♥♥♥
The big bed was impossibly comfortable.
Lurielle stretched, feeling her back pop, and pushed her toes through the cool expanse of sheets until they met a solid mass, radiating heat. Khash’s face was pressed to the pillow, facing her, and she took a moment to examine his sleeping form. Wisps of dark hair that had pulled out of his braid during the previous night now curled around his face, and the dark fan of his thick eyelashes lay upon his skin like a shadow. His tusks were massive, and his full lips were parted slightly as he breathed heavily into the pillowcase, sound asleep. She stretched forward until she was able to gently brush her lips to his, feeling her heart fold in on itself.
It was almost time to say goodbye.
She’d laid against his chest in a daze the previous night, while the rest of the fireworks display rained colored sparks over their heads. Her heart had been hammering as she recovered from her explosive climax, twinned in the thundering pulse beneath her cheek as he held her—a big hand splayed over her back, while the other gripped her thigh. Once the cacophonous grand finale reached its own climactic completion and the air grew still in the aftermath, Lurielle raised her head to gaze down at him. Khash’s hooded chocolate eyes crinkled as he smiled his lazy smile at her, lifting his neck until he was able to meet her lips.
“Best fireworks ever.”
She stayed there, resting against the steady beat of his heart as they talked in the darkness. She told him a bit about her relationship with Tev and how he’d treated her; the way she’d left, moving to Cambric Creek for a job opportunity she wouldn’t have pursued otherwise. She was the subject of hushed gossip in her mother’s circles, she was sure, but she had long ago stopped caring, too happy with the life she’d built to miss anything from the life from which she’d walked away.
“Mmm, that man is fortunate he sleeps a long way away from me. You have a beautiful, brilliant elf in your life, and you don’t cherish her each and every day? That’s not a man, not where I’m from.”
She’d snorted at the thought of Tev having cherished her even a single day, let alone doing so regularly. “What about you? I thought that was a song you knew all the words to?”
He hummed for a moment, dragging his palm down her back to squeeze the redolent flesh at her hip.
“Mhm, that I do. Five years. We met at a networking event, lived together for two of the five, but she didn’t want anything more than that.” His smile was swift, showing off the winking bands around his tusks. “At least, she didn’t want it with me.”
Lurielle harrumphed, not understanding how such a thing could be possible.
“Was she Orcish?”
“She was a half-orc, but she’d grown up in the city, not a part of any clan, We had about as much in common as you and I, at least in that regard. I grew up with a clan, so our experiences as orcs were mighty different. Not that different is bad, of course, but it was an obstacle. Tradition is important to me.”
“Tell me more about it,” she whispered, pressing her cheek to his chest, closing her eyes as his rich, deep voice painted a picture for her: one of great fires lit by his clan and the stories the elders would tell around them; fishing in creeks and playing in brush pine forests with his numerous cousins, the entire clan living in a closed community enclave. She could almost smell the sap of the pines, the hot southern sun baking the red clay hills in the high heat of the day, the smoke of the fires and the boom of other voices, all big and deep as the orcs gathered as a community around the flames. So wrapped up in his narrative, she was, that his next question caught her completely off guard, nearly startling her off his chest. “Do you not want kids then?”
She considered the question once she recovered, enjoying the feel of his thick fingers dragging over her shoulders, despite his guarded tone. “I do, I think...I just want them on my terms. No obsessive calorie counting and in utero painting classes and designer onesies. I’m not willing to give up my career and force my kids into moon dancing and basket weaving...yes, just on my own terms.”
“Do I even want to know what in utero paintin’ is?”
She lifted herself and grinned down. “You orcs think you’re all so tough, but you have no idea. Elf culture isintense.”
The walk back to his cabin was quiet, and she'd focused on the feeling of the balmy night air on her bare skin and the warmth of his hand in hers, and not the fact that she naked–outside, where anyone could see the least flattering bits of her.
The moonlight across his bed bathed her in a silvery-white beam when he kissed his way up her thick thighs, tusks scraping pleasantly against her skin, before delving his big tongue into her hot center. Lurielle tried to remember—as she gripped the sheets, her panting breaths seizing into strangled moans every time his full lips vibrated against her with the appreciative groans and grunts he was making—if her ex had ever gone down on her like a starved glutton at a feast, even once in their relationship. She was shaking with her climax against Khash’s mouth before she was able to formulate an answer, her entire body seeming to pulse, glorious aftershocks rippling through her as he continued to lick her slowly until she stilled his movements with a hand to his head. Not even once, she’d decided. At least not likethat.
“How’s this going to work, darlin’?” he’d mused, climbing over her afterward, his huge body dwarfing her beneath him.
Lurielle watched the shadow of his erection bounce across the bedclothes as he moved, and couldn’t hold in her laughter at the sight. “You’re waggling,” she’d giggled, pointing at the long outline before the shadow of her own hand closed around it. His big shoulders shook as caged her in his arms, insisting through his laughter that she was wrong, before silencing her with his lips.
Laughter in bed was another new sensation. Self-consciousness, awkwardness, mortifying embarrassment—all emotions she associated with intimacy, but laughter? She wondered what else she’d been missing out on. When his mouth latched onto the tip of her heavy breast, his thick, syrupy voice marveling over howsoftshe was, impossibly making it sound like a good thing, she had an idea it was more than just laughter.
Finding a position that was comfortable for them both took maneuvering, but when he’d pressed into her slowly, letting her adjust to his size as he groaned about how tight she felt, Lurielle felt a bright stab of clarity alongside the pleasure, seeing exactly how she’d wronged herself for years. She’d read articles in magazines and on blogs about women having the kinds of orgasms that made them see stars, go blind, nearly shake apart. Clickbait-y headlines and fictionalized accounts, she’d always thought, dismissing it as hokum, along with her Nana’s warnings against wearing red on Mondays or instructions on how to honor the fae. Sex like that simply didn't happen in real life.
When she stiffened, unable to speak or blink her eyes, the only audible sound being Khash’s voice in her ear as he pumped into her rhythmically, stimulating every inch of her with each deep thrust of his hips, she was forced to reconsider that she’d been wrong, wrong about everything she thought she knew, and probably owed Nana an apology.
“Who’s wagglin’ now, Bluebell?”
When he came shortly after, he lifted her hips, moving her body against him as he filled her with pulse after pulse of molten heat, Lurielle had been certain she could feel her soul leaving her body as she spasmed around him.
The moon had still been bright through the sheer curtains afterward, Khash’s big arm draped across her in the white light, as sleep pressed in on her. His head was pillowed on her breast, his exhalations heavy against her skin, and she had wondered if he would snore when on his back.You leave tomorrow, so you’ll never find out.She knew her arm and leg were going to go numb under his heavy weight, that she’d need to shift herself into a new position before long, but sleep found her quickly, drifting away on the current of his warm breath against her.
Now, as light filtered in through the sheers, the sound of her phone, several rooms away, pulled her from her reverie. Squinting against the sunshine, she tiptoed through the cabin, retrieving her cellphone from her clutch in the bathroom. Several missed calls from Ris, and as many texts.
You should have come with me, I crossed everything off my bucket list!
