listen.” She looks up at me so earnestly.
But… “Sorcery,” I mutter, discomfited.
“My world has technology and ways of communication and fabrication you can’t even imagine and—you name it. If I stay here, I’m leaving so much behind!”
Unbidden, my fingers tighten on her hips. My gaze is welded to her face. “But you gain me.”
That stops her. Her breath catches as her eyes search my face.
“And you gain the blessings of sisterwives,” I add.
Her lips tip up in a rueful sort of smile. “Where I’m from, that’s not a selling point but…”
“And brats,” I say quickly. “Hellfire, I’ll give you as many beloved brats as your heart can desire—and if your womb is closed or if you don’t want to birth them, I’ll bring you orphaned brats by the cartload and we’ll ado—”
She covers her face, cutting the words right off my tongue. “Roarg… if I go back—”
If. I like if better than when.
“I’ll never find a man like you,” she whispers, voice breaking.
“Aww, kwa?ara,” I murmur, enveloping her in a squeezing embrace. “I don’t want you to find a man like me. I want you to have me. Although I can admit I am sorry that you are sad.”
She’s shaking her head against my torso. “You all want me to just accept this. Life here,” she says.
“Yes,” I agree.
She exhales a shaky breath, and her hands slide under my tunic. Directly below my belt, my body swells with a crude show of approval. She’s got my kyrp? trained to respond to her simplest touch.
Very softly, she says, “I’m starting to. It’s crazy, but I really…” her fingers find my belt, and I stare down at the top of her head, struggling to listen to her instead of grabbing her up and tossing her back on the mattress. “Like you,” she finishes as if it’s a terrible admission.
I draw the wherewithal to speak and crook a finger under her chin, catching her large, expressive eyes. “And I love you.”
She holds my gaze, her eyes turning warmer, and she sighs softly. “Dammit. I love you too.”
I crush her to me. “Kwa?ara,” I exhale roughly. “I will make you happy. Just open yourself and give me the chance. Give us all the chance,” I correct.
She... nods.
TRIUMPH!
Elation fills me. “I really find your gemstone fetching,” I share, hands rucking up her dress.
She bites back a reluctant smile. “Actually,” she says with a sigh as she helps me undress her, “so do I.”