Page 23 of Finding Her Heart
Saying it out loud. Thinking it through, compared to what happened with the raiders, how she had walked right into the middle of them, made the entire event and its life's result sound trivial.
But there it was. That morning under the red moons dominated her life. Marked her. The deaths surrounding her life caused by the raiders, all the deaths before that, that was the Curse of Woe. The result. Her fault. Her punishment.
His hand engulfed her chin. Tipping her head back. His other thumb brushed her tears, even as that hand slid down her chin to her neck, fingers wrapping around her throat. So close she could feel his breath on her face. He licked his lips. She saw the black surface of his tongue and answered with a moan, affected by the sight. She didn't know why—didn't understand. But his tongue, in that wide Orki mouth, between his intimidating tusks—solid black on top with dark-patterned markings on the bottom set butterflies alight in her center. She found it deliciously attractive and wicked.
Someone moved the torches in the cave, darkening the area, enclosing them in intimate moody shadows. Now they were all alone in the world. No one could see them. No one would judge them. No one would take this male from her.
Emitting soft growls, the war beast nudged her when it decided to stand and turn in circles, looking for a comfortable position. The white-eyed Orki snapped his fingers at it, and the enormous beast huffed in answer. Filled with tension, Annabell giggled nervously, drawing the Orki's gaze back to her as the war beast laid down. Its body curved in a half-circle around the area where she sat.
His hand still on her neck, under her chin, White Eyes moved his fingers, playing along the side of the muscles that ran up from her shoulders. She smiled at the light touch. It almost tickled, but not quite.
She watched his face for his reactions. Why did he not speak? She looked at his throat, the split of skin in a circle around it that looked like a scar, and the black rectangle piece there. Unless a string hid in the scarred crease of his neck, the thin metal thing protruded from his flesh.
Touching her the whole time, he moved, settling in for sleep like his war beast, and guiding her down next to him, in the vee of his shoulder. He grunted once in his throat, pulling her against him like a lover, encouraging her to cuddle close to his warmth and strength. Instantly assaulted with twenty different feelings and thoughts about where her body was and what this Orki wanted from her, Annabell let her body relax into his.
There were places where she was naked, skin to skin, with the male. Loving married couples acted this way with each other. She wanted to run from this. She wanted to press in. His touch—heat and masculine—spurred an addiction. Starved for it, denied touch for so long by her proper family and her proper village, everything the Orki Original did now fed a hidden monster inside of her voracious for more. It was so good. So good. To feel like a living, breathing being. To have his arm at her waist, and that hand at her neck slide around the back into the mess of her hair. To be tucked against him.
She could hardly believe it was happening.
She didn't really fit in the space. His skin was butter soft, the best kind of expensive leather, but the size and shape of his body was considerably different fromhers. Resting her head on his muscled arm bent her neck at an odd angle. To be close enough to get the benefit of his heat, Annabell needed to lay on her side, lift her leg over his, clinging. This made her even more aware of her own nudity. Parting her legs like that opened the simmering pulse of her core, a greedy, wanton thing she'd never been able to suppress. That monster of want grew, now hungrier than ever.
That was unexpected.
She remembered this feeling from early in her marriage. Was it wrong? Would he reject her for it? Would he think her shameless? Did it even matter? Mark had said that only a woman who would lay down with the Orki behaved in this manner or wanted such things. That she should be a woman with honor and legacy. She should be above immoral desires.
But White Eyes was Orki. Did they want like this? Had that been an insult?
Cursing her limited knowledge, her lack of understanding, she ignored her body. She wanted to ignore it all. Too much. She shouldn't be experiencing anything. Just days ago, she'd lost the closest members of her family—and their families, as far as she knew.
Annabell whispered their names out loud, "Benjere, Kejere, Vej—their wives, their children." Their lives gone—all the males of her village—gone. Women she had known her entire life had suffered things she couldn't guess at.
Lurann did things to stay alive; slept with that Boss, catered to him, even stepped in so the younger girls didn't suffer the man's attention. Annabell learned from one of the other women that Lurann had told the steel city men about the hard cider in the other village. She alone had done something, attempted to help everyone, hoping to get the men too drunk to function and making them vulnerable in their sleep.
Lurann deserved this happiness, this safety, this wonder.
"Lurann is cream. You are my daughter."
Annabell closed her eyes, tried to hold back the tears. She'd cried so much, but now there was more. Pressing her face against the Orki's side, she inhaled his unique, wild scent to calm herself, breathing through this pain and acceptance of failure and guilt. Awful desires burned in her heart, but she did not deserve to indulge in them, to feel good. She would not be happy when others paid such a high price. She did not deserve it.
Yet White Eyes' scent calmed her. Centered her. Made her safe.
His arm tightened, and that noise in his chest returned. Head pressed close, it was all Annabell could hear. It relaxed her, carried her away into a soft and dreamy space.
*
Waking with one arm numb and prickling, her neck hurting from the awkward tilt of her position, she tried to move. Oh, she just had to stretch out her neck, straighten her hips. As strange as it was to be sharing a sleeping space with an Original, waking up with aches and pains was a familiar routine. She knew she could sleep hard and deep for hours, but there was also a well-practiced habit of half-asleep stretches to relieve the discomforts of her lumpy mattress, hard workdays, and body that felt its age.
The hand on her waist tightened, keeping her tied to his side, not letting her escape.
"My neck. Got to move. Sorry to wake you," she whispered. The moment left Annabell flustered with its strangeness. Memories of her one other bed partner were striking compared to this Orki. He hated it when she moved—said it made him dizzy when she shook the bed with her restless fidgeting and practically pushed her away.
His hand tightened. She couldn't help her yelp when he repositioned her on top of him. Her weight was nothing to him. First face down, then face up, she found herself with her head resting between his pectoral muscles on his sternum, her bottom cradled and supported by his pelvis, and her legs splitting around his.
The purr he made was louder this time, forceful, sinking into her chest. His fingers moved in languid, firm strokes over her neck, finding stressed muscles just like he had before. Annabell bit her lip. It was the rubbing that hurt and felt good at the same time. Very good. Too good. Sensitizing her all over, filling her up with heat. Her body melted to warmed honey beneath that touch, her will floating away in a cloud of steam.
She was lying with her back to his front, on top of an Orki Original. Naked, wearing her stockings, she had the big pelt and blanket over her breasts, pulled up to her neck. It slipped to the side when her grip loosened and she began to move her hips. Relaxed from sleep, her inhibition slackened. She moaned softly at his touch, accepting everything he gave her.
He was warm; that sound, the smell of him, the care. She had no resistance. He lit the old, barren fires of her desires, and fed them, fingers in her hair, on her scalp, at her neck, on her shoulders.
