6. Tokens #3
He shifted alongside me in the dark. “Let’s see if you can enjoy the finer things, barbarian,” he muttered, and with a slowness that felt agonizing, he nuzzled the sensitive curve of my neck, and brought his lips to my skin.
I don’t know why I thought it would be rougher, that he’d crush and bruise and bite and break.
His mouth was warm, and soft, and relentless, on my collarbone, the softness of my shoulder, as my heart threatened to run too fast, like I’d eaten digitalis, till like the hearts of the poisoned, it would stop.
His lips brushed my temple, the bridge of my nose, till they lingered, tasting, at the corner of my mouth.
“Remember to breathe,” he murmured, and his lips met mine.
There was so much about him I’d thought was supposed to be hard.
He looked hard. Muscles, brow, jaw. He looked like an extension of the blades he wielded.
He looked like you’d cut yourself stroking his hair.
Now, as his lips moved over mine, the touch was soft, like I was something worth being gentle with.
Like I was something he could tease open with a song.
I didn’t want to be someone who fell apart at the first sign of gentleness, who came crawling at the first open hand so I could be struck.
I was not a creature to be coaxed. When my breath caught, and he chuckled, I fisted my hands against the bedroll.
But staying still…if I resisted, did I gain myself anything?
This bitter pride I held to, maybe I could convince myself I was unmoved.
Maybe I could even convince him. But denying this man would not bring me closer to safety, or freedom, or make him more inclined to defend me from the brutes we met in this forest. If my goal was getting out of this with my sanity, how much of that could I save by defiance versus by giving him what he’d want?
I moved my lips against his, like kissing a cheek.
His fingers tightened, near bruising, on my arm, a bite of that brutality before his grip relaxed.
His hand slid to cradle my neck. So this was dangerous, too, giving him what he wanted, drawing in the orc I’d chosen.
With someone this strong I was in danger either way.
Our mouths moved together, mine hesitant, his slow, and then his kiss deepened, testing, like a question.
But what could he have to ask me? I reciprocated, clumsy, and he hummed against my lips, his arms drawing me closer, and I remembered again I was unclothed.
I didn’t know how long we would need to be together. What if I needed to be good at this?
Lying still helped nothing. If I was going to kiss him, I might as well touch. I found his body in front of me and to steady myself, I grabbed his shoulders.
His hand found my waist, and he pulled me to him, close against the heat of his skin.
His abdomen moved against mine, his mouth hard and soft, and he tasted like wood sorrel and pine, like the burn of a campfire, like salt and rain and if he was going to touch me, why shouldn’t I touch him?
I ran my hands down the smooth planes of his body, the divots and curls of him, muscle and soft flesh.
He snarled against my neck, his grip flexing, and I went still.
“I'm sorry,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Don't,” he growled into my shoulder, pulled back just enough that I could catch the glint in those iron-forge eyes. “Don’t…be sorry.”
I slid my fingertips across his skin again, and his breath hitched, and he came back to my mouth again.
Maybe I was good at this, at affecting him. Maybe that wasn’t pathetic. I was thrown into a cell to get an orc under my control. What else would you call this, when his breathing changed and his head bucked back as I moved? I wasn’t puppeting him, but addicting him, maybe.
Maybe orcs weren’t like human men, where they could take us and then throw us away. Maybe this weak and transitory power mattered.
I didn’t want to admit that it was affecting me, too, the roughness of his breathing, the demand in his kiss, the way he pulled me close, his hands on my back.
What I should be feeling was fear. I should fear destruction.
I should fear at least pain. This savage satisfaction that his pulse rose with mine, this desire to pull him closer, to take his body as he took me…
this was more animal than human. But why not lose myself?
Bogdana hadn’t given me medicine for the pain.
We should take what relief this world offered.
I pressed myself against him, into the way we grappled and dragged at each other.
I pressed into the waves of feeling that raked against what was left of my mind.
I pressed in like he was the mast in a shipwreck, and we were the last thing above water.
I kissed and bit and clung.
A shuddering heat flowed over me, an enervating warmth. I clung, weaker than before, through the waves, a whimper coming out of me, like some damned dog.
He gasped against my skin. I was still reeling, still clinging like a lost thing, when he pushed my legs open.
I expected pain. I didn’t expect the opposite, the relief crashing into me as he thrust in. I didn’t expect release.
I didn’t expect hunger.
I was shattering, losing my grip on my own mind, the heat rolling through my body that he ravaged, unable to care where his hands went, what happened next.
I wanted this, the power of him driving in, the rhythm of his body with those jagged breaths, the sear of each thrust into my core.
I wanted the way he pressed into me and gasped, again, the way his hands tightened on my wrists, his snarl as the pressure of him blocked out everything else.
His body shuddered, the last of the waves rolling over me, leaving me limp.
He pulled off and collapsed beside me, panting, and I lay there, a nerveless thing.
Some women enjoyed this, I’d known that. What did it mean about me, that I was one of them?
“I’m sorry,” he said in the dark, and I couldn’t find my voice in my body to reply. His thumb caressed my lip again, and that wasn’t odd, I supposed, after his tongue had been there. “I should have told you, that first night. That there wouldn't be another.”
The air was cold, but heat came off his skin, our breath mingling. And it should have been odder, to have nothing between us. This all should have been odd, but I didn’t have any fear left.
He pressed a lazy kiss to my head. “Who would take a harem over this?”
The pouch lay heavy against my breast. My thoughts were scattered, unwordable things. I lay next to the orc, and at some point, against the rhythm of his breath, I lost myself.