And most of all, onhis.Always.
And gods, it was so close, waiting here on her tongue.Yours? As your mate? Always?
But the words wouldn’t seem to come, not yet, not yet — he’d still hidden this from her, concealed the truth,again— and after another instant’s choked silence, Joarr reached down, and plucked something up from beside the altar. Two little brown mushrooms, looking deceptively innocuous, with their thin white stems and peaked caps. But Gwyn had seen these before, hadprescribedthese before, when she’d been able to acquire them — and they were excessively rare, and deeply valuable, and extremely powerful.
Joarr silently handed the smaller of the two toward her, brows raised, and Gwyn swallowed as she spun it in her fingers, inhaled its distinctive, unpleasant scent. “Um,” she said, “you know, for a woman in my situation, I wouldn’t generally recommend —”
But Joarr had already bitten off half of his mushroom with a sharp snap of teeth, and shook his head as he tossed the rest into his mouth. “Mayhap with human son,” he said firmly. “But you ken there isnaughthuman can eat to harm orc-son, ach? Even when humanwishesfor this.”
It was an excellent and very valid point, and even moreso when Joarr gave her a slow, wicked smile, and leaned in to nibble at her neck. “And this is only tiny one,” he murmured. “Just enough to grant you more fun, ach?”
And Gwyn’s breath was half-laugh, half-groan, the heat already coiling in her belly. And she should have still been focusing on that secret, on how he’d hidden something so important, how he still didn’t trust her, after all she’d done — but it was so much easier to pop the little mushroom into her mouth, and swallow it back. To meet the eyes of her orc, her lover, she would fix this, she would…
“Wise woman,” he purred, his voice dark and dangerous, his eyes alight on hers. “And now, we mate.”
28
Now, we mate.
They were the same words he’d spoken to her their very first time, heavy with hunger, with promise — but this time, it felt as though there was even more weight to them, more meaning.We mate.
Wemate.
And as he crawled toward her on the altar, nudging her down onto her back beneath him, Gwyn’s body was already shivering, her head nodding, her eyes desperately searching his face. Finding the intensity in his gaze, the shimmering heat, the bare, beautiful hunger.
His hand was moving efficiently between them, shoving down his trousers, yanking off Gwyn’s dress — and then, oh gods, he was already there. That smooth, slippery head of him finding her quivering heat, parting her around it, feeling her pulse and pant against him…
His slam inside was sudden, brutal,wonderful, and Gwyn cried out as she arched up, as he ground himself deep within her. Holding her eyes as he did it, watching her, weighing her — and then dragging out, slow, intent, before driving back in again.
The feeling was so familiar now, the furious fluid rhythm, the pulsing, primal power. And as he picked up speed, plunging into her again and again, Gwyn somehow felt the strength of it coiling, sharpening, swirling even more vivid than before. Speaking, without a single word, of how he needed it like this, craved it like this — the power, the control, the certainty. Thesafety.
And Gwyn saw him, understood him,lovedhim — and so she met him, welcomed him, drew him harder and faster with her own gasps and groans and pleas. With her hungry, writhing body meeting his every slam forward, her hands and feet tingling, the room slightly stuttering behind the strength of his watching, glittering eyes.
“Yes,” she gasped at him, clawing at him, wrenching him closer. “More, Joarr.Everything.”
His eyes fluttered, gone briefly distant, his gasp choking from his throat — and oh, oh, it was here already, that thick molten heat of him, pumping out deep inside her. Filling her full of his truth, his vulnerability, perhaps even hisweakness— and even as Gwyn moaned, twitched, revelled in the feel of its slick warmth within her, she knew it wouldn’t be enough, not for him now, not like this.
And when he drew back, his eyes still blazing, the room now slowly spinning behind him, Gwyn felt her shivery finger reach up to touch his face, tracing down the sharp smooth lines of it. Her orc. So distant, so lonely, for so long, so carefully hidden beneath…
“More,” she whispered, her tongue slipping out, brushing at her lips. “Tend me. Please.”
He groaned close in her ear, nipping it with his teeth — and Gwyn shivered all over as she yanked him upwards, hard and purposeful. And with another deep groan, a quick little flick of his graceful limbs, Joarr was kneeling up over her, his legs straddling her chest, his slippery length bobbing over her mouth, dripping a long string of thick white from the tip.
Gwyn opened her mouth to catch that dangling white, to feel its sweetness spark on her tongue. To hear the heat of his growl as his hand wrapped around his swollen strength, and then pumped up, milking out more, drizzling it down between her waiting, parted lips.
Gwyn eagerly drank it, swallowed it, the glorious taste of him sweeping into something almost like colour, like bright light sparkling over her skin. Into the strange, surreal ecstasy of her powerful orc pinning her to an altar, feeding her the very essence of him, easing that dripping slit ever closer…
She licked for it as it came, kissed it, sank her tongue deep into that oozing, bubbling source of him. And when he kept driving forward, bearing down deeper, she could have sobbed her relief, hergreed. Revelling in the reality of an insolent orc impaling her by the mouth to an altar, pulsing his bounty straight down her open, gulping throat.
Above her, his eyes were fluttering, his head tilted back — and it was like he was radiating that heat and hunger and loneliness, or perhaps even…fear. And Gwyn couldn’t follow it, couldn’t bear it, and she felt her fingers skittering up to find his gasping chest, to offer some small comfort, stroke it all away…
But his hands were far too quick, catching her wrists, his eyes flashing — and in an instant, he had both her arms pinned to the altar over her head, his body now leaning over her, his heft still jutted deep into her mouth.
“Witch,” he growled at her, as he ground a little deeper, gods, yes — and then slowly drew himself out again, away. Lingering at Gwyn’s lips, letting the thick white smear against them, watching her kiss and suckle him, as that reckless hunger again shot up sharp between them —
Gwyn fully expected his slam downward, welcomed it, needed it — but she didn’t expect the frustration of his growl as it came, the low streak of curses in black-tongue. Or how he yanked himself out again, all the way, his body twitching back onto his heels between her knees, his clawed hands rubbing against his face.
It was like Gwyn was being pulled up too, like he had her on a string — and she crouched between his legs, stroked her trembling fingers up his hard thigh. “Not good?” she whispered, her voice sounding utterly foreign in her ears. “Not enough?”
