Page 34

My eyes drop to his hand—the one he was about to slice open… for me.

Something in my chest tilts as everything I just rewrote about our wedding, rewrites itself again—with a much more intense plot twist.

The empty bed… the hunt… waking up to Grak instead of him this morning. I took every bit of that as proof he didn’t give a real damn about me.

But it was just the opposite.

“High value” Vance never worried about my pleasure or my feelings.

Yet, this nine-foot Emperor ran away to pray because he was scared he might cause me pain.

That word I refused to consider last night fists around my heart.

“Ivar…”

He shakes his head frantically, keeping his eyes lowered, as if this gigantic Orc is scared of his much smaller bride.

“Ivar, look at me,” I insist.

He doesn’t answer. But I wait him out until his mournful eyes finally rise to meet mine.

“I liked the hurt,” I confess. “I liked waking up sore because you loved on me so hard. I didn’t have that…”

My voice cracks, the memories of the past year clawing at my chest. “Before I came here, I didn’t have any love or real desire in my life. Nobody ever wanted me. They only wanted what I could do for them. Then you came along and blew my mind by making it so simple. No hoops, no tests, just ‘Hey, Little Bride, I’m all in!’”

I shake my head. “That’s why I can’t believe—can’t even fathom—that you’d think I’d need to be protected from the gift of your love when it’s the one thing I’ve always wanted.”

“Adora…”

With hope brimming in his eyes, Ivar leans in, so close his lips hover over mine. “Then if you allow, I shall spend the rest of my life giving this gift to my Little Bride.”

I can’t say for sure who moves first, only that our lips crash.

His skull codpiece belt buckle clatters to the floor. My fur throw is tossed aside, replaced by his furnace heat as he picks me up and pins me to the marble wall.

I instinctively wrap my legs around his waist, and we both groan when the large tip of his cock presses into my opening, once again spreading my folds apart.

The pheromone-induced frenzy is done, but my body must have changed in some permanent way. Like something summoned, my slick spills down his shaft, allowing him to fill me with one rock of his wide hips between my legs.

“Do not wish to hurt you… Do not wish to hurt you.”

I don’t know if he’s talking to me or himself. He bangs the side of his fist into the wall above my head, forcing himself to take me with slow, controlled thrusts.

A new memory unlocks. This is how it went last night.

Him muttering that we should stop, to please cease taking his cock so well. Me unable to keep myself from coming every time he bumped against my clit.

“I think… I think maybe Orcs aren’t the only ones affected by Star Thrall,” I admit right before I explode.

“Little Bride!” he grunts out before doing the same.

Forget Lower Realm versus Middle Realm. Time loses all meaning as we come and come before finally landing in a tangle of heaving chests and pounding heartbeats above the puddle we’ve made on the floor.

“You asked if I liked you.…” He leans his forehead into the top of my hopelessly disheveled braids. “My passion may eventually calm, especially after the birth of our first ogre. It is said male Orcs struck with Star Thrall can become less intensely attached over time. I am sorry that I did not make this plain last night. I already care greatly for you. And my hope is that you come to feel the same for me, and that we can spend the rest of our lives together.”

My heart races like it’s fit to burst. But this still feels so crazy. And after a lifetime of other people deciding for me, I need to know, “What happens to you if I leave and return to the Lower Realm?”

His breath catches. Audibly.