His answering groan meant he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, and his fingers on his scarred, veined length slowly slid up again — this time, while his finger between Rosa’s legs sank a shade deeper. As if he were fucking both of them at the same fucking time, and Rosa heaved and shuddered at the truth of it, moving but not caring, even as she felt the sharpness nudge again, deep inside, ohhell.
“More,” she begged him, searching his face, drinking up his fluttering eyes. “Please.”
He did, he obeyed, his head nodding as the claw between her legs nudged even deeper, as his other hand stroked up his length again, milking out more of that spluttering white, pooling it thicker on Rosa’s bare skin. Marking her, even if he wasn’t fucking her, and she felt her body arching, swerving, driving onto that invading finger, needing it,more—
“Be still,” he hissed, a flash of anger sparking across his eyes, but that only made it worse, made Rosa’s body writhe harder, flaunting her, defying her. Needing only to hurl herself onto an orc’s claw, to ram herself deeper, to feel the impossible, mind-bending truth of an orc’sknuckles, pressed up against her pulsing, dripping-wet heat —
“Can’t,” she choked at him, the sparks flaring brighter, the room flickering all around, narrowing to this, only this, hunger and craving and mad, screaming sensation. “Please my lord, please John-Ka,please!”
And oh, he was with her, suddenly, he was here, that long clawed finger finally, finally gliding in and out a little, matching the hard, brutal strokes of his hand on his swelling, dripping cock. Looking like a dark avenging god, a furious beautiful monster, his eyes rolling back, his lips parting, his entire body jerking into his hand —
“Open your mouth,” he hissed, barely audible, but Rosa obeyed, immediate, powerless — and then, fucking hell, that cock in his hand visibly stilled, the huge bollocks beneath it pulling up tight — and then he fired. Spraying out streams of thick, milky white, all over Rosa’s breasts and belly and even her face, spattering into her open mouth, sparking bright and warm on her tongue.
And the sight of it, the reality of it — an orc’s huge prick spraying her with his seed while he drove into her with his claw — finally,finallyset free Rosa’s desperate, devastating relief. The pleasure furiously screaming, throbbing around the tight invasion of his finger, while her body writhed and flailed, and the white heat flared across her eyes, battered against her heart. Consuming her clean and whole and pure, while the orc’s claw, and still-sputtering cock, marked her, brutalized her, claimed her for their own.
The aftershocks kept convulsing, even as the pleasure gradually faded, as that deep slit’s spray tapered to a trickling ooze, again pooling on Rosa’s belly. As that invading finger slowly, gingerly drew out of her, and then raised to his own slightly trembling lips, and slipped itself deep inside.
It meant Rosa was left lashed to a bed, her legs sprawled wide, her bared body coated in a thick, messy sheen of orc-seed. While her traitorous tongue kept darting out, almost on its own, to lap at the mess, while her eyes were caught, arrested, on the sight of this gorgeous, enraging orc, flushed and undone, his own finger — that had just beeninside her— sucked deep and greedy into his own mouth.
His eyes blinked, once, long-lashed and almost surprised — and then his finger yanked out from between his lips, fast enough that Rosa expected to see blood in its wake. But there was nothing, only a tightening of his mouth as his gaze flicked up and down her debauched, dripping body.
“Are you in pain,” he said, stiffly, through still-pursed lips, and Rosa considered that, and then shook her head. Even as her own cursed tongue swept out again, licking helplessly at more of the damned delicious mess, and she could see John’s eyes following the sight, the faintest flare of warmth flicking behind them.
“Foolish pet,” he murmured, but his long arm had reached up, easily, to wipe at some of the slick on Rosa’s cheek. And then he slipped it between her lips, the taste bursting bright on her tongue — but mixed, this time, with something sharper, less familiar. And as her tongue carefully nudged at his claw, there was the jolting, heat-swarming realization that this wasthatfinger. The one that had beeninsideher, and filled her with such furious, forbidden pleasure.
“Thank you, my lord,” she whispered, and John acknowledged it with a silent nod as he did it again, again. Wiping up the mess he’d sprayed on her face, feeding it to her, with a quiet, intense care that seemed at sudden, utter odds with the version of him that had made the mess in the first place.
Or was it, because another flick of heat had crossed his eyes as she sucked harder at his finger — and then even more as she lightly bit on it, holding it in place, carefully curling her tongue against his claw.
“Do you yet wish to leave?” he asked now, his voice cool, as he obligingly delved his finger deeper, that claw nudging very gently against the back of her throat. “Or shall you stay, and be grateful for my care for you?”
It was him being a dominant arrogant ass again, Rosa’s rational brain noted, from somewhere very far away — but at the same time, it also — wasn’t. Because he was still — asking. Still, perhaps, offering. And even if he’d tied her to a bed and covered her with orc-seed, even if this had all been some kind of evil distraction ploy — Rosa did, in fact, feel surprisingly calm again. Collected again. Cared for.
“You know I didn’t really want to go,” she heard her appalling voice murmur, once he’d drawn that finger free again. “Though I truly would appreciate it if you told me things like that, John. I can’ttrustyou, if you keep secrets from me.”
John’s eyebrows lifted, betraying a smugness that was clearly borne of the shameful fact that she’d just trusted him enough to take hisclawinside her. But then his gaze slid away, and he reached down beside the bed, where his hand produced, to Rosa’s vague surprise, what appeared to be a rag — and which he brought up to her face, carefully wiping her cheeks clean.
“I have answeredscoresof your prattling questions, pet,” he said, his eyes intent on his work. “What more can you wish to know?”
Rosa stuck her tongue out at him, purely for thatprattlingpoint — and in return he promptly nipped at her tongue with his rag, dragging a bubbling, reluctant laugh from her throat. “Well,” she said, watching him, working up the nerve. “Why don’t you ever retract your claws, like the other orcs do? Is it that you don’t want to?”
It was something she’d been wanting to ask, ever since she’d noticed Efterar’s claws retract her first night here — but this was why she hadn’t, the way John’s eyes closed off at once, all chilly guarded distance. But she waited, watching him, as he finished wiping her face, and moved the rag down to stroke, gentle, at her neck.
“I lived, for many years, with orcs who were not — kind,” he said slowly. “I sought to keep safe those I cared for, and foolishly thought that if I never drew in my claws, I should always be ready to defend them. Until one day, I found that I could not draw my claws in again.”
Rosa’s heart seemed to wrench, her eyes caught on his distant, dispassionate face. And before she’d quite realized it, her arms had yanked on her restraints again, trying to break free, to touch him, to wipe away that look, to bring the warmth back to his eyes…
“And you couldn’t try to fix it?” she asked, wincing even as she heard the words, because of course he would have tried, he wasJohn. “Nothing worked?”
He shook his head, a twitch of bitterness drawing at his mouth. “I fused the bone,” he said, his voice deceptively steady. “By the time I came here, even Efterar’s vaunted magic could not alter this.”
Oh. Rosa winced, even as she followed that suggestion backwards, to the implication that he hadn’t always lived here, after all. “And where did you live before this? With whom?”
John visibly grimaced this time, his rag slipping down to her shoulder, moving with perhaps less gentleness than before. “The Ka-esh oft house their mates and sons away from the mountain, in camps deep under the earth,” he said. “My father raised me in one of these, mayhap for eight summers, until he was killed. Then I was moved between other camps, oft with Tristan and Salvi, who had also lost their blood kin.”
He said it all with a curt, distant matter-of-factness, as though it meant nothing to him, this horrible tale of devastation and loss. “And you didn’t know your mother?” Rosa whispered, though it almost hurt to ask the question. “You couldn’t have gone to live with her?”
John barked a laugh, bleak, bitter. “I killed my mother, with my birth,” he said. “As have so many of my kind.”
