Page 52 of The Orc’s Comfort

He ties it gently, checks the pressure with two fingers at my temple, asks if it's too tight. It isn't. The world narrows immediately to what I can hear and feel: the couch cushion under me, his breathing, the hushed silence of a room lit only by candles I can no longer see.

"Tell me your name," he says.

"Julia." I don't understand the question until his mouth finds mine and I realize he wanted to hear me say something ordinary, once, before nothing about tonight is ordinary again.

He picks the dish back up. I hear it before I feel it, the small motion of his wrist, and then warmth drips along my collarbone, tracing a path I can't predict, and I arch toward it without deciding to. His mouth follows every drop, patient, thorough, and without my eyes to anchor me the sensation has nowhere else to go but everywhere at once: his tongue, the last of the candle-heat on my skin, the low sound he makes against my throat that I feel before I hear. Every place he hasn't touched yet starts to feel like a question I want answered.

"Rhazgar." I don't know what I'm asking for. He seems to.

"I know." His mouth moves lower. "I told you. I have plans."

Somewhere between the honey and his hands finding every place the honey didn't reach, wanting stops being a word I have room for and becomes the only thing I am.

"Bedroom," he says, the single word rough.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Julia

His fingers undo the fabric knot at the back of my head, and the blindfold falls away.

He doesn't let me get my bearings before he's lifting me off the couch, one arm under my knees, and carrying me down the hall. "Almost there," he says against my hair.

Candlelight first, then the room resolves around it as he carries me through the doorway. Gauzy linen hangs from the ceiling in a loose canopy over the bed. Shallow bowls sit at intervals along the floor, each holding a scattering of pale stones that glow faintly blue-green, throwing just enough light to catch the edges of everything without competing with the candles.

"Rhazgar." I look up at him. "This is beautiful."

"You deserve beautiful." He sets me down on my feet at the foot of the bed, hands finding my hips. "You deserve everything."

He steps back just long enough to shed the rest of his clothes, quicker and less careful about it than I've ever seen him, then he's back in front of me.

He kneels in front of me, and his hand slides down, unhurried, two fingers finding me, testing. I gasp and grip his shoulder.

"Still with me?" he asks.

"Very much."

He works me slowly, patient in a way that should be maddening this far into the night. But it isn’t. He watches my face for every flicker of response, adjusting. When I'm shaking and open and saying his name like a demand, he withdraws his hand and lifts me onto the bed. The bedclothes are soft beneath me, the frame built to his scale, wide enough to make me feel small in a way I've stopped finding anything but thrilling. He follows me down.

"Look at me," he says, when he's settled between my legs.

I do. He's entirely present, watching my face the way he's watched it all night, reading it before I've finished making an expression.

"Same as before," he says. "Tell me if it's too much."

He positions himself at my entrance, and the first press of him is nothing like his fingers. I tense before I can stop myself.

He stops immediately. "Too much?"

"No. Just a second."

His thumbs make small circles at my hips while I breathe through the stretch and feel my body decide to accommodate him. When I nod, he pushes deeper, and the first ridge catches at my entrance. I understand, suddenly and completely, what all of tonight has been preparing me for.

"Feel that?" His voice is strained.

"Yes."

"There are more." He withdraws slightly and pushes back in, letting me feel the ridge on both movements. "Every time I move."