I nod, suddenly clumsy with my own hands, and turn to the mundane task of unpacking groceries. Milk in the fridge, coffee on the shelf, apples in the bowl—anything to keep busy while she moves around the kitchen, plating the food.
I can't not notice what she's doing. How she chooses the best seared edges of meat for my plate, adds extra roasted carrots, tucks in the crispiest potatoes. How she slides the plate my way with a satisfied smile.
Don't read into it,I warn myself. Don't pretend this is some kind of vow.
I fail at that too. The thought echoes through my head with crystalline clarity.She fed me.
We sit across from each other at the small table, the lamp between us casting everything in warm gold. Outside, snow hisses against the windows and the wind howls through the pines, but inside it's just us. Fork against plate. The soft sound of her breathing. The scrape of my chair when I shift to accommodate legs too long for the space.
We eat in silence, like both of us are afraid to disturb whatever truce this is.
The food is incredible. Tender beef with herbs that taste like summer, vegetables roasted to caramelized perfection, flavors that explode across my tongue and make me want to groan with pleasure. She's not just a good cook, she's gifted. Every bite is a revelation.
Midway through the meal, she looks up from her plate. I watch her as she puts her fork down and tilts her head. Then she shatters my world once again. She’s making a habit of it, apparently.
"Feed me, Darhg."
I blink. Water goes down wrong in my throat and I cough, choking on it like an amateur. She doesn't look away. Doesn't laugh at my obvious distress. Instead, she leans forward slightly, lips parting, mouth opening in clear invitation, a spark of that familiar mischief dancing in her eyes.
Heat slams into me like a freight train. My cock throbs hard against my jeans, my erection brutal and immediate, the kind of arousal that makes thinking impossible. Does she know what she's asking? Does she understand that feeding between ogres is intimate, territorial, a claiming as old as our species?
I don't move. Every alarm in my head is shouting.You’ve gone too far. If you cross that line, you can't come back from this. Still, I can't look away from her mouth. Lust coils in my guts, spreading from that place right below my navel through my entire body.
I want to do it. I want to place a perfect morsel of food between her parted lips and feed her. I want to grab her and kiss her like there’s no tomorrow. And I definitely want to bury my cock inside her and lay my claim on her.
But I can’t. It’s wrong. She’s too young, too fragile. Too human.
Rona finally closes her lips with a soft tutting sound and looks down at her plate, but there's nothing defeated about the gesture. She spears a perfect bite of meat with deliberate slowness, her eyes lifting to hold mine.
"If you won't feed me," she says, gentle and wicked, "I'll feed you."
She brings the fork across the space between us, and in my mind, I see myself perfectly from her perspective. An ogre with eyes blazing red and ravenous, looking at a woman like she's the whole feast. I know I should refuse.
I open my mouth anyway.
The bite lands on my tongue and flavor explodes across my palate, but it's nothing compared to the wild, feral satisfaction that roars through me at being fed by her hands. The most primitive part of my brain screams its approval.
Mine. She fed me. She's mine.
Like I'm watching myself through a looking glass, I reach for my own fork and select the best piece of roasted meat I can find, bringing it across to her waiting mouth. She's already prepared,lips parted, gaze holding mine without flinching as she accepts what I offer.
Fuck. She claimed me. I claimed her.But even as the thoughts form in the back of my mind, I ignore them. I’m way too horny now to listen to reason.
She chews slowly, humming in satisfaction, and the sound goes straight to my cock.
I don’t need a mirror to know my eyes are glowing more fiercely than they ever did before, throwing off a vivid red glow across the table. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away.
She looks at me like she’s trying to decide her next move.
Slowly, Rona sets her fork down and wipes her thumb across the corner of her own mouth. I follow the movement, memories rushing through my head of how those soft lips felt under mine.
“I have a question for you,” she says softly, her eyes large and mesmerizing in the low light, her pupils dilated.
“What question?”
I try to think, but my mind refuses to formulate a single thought as I watch her stand up. She comes around the table with slow, deliberate movements. She stops beside me, close enough that I can smell the powerful aroma of her arousal on her body. An arousal that lays waste to what little remains of my sanity.
“Darhg,” she says, setting her palm on the table nextto mine. “Do you want to kiss me?”
