I moved onto washing his hair. It was surprisingly soft, though it looked coarse, and I threaded my soap-covered fingers through it, washing away the dirt. Once it was clean, the horde king did one final rinse and then stood from the tub, water sluicing off his body.
He looked down at me, his magnificent flesh on display, his cock still hard in front of me. And I kneeled before him, in my transparent shift.
His jaw ticked and he growled, looking away. He stepped out of the tub, calling out in Dakkari towards the entrance and I gasped when the same three males appeared, taking out the bathing tub so quickly, I didn’t even have time to shield my almost-nude body from them. Not that they looked. They kept their eyes averted.
The horde king had no hesitations about his own nudity and simply dried off with the same furs I had used before draping it over the back of a steel rack at the side of the tent.
When we were alone again, I stood, wrapping my arms around me to hide my modest breasts. My hair was wet, however, drenching the fabric as it dripped, and parts of the shift molded to my body.
I tensed when he approached me and despite the heat in the tent, I shivered, my nipples pebbling against my arm.
He unthreaded my arms, placing them at my sides, looking down the front of my body the same way he had at my village. Like he could see all of me. And I supposed he could.
Tension, at least on my part, thickened the air between us.
“I had intended to rut you on the floor this night like a beast,” he murmured suddenly. “I thought of nothing else as we rode.”
I inhaled a sharp breath.
“I will wait until you heal,” he finally said.
That…surprised me.
The way he was gazing at me…no male had ever looked at me like that before. And when he reached out a hand to touch me, in desperation, in a clumsy attempt to maintain some sort of distance between us, I hurriedly asked, “Do the Dakkari often take humans as their whores? I would think your own females would suffice for that purpose.”
The horde king stilled and my blood rushed in my ears, wondering if I’d gone too far.
Silence spread thin between us.
“You believe you will be my whore,kalles?” he finally asked.
Confusion made my brows furrow and I licked my lips as I said, “Isn’t that what you meant?”
The horde king grinned, though it was small and dark. Still, it made my breath hitch.
“Nik, you will not be my whore,” he rasped, his voice deepening. I gasped, my body going tight, when he brushed his fingertips over my pebbled nipple before thumbing it back and forth in a way that made my hands shake, the sensation foreign and new. “Nik, you will be mykassikari.You will be myMorakkari.”
My head went foggy as he continued his caress over my other nipple but when I tried to squirm away, his tail wrapped around my waist, holding me fast and firm, surprising me with its strength.
“What…what is that?” I asked, trying to focus.
“I will claim you in the old way, in the old Dakkari tradition,” he told me, which only confused me even more. “You will not be my whore,kalles. You will be my queen.”
Chapter Five
When I woke up the next morning, the horde king was gone.
Emerging from a restless sleep, I felt even more exhausted than I had the night before. And when I shifted my legs, turning over in the wide bed, I hissed. The pain was even more severe as well.
I sat up gingerly, looking around the empty, dark, domed tent. I already knew he was gone, had woken briefly when he’d roused from bed in the early hours of morning, but it didn’t prevent me from scanning the quiet space warily.
When I was convinced I was truly alone, I blew out a small breath, pushing my wild, still-damp hair away from my eyes, my mind replaying the events of last night.
I picked at the fur blanket covering my thinly dressed body.
He’d told me I would be his queen.
His queen.
