His voice shook her out of her daydream and she slid off his back, quickly finding the pulled back duvet to draw over them.
"Oh no, it’s not. C’mon, head right here, mister. You need to rest."
"It’s too early for you," he grumbled, his eyes already closed. Despite the protestation, he did as she asked, and the heat of his body radiated against hers as he puddled into the mattress. She thought he felt a touch feverish, his always-warm skin hotter than normal, and decided she’d search his bathroom for a thermometer later.
"Is my tablet going to bother you? If not then I’m fine right where I am."
His hair was silky-smooth as she sunk her fingers into it, dragging her nails down the back of his neck once he’d settled against her, his head pillowed on her breast. The soft, sandalwood smell she was accustomed to had been completely overtaken by something wilder — pine needles and black earth and crunchy leaves, the swirl of bonfire smoke weaving through his hair and the brightness of plump red berries, so sharp and juicy she could almost taste them bursting on her tongue. Her brow wrinkled as she inhaled deeply, wondering how it was possible for him to so thoroughly smell as if he’d just come from a party in the woods when he’d taken such a scalding hot shower.Tomorrow you can take a shower together, and you can use your rosewater shampoo on him. For now, just finish your book, that’s all you’d be doing at home anyway.The highborn nereid in her book hadn’t yet realized the grouchy centaur horse trainer she verbally sparred with each day was the laird of the neighboring clan, but she would soon, and the tension between the two was delicious.
Tate’s breath was a hot, steady huff against her skin, just above the low neckline of her tank top, and Silva closed her eyes, trying to imagine him as the secret prince of some faraway highland castle and herself as the unwitting highborn lady. It was silly and stupid to have fallen this fast she reminded herself for the hundredth time, the tips of her nails just barely grazing his skin. Stupid and silly and she’d lied to her family and friends more in the past two months than she had in her entire life, a habit in which she was becoming quite adept as she invented reasons to be away from her life and responsibilities.And for what? It’s all going to catch up with you eventually and you don’t even know what kind of a relationship he’s looking for. You’re probably just in the way. Real-life isn’t a romance novel.
"I’m glad you’re here, dove."
Her breath caught and her heart tripped in an uneven cadence at his soft exhalation, just on the edge of sleep, as he was able to hear her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them, and she was unable to answer for a long moment. Stupid and silly which meantshewas stupid and silly, but at that moment, she didn’t care. She was exactly where she was meant to be.
"I am too."
Lurielle
"Idon’t think halfthe orcs on the field were this muddy. You’re soaked to the skin!"
Lurielle winced at the amount of rainwater dripping from the hem of her boyfriend’s soiled jersey, collecting on her laundry room floor as she pulled it up his body. The tight, white shorts he wore were caked in mud and similarly dripping, their original color completely hidden beneath the wet muck. "Just hold still and don’t touch anything. You’re getting mud everywhere, you’re as bad as the dogs!"
"The half that kept their shorts clean were relying on the rest of us to win the match," Khash huffed, ignoring her and pulling the jersey over his head, his long braid swinging free to drip even more water down his body. "You don’t win Grumsh’vargh by keepin’ clean, darlin’. This isn’t one of your croquet matches."
"I don’t even like croquet," she muttered, sinking to her knees on the towel she’d dropped on the ground. "Thisis why I call it mudball."
The clutch of orcish wives and girlfriends who populated the sidelines at the bi-monthly matches had thawed to her presence amongst them, but as she sat at the edge of the supporters week after week with only Ordo for company, listening to the women chatter and laugh in Orcish, she wondered if there would ever be a stage in her life when she actually fit in with her peers. She’d downloaded a language lesson app on her phone and diligently studied her Orcish in fifteen-minute bursts several times a day, the app’s benevolent but slightly bullying bat mascot reminding her periodically through the day to complete her lessons, but she was still completely unable to decipher a single guttural word during spoken conversations.You need to sign up for classes at the school, or see if the community center offers anything, she’d thought that afternoon, listening to the laughter of the group.
It had rained that morning, leaving the field a muddy mess. Ordo had been left behind, and as she’d shifted in her seat, tucking her hands up into the sleeves of the oversized hoodie she wore, a small part of her wished that she too had been left at home.He’s going to want your kids to speak Orcish, so you need to learn it now. Perhaps she’d fit in then, Lurielle thought, dipping her nose beneath the hoodie’s neckline and inhaling, when she was a room mother at the Cambric Creek elementary school. The hoodie was Khash’s and still held the subtle smell of him — amber-touched leather and a hint of warm musk — and she’d taken to wearing it to the matches like a security blanket, insulating her from the unkind words probably being spoken about her by the group.Don’t be stupid, they probably didn’t even notice you’re here.
"These are going to need to soak until next week if you want them to actually be white again." She loved the sight of him in the tiny uniform shorts; loved the way his thick thighs filled out the legs and the curve of his generous ass strained the stitching on the backside, and even darkened with mud and dripping wet, the bulge of his thighs against the snug fabric made her weak. His thighs weren’t the only bulge, she observed appreciatively once she was eye-level with his waistband. The only thing surprising about the story he’d once told her about splitting his pants while walking the dog, Lurielle had decided over the course of the past five and half months, was that it didn’t happen to him on a weekly basis. The structural integrity of every pair of pants he owned was in danger each time he put them on, strained in every direction—his muscular thighs, the considerable bulge at his crotch, and the twinned globes of his ass, somehow managing to be solid with muscle and deliciously soft all at once, protruding enough to be used as an emergency end table if the need were ever to arise and threatening to burst free like a particularly rambunctious juicy peach. She had never considered herself an ass aficionado, but she was proven wrong every Saturday at the sight of him in the tight, white shorts, no matter their state of cleanliness.
"That’s what bleach is for," he chuckled as she drew down the short zipper, hooking her fingers beneath the waistband and pulling the soiled shorts down. They had casual plans for the night, to visit the fairgrounds where the community Fallfest carnival was taking place, at which Khash would announce they ought to get chickens for her backyard, a proclamation he would somehow manage to voice with a straight face, regardless of the fact that he lived in a luxury highrise in the city most of the week. Lurielle would buy goats-milk soap scented with rosemary and mint, made from a local vendor and carried at every single street fair, maker’s mart, and community sale the town boasted, yet she always sniffed it like it was the very first time she’d ever heard of something as fanciful as homemade soap. They would eat terrible fair food that would have had her hating herself just a few years ago, but these days she attempted to simply not think about it. It wasn’t as if there were a fair every weekend, after all. Fried cheese on a stick was calling her name, but the shorts had other ideas, it seemed. Lurielle tugged again, and the soaked fabric refused to budge.
The full curve of that juicy peach was the culprit, she realized, the wet fabric molding around it and settling beneath each cheek’s double handful like cement. The shorts were a size too small, likely purchased when he joined the league, before years of city living and rich, high-end restaurant food, which hadn’t helped the situation. Hooking her thumbs beneath the waistband, she pulled with all her might, to little avail.
