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"I am too. Knowing our luck, someone would have shown up with a long-lost Novoran relative and want to perform yet another marriage ceremony," I grumble.
Agakor laughs, his big body shaking with delight. "You've heard that Novorans believe in wife-sharing, haven't you?"
Scandalized, I lightly smack his stomach. "They do not. You're teasing me."
"It's true. They're an odd people." His big hand smooths down my hair. "Are you sure you have no regrets, love?"
"Are you sure that I'm your 'love'?" I lob back, teasing him. "We only just met less than a fortnight ago."
His fingers snarl in a tangle, and I wince, but he continues to stroke my hair, gently working through the knot, and I decide I like this. Being petted after sex is almost as nice as the sex. Almost. Agakor is amused at my question, though. "You think it's too soon for me to love you? How much time do you think I need?"
"More than this?"
"Mmm, I disagree. Orcs love very quickly. We can become attached at a glance. My father fell in love with my mother when he attacked her encampment and she nearly gutted him with a meat-skewer. He says right then it was love. As for me…" His knuckles brush over the swell of my breasts. "I'd love to say it was the moment I saw your freckles, but it wasn't."
"When was it?" I ask, curious. What was the moment that decided me for him? When my gown was torn off? When he “tasted” me? Some other moment in the last week or so?
The amusement in his voice is like a warm blanket as he leans close and whispers in my ear. "When you petted my cock. You were unafraid and fascinated, and you clearly had no idea what you were doing. In that moment, I fell in love."
I make an indignant sound in my throat, but I ruin my outrage by giggling. I can only imagine how it must have seemed to him. I don't remember how I touched it, but I know I didn't use the tight, firm circling grip he likes when we met for our solar rendezvous. "Was it bad?"
"Incredibly awkward," he agrees. "But so charming." He plants a kiss atop my head. "Just like my bride."
CHAPTER 20
IOLANTHE
The rest of the wedding ceremonies go off without a hitch. The next morning, Mudag announces that we're married in the eyes of his clan, and Agakor immediately calls back the priest of Belara. That evening, we have our second wedding and the accompanying feast, and spend our first officially married night in bed together. Now that I'm officially Agakor's wife, I turn the keep-cleaning into high gear, hiring extra servants from the nearby town. We scrub the place inside out, and then I set about to decorating. It turns out that Turnip knows everyone in town and is a fantastic haggler, so I make her the “official” housekeeper. When I hand her a set of keys, she gets misty-eyed and sniffs, though she denies it.
Nights with Agakor are perfection. He takes the time to make me come at least twice before he takes his own release, and I love exploring him and trying out new things in bed. It's all exciting to me, and I still can't believe he finds me so attractive. He can't keep his hands off of me, touching me when we're at dinner, or insisting I sit in his lap while I read a book by the fire. I eat it up, though. After years of being ignored and lonely, I love my grabby, affectionate husband.
Life would be perfect…if only my father weren't determined to destroy things.
Agakor tells me not to worry about it. That he won't let anything happen to me. That he won't let my father take me from him. I trust him—I do—but it hurts me when I see new mercenaries arriving at our keep every day. It concerns me that Agakor and his men are constantly scouting and looking for my father's spies. I know my father won't give up.
It's not about me. He's using that as a pretense, a justification to attack Agakor because he's wealthy. He's not concerned about my happiness. The only thing my father has ever been concerned with is his own coin and power. My sisters and I were just useful tools to help him grow that power. Now that he sees an easy avenue to increase his wealth again, he will stop at nothing to get Agakor's treasury.
It worries me. And after I have been married a week, word trickles down that my father is in talks with a neighboring lord. That concerns me more than anything else. Agakor has men, but he doesn't have the reputation. What if the local lords band together and approach the king, asking him to step in? My father could easily fabricate a story about how I'd been kidnapped and that I'm being held against my will. If he musters the support of his neighbors and they attack en masse? Not even Agakor has enough men to hold back an army.
