Ella’s head was shaking, her whole body almost shaking, and she thrust her trembly hand flat against Natt’s chest. “But you did it,” she said, her voice wavering. “You willingly took pleasure with Dammarr, and however many others” — she forcibly shoved back the memory of Skaap speaking, earlier today — “that you chose, while I was left alone, and untouched, andwaiting for you. Fornine years.”
The words came out sounding plaintive, and perhaps entirely unfair. Because Ella knew what Natt had gone through, being hunted, trying to keep her safe, fifty,fifty— and his replying laugh confirmed it, coming out cold and disbelieving.
“Ach, and you truly think I would have chosen all this, over you?” he said bitterly. “And you yet pretend as if you were truly waiting for me, keeping your pledge, all this time? When you yourself have said that your maidenhood had value, and you meant to use it to buy this man?This man, lass?”
His voice broke at the last, his head shaking. Betraying the truth, suddenly almost staggering, thatthiswas why Natt had never recognized that Ella had kept her pledge. Because he truly didn’t believe she had. He truly still thought she’d been saving herself forAlfred. Waiting to use her maidenhood as a transaction, as an ultimate reward, handed carelessly over to Natt’s greatest enemy, along with enough wealth to start a war.
And of course Natt believed that, because Ella had told him that, hadn’t she? And had she ever corrected it? Had she ever spoken the truth of it?
Natt’s angry eyes had moved away from her, glittering toward the wall behind her head, while his arms crossed tight over his chest. Shutting Ella out, leaving her standing there searching for words, for truth, without the escape of his magic, or even the touch of his hands.
And looking at him, feeling the rage and the misery crackling all over him, suddenly there was only — resignation. Defeat. She’d run so long, for so many years, and perhaps finally she just needed to be, to face it, to speak. Truth.
So Ella swallowed hard, and blinked hard, and again faced her own mortification, her own shame. She’d come to Orc Mountain, she was wearing an orc’s clothes, she’d sucked off an orc in front of his friends. Surely she could do this. Speak.
“I would have done it, with Alfred, if it had come to that,” she said, almost a whisper. “But I truly was waiting for you all that time, Natt. I never forgot you. I never stopped missing you, or hoping you’d come back.”
“Why,” came Natt’s reply, immediate, relentless, so Ella took a bracing breath, and kept ploughing on. Speak.
“Because we were —friends, Natt,” she said, with a sigh. “And I know you hate that word, but that’s what it was, for me. You were a friend, a real one. You knew me, and you wanted to know me.Thisme.”
She gave a shaky, frantic wave at her shocking clothes, her unkempt hair, herself. And though she could feel Natt’s eyes now, she couldn’t make herself look at him, and instead kept her gaze on the floor, her breath coming out far too loud. Speak.
“I’m not really a good lady, Natt,” she whispered. “I’m not a good heiress. I’m not —real, like that. I dress up and smile and pretend, and I do it all quite well, so no one ever notices. But with you —“
Ella’s breaths were catching, tripping on her too-thick throat, and she had to scrub again at her face, make herself keep going. “It was just so —easy, with you. And it never was again, after that, especially after Papa died. And once you were both gone, there was no one left who’d ever seen this part of me at all. And even Papa didn’t want me to be this, he wanted me to be alady— so I thought, well, maybe if I really was a lady, maybe at leastthatpart of me would finally be real, after all. Maybe I would finally forget the rest — forgetyou— and find a way to be happy again.”
The words echoed against the silence, against the solid truth of Natt’s form before her, and suddenly they sounded so petty and foolish and shameful. The whining of a rich, privileged woman who hadn’t gotten her way in life, and who couldn’t face the choices she’d herself freely made.
But Natt, the Speaker of the Grisk, the twelfth in his line to speak for his brothers, had lifted Ella’s wet face toward him, and wiped at her cheeks with his clawed thumbs. And his eyes were here, his own truth was here, easy, mercifully easy, between them.
“You finally speak truth to me, lass,” he whispered. “This honours me.”
But Ella wasn’t honourable, she was selfish and foolish and utterly shameful — but Natt’s eyes didn’t falter, didn’t fail. “You are not a real lady, lass,” he said, so quiet. “But you are yet quick and curious and clever and kind. It pleases you to run and laugh and play and fuck. You are hungry and filthy and wicked. You areyou, lass, and you bring me joy like none else. And most of all when you speak such sweet truths, and proudly flaunt them before me.”
Oh. Ella couldn’t move, suddenly, could only blink at the bright, furious purpose in Natt’s beautiful eyes. And when he abruptly sank to his knees on the cold stone before her, there was no humiliation, no shame — only wonder, and longing, and then sheer, pulsating pleasure as he yanked her skirt up, and thrust his tongue deep between her thighs.
Gods, it was glorious, that slick shocking tongue licking and slurping with eager abandon, his mouth opening to drink more, to taste more, to suckle and kiss and swallow. While those dark powerful eyes held steady to hers, brazen, outrageous, unrepentant. Truth.
Ella’s fluttery hands dropped to grip in his hair, and perhaps they even drew him closer, deeper. Earning a rumbling laugh from his mouth, vibrating straight into the very core of her, while her own mouth desperately cried out, the sound carrying down the black corridor.
But Natt liked that too, both rewarding her and taunting her with another shockingly deep thrust of that possessive tongue — and it was so good, so gods-damned intoxicating, that Ella finally just opened her mouth, and let the truth spill out with every gasping breath.
“Oh gods,” she breathed. “Oh gods, Natt, you’re so good, you feel so good, Idreamedof this foryears, deeper, harder, suck me, kiss me, kissme—“
Natt did, he kissedher, his eyes on fire, his lips desperately sucking, his throat compulsively swallowing, his tongue thrust so deep it might have reached her very heart. Truth, truth, that was this, it was real —
Ella’s scream seemed to shake the corridor, but she didn’t care, she couldn’t, not with her whole body screaming too, shouting its pulsing, flaring pleasure all over Natt’s tongue. Exploding again and again in a shower of light, of sparks, of colour and wonder and — peace.
And the peace remained, even as the pleasure faded, flickering away into the shadows. Even as Natt finally pulled back to look up at her, his eyes glimmering with warmth and danger, his black tongue licking at his lips with a slow, forceful satisfaction.
“Ach, this was a good lesson, was it not?” he breathed, perhaps a caress, or a challenge. “What do you say, my lass?”
Ella drew in a shaky, rattling breath — and then, for some inexplicable, beautiful reason, shelaughed, the sound carrying light and joyful down the dark corridor. “I say,” she murmured, her hands sliding into the mess she’d somehow made of his hair, “that you are a heartless outrageousscoundrel, Nattfarr of Clan Grisk.”
He laughed too, the sound deep and warm and utterly glorious, and in a surge of movement he leapt to his feet, and caught Ella bodily up in his arms. “Andyou,” he murmured into her hair as he hitched her closer to his chest, “are all my lifelong hungers thrust into one lovely, filthy, screaming little beast, that the gods have dropped upon my head. Or, in truth” — he nuzzled at her hair — “upon my prick. And now that you have spoken these truths, I fear that you shall not so easily escape their will, my fair, foolish one.”
His voice lowered at the end, and surely there was a warning in it, perhaps more truths yet to be spoken. More truths, perhaps, ofAlfred— but in this lovely, peaceful moment, Ella was quiet, content, at ease. At peace with her truths, and what she was, in this moment, curled safe and close in Natt’s arms.
