Geva’s laugh was loud and disbelieving, escaping her throat in a hoarse, high-pitched yelp.
This orc wanted her to what? To be bathed in hiswhat?!
“You — cannotpossiblymean what I think you mean, orc,” she sputtered, between her suddenly shallow breaths. “You want me to bathe in your…”
Gods, she couldn’t even say it, but her eyes had again dropped downwards, catching on that too-conspicuous bulge in his trousers. On how — how his big clawedhandhad dropped here too, adjusting himself with a highly suspect casualness.
“Ach, mayhapbatheis not the best word for this,” he replied, his mouth thinning, his gaze now firmly fixed to something beyond Geva’s head. “Mayhap…paint, would be better.”
Paint. This orc wanted topainther. With…that. Out ofthere. And had he saidfresh?!
“That is… absurd, orc,” she finally said, her voice blank. “That is utterly outrageous.Obscene. Why would I — how would I possibly — you cannot possibly —”
The orc was still glaring at the wall behind her, his arms crossing tightly over his chest. “This is notobscene,” he countered, clipped. “It is how orcs mark our mates. We have done this from the earliest tales, for this allows us to track you, and guard you, and keep you safe. It is a show of favour and fealty. It is agift.”
There was a surprising vehemence in his words, in his flashing eyes, and for a moment Geva was entirely speechless, staring at his set, stubborn face. He truly meant this. He truly wanted her to… to…
“We shall not need to touch one another to gain this,” he continued flatly. “You can do this yourself, and then bathe after, or rinse your mouth, as you wish.”
Wait. Wait waitwait. “Rinse mymouth?” Geva demanded, her voice shrill. “You expect me tobathemymouthwith this, too?!”
The orc’s expression remained grim and mulish, and he jerked a sharp, purposeful nod. “Ach,” he said. “Once you taste it, you shall see.”
Good gods. Strange waves of heat were sweeping up and down Geva’s body, swaying her on her feet — and she staggered backwards, until she’d bumped into her bed. And she gratefully sank down upon it, dropping her heavy satchel to the floor, while her hands frantically rubbed at her face. No. No. This was not worth it, passage to Ezira was not worth it, this was utterly preposterous, she would be better off running for her life, and…
The orc was stepping closer toward her, his eyes still narrow and obstinate, his folded arms flexing against his chest. “You shall see,” he repeated, deeper than before. “Orcs’ taste is pleasing to women.Mytaste is pleasing to women.”
Histaste. Wait, as if he knew this from personal experience?! And when Geva shot him a look of sheer jolting disbelief, he returned it with a cold, contemptuous snort. “Ach,mytaste,” he hissed. “I have had womenbegto suck me. I have had women make themselvessickupon my seed, and then crawl back for more.”
Something roiled in Geva’s belly — surely nausea and nothing more — but her disbelieving gaze had again dropped to that telltale swell at the orc’s groin. Which was now far nearer than it had been, impossibly close before her eyes… and damn it, his big hand had moved to adjust it again. His sharp black claws lingering on where there was now a very long, thick, prominent ridge, swelling against the trousers’ grey fabric.
“You do not believe me, woman?” he growled, as that hand slowly slipped down the full length of that ridge, until his fingers were casually cupping at the oversized bulge beneath. “You do not believe a proud, prim schoolmarm like you could welcome an orc’s sweet seed down her throat?”
Geva’s breath hitched, surely with horror and disgust, but she couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away as the orc’s hand leisurely slid up again. Showing how that ridge had grown even longer and thicker than before, tenting the trousers around it, reaching nearly up to his waist…
“Mayhap we ought to test this, then, woman?” the orc asked, his voice gone a little lower. “See if you can bear my taste, before you swear to this?”
Oh. Geva had fully stopped breathing now, those shocking words swirling through the ever-worsening mess of her thoughts, her eyes still fixed to the sight before her. To the orc’s big clawed hand sliding down again, slow and shameless and blatant. Toward where he was shifting his powerful thighs a little apart, so she might better see the true heft of the weights hanging between them, see how plump and heavy they were in his big clawed hand…
“You are not a maid, ach, poppet?” the orc’s husky voice asked, even deeper now. “I can smell what, seven other males upon you? Eight?”
Geva twitched, and shot a furious glance upwards, toward the orc’s taunting, flickering eyes. How did this bastard know that, howdarehe mock her with that? And wait, why the hell hadn’t he smelled the other servants coming, if he could apparently smell every damned man she’d evertouched?
“I am thirty years old, orc,” she snapped at him. “You can’t honestly expect a woman to stay celibate for decades on end? Gods, it’s not like I was —”
She stopped there, wincing, because where had she been going with that? Yes, she’d sought pleasure and relief with men, but she’d always been very, very careful, and her primary focus at the time had always been her family, and her education. Until — until she’d ended up here, where her contract with the Fitzwalds firmly forbade any kind of male contact whatsoever. And gods, she’d never imagined how much she would miss it, or the…possibilitiesthat came with it. The possibilities of her own partner, her own children, her own family…
“Ach, I do not hold this against you, pet,” the orc murmured, and wait, that was his big hand, once again settling on Geva’s head, tilting her face up toward him. “I only say, you are no innocent, and neither am I. So there is naught to lose in testing this, ach?”
In testing this. In his other hand still stroking up and down that swollen, oversized ridge in his trousers, while Geva blankly watched. Watched as it seemed to grow even longer, fuller, until the upper end had indeed reached the waist of his trousers. And his smooth, steady strokes just kept priming it, plumping it, until Geva caught a glimpse of glossy grey skin, peeking up above his belt, looking impossibly scandalous against his starched white shirt.
“One taste,” the orc purred, as his hand slipped up to loosen his belt, and then slid the trousers’ fabric downwards. Revealing more and more of that rounded, silken head, with its sliding hood of soft grey skin. With the long, thick, veined shaft beneath, growing fatter and darker as it extended downwards, until it disappeared in a swarm of thick black curls. But then below, there were those twin bulging weights, also covered over in black softness, almost as if they wanted to be touched and cradled and…
And. The orc’s trousers had fully fallen to his thighs, now, and the sight of this — of this orc exposing himself, and now againstrokinghimself, in Geva’s damned bedroom — was the only truth left in her frantically fraying awareness. Gods, it was big, it was ghastly, it wasgorgeous. And there was no way it could belong to this orc, and there was absolutely no way Geva was actuallytastingit, like he’d suggested. Not even with his other hand now petting her head again, as if she were still a favourite skittish pet. And not even with how that glossy tip was now jutting straight out toward her mouth, revealing a thick bead of white, pooling within its deep-cut slit…
“One taste,” he said again, or wait,wait, that was her, saying these words. “A test.One.”
And even as she winced, she didn’t try taking it back, because yes, damn him, she’d said it, she’dmeantit. And in return, there was an instant’s silence, a sound that might have been an intake of breath —
