Page 44 of Halfling
She enjoyed Orek’s stories very much; he was a gifted storyteller, and when he told her of all the things he’d seen and heard passed along in orcish stories, she gobbled them up greedily. For all that he was generally a quiet male, he came alive telling a story. When they were sat eating their supper around the fire, the warm glow would cast him in dramatic shadows, which he used to his advantage. His hands were always moving, and he knew when and how to perfectly pitch his voice low for effect. When they were walking during the day, he was no less animated, though she couldn’t watch him as closely since she had to keep her eye out for errant, ankle-turning rocks and gopher holes.
His story today had been the tales he’d heard of mermen. He’d spent the better part of the morning trying to persuade her of it, but she still wasn’t convinced.
“But you neverhearabout male sirens. Just the mermaids on the north coast.”
“They say the males are even more beautiful than the females, so the mermaids guard their men jealously.”
“Who aretheyhere, exactly?”
“Stories.”
“Mmhmm,” she hummed dubiously.
“I’m recounting in good faith.”
“Why would they let themselves be hidden away, though?”
“Maybe they like being kept,” he said in that resonant rumble of his that Sorcha felt all the way to her toes. It was almost like a purr and had no business being as…pleasant as it was.
A mysterious little grin played at his lips, letting just the hint of his fangs peek out. It softened his otherwise broad, brutal face, and Sorcha was drawn in as surely as moth to flame. Days traveling beside thismale and she was beginning to realize there was something almost…beautiful about him. He was big and could be brutal and his face was often set in hard lines, but just as the highest mountain peaks commanded a stark beauty, so too did Orek.
The blend of human and orc in the lines and contours of him created something not monstrous or odd but wonderful.
She felt the blush creeping up her neck and looked away, focusing on everything and nothing besides him.
They’d been following the river for days now, the landscape around them gradually growing greener. They’d left behind the hardy pines and firs that littered the ground with dry needles and sharp cones and trekked now beneath behemoth redwoods and wide cedars. Thick mats of clover and milkweed carpeted the forest floor, running all the way down to the boulders lining the river. Though autumn had been threatening even before Sorcha was taken, it’d yet to turn too chilly, at least before the darkest hours of night. She could only hope the weather would hold.
So far, their journey, other than the slaver attack, had been somewhat easy. Pleasant. She knew most of that was thanks to her travel companion.
Sorcha cleared her throat, still fighting her blush. “I still think you’re kidding.”
He grinned again. “You’ll have to ask a mermaid, next time you see one.”
“Oh, right, yes,next time,sure,” she snorted. “I doubt she’d tell me the truth, either.”
“Hmm,” he hummed, “then I suppose you’ll just have to trust me.”
Orek returned to their camp for the night feeling a little less tense. Head still damp from being dunked in the cold river, he rolled his shoulders to loosen his muscles as his blood cooled.
It was the fifth night after the attack, and just like all the others, Orek had found a moment to slip away into the dusk to take himself in hand. He’d mercilessly worked his cock, imagining it was her smaller, softer hands instead, dreaming what her touch must feel like. He’d grit his fangs and snarl her name as he released into the river, letting it carry away the scent-heavy spend and his sharp, aching longing—momentarily, at least.
Every day now, he filled his head with memories and images of her smile, her laugh, the lush slope of her backside and swells of her breasts. When he looked about the forest, he saw the curve of her waist everywhere, in the bend of the river or slope of a tree branch. He dreamed of burying his face in all those curls, and his fingers itched to twirl them around his fingers. He lived for when her eyes sparkled and her lips, those damnable plush lips, curved in amusement. He didn’t care that it was often to tease him—no, he actually enjoyed that, lived for her every word, even if it was at his expense.
Because it meant she was easy with him. Because it meant she saw him not as a danger but as a…friend.
And a friend was much better than an enemy or threat. Even if his thoughts of her rarely ever stayed merelyfriendly.
Orek was no stranger to taking himself in hand and satiating his needs. He was a male in his prime but alone—he’d done it to relieve a little stress or just because he was bored. Orc-kin weren’t shy; he’d witnessed many of the clan indulging in orgy or other clanmates locked in sex, as well as animals rutting in the forest. He’d even come across more than one pair of humans caught up in their passion.
He’d seen all manner and number of couplings, all the types ofpassion and passion-play, and sometimes been moved. Sometimeshe kept the memory of how a male twisted his hips or the pleasured moans a female made and used those to bring himself pleasure.
Now, though, all he could think of washer.
What sounds she would make as he moved and twisted his hipsjust so,bringing her more pleasure than either of them could stand, haunted his sleeping and waking thoughts.
It was the sweetest torture.
Part of him knew it was a dangerous, fateful path he walked. One he wouldn’t be able to turn back from soon, if he could at all. Once orc-kin accepted and initiated bonding to another, something fundamental and irreversible shifted inside them. It was why mate-bonding was taken so seriously—and avoided by many in his clan.
