Page 39 of The Orc's Captive Bride
He lifted her like she weighed nothing and pressed her against the wall. The cool stone was a shock against her heated skin, but she didn’t care.
Couldn’t care about anything except the way he touched her. The way his body felt against hers. The way his kiss stole every coherent thought.
“I wanted this,” he murmured against her lips. “I wanted you. From the moment I saw you.”
“Then have me.”
His eyes turned black as his Beast rose to the surface, making him look dangerous. Feral.
Perfect.
His mouth moved to her throat, then down to her breast, drawing the aching peak into his mouth with a single-minded intensity that made her writhe against him. She was coming apart in his arms, pleasure building to an impossible crescendo?—
She woke up with a gasp.
The room was dark and empty. There was no Khorrek. No pleasure building to impossible heights. She was alone in her luxurious prison, and there was an ache between her thighs that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with want.
Oh my God.
She pressed her hands to her burning face, mortification warring with lingering arousal. She’d just had a sex dream. About Khorrek.
Who was probably standing guard outside her door right now.
Kill me. Someone please just kill me now.
She was an academic—someone who lived in her head, not her body. Physical attraction had always been something she understood intellectually but rarely experienced personally. Certainly nothing like this. Nothing that made her wake up aching and desperate and wishing the dream had been real.
“This is insane,” she whispered to the empty room. “You’ve known him for less than a week. He kidnapped you. He’s an orc. He works for a psychopath. This is literally the worst possible person to develop feelings for.”
Her body, apparently, didn’t care about logic.
The dream had felt so real. The weight of him. The heat. The way his hands had touched her with a mix of reverence and hunger that made her breath catch even in memory.
And that voice. Dark. Rough. Telling her he wanted her.
From the moment I saw you.
She groaned and pulled the blanket over her head like she could hide from her own mortifying thoughts.
It was the stress. Had to be. Her brain was processing trauma through incredibly inappropriate sexual fantasies about her captor. There were probably academic papers about this sort of thing. Stockholm Syndrome with an erotic twist.
Except it hadn’t started after he kidnapped her.
It had started the moment their eyes met at the stone circle. That instant, electric connection that had made his Beast stir. And she’d felt it too—an instant recognition, a pull she couldn’t explain.
Insanity. This is insanity.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about their kisses. The real ones. How he kissed her like she was oxygen and he was drowning. How she’d pulled him down to her last night with no hesitation, no second thoughts. How right it had felt.
Until he’d wrenched himself away like she’d burned him.
You need to sleep. You are exhausted and not thinking clearly.
The words had stung—still stung—because they meant he thought the kiss was a mistake. That she’d only done it because she was tired and confused and not in her right mind.
Maybe he’s right.
But lying here in the dark, achingly aware of every place dream-Khorrek had touched her, she couldn’t convince herself it was true.
