Page 21 of Shackled to the Orc

“How should I know? You’re the reason I’m here, not him. You think he would have paid for me if it wasn’t for you barging down the stairs?”

His bright green eyes watch me carefully. I can’t ever get a read on him. He closes the door and sinks heavily onto the bed. It creaks under his bulk as he leans back, his huge muscles cording as he puts his hand behind his head. There’s this constant tension to him, this coiled energy that could explode into violence at any second.

“You will tell me every word he says.”

I run my hand over my forehead, feeling the tension between my eyes. “What do you think he wants from me, Khan? Why do you think he bought three Amazons with broad shoulders? You think it was to keep you company? Put it together, Khan, you’re getting old. He’s thinking about the future. He wants seven-foot-tall half-orcs to sell off to other pitmasters and raise up as the next generation.”

“I would not have a child raised into this life,” he growls, his huge hands clenching the sheets.

“I get what Shug wants. What I don’t understand is you. What do you want from me? To order me around? To make me sleep in your bed while you lie on the floor? Why me? Make it make sense.”

He says nothing, and it’s like talking to a mountain. “Shall I stand? Sit? Do a dance for you?” I’m poking the bear, and his lack of reaction only infuriates me more. It’s my life he’s playing with, and he doesn’t seem to care.

Khan turns his head, looking me up and down. “I was wrong before.”

“About what?”

“I called you a peacetime woman. Out there, you did what you had to do. No hesitation.”

“I just did what I needed to. That’s all.”

“He would have died if it wasn’t for you.”

“You think it always goes well? It doesn’t. There’s been times I wasn’t enough, and I did everything I could, and it still ended bad. And I learned from it. But you, you just sit around, blaming yourself for what happened so long ago. You might be happy sitting here waiting to die, but I’m not.”

I know my words are dangerous, that he told me not to mention his tribe, but I’m tired of him changing the subject, of his stony silences, of his infuriating presence. “You think I don’t see what’s going on? You won’t take anything to help your pain. You felt guilty getting a massage for your headaches, you train even though your arm needs rest. I get it. You want to hurt, then you want to die. But why me? Why point me out and drag me into it?”

He doesn’t answer. He turns his head, staring straight forward at the wall, drawing up and hunching forward, hands on his huge thighs. Khan is a titan of a man, brute strength and power, and all of it is wasted, turned against other warriors trapped in the same pit.

The silence stretches, and I can’t take it any longer. I stand up, the chair clattering behind me, all my helpless frustration boiling up as I stalk in front of him while he stares straight through me like I don’t exist. “No, you don’t get to sit there like a wall. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have been bought by that rich fool and found a way to get out. This place is like a jail.” I cross my arms, tight, because I want to reach out and punch him.

“I did not choose you.”

“You bloody well did.”

Suddenly, he’s standing, towering over me, twice my size, and I bite my tongue, regretting my words. “When I saw you, tied up naked, I was moving before I could think.”

He was like a statue, my words washing over him, but now he’s alive and vital, his lips curled back showing his fangs. I step back, and he steps forward, until my back hits the wall, and there’s nothing but the orc in front of me, my entire vision taken up by the wall of green muscles and his power, every breath filled with his masculine sweat.

“I was ready to die before I tasted your scent.” He raises his hand, running his finger over my jaw like I am made of porcelain, his finger grazing my lip, and I gasp, pressing my back against the wall, with nowhere to run.

“What are you doing?” My voice wavers as I speak, the rush of sensations pulsing up in me, dark tendrils of need gripping me.

“I can smell it in your scent. What you crave.” His voice is a low growl, deep and hypnotic. I bring my hands up, pressing them against his broad chest. At first I want to push him away, but when I touch the wall of power that is him, my fingers running over his sweaty muscles, my hands tremble. He drives me insane, an old lion who refuses to die, the embers of his being sparked anew.

“Is this your plan, Maya? Seduce me? Bind me to you, so I help you escape?”

I can’t speak. My chest is rising and falling as my heart pounds, his finger tracing down from my lips, running against my neck, touching my collarbone, making me shiver. “You should be careful, Maya. How do you know I won’t keep you as my pet? Train you to be my little toy and never let you free?”

“That’s not you,” I manage, breathless.

“I’m a brute. I’m a killer.”

“Then you wouldn’t care if those two novices died.”

His hand opens around my throat and slowly closes, between me and the wall, and with one squeeze, he could end me. It only makes heat flush between my legs, feverish, my body aching for him to take me. His cock rears up, thickening and pressing out from his black loincloth, and I glance down past his forearm at my throat to the huge heft of it as it grows and grows, this massive, green rod that pulses with every beat of his heart. It would rip me in two.

He breathes in, nostrils flaring, tasting my scent, tasting the darkness of my uncontrollable lust. He drives me to madness. “You’re scared of me,” he growls, as he holds his hand around my throat, able to feel the rapid beating of my heart as it pulses in my neck.

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