Page 40 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

He let out a rasp of a breath, looking at her in surprise.

She got out of the bed, all in a rush. “I’m so sorry. I do not know what I was thinking, and I don’t know why I did that. I should never have touched you without permission, not there, and I have no notion—”

He was out of the bed and behind her, pressing his body into hers from behind, and her voice just died in her throat.

He cupped one of her unbound breasts through her tunic.

She let out a sigh.

He pressed his lips into her jaw. She remembered they’d kissed before, once, and never again, and she turned and their lips met again, brief, sweet, bursting, and she opened her mouth to touch her tongue to his, and that felt good.

She broke the kiss. “We can’t.”

He let go of her. “Sorry.”

“It’s my fault, I started—”

“So sorry,” he said. “Very, very sorry. I should not have taken liberties and I lost my head, and you’re very lovely with your hair falling out of your braid, and do you ever take it down, and—don’t answer that.” He sat down on the bed.

She looked at him. Then, she looked away. She had a wild and ridiculous thought, one of regret, that she had stopped them at all. She thought that she could probably get them right back there, easily enough, likely without saying any words at all. She could just reach down, take one of his hands, pull him up from the bed and press herself into him, and she imagined that Iahir would begin kissing her again. It would be easy.

But she did not want that.

Because…

Oh, because of everything. Because he was on the opposite side of a conflict than she was, because he was on the side of the enemy.

Except when he had said that maybe neither of them were on any side at all anymore, she’d had to admit that might be true.

But even so, he was the sort of man that he was, an elven nobility, a playboy, an arrogant, dismissive sort of man.

What did he want with her and why? Why would he wish to kiss her?

Well, she had known this from the beginning, of course. He found her sexually interesting. He wanted her, but she was a conquest, an interesting experience, a novelty. He was just like every other man who had taken her to bed, in the end.

She drew in a breath and let it out, and she did not desire to have him kiss her again, not anymore.

But he, damn him, kept bringing it up.

He apologized about it three more times, saying that maybe when he’d been stabbed in the shoulder, he’d gotten a fever and it had addled him and made him lose control of himself once. Another time, he said that he hadn’t been fully awake, and if he had, then he would have kept himself in check. And the third time, he pointed out that she had touched him.

They were horseback by this point, having left the inn behind miles ago. They would not be traveling together for much further, because soon, he would need to take the east road to go to Cirlahir, and she would travel on north to Notharlien.

The morning air was balmy, and they were traveling down a road that bisected two flat fields of grain, waving in the morning breeze. There were some farms in the south, some bits of countryside. It was not all towns and cities on top of each other.

“I do not know why we are still speaking of this,” she said. “I have told you there is no need for apologies. In fact, this last thing you have said did not even sound like an apology. I think you are simply angling to find some excuse to talk about your cock.”

He let out something like a snort. “You’re still so angry with me, warrioress, however, so I must apologize.”

“Indeed, I was not angry until you insisted on bringing the topic up over and over again.”

“But that seems to me to be an indicator that you are, in fact, still angry about it.”

She sighed heavily. “No, it is not. I simply want to put the entire business behind us.”

“Because you’re embarrassed?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I am. You seem to be embarrassed, too.”