Page 11 of Rapunzel's Outlaw Orc
“I was so sure I could get out. That someone would hear me. But no one came.”
“Until now.”
She looks at me. “Until now,” she echoes.
Something shifts between us. A quiet understanding. Two broken people, thrown together by magic, fate, and aggressive roots.
Rapunzel’s eyes flick to my legs. Then up. Then down again. Her eyes widen as they skim over the bulge pulsing against my leather pants, and the flush coating her cheeks could rival sunburn.
“Do you want to use the bath?” she blurts, gesturing toward the bathroom with its crooked little tub and an absurdly cheery purple curtain. She wrinkles her nose adorably. “You sort of smell.”
I look down at myself—crusted leather pants, patches of dried blood, what could be a dollop of bird shit, and whatever else has congealed in the creases. My nose twitches. I smell like I’ve been through a bog and a back-alley brawl with a swamp hag. She’s probably horrified.
“I haven’t exactly had access to modern plumbing,” I mutter defensively.
“I have soap. Several kinds, including chamomile,” she says, all sunshine and sin. She tosses me a bar. “That one’s got goat's milk in it.”
I rise to my feet and take the towel she hands me—the smallest in existence—and make my way to the tub. It’s the size of a wine barrel. I’m the size of three wine barrels. We are not a match made in bathing heaven.
I strip and squeeze myself in anyway. My knees hit my chest. My foot knocks the faucet. The soap shoots out of my hand like a greased piglet.
“Why is this soap so slippery?” I mutter, smacking my elbow on the rim.
Water splashes everywhere. I curse so loudly, I’m surprised I don’t shatter the tub.
I’m only mildly concussed when I finally haul myself out, dripping and grumpy but cleaner than I’ve been for days. Theworld’s tiniest towel barely covers my crown jewels as I clutch it in front of my groin and step out of the bathroom.
Rapunzel—dressed in a plain white nightgown that hides everything and somehow still manages to be the most seductive thing I’ve ever seen—looks up. And goes utterly still. Her breath hitches. I become acutely aware of every droplet tracing a path down my chest, of how her eyes follow them, slow and deliberate, like mist gliding down the slope of a mountain.
“Got a spare shirt?” I ask, pretending I don’t notice the way she swallows hard.
She turns and grabs something from the bed, hurling the fabric at my face, her cheeks bright red. “That’s the best I can do unless you want a corset and petticoat.”
It’s another nightgown. This one floral and ruffled. Designed for someone half my width and a third my height.
“You want me to wearthis?”
She shrugs. “I’d give you the bedsheet, but it’s the only one I have.”
I eye the dainty excuse for clothing. It wouldn’t fit my thigh, let alone the rest of me. Tugging it at the seams, I fashion what’s left into something that vaguely resembles a sarong. I knot it at my hip with a muttered prayer to the gods of structural integrity while my dignity dies a quiet death in the corner.
Rapunzel claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes dancing with mirth.
I glare. “Say a word.”
“You look… fetching,” she whispers.
I shrug. “Dignity: zero. Comfort: surprisingly high.”
Her mouth twitches. “I never thought I’d see an orc in a floral wrap.” Then she sobers a little. “I’ll wash your clothes.”
I glance at the crusted leather pants and torn shirt abandoned near the tub. “Might be easier to burn them.”
She shrugs. “Maybe. But they’re yours. You’ll want something manly to put back on after your spa day.”
“Are you saying this”—I gesture to the floral sarong hugging my hips—“doesn’t scream raw masculinity?”
“Oh, it screams something.” She giggles, a bright peal of sound that makes my blood heat, gathering my dirty clothes like she’s holding a filth-bomb. “If I die, bury me in the forest and avenge me with great violence.”
