Not right. Not right.
When she opened her eyes, White Eyes was running the cloth over his head and face. Wet and sloppy, the water dripped down the unhuman shape of his features.
Muscles tensing, restraining herself, she licked her lips with a mad urge to drink every drop of water off his body.
Wringing the rest of the wet cloth out, he dipped it in the bowl of water she held, wrung it out once more, and rubbed it over himself. The bowl wasn't that big. There was a lot of him. And though it felt like hours, it only took minutes until he finished and stood before her with a wet cloth.
Grinding her teeth, fingers clenching the bowl, Annabell held still when White Eyes started washing her. She never knew a male who said so much with his eyes. And what his gaze did to her, what his presence did to her. Annabell felt dizzy with the rush of hunger he caused.
It was no surprise she liked him. She had liked him from their first meeting. Different from her, a presence of pure masculinity and a sweet gentleness as he handed her a wildflower and told her his name.
"Doku-ni, I remember. And the war beast is Zerzer!" Annabell remembered suddenly, saying it out loud.
His heavy brow relaxed, a smile emerging. In a flash of sensual provocation, his black tongue came out, black against the white of his skin. Enthralled, she watched him echo her own actions and lick his bottom lip.
Oh.
The sight of his tongue made her nipples throb. Images of feeling it curled over and around her, wet, barely there, then firm. Licking, tasting, and sucking. She wanted that. Would he touch her breasts?
Holding her eyes captive, he ran the wet cloth over her face, her neck, and her shoulders. Her skin turned to gooseflesh in the air. The cloth stayed sloppy wet, rivulets of tepid water running down her body, cooling quickly, tickling. He ran it down both arms, to her hands, and wiped finger by finger. Instead of efficient speed, he took his time. Never taking his eyes off her, he bathed her with care and attention.
Annabell trembled as Doku-ni touched her. He wouldn't let her break their gaze or hide. His cloth found scars, fat, calluses, and age. She was all disappointment, a spinster, and widow. White Eyes washed it all away to find the woman beneath. Every swipe of his cloth was the deepest, rawest of intimacies. Movements slow and deliberate—there was no aggression, no force. Perhaps the custom of washing was unavoidable, but his seduction was not.
Still silent, he made no noise. Not that luxurious grumble in his chest or the deeper, powerful growl that had come from his throat. What he did was a gift, an honor from him, one he asked her to accept.
The gift of the Orki to his redress, showing her who she was, what she meant to him. He watered Annabell's thirsty, empty soul.
When was the last time anyone had touched her?
When was the last time anyone had loved her?
He washed her back in languorous strokes. Muscles jumped under her skin as his cloth shaped the curves of her waist to her hips, her bottom, and thighs. She was thick there, thicker than in her girlhood. Strength needed for working the farm by herself stole her soft girlishness and replaced it with the mannish flesh needed to survive. She couldn't help the changes, just like the wrinkles around her eyes from glaring into the morning sun. She told herself that she accepted the price of her choices. There was nobody to care what she looked like, anyway. There never would be again.
This Orki gave her heartbreaking acceptance and approval—it confounded her.
Her back finished, he returned to her front, where her breasts ached and her nipples had become extra sensitive. He wet the cloth, wrang it out this time, then washed her breasts. He cupped it around the fullness, lifting, gently squeezing in his big hands, rubbing the material against her skin again and again.
They stood now, enclosed in their own bubble of privacy. The world did not exist. His breath. His heat. His scent… Bending over her, he brushed a tusk against her brow. Then his lips. The wet tip of his tongue touched the corner of her eyelid at the same time his fingers closed over her nipple through the cloth in a pulling-pinch.
Annabell cried out, and a whine started behind her teeth that built to a wail of pain. White Eyes had reached inside of her being and found all her dreams and fantasies, pulling them out–seeing them–one by one.
She was sorrow exposed to the brightest part of the day, fields of unseen wildflowers, the untasted, sweetest peaches at the top of the tree. It hurt like an impossible desire. Lost then found, and now the dream was here, in her hands, too exquisite to endure. The wail rose, spiraled, twisting in the air with raw realizations, lowering into a scream of agony.
This desire was dead. This fantasy and dream had been dead, but here it all lived, heated and alive, resurrected. She was grief and gratitude, rage and acceptance free-falling into new.
Chapter 10
Every dream She Never Had
The Orki picked out women from the Gathering Lodge yard, but Annabell had seen no other feminine faces. She had heard them. Cries and protests. They were alive. She might have seen Lurann's yellow hair, but she couldn't be sure. She passed out at Doku-ni’s feet, losing track at what happened around her.
Annabell trusted in her papa's stories. The Orki had good intentions, but their ways were not the customs of the village. With as much grief and woe as they had left behind, it was a hard leap to think the other women might be in danger. Annabell tried to see who else sat with an Orki on the back of his war beast, but Doku-ni stopped each attempt. He pulled her head in close to his chest, covering her eyes with the blanket, cutting off her view.
"What are you doing, Annabell Roe? What are you doing?"her inner voice asked.
"I do not know."
"Look with your eyes and not your emotions."
