Page 38 of Romancing the Orc

“Good idea.” I glance back over my shoulder in time to catch her happy smile.

It’s still light by the time I call a halt for the evening, the days long this far south on the globe. I leave Lara in a sheltered clearing with the plants ordered to form a protective barrier around her.

Grey joins me on the hunt.

“So, orc. This human world,” he says, his tone serious for once, “is it a place one such as me can live? My fae form can pass as human.”

“True.” His skin color falls within the range of human norms. He’ll have an easier time than me in that regard. “But the people of this time are quite different from the humans of the past. They have their own kind of magic now, something called technology. It includes various forms of identification paperwork. You need it to do almost everything, and you won’t have it.”

“You’re clearly getting by.”

“Perhaps.” I grunt, remembering Lara’s insistence that my agent takes too much of my money. It wasn’t an issue before now, because my needs were simple and I had enough to survive on. But everything’s changed.

This paperwork is going to be an issue if I leave Steve’s “employ.” Will I be able to support my mate? Will I even be able to marry her in the way humans do?

I scowl. No matter what it takes, I must find a way to be the mate Lara deserves.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lara

By the time we make camp for the evening, I’m burning with the need to find some answers. While Brokk and Grey head off to hunt, I pull out the journal and flip it open to where I left off, the photos acting as a bookmark.

I fan out the pictures like a hand of cards, place the top one on the ground in front of me, and scrutinize the next. No matter how I position it, it doesn’t fit with the one on the ground. I set it off to the left of the first photo and grab another. It also doesn’t match up to either of the others. I try reading what’s on them to see if the words will help me put them together, but each picture shows such a small section of wall that it’s just fragments like: “follows the” and “traveler” and “cannot walk.” Super helpful, not!

My mind wants to make a story with the words, but when I try to piece sentences together like one of those refrigerator-magnet word games, it’s clear from the pictures that the stone they’re carved into doesn’t match up.

I groan. God, the photos are completely jumbled. It’s going to take absoluteagesto lay them out in the right order. Jigsaw puzzles have never been my thing—I’d rather read.

The same is true now. I try to focus on the pictures, but the storyteller in me is sucked in by Caroline’s words spread open on my lap.

“Just a few pages,” I whisper and start to read where I left off, the High Fae symbols as clear as English:

“Little human, have you come to be mine for a night or an eon?” Those lips curled into a wicked grin, and everything my chambermaid told me of what happens between a man and a woman in the marriage bed flooded through my body with instant awareness.

“A night,” I whispered.

“Pity.” He dropped his head, his breath brushing over my ear. “What I would do to you, if I had an eon.”

Then those lips were on my neck, and a great pleasure overwhelmed me. I swooned, falling into his firm embrace, and the scoundrel laughed at me. Yes, I named him scoundrel, for indeed he was. No gentleman would laugh at a lady so. I told him as much, shoving at his shoulders with seemingly less strength than that of a babe, for all the good it did.

“Ah, my unplucked maiden, do not fuss.” His eyes held mine in a mesmerism that made me pliant in his arms. “I will bring you such pleasure as you cannot now fathom and will never feel again. You will long for me for all your days.”

He twirled us about, and when he halted our spin, we no longer stood in any human garden but in a Faerie bower complete with a bed hung with lanterns that glowed blue instead of gold. Spun silk in a wealth of bright colors draped the decadent cushions he pushed me down onto. His fingertips brushed my ankles as he gathered the hem of my night rail in his hands, and I quivered at the scandalous sensation.

We came together in that wanton bed, experiencing the pleasures of the flesh reserved for husband and bride. My Faerie lover knew no shame in the act, though, and while I lay in his arms, all such concerns were distant and trivial.

There was room for naught but pleasure.

“Whew.” I blow a stray lock of hair off my face. All my years of studying the journal gave me only the tiniest understanding of what she experienced. Even with the actual sex glossed over by euphemism, it’s clear the encounter shook her.

God, I spent all of my teenage years making up stories about her and her fae lover. I went through my angsty poetry phase early, thank god, and moved on to writing romances. Teen me thought they were “hella” racy, but there was little more than passionate kissing. I chuckle. If that younger Lara had any idea of the smut I write now, she would have died of mortification!

I flip forward in the journal, skimming over the text with the long practice of a speed reader. I’ll take time to savor it later—for now, I want answers. How did their story end? Did he follow her to America? What did he think of her having a human husband?

Caroline spent the next few weeks wandering the grounds every night, searching for her Faerie lover without finding him. Only a month or so later, her family hurriedly married her off to a young merchant due to leave for a new position in America.Their first child was born eight months later. The babe was uncommonly fair and handsome and looked nothing like her husband, but the transatlantic move did what her family hoped for and kept anyone from gossiping about the true paternity of the child.

Excitement tingles along my nerves. My x-times great-grandfather—math issonot my strong suit—was fae!

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