Simon’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t move, beyond folding his arms over his muscled chest. “I no make youpet, I make youSkai,” he said, as if this were a crucial distinction. “And you have already sworn to honour me in ink, ach? You are yet bound to obey me, whether I grant you reward or no. You wish me to take my reward back?”
And in an impossibly swift flash of movement, his huge hand was gripping at the neck of her new tunic, threatening to take it, totearit — and Maria yanked away from him, her eyes wide, her fingers clutching it close. “No,” she choked out. “No.Please.”
And gods, it was humiliating, pathetic, and Simon leaned back again, complacent, smiling. “Ach, I thought thus,” he said, his voice enragingly smooth. “You shall learn, woman.”
Maria glared down toward him, her arms still crossed tightly over her tunic, and Simon kept smirking as he rose to his feet, looming huge and deadly over her. “And we shall start now,” he said, striding over to his shelf, and grasping for a lantern Maria hadn’t noticed before. “Come.”
Come. Complete with a sharp little jab toward the floor beside him, as though Maria really were a wayward puppy he’d decided to whip into shape. And between the still-curdling outrage and disbelief, there was something even more infuriating — the fact that there was no actual reason to refuse. Because he was stillright, curse him.
She’d signed that contract. She’d sworn to obey him. And if he’d decided to start giving her rewards in the bargain, she should damn well just accept it, and humour him, and take whatever the hell she could get. He was just an orc. For her freedom.
But even so, Maria couldn’t seem to stop glaring at him as she stiffly strode across the room, and halted in the spot he’d indicated. Earning for her efforts another smug smirk, and then the abrupt sight of his broad bare back as he stalked toward the corridor.
Maria silently followed, her hands in fists, her eyes darting uneasily at all the smooth stone around her. It was far easier to see it all in the bright light of Simon’s lamp, and she couldn’t deny a spark of surprise as he led her through a nearby empty room, and then into a smaller, twistier corridor that had been tucked into a crevice in the back wall.
“I take you to the Skai shrine,” Simon said over his shoulder, as he turned into another hidden, tucked-away corridor. “Here, you shall learn to worship with me and my kin.”
She would? Maria shot him a blank, startled look — she’d never been a particularly pious person, especially after the gods had so cruelly betrayed her with her marriage — but of course Simon entirely ignored it, and ushered her into a warm, sweet-scented room.
And despite Maria’s still-curdling irritation at all this — at him — she couldn’t help glancing around with genuine interest. The room appeared to be carved in a circle, with multiple doors in the rounded wall, and a variety of fur-covered benches scattered about. And in the room’s very middle, there stood a cluster of life-sized figures, carved out of yet more stone.
And as Simon stepped closer, raising the lamp, Maria realized that the stone figures were all orcs, and that they were unnervingly lifelike. And, perhaps more unnerving still, none of them woreclothes— instead, they all proudly displayed bared chests, muscled limbs, and distinctive, swollenmonstersat their groins.
“You shall worship Skai-kesh, the father of the Skai,” Simon announced, with a purposeful wave toward the largest figure, who was also, predictably, the most impressively endowed. “I shall now show Skai-kesh the rite of my favour, whilst you offer him your prayer. He seeks three new truths each day: a fear, a longing, and a blessing. Ach?”
Maria’s uneasy eyes were flicking up and down the figure —Skai-kesh— who along with his shocking genitalia also boasted a mess of cropped black hair, and a pair of oddly unnerving, black-painted eyes. They were unsettling enough that she had to glance away, and she found Simon staring down at her with equally unnerving intensity.
“Ach?” he repeated, his voice hard, his hand waving toward the nearest bench. “Kneel, and honour me.”
The rebellion flared brief and powerful in Maria’s gut — Simon had truly decided to dictate who and how sheworshipped, as part of his damnedgame?! — but she forcibly shoved it down again, and drew in a deep breath. She’d sworn to honour him. She would take what she could get, and gain her damned freedom. And truly, of all the things Simon could be demanding right now, a prayer was surely manageable.Surely.
So Maria made herself nod, and lurched stiffly toward the bench. It was higher and wider than she’d first supposed, almost more like a table — and as she clambered onto it, there was the sudden, startling feel of Simon’s big hand on her waist, helping her up. And then that handlingeredthere, holding her bottom half in place, fingers spreading wide against her hip…
Maria twitched all over, and whipped her head around to look at him — and wait, wait,wait. That was surely another challenge in his eyes, brazen,taunting— and he’d moved to stand closer behind her, enough that she could feel his warmth radiating through her tunic. And then — she gulped aloud — his clawed hand slowly, deliberately reached down inside his trousers, and brought out —
That. Yes, good gods,that. Huge, veined, swelling and filling, jutting out toward her. Looking far too similar to the stone depiction at this Skai-kesh’s groin, and wait, surely this wasn’t that,surely—
“S-Simon,” Maria gasped, and ohhell, he was already drawing up her baggy tunic, exposing her loincloth beneath it. “What thefuckare you doing?”
Simon’s eyes narrowed on hers, dark, stubborn, scornful. “I show Skai-kesh my favour toward you,” he repeated, with exaggerated patience. “Thus, I must fill you and cleanse you whilst you pray, this first time. It is a rite of the Skai. Should you wish to gain my next reward” — his brows rose, cool and imperious — “you shall seek to please me, and welcome this.”
His next reward. Gods, this infuriatingassholeand his infuriating damned game, he could not truly mean this, he couldn’t —
But his warm hand was already skating up Maria’s exposed hip, catching on her loincloth — and then he flipped that up, too. Fully exposing her bare, bent-over arse to the room’s cool air, and suddenly it was like she was spinning, twirling into an inconceivable abyss, as she felt Simon spreading her legs apart, shifting forward, closer, until —
She yelped aloud, because wait,shit, this was indeed trulythat— and Simon was trulythere, nudging hard and smooth and slick against her exposed, spread-apart heat. And this was clearly a public room, surely other orcs could walk in at any moment and seeeverything, and Maria was aduchessand this was trulyappalling—
But for some ridiculous reason, she couldn’t even seem to speak. Because all the world had somehow again coiled into this, an orc standing massive and menacing behind her, his big warm hands gripped easy and proprietary to her bare hips. While his huge, hot, shuddering heft kept prodding her, its rounded head sinking slightly deeper, just beginning to spread her open upon it…
“S-Simon,” Maria finally gasped, even as her eyes rolled back, her shocking heat clutching close and convulsive against the strength seeking to invade it. “Th-this is ap-public room.”
“Ach,” came his reply, shameless,mocking. “You no wish many others to see, you open wide for me in a hurry, and youpray.”
Oh, goodgods. A full-body shiver swept down Maria’s back, and there was the awareness, brief but desperately powerful, that she surely needed to refuse this, yank herself safely away from this, tell him just how completely and thoroughlyoutrageoushe was —
But instead, a low moan had escaped her mouth, and she again felt herself spasm against that hot, seeking truth. And flashing across her thoughts, inexplicably, was a vision of the night before, of the sheer power of their joined hunger, followed by the quiet weight of his words.You no see why we cling to what power we can find in this. You shall welcome my cleansing. You shall become a true Skai…
And no, no, surely Maria was not imagining sheunderstoodthis asshole again — let alone wanting to become one of his clan. Not when the Skai were obviously so completely horrid, when they didn’tdress, and had wholeroomsdevoted to debauchery, and had rules that required thefts of other livingbeings, andruts, and fights to thedeath. And even their worship couldn’t be straightforward, when one apparently needed to be publiclyfilledwhile doing so…
