Mab's hands stilled. "Room where?"
"Our quarters have a second chamber. Small, but warm. It was meant for children. Eventually."
The word sat in the air like a held breath. Mab resumed working the salve through his hair, her fingers moving automatically while her mind turned the implication over.
"And Annie?"
"There are families at Northwatch who would take her in. Orcs who've raised daughters, who know what a girl her age needs." Varek turned to face her, and her hands slipped from his hair to his shoulders. "Or she could stay with us."
Mab looked at him. At the tusks curving up past his lip, the amber eyes that caught the starlight, the war-marks visible on his shoulder above the waterline. The monster from the stories. The man who was planning room arrangements for two human orphans he'd known for four days.
"You've thought about this," she said.
"I've thought about everything." His hand found her hip under the water, pulling her closer. "The moment I claimed you in that hall, I claimed what was yours. The children are yours. So they're mine."
The words should have sounded possessive. Should have made her bristle, the way ownership always had when it came from human mouths. But Varek didn't say it like ownership. He said it like responsibility. Like a door opening instead of closing.
"Do you want children?" The question came out before she could think better of it. "Your own, I mean. Not—not borrowed ones."
Varek's hand tightened on her hip. "I want what you want."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer that matters." His thumb traced a slow circle against her hipbone. "But if you wanted to give me children, I would thank the mountain every day for the rest of my life."
Mab's eyes prickled. She looked away, at the steam, at the stars, at anything but the naked want in his eyes.
"And you?" he asked.
She opened her mouth to answer and found nothing there. No words. No ready response. Just a blank space where the thought should have been. The question had never been real before, so she'd simply... not thought about it. The way you don't think about what you'd do with a fortune when you've never had two coins to rub together.
"I don't know," she said finally. "I've never been allowed to want it."
"You're allowed now."
Such simple words. Such an impossible thing they asked of her.
"I don't know how to want things," she said. "Not properly. Not the way you mean."
"Then learn." His hand slid from her hip to her waist, pulling her through the water until she was flush against his chest. "Start small. Tell me something you want right now."
The heat of him seeped into her skin. His cock stirred against her belly.
"You," she said. "Again."
Varek's eyes flared. "That's a start."
He spun her in the water before she could draw another breath.
Her back hit his chest and his hand spread flat between her shoulder blades, pressing her forward until she caught herself on the edge of the pool. The stone was warm under her palms, slick with mineral deposits, and the night air hit her wet skin above the waterline.
His knee shoved between hers. She spread her legs, the water shifting around her thighs, and felt him line up behind her.
He didn't ease in.
He drove into her in one stroke, and the sound she made wasn't pretty. It was punched out of her, raw and graceless, and her fingers scraped against the stone as her body tried to accommodate the sudden, brutal fullness of him.
"Varek—"
