He stroked her face again, letting out labored breaths, as if he was exerting himself even though he was sitting entirely still. He ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “You are perfection, do you know that? How could something like you, something so light and lovely and beautiful, how could you touch me?”
“Should I… touch?” She was staring directly at his cock.
He let out a hoarse grunt. “Get the rags.”
She bit down on her lip, gazing at his cock.
“Now, Aerhril.” His voice was still hoarse.
“Yes,” she said. “Because you are bleeding.”
He reached over and tugged on the coverlet on his bed. He tossed it over his crotch, and she let out a little sound, as if she was disappointed that he’d covered himself. He groaned again.
She got up and went to seek the trunk. She came back with clean rags and she set about tying one of the strips of fabric around his arm.
“I should not have been this way with you,” he said to her. “You’re not for me.”
“I think you must come with me when I go back to the south,” she said.
He made a funny noise.
“I am not saying that I can do much for you there,” she said. “But there are opportunities in the city, even for orcs, and perhaps, if you worked at some trade you could… we could…”
“No, we couldn’t,” he said.
“Well, it would take some doing, I suppose. I would need to get money somehow, too, but we could go somewheretogether, somewhere away from everyone, just the two of us, and we could—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, we could not.”
She was hurt. She pulled away and looked him over. “You seemed eager for me a moment ago.”
He took one of the rags from her and began to tie it around his own leg. “You’ll want children, Aerhril.”
“That’s what you say?” She furrowed her brow, looking him over. Why could she not tear her gaze away from the place where his cock tented the coverlet he’d thrown over himself?
“Everyone does, eventually,” he said. “It’s just how people are. You might think you don’t want them now, but you’ll get older and you’ll think of your own mortality and you’ll want someone to live on in your stead once you are gone. You’ll want children.”
“Well, I suppose I still don’t know how that even works,” she whispered.
He met her gaze. “Right. You wouldn’t.”
She swallowed, trying to get up the courage to ask him, baldly, to explain it, but instead she said, “We could, though, you and me.”
“No,” he said. “I told you, I won’t. I will never pass this on.” He gestured at himself. “A child with you would be more elf than orc, but still orc enough that it would be even worse for him than it is for me. Or… if it was a girl? It would be the worst of all.”
“If we were away from everyone—”
“You can’t keep a child away from everyone,” he said firmly.
“Maybe I won’t want children,” she said.
“You will,” he said. “And even if not, it’s not fair to you. You’d be diminished by me. You would have no one else. Your family would shun you—”
“You don’t know that they—”
“I do, and so do you,” he said. “You’d resent me for it. We do not have a future, fair elf, daughter of the gold fingered dawn. You know it. I know it. Best to snuff out anypainful fantasies that say otherwise.”
She would have fought with him, but she sort of had to admit he was right. She did not wish to say that out loud, for it was horrible. She reached down and feathered her fingers over his face, over his jaw, his chin.
