What came instead was a heat that started low in her belly and spread outward, pooling between her thighs. Her skin felt too tight. The nightgown felt like a cage.
His hand had reached her knee. His thumb pressed into the hollow at the back of it, and her leg fell open.
"Good," Varek said. "Just like that."
She had spent her whole life learning to take up less space. To press her knees together, tuck her elbows in, shrink herself down to fit the corners she'd been assigned. And now this orc was spreading her open with one hand and telling her it was good.
"Sit up."
She sat.
His hands found the cracked leather belt at her waist and worked the buckle loose. Then he gathered the nightgown in his fists and pulled it up over her head in one motion.
Cold air hit her skin. Mab crossed her arms over her chest.
Varek caught her wrists. "No," he said. He drew her arms down to her sides and held them there. Then he stepped back far enough to see all of her.
Mab had never been naked in front of a man.
She knew what she looked like. The soft roll of her belly, the dimpled flesh of her thighs, the breasts that had never fit properly into any bodice the household provided. She knew what men saw when they looked at her. When they looked past her.
Varek was not looking past her.
His gaze moved over her body like a hand. Down from her throat to her breasts, lingering there, watching the way they rose and fell with her breathing. Lower, to the curve of her waist, the swell of her belly, the dark hair between her thighs. His nostrils flared.
He dropped to his knees at the foot of the bed.
The thud of it shook the frame. Varek on his knees still put his head level with her chest, his shoulders broader than her entire body, his hands settling on her thighs, pressing them apart. Mab's hands knotted in the sheets. She could feel herself shaking.
Varek leaned in. His breath was hot against the inside of her thigh, and then his nose pressed against the crease where her leg met her body, and he inhaled.
The sound he made was obscene. A groan that rumbled up from somewhere deep in his chest, vibrating against her skin.
"You smell like wanting," he said. "You've smelled like this since the hall. Since I put you in my lap and ground you against my cock." His thumbs pressed into her inner thighs, spreading her wider. "Do you know what that does to me? Sitting in a room full of my men, and all I can smell is your cunt getting wet for me?"
His mouth was so close she could feel the heat of his breath against her folds. His tusks grazed the sensitive skin of herinner thigh, dragging over flesh that had never been touched by anyone.
"Varek." His name came out cracked.
"That's it." His thumbs spread her open, and she felt the air against her slick heat. "Say my name. I want to hear it when I make you come."
His tongue touched her.
Mab's hips jerked off the bed. His hands clamped down on her thighs, holding her in place, and his tongue dragged a slow line through her cunt.
She had never felt anything like it.
His tongue was broad and hot and impossibly thorough, licking into her like she was something to be savored. His mouth sealed over the swollen bud at the apex of her thighs and sucked.
Mab's back arched off the bed. A sound tore out of her throat, something between a moan and a sob, and her hands flew to his head. Her fingers found the coarse strands of his hair, the thick braid at the back of his skull, and held on.
His tongue circled her, then flattened, then circled again. He was learning her. Mapping her responses the way she'd once mapped the kitchen, every surface and corner and hidden space committed to memory. When she whimpered, he pressed harder. When she gasped, he slowed down. When her thighs tried to close around his head, his hands forced them wider and his mouth grew more insistent.
One hand left her thigh. She felt his finger trace through the wetness his mouth had left, sliding down to her entrance and pressing in.
Mab's breath locked in her chest. His finger was thicker than anything she'd imagined, and it slid into her slowly, so slowly, giving her body time to adjust around it.
"Good," Varek said.
