Page 66 of Protective Pucking Orc

Let’s get one thing straight: cinnamon was my favorite flavor before I met him, and after a few days of getting covered in it, I liked it even more. Orc cum tastes even better than it smells, is the point.

I loved the way Dakvaar would cover me in it—like he was marking me—then scoop me up and carry me into the bathroom to clean me up again. Usually, while waiting for the huge garden bath to fill, he’d place me up on the counter and make me come again with his tongue, I shit you not. Then we’d climb into the bathtub and get all hot and wet and slippery and it would start again…

But by the third night of this, I wondered why, if we were Mated like he claimed, he wasn’t…you know. Finishing inside me. Claiming me?

I wanted all of him. I just didn’t know how to get from wanting to whatever came next, and I was chewing on that exact problem Saturday afternoon while I wrestled Rosa into her brand-new jersey.

Two of them had arrived that morning in a box with Lila’s handwriting on the lid. The teal, wicked cobra snarling across the front, and on the back, big white letters spelling out my orc’s name over his number. A little one sized for a five-year-old. A bigger one sized for me.

“That’s Dak’s number!” Rosa shrieked, in the voice she usually reserved for discovering dessert existed. “Mama, that’s Dak’s number, put yours on right now⁠—”

“I am, I am⁠—”

I pulled it over my head, and my throat went thick without warning.

Because here’s the thing: I’d spent years making myself unremarkable…a woman who didn’t wear anyone’s name, who’d learned the hard way what belonging to a man could mean.

And now his name sat across my shoulders like a flag, and it didn’t feel like the leash—as he’d called it—at all.

Oh, said the sensible voice, very quietly. Oh, we’re really doing this.

Yeah, we really were.

Tonight we weren’t hiding in Lila’s owner’s box, either—we were sitting in the family section with the girlfriends and wives—excuse me, the Mates of the other players. Lila had been very clear about the terminology on the phone, laughing that bubbly laugh of hers: “You’re one of us now, sweetie. Wear the jersey.”

One of us.

I didn’t know what to do with how much I wanted that, so I grabbed Rosa’s hand and clicked her into the booster seat in Dakvaar’s truck.

The family section turned out to be a warm pocket of chaos behind the home bench, and the second Rosa and I appeared at the top of the stairs in our matching jerseys, the whole row erupted.

“They’re here!” Lila was on her feet first, gorgeous in a jersey of her own—Kardok’s number—her golden hair pinned up with two jeweled cobra clips, looking sleek and elegant even in a hockey jersey. She swept down on us like we were long-lost family, which, apparently, we now were. “Oh, look at you both! Look at this tiny jersey, I’m going to just squeal⁠—”

“I’m Dak’s number!” Rosa announced, spinning to show off the back. “That’s Dak. Dak is mine.”

“Dak is absolutely yours,” agreed the pink-cheeked woman scooting down to make room, a homemade sign rolled under one arm. “I’m Holly. That’s my idiot down there—number nineteen, the one who cannot physically stand still.” She pointed at the ice, where one of the warming-up orcs was bouncing on his skates like the ground was electrified. “Jord. Three years together, and I still can’t get him through a whole movie.”

“Jord’s the one who taught Rosa the secret handshake on the bus,” I said, and Holly lit up like I’d handed her a gift.

“That’s whose kid she is! He came home talking about her for two days. He’s going to combust when he sees her up here.”

There were others—a warm-voiced woman with silver threading her braids, a younger one carrying on a running commentary with somebody two rows down—but Lila had already tucked me into the seat beside her and pulled Rosa half onto her lap like they were best friends. Maybe they were, since Lila had been the one to help get her from daycare that first, horrible day.

I couldn’t keep the names straight; it was too much. But like…the good kind of too much, the kind that pressed on some bruised place I’d forgotten I had.

Then the lights dropped, the crowd roared, and the game started, and I realized I still really had no idea what the hell went on in a hockey game.

I mean, I tried. I had a basic understanding that the puck was supposed to go in the net—like futbal! Oh, I understood futbal!—and that the guys in turquoise were supposed to be doing it. But the little puck moved faster than a soccer ball, and there were a lot of other rules I couldn’t follow.

“Okay, what just happened?” I finally asked out loud as everyone around me groaned in unison.

“Icing,” Lila said. “Which—full disclosure—I only sort of understand myself. I skated in circles and landed on my feet for a living. All of this—” she waved a hand at the churning, crashing violence below us “—is completely barbaric and I love it, but do not ask me the rules. Ask me a triple axel.”

I grinned. “Some help you are.”

“The worst. But I can tell you the important part.” She leaned in, pointing, and her voice went fond. “See your male? Back there, near the goalie? Watch him. Everyone else is flying around like maniacs, and Dakvaar just stands. You can bet he’s reading the whole game from where he needs to be. Kardok says he’s the best defensive mind in the league—he knows where everyone’s going before they do.”

I watched Dakvaar.