More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
He had to do this—for her. For any life he hoped to have with her.
“Sorcha,” her mother huffed, “you have to get up. I know it hurts, but life still needs to be lived.” That bitterness throbbed inside her, peeling her lip back from her dry teeth to sneer at her mother. Aoife jerked back as if Sorcha had slapped her. “I’m sorry someone else has to do all the fucking chores,” she growled.
“Your siblings all pursue their dreams thanks to you. Your father, too. This family succeeds because you are there to support it. But I didn’t…” Aoife kissed the back of Sorcha’s hand. “I didn’t realize how much that took from you. Not until I saw you with him.”
Her chest ached with a fragile hope, evermore painful than the heartbreak. It laid tendrils inside her, grasping at the broken pieces of her heart. Not putting them back together, but holding them steady as she fell into her mother’s arms and wept.
He’d even lost a day seeking Cara and Anghus’s farm, needing to assure himself that he hadn’t led Silas or worse to the family’s homestead.
Anghus had supplied him with food, for which Orek was doubly grateful. He thanked his friend and walked back into the woods, relieved at least that neither Silas nor Krul had made it to the homestead.
For whatever reason, Krul’s party hadn’t made nearly as much haste as Silas.
A roar raked through Orek’s ears. Tusks as long and sharp as daggers slashed at him. The sword trembled in his hands, and blood gushed hot between Orek’s fingers. A tusk dug into his shoulder, Krul’s hands gripping hard at his arm and neck as Orek pushed the sword in further, past the resistance of muscle and ribs.
Stomping a boot on the orc chieftain’s chest, he flattened him on his back and drove the sword down, through organs and spine, into the ground. Pinning him.
Orek bared his fangs right back. “She’s my mate,” he hissed. And nothing in this world was as vicious or determined as a bonded orc protecting their mate. Krul Stone-Skin died with his lips twisted in disgust and red eyes seething. Even as the light left his eyes, his face frozen in a rictus of rage.
“I go where you go, my mate. You are my home, Sorcha. My clan. I’m sorry I ever made you doubt it.”
She was a little embarrassed to admit even to herself that all the urgency and restlessness of the past days had coalesced now into an aching need, making her crave her mate something fierce. Sorcha wanted to feel him, assure herself that he was alive and with her.
Unable to help herself, she tangled their legs, pressing the apex of her thighs into his hip. A muffled groan escaped her lips as she sought more pressure. This wild, frantic need wanted out, but she knew better than to mount her hurting, wounded mate in the middle of camp with her brothers and father a few paces away—though she certainly thought about it.
Her questing hands took hold of his cock, the heat of him searing her palm.
Her breast popped free, nipple hardening in the cold winter air, but he quickly warmed it with his mouth, sucking and laving the flat of his tongue across the tip. “Whose are these to lick and kiss and worship?” he growled, nipping the sensitive underside. “Yours,” she moaned.
He purred when she grew even slicker for him, that utterly pleased smile teasing at his lips again. “Whose cock will you ride with your tight cunt?” His middle finger found and teased her entrance, spreading her syrup up to her clit and back down again. “Yours!” she gasped.
A big hand covered hers on his cock, and together they pumped his length once, twice, spreading the leaking spend from root to tip. At her ear, he rumbled, “Watch me sink inside you. Watch how you take your mate so perfectly.”
There was hardly any light for her to truly see, but his cock glistened with her slick in the moonlight, enough that she saw how the flared head parted her to his invasion as he pushed inside.
Sorcha gasped when his hips finally came flush with hers, seated to the hilt inside her. She trembled with it, feeling impossibly full, and needing to move.
Orek quaked and gave her a hard thrust, the wet sounds of their bodies loud in the quiet clearing.
“My mate,” he snarled, and then his hands were full of her backside, drawing her down to impale her on his cock.
Her body clutched him tight, and she felt his cock throb inside her as he filled her with seed, his hips beating a desperate rhythm. With a roar, Orek bore down on her clit to send her spiraling into another release, one so long and consuming she nearly drowned in it.
“I’ve only ever wanted you, Sorcha. My life is yours.” His big palm warmed her leg in the cold night, running up and down her flank and backside, as his other hand loosened her stays. “I want to hold you as we fall asleep and wake you each morning with my tongue on your cunt.”
Hips rocking gently, she teased the underside of his cock with her quim, soaked with their spend.
“I see now that I can’t—I shouldn’t go back to how things were. I love my family, but I have to live my own life. And that life is with you. I want to build something new. With you.”
She was content to lick and taste and tease every inch of him, so Orek lay back and let her have her way, just as a good mate should.
Her tongue strayed along the length of his cock, making Orek grimace with painful pleasure.
She sucked him inside, swirling that maddening tongue, and Orek groaned long and with feeling into the night, a predator felled.
She sank on him with aching slowness, teeth biting into that swollen bottom lip. Orek held her hips steady as her body dropped that last inch, taking him to the root.
Fangs bared to the moon, he rutted into his mate from below, forcing himself inside again and again as her body rippled and clenched in release. She cried his name, filling his ears and his heart.
“So glad I found you,” she murmured, voice gone slurred and drowsy. “And now you’ll never be rid of me.” “Promise?” “I promise.”
Orek woke cold, stiff, and pained—and it was the best day of his life. He began it just as he’d promised, with his tongue lapping at his mate’s warm cunt.
Then he set his cock where his mouth had been, claiming her with steady, pounding thrusts that buried him deep inside her, exactly where he wanted to be.
A pale green, it floated around her like the calm waters of a pond, silver threads embroidered at the hems and cuffs to catch the light like rippling sunlight across the surface. The billowing sleeves draped and bounced with her unbound curls, which hung long to her waist. The neckline dipped low on her chest, revealing swathes of creamy, freckled flesh that deserved kisses between whispered praise.
Several halflings now called the Darrowlands their home, including a blacksmith who worked for Darrow in Dundúran Castle. The others had taken up farming in the countryside.
More than one set of eyes tracked Maeve everywhere she went—and they weren’t all human. If anything, that seemed to delight Maeve even more, and Sorcha wished her sister well. She has no idea what she’s in for.
She’d eaten her fill, danced her fill, and now it was time to gorge on her handsome halfling husband.
They weren’t sure if Orek could sire children. Halfling animals like mules couldn’t, and they didn’t know if this would be true of him, too. Sorcha had delighted in her mate filling her with his seed hundreds of times now and had yet to fall pregnant.
“You said I can have you any way I like,” he said as he crossed back through the house. In the kitchen, he finally set her down on the table, which was, interestingly, the perfect height to keep their hips level. “I want to start here.”
His soft gaze turned hungry as he leaned over her, rucking up her skirts.
Sorcha moaned happily as his calluses rasped against her tender flesh, biting her lip as he set his middle finger to run maddening circles around her clit.
“Enough teasing me with them—show me your pretty breasts.” Orek watched raptly as she tugged the neckline of her dress down, allowing one breast to spill free. She plumped it in her hand, teasing one fingertip over her nipple.
Sorcha moaned when the hot bar of his cock slid against her quim, the flared head notching at her clit. He settled between her thighs, holding himself over her on a palm splayed at her waist.
Gulping, she used her arm and hand to plump her breasts, teasing them with finger and thumb. He rumbled as he watched, eyes gone molten gold. Though his nostrils flared and his cheeks grew ruddy, he never hastened his hips, instead keeping to those maddening little thrusts that pushed her to the brink.
With his eyes fixed on hers, he covered her hand with his to feed her breast into his greedy mouth, where he sucked and laved at her. He worked her with teeth and tongue, alternating between breasts and sucking kisses and nipping laps.
He seated himself with firm rolls of his hips, working a little deeper with each stroke. His head fell to her chest when his hips came flush with hers, cock buried to the root inside her. Sorcha clenched her muscles around him, earning her a purring growl.
Their hips slapped together again, again, in a rhythm that would’ve moved her across the table if she weren’t gripping him tight.
She clutched at him with every drag, her body begging his not to go, and welcomed him back with every stroke. She wept for him, their slick and spend dripping over Sorcha’s thighs and the wet sounds they made echoing off the stones of the kitchen.
Her mate held her tight and himself still as she came, milking his cock, until he too could stand it no longer. Rhythm stuttering into a frenzy, he set his elbows on the table, clutched her hair in his hand, and rutted.
Orek snarled as he pumped her full of him, the hot gush of his seed scorching her from the inside out. She was full. So full. But she’d never get her fill of him.
