Page 23 of War Mage

With something like a relieved sob, I let go, letting myself fly with euphoria as I orgasm. It is like I’m being shattered and remade all at once, it’s so intense. I’ve never experienced a climax as forceful as this, my mind almost whiting out in sensation.

I fall forward, catching myself on Urim’s chest, heaving heavy breaths. Slowly, I come back to myself and find that I want soothing. After such intensity, I want soft touches, stroking fingers, murmured praise. But nothing is forthcoming. The orc beneath me might as well be a statue for all that he is moving. If I couldn’t hear his steady heartbeat under my ear, I would think that hewasa statue.

Slowly, with some difficulty, I lift my head, pulling myself up straight. Urim is looking at me impassively, his face unreadable and unmoving, though his eyes glitter darkly in the low light. What is he thinking? I search our mate bond and come up with that emotionless, calm feeling. But I know that is a mask he puts on his real feelings.

“What are you thinking right now?” I ask boldly, holding his gaze.

Urim doesn’t answer for a bit, before pivoting and asking back, “Are you satisfied? Are your appetites sated now?”

His words are like a slap in the face after the submission that I granted him, the trust that I placed in him. His cock is still inside me, still connecting us, but I have never felt further away from a sentient creature than I feel from him at this moment. A surprising amount of hurt wells up in me, but I quickly smother it under a veneer of indifference. I don’t want him feeling how his words affect me in the bond.

So, instead, I climb off of him, letting my skirt fall and cover the evidence of our tryst and pull my underdress back up over my breasts.

“Yep,” I reply carelessly. “I got mine. You were an adequate partner, orc.”

Urim regards me for a long moment, then he stands, doing up his belt on his warkilt, which is slung low on his hips. “Good. But we should probably not indulge like this again. It’ll complicate matters on the mission.”

“Complicate what matters?” I ask dismissively. “Like you said, this was a sating of appetites and now it's done. There’s no reason for it to happen again.”

The orc just nods at my words, turning away from me so that I can’t see his face. The bond still holds strong with that calmness I am growing to hate. “Goodnight, Adara,” Urim says, his voice totally even, like nothing intense just happened between us. Then, before I can say anything back, he exits the captain's cabin and leaves me alone.

I feel vulnerable and angry as he leaves, but I struggle to push those feelings away so that they won’t travel along the bond. He said that he could sate us both without losing control, so I guess he wasn’t lying, but it feels wrong, like something’s missing from this dynamic. Our compatibility is undeniable, but something is broken between us just the same, even if I can’t put into words what that is.

Urim is right. Best that this never happens again. For my own sanity’s sake.

Chapter 10

Urim

Five Days Later

The ship rocks and groans, the swells crashing all around us. Sailors rush around, doing their best to make sure that we do not sink. I smother a sigh. I suppose it was too much to hope that this part of the plan would go off without a hitch. This part of the water is not called the Bitter Ocean for nothing. Storms are common here.

“You can’t leave now!” Captain Ruthford is shouting at me. “Going out in a dinghy in this weather is suicidal!”

“The plan was always to leave during a storm,” I shout back to be able to be heard over the roar of the angry, storming ocean. I’m dressed in Terrian clothes in preparation for leaving, like Vargan would. They are sticking to my skin uncomfortably in the rain and sea spray. With some difficulty, I roll up my sleeve to reveal the runic tattoo on my arm that Lady Melelea designed just for me and touch the peaks on the rune in descending order. Doing so activates the illusion magic within and I can feel the tingling on my forehead as the rune of banishment carves itself painlessly into my skin. I take a bandana from my pocket and tie it across my forehead, in the style that Honorless do, hiding my false rune.

The captain doesn’t react to my actions. He just keeps arguing,“A planned, controlled storm summoned by magic and easily dispersed! Not Feri’s wrath coming down on us!” It’s an apt description. Feri is the Adrikian name for the god of seas, and storms like this are called his wrath. The water and skydoseem angry.

“We’re not far from the Barakrini coast. We’ll get there,” I argue, looking out over the churning ocean. Is it my imagination or the waves getting even bigger? “And we can’t risk waiting or we could get caught.”

“The Barakrini navy’s not out in this weather,” argues the captain. “No one that can help it is!”

“All the more reason not to wait. This is a golden chance to slip into the country without you being caught. We’ll leave and you can get out of the area and from under the storm using your wind stone.”

“You’re mad!” Ruthford insists. “But if I can’t stop you, I’ll stop arguing. If you want to risk your lives on a fool’s journey, then on your head be it!”

“I have something to say about that!” comes Adara’s voice behind me.

I smother another sigh, even as my Mating Instinct lurches in my chest at the sound of her voice. I have barely seen her since that night in the captain’s cabin, a ploy to get my Mating Instinct under control, but it hasn’t been working. How can she aggravate me and bring me peace all at once? “We have to go now! That was the plan all along. A storm gives us the perfect excuse to be in a dinghy when we land in Barakrin and to not have additional slaves. We will say that our ship went down in the storm!”

“Our shipwillgo down in the storm if we leave now! The dinghy can’t take this kind of weather!” Adara shouts at me, glaring at me through the rain.

“I can row in the waves. I’ll get us there.”

“Your arrogance is going to get us killed!”

I shout back. “Just put on your manacles and get in the boat!”

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