6. Tokens #2
He shook his head again, irritated. “Do you humans learn how to speak? If you want to carve a husband out of a random orc, you're going about it wrong. Any orc would tell me what she wanted. A child five years old could tell me.”
“Then are you going to marry them?” I’d blurted it out, and I couldn’t take the stupid thing back. “The orcs,” I whispered. “Are you going…to marry them?”
He put down his knife, looked at me like he hadn’t seen me before. “You want to fight me,” he said, and my heart was in my mouth. He just sat there. “I’ve lived among soldiers. I’ve served among mercenaries. I know when someone is trying to get me to fight. What are you doing?”
I stayed silent; didn’t know what to say. I was saving what was left of me. I was trying to stay alive.
The knife slid into his sheath.
If he hit me now, would that make it easier to poison him? Or would I feel like I’d deserved it? Would my heart betray me, like so many others’?
I wasn’t better or smarter than the women who died. I wasn’t better than anyone. I tasted salt on my lips. A tear slid down my face, foolish.
“We don’t marry more than one woman,” he said.
“You can put your mind at ease, whatever rumors you have heard. We are not that way.” He breathed deep, his voice a little raw, that steely control still running through it.
“I’m sorry I let you worry. I will try to remember how little we know of each other.
You are…in no danger of replacement. This is not a harem.
” He held what he’d worked in his hand out.
A spoon. He’d whittled a spoon. “You’ll need this to eat, yes?
” He was still holding it out. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t name whatever this feeling was, whatever my insides were doing, screaming, or melting, or turning to glass. “I need…I’ll be back.” I fled into the trees.
I crouched in the dead leaves, my heart still pounding.
He would show his colors eventually. He would have to.
He would turn. They all did. And I wasn’t a weakling.
I wasn’t giving in because I was cheap, because any show of forbearance or kindness broke my resolve.
I was delaying because that ferryman had been unnerving, the way his eyes followed me, and I didn’t trust him, and the orc…
it was better to stay with the enemy I knew than to risk a stranger.
We’d crossed the river. There would be a road.
I’d find it. Maybe we’d cross other humans, and I’d travel with them.
This wasn’t me giving up. This was wise planning.
I caught my breath again, desperate gasps that sounded too much like sobs.
When I returned to the campfire he had one bowl he was eating from, offered another to me. I took it.
“If you can,” he said, “Tell me what’s bothering you before you decide to start a fight. I’ll try to do this better.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Am I forgiven?”
“Pardon?”
He was staring at me, the ghost of a smile on his mouth. “Am I forgiven?”
“For what?”
He whistled, low. “There’s a list already? Sajahk, this is bad. Three days of marriage and I’m in the hole.” I reached for denials, defense, but he pointed at me. “No, you smiled. I saw that. I’m winning. You forgave me for something.” White teeth shone when he grinned.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to kill him. Maybe I got out of this alive, and he did too. Maybe we reached somewhere safe, and I just disappeared, and he forgot. He spooned soup into his mouth. “Mm. Better than rations.”
It was.
The sun set. He banked the coals and walked us farther into the trees for another place to camp.
“We’re far from the road, and the wood was too dry for much smoke,” he said.
“But I prefer not to trust the moon when I travel alone.” He didn’t mention that traveling with me was harder than alone would be.
When he was content with a small hollow between banks of trees, he smoothed the ground and started laying out the bedding against the earth wall. “I usually sleep sitting up,” he said. “It’s faster to run if I have to.”
I nodded. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds again, and my vision of his preparations in this already dark space was dim. The breeze was chill, and I shivered. An owl hooted, in the night, and I turned to spot it, cutting across the slightest flash of the sky.
“Alright,” he said. “When you’re ready.”
And I’d lost him. My eyes, already weak, had attuned to the brightest part of the night, and now it was only blackness here. I moved stiffly forwards, searching with my toes, my hands, gasped when I touched the warmth of his skin.
His laugh boomed through the hollow.
“Are you going to just watch me—"
“Why? Is that unkind?” His hands caught my waist, and I forgot how to breathe. “Should I show you where I am, then?” The heat was rising in my face, and he laughed again. And I told myself that this made sense, that while I needed him, I needed him to be happy, that playing the wife meant this too.
He pulled me down, to straddle him, and I yiped in shock, before his hand pressed my cheek. “You’re pretty in the dark,” he said. “But you’d be prettier with less between us.”
There was no one else here. However my breath caught, this was perhaps better, better than barely-closed doors in makeshift prisons, or orc tents near other sweaty bodies, or whatever other place this life could find to get me unclothed. I found the hem of that shift.
His hands brushed over my bare shoulders, down, and his voice hummed deep in his chest. “It is a shame you can’t see this,” he said.
“Why?” I got out.
“Because you’re lovely.”
And that shouldn’t have set my face on fire again, but he laughed, and I knew he could see it. I could feel him against me, though he hadn’t disrobed, the size and the heat of him, and goosebumps prickled across my skin, readiness like fear.
“We could get under the blanket,” I said, all false calm and bravado. Far too calm for someone who was naked in the woods with an orc.
His voice rolled against my ear. “So eager to hide.”
I lifted my chin. “It’s cold.”
He chuckled again, and the blanket snugged around my shoulders. I started climbing off his legs to find space next to him, when he twisted me in and caught me against his side.
And now my face was on fire, now with so much of my skin on his, his arm tight around me, and I was squeezing my eyes shut against the dark, trying to breathe and keep from making a sound. The warmth of his breath huffed against my forehead, rosemary and pine. His hand caught my hip, moved—
“We can just do this,” I blurted out, and he stilled. I felt his head lean back, to look at me, I guess, and I schooled my expression, said, “We can just…we can do the part. Where you’re inside me. We don’t have to…the rest. Right now.”
“Why are you saying this?” His voice wasn’t angry. I couldn’t tell if it was confusion, or amusement, but it wasn’t anger, so I pressed through, let myself preserve some tiny piece of my own dignity.
“You’re ready, aren’t you? I am too. Let’s just…it’s late.” I swallowed. My pulse hammered at my throat. I opened my eyes, found the merest, deeper shadow moving in that shadow.
“Why are you in a rush about this?” he rumbled, not a laugh. “It is an odd way, to be eager.” I could almost hear his lips press together, in thought, and how much had I stared at him, that I was seeing expressions in my head? “Are you saying this because you’re trying to please me?”
“I am pleasing myself,” I scraped out, a shuddering breath. “Please.”
He pressed, “You know there are more things to enjoy than just—"
“Please.”
He stopped. He was too quiet.
I had to cover again. I gushed, “Why mess with what’s working?”
He was quiet, and then I felt his touch skim along my jaw, my cheek. And he murmured, his voice edged with something that in the dark I couldn’t judge sweet or bitter, only that the rhythms of his accent rolled through me: “How are you so shy and still so bold?”
I didn’t answer. His hand left my leg, and even with trying to brace myself, trying to ready for the pain that would come again, I felt relief pass over me.
“A compromise,” he said. I tensed— “You let me kiss you.”
My mind stuttered. “You…what?”
“Kiss.” His lips grazed my neck, by my ear. “You humans have heard of it?”
“Yes, we…” There was no winning that argument. “...humans kiss.”
“Do you?” he murmured. His teeth nipped at my ear, and I almost jumped out of my skin. He laughed again. “...then kiss me.”
Blood was rushing to my head, and this was a reasonable expectation, there was no reason I should have thought orcs only thought about the main act, when the drunks at the pub where I’d beg Father to come home and the sweaty-palmed boys outside the church both equally wanted their mouths on mine.
I shouldn’t have assumed that giving him one part of me meant he wouldn’t slowly take every other piece of me I had.
I pulled back, steadied myself. “Fine,” I said, that false courage trembling in a vibrato that wasn’t mine.
“Fine, yes, I’ll kiss you.” My eyes had just adjusted enough to find his silhouette, the barest sheen of moonlight against his shoulders, his hair.
I put my hand on his shoulder— smooth, warm skin— for balance, and what if his mouth was the wrong place to start; what if I was supposed to kiss his nose or something or his cheek what if—
I collided with his mouth, warm lips, pressed, pulled back. “There.” The moment hung.
When he spoke, there was mock censure in his voice. “You live up to your reputation for aggression,” he said. “Even your kisses are like you’re trying to punch with your lips.”
“I’m not—"
“Are you afraid I’m going to get too lost in your caress and forget to make love? That’s not how this works.”
“No! It isn’t…” the words were a tangle and I couldn’t press them through.
“Wife,” he murmured. “I’m not one of your rabid humans. You’re going to have to accept that I’m a little slower at this than you. I’ll have to lean on your understanding.” He cupped my chin in his hand. “Can I show you?”
“...yes ,” I whispered.