“Ach,” he gasped, and Ella realized that his hungry, flaring eyes were fixed on her mouth. On where — she held his gaze, her eyes hooded — she was licking her lips, taunting him, trailing her fresh red blood against her skin.
Natt’s moan sounded like pain, his black eyelashes madly fluttering, and when he made to jerk away Ella held him there, clasping her arms and legs around his beautiful weight, dragging him close. Trapping him, in what he’d done, and he knew, his dark head slowly lowering to hers, caught, held, compelled —
He sucked her bloody tongue slow, steady into his mouth, his eyes held to hers with a quiet stilted reverence. And then he was swallowing her, drinking her, so gently at first, but then harder, hungrier with every breath —
It was abominable, it was utterly shameful, it was the orc who’d betrayed her desperately sucking her own lifeblood out of her tongue. It was filthy and it was pleasure and pain and longing, it was, she was, I see you —
And when Ella spread her legs wider around him, wriggling her hungry emptiness to search for him, he was already there. His swollen smooth hardness already kissing, already demanding, pressing, seeking to split her apart around its delving head —
Ella yanked her mouth away from his, earning a growl of protest from his throat — but she needed to see this, know their truth. And as they were held, caught in the life and the magic, she took a shaking, shuddering breath — and opened. Opened to him, against him, around him, and he cried out, loud and guttural, as he sank slow, smooth, slick inside. With no resistance whatsoever, just his hot swollen skin sliding home into Ella’s wet dripping heat.
Gods, it was glorious, and their moans of pleasure had risen at once, together, true. And Ella’s fingers were fluttering over his face, the red of his mouth, the wetness of his eyes. “Speak to me, Natt,” she whispered. “Speak all the filthy shocking truth you can. Please.”
He nodded, blinked, nodded again. And then rose up onto his elbows, looked deep into her eyes. “Look at you, my sweet pretty lass,” he whispered, his voice hitching, as he pressed himself in tighter, harder, his hips circling, setting off sparks behind Ella’s eyelids. “Look at you, with your pretty bloody mouth, and your pure maiden womb spread wide open and easy for me, dripping with my scent and my seed. Look how you have bloomed for me.”
He dragged himself out as he spoke, those eyes hard and arresting on hers — and then sank himself back in, in one deep, devastating stroke. Bringing a sound very like a scream to Ella’s mouth, her arms and legs desperately gripping at him, and suddenly his mouth was smiling at her, his teeth brilliantly sharp, black eyes blazing hard, hungry, bittersweet.
“You should have made me a wondrous mate, lass,” he breathed. “You should have made me so proud to claim you and flaunt you as my own. I should have been the envy of all my brothers. I should” — he dragged back out, and drove back in, wringing another scream from Ella’s mouth — “have boasted to them of my fair mate, who eagerly bares her lovely form, and thrusts open her womb, and drinks up my seed. I should have shown them, again and again” — he drew out again, sank back in, ohhell— “how she screams, how she wriggles and writhes upon my prick, how she bestows her many riches upon mealone.”
Oh gods, oh fuck, he was truly fucking Ella now, carving into her again and again, rocking her entire body with it, wringing shocking, gasping noises from her mouth. Her arms and legs clinging to him, her eyes staring shocked into his, gods he was appalling and gods this was good and there had never been pleasure like this in her entirelife—
“I shall show them,” Natt gasped, those eyes briefly slipping away, dazed and fluttering, as he slammed in again, again, “my fair mate with her belly rounded, filled with my son, reeking of my scent alone. I shall show them her pierced, dripping teats, her open dripping womb, ach” — his body drove harder, higher, fuck, fuck — “her drippingneck, scarred by my teeth, all of her marked and filled andmine—”
The world was spinning wildly, the only truth Natt’s glittering eyes, Natt’s huge body, Natt’s impossible words, slamming into her, making her beautiful and bright and whole. Making her into his mate, his true orc’s mate, marked and stretched and screaming, oh gods —
And in the chaos the hunger, the wicked heat of an orc’s sweaty driving body over her, Ella reached for his head, and drew it down. Pressing him close into the curve of her neck, and she could feel his inhale, deep and swarming and desperate, filling up his lungs his cock his heart.
His lips and tongue were already there, suckling painfully on her skin, and when Ella gasped he yanked himself up, the world rocking sideways, his eyes dark and crazed and staring. “You must,” he gasped, between heaving breaths, “speak this, should you wish me to stop, I know not what I speak, I ought not —”
But there was only this, only the frantic shouting craving, and Ella grasped tighter, dragged his head back down. Feeling his muffled shout, his body arching, his lungs filling, his tongue hot and dragging as his teeth scraped soft, sharp, deadly —
He bit down, hard, as that hardness inside her soared up, gouging deep. And Ella screamed again even as she clung to him, clawed at him, bared herself whole to this invading violent deadly orc, his teeth in her neck his cock between her legs his throat greedily swallowing, oh gods oh gods havemercy—
The pleasure surged like a living thing, like a hammering trammelling beast, laying waste to all in its path. Flaying Ella bare beneath it, stretched and swollen and screaming — and then hurling it even higher when that cock plunged inside her one last time, and sprayed out its seed in a flood. Filling her, drinking her, her orc her mate her own, her love, her one, hertruth.
The world was still spinning when Natt’s body finally slowed above her, his driving thrusts replaced by thick, gulping breaths. His head was bowed, his big shoulders heaving, and when Ella’s trembly hands went to tilt his face up, he didn’t resist.
And thesightof him, he looked dazed and debauched and utterlyterrifying. His black eyes stunned and gleaming, his mouth smeared with blood, his slick, sinuous tongue coming out slow to lick his lips, his sharp white teeth now rimmed with red.
Ella felt her body give a strange little shudder, with something that was alarmingly close to pleasure — but it seemed to shake Natt awake, somehow, his eyes refocusing, blinking at her — and then squeezing shut. And she could see his throat convulsing, could feel the sudden rising tension as he dragged in a hard, bracing breath.
“Ach,” he choked, his voice harsh. “Curse me, lass. I did not — I ought not — I should have first spoken to you of this, you shall think me amonster—”
But his tongue had slipped out again, licking yet more of that red off his lips, and Ella twitched at the sight — and then, somehow, impossibly — shelaughed. The sound bubbling on its own out her throat, warm and almost giddy, her whole body shaking beneath him.
“Sorry to say, Natt, but I’m not in the least surprised,” she said, her voice a smooth, easy caress. “Didn’t I always tell you? Orcs are the most shocking creaturesimaginable.”
Natt was blinking, his body gone still, and Ella slid her hand into his silken hair, brought him down for a slow, succulent, metallic-tasting kiss. His tongue careful, hesitant at first, but Ella teased hers against it until he was properly kissing her back, deep and slick and filthy, just the way it should be.
But when he pulled back, his eyes were dark again, distant, bleak. His throat swallowing, his head shaking, and Ella almost sobbed as she felt the pleasure ebbing away, vanishing into emptiness. He’d betrayed her. He wasn’t her mate, and she wasn’t his. She had to go back, or else she would start a war.
“I am sorry, lass,” came his low whisper, hitching from his still-bloody lips. “I am so sorry for these many wrongs I have wreaked upon you. I ought to have been a better orc. A better — friend, to one who has given me such gifts.”
It was truth, spoken from his eyes to hers, and Ella nodded, drank it up, held it close. He saw her. She saw him.
“And yet, Nattfarr of Clan Grisk,” she heard herself say, her voice only slightly wavering, “you have continued to prove yourself devious, and shocking, and utterlyindecorous. As usual.”
He smiled at her, slow, sweet, miserable. “You ought to have better, my lass,” he said. “You ought to betray me in turn, and thus spark this war against me. It is what I deserve, after what I have done to you.”
