Chapter 7: The Morning Light
I wake to warmth. To the heavy, solid press of a body curled around mine, and for one breathless moment, I let myself believe it was a fever dream. My father is alive. Y'thara stands unbroken. I am merely Liana, the sheltered princess who has never known the weight of a crown or a conqueror's seed pooling inside her.
But the ache between my thighs tells the truth. The cold iron band on my finger tells it louder.
I open my eyes to pale morning light filtering through the gauze-draped windows, casting silver across the marble floor. Gromm's arm is draped over my waist, his chest rising and falling against my back in a slow, steady rhythm. Deep sleep. Trusting sleep. The notion unsettles me more than his wakefulness ever could.
I turn, carefully, and find myself face to face with him.
He is softer in sleep. The jutting brow ridge still casts shadows over his closed eyes, and his tusks remain stark against his lower lip, but the hard lines of his jaw have eased. His mouth is slightly parted. His breath is warm against my forehead. I study the geography of his face like a map I am trying to memorize, searching for the monster I need him to be.
Instead, I find scars. A thin white line cutting through his left brow. A jagged patch of rougher skin at his temple. A long, puckered mark that goes down his neck and over his chest. His skin is dusky green, coarse-grained, and beneath the hair spreading across his chest, I can see old wounds layered like the rings of a felled tree.
I do not know why I reach out. My fingers move before my mind can catch them, tracing the edge of the scar at his brow. His skin is warm, textured, real. He does not stir.
I let my hand drift lower, following the line of his sternum, the heavy swell of his pectoral, the hard plane of his stomach. The hair there is coarse beneath my fingertips. I tell myself I am mapping my enemy. Learning his weaknesses. But my touch is not clinical. It is curious. Reverent. And when my fingers brush lower still, grazing the thick, heavy length of his morning erection where it presses against his hip, slick with the residue of what he buried inside me last night, I cannot look away.
He groans in his sleep. Shifts against me. The head of his cock nudges my thigh, and I feel my body respond, betraying me once more.
I lick my lips, the motion unconscious, and my hand drifts lower. My fingers brush the coarse hair at the base of his shaft, and I feel the heat of him before I even make contact. He is thick and heavy, half hard even in sleep, and the sight of it stirs something in my belly. Something I should not name.
I curl my palm around him.
The skin is smooth over iron hardness, hot to the touch. I trace the ridge of his glans with my thumb, feeling the slit where his seed spilled from me last night. My breath catches. I run my fingers along the thick vein that pulses against the side of his shaft, following it down to the heavy sack nestled between his thighs. His balls are full, tight against my touch, and I cup them gently, marveling at the weight of them.
The musk rises from his skin, earthy and raw, and it clouds my thoughts. I lean closer, my mouth parting, my tongue sliding out to taste him. Just a tentative lick, just the barest brush of wet heat against his tip.
His hand moves fast.
Fingers tangle in my hair, not hard but firm, stopping me. I freeze, my lips hovering a hair's breadth from his cock. His amber eyes are open, dark with something between sleep and hunger.
"You are playing a dangerous game, little queen." His voice is rough, graveled with sleep. "If you keep going, I will not stop until you are bred all over again."
My heart hammers against my ribs. I should pull away. I should reclaim some shred of dignity. But the heat between my legs aches, and the taste of him lingers on my tongue, and I do not move.
I meet his gaze, and something shifts inside me. Something that should terrify me but instead makes my thighs press together.
"What if I want to be bred again?"
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, hanging in the morning air like smoke. My hand is still wrapped around the base of his cock, and I feel it twitch against my palm as my question registers. His amber eyes darken, pupils swallowing the gold until only a thin ring remains.
A low growl rumbles from his chest. His hand tightens in my hair, not painfully, but with a possessiveness that makes my breath catch.
"You are a greedy little thing, aren't you?" His voice is rough, scraped raw by sleep and want. "My beautiful, hungry wife. Already aching for more of me."
He pushes my head down, guiding my lips to his cock. I do not resist. My mouth opens, and I take him, just the head at first, tasting the salt of his skin and the lingering musk of our union. He groans, a deep, shuddering sound that vibrates through his entire body.
I have never inspected a cock before. Not like this. In the baths I had only glimpsed him, and last night was a blur of sensation and surrender. But now, in the pale morning light, I study him with my lips and tongue. The shape of his glans, the ridge where it swells, the velvety texture of his skin stretched over iron hardness.
He groans again, and the sound is vulnerable. Unguarded. The great warlord, the beast who conquered my kingdom, reduced to a shuddering mess by the touch of my tongue.
The realization sends a thrill through me.
I wrap my hand around his shaft as much as I can manage, which is not nearly enough. He is too thick for my fingers to meet. I stroke him as I lick, tasting the length of him, learning the map of veins and ridges. His hips buck slightly, and he lets out a string of guttural orc words I do not understand but feel in my bones.
"You learn fast, little queen," he rasps. "You will drain me dry before the sun rises."
Before I can respond, his hands find my hips. He drags me up his body, flipping me, repositioning me until I am straddling his face. The position is obscene, my cunt hovering above his mouth, my thighs framing his tusked jaw. I feel his breath hot against my folds, and I tremble.
"Then let us feast together," he growls, and his tongue plunges into me.
A cry tears from my throat, raw and unbidden, as his tongue drives deep into my core. The sound echoes off the vaulted ceiling, shameless and wanton, and I clap a hand over my mouth too late. Gromm's chest rumbles beneath me, a low chuckle vibrating through his body and up into my cunt.
"That is it, little queen," he growls against my folds, his breath hot and damp. "Let them hear you. Let the whole palace know how your orc husband pleases you."
His tongue curls, laving at my entrance, tasting the evidence of last night and this morning's arousal. I shudder above him, my thighs trembling, and he grips my hips with both hands, holding me steady as he feasts. His thumbs spread me open, exposing me to the morning air and to his relentless mouth.
"Keep busy," he rumbles, giving my ass a firm slap. "You started this. Do not leave me wanting."
I understand. I lower myself, crawling backward until my knees frame his shoulders and my mouth hovers above his cock. It stands thick and proud, glistening with my saliva from before, and I take a breath before lowering my lips to his tip.
But his tongue finds my clit, circling with practiced precision, and my concentration shatters. I moan against his shaft, my forehead dropping to his thigh as pleasure blinds me. His fingers dig into my flesh, guiding my hips, grinding my cunt against his mouth.
"I cannot," I gasp, pulling back from his cock. "I cannot focus when you do that."
His chuckle vibrates through me. "Good. Do not focus. Just feel."
His tongue spears into me, then retreats, only to have his lips seal around my clit. He sucks, gentle at first, then harder, and I cry out again, my hips bucking against his face.
"Gromm," I plead, the name breaking from me like a prayer. "I am going to come. I am going to — "
His thumb presses against my clit, rubbing in tight circles, and the orgasm crests like a wave crashing through a dam. I scream, my body convulsing, and I feel a gush of liquid release from me, splashing against his face, his chest, drenching his tusked jaw. The sensation is foreign, shaming, and I freeze as the last spasms fade, mortification flooding in.
I lift myself, looking down at him. His face is slick, glistening, his amber eyes wild with triumph.
"Did I — " I start, my cheeks burning.
He laughs, a deep, genuine sound that shakes the bed. "You did, little queen. You squirted for me." He licks his lips, savoring. "Delicious."
Before I can apologize or hide, his hands grip my waist and pull me off him, flipping me onto my back. He looms above me, his cock pressing against my slick, sensitive entrance, and I feel the hunger radiating from him like heat.
"Now," he growls, positioning himself. "I am going to fuck you properly. And you will come again, and again, until you forget your own name."
His cock drives into me in one brutal, seamless motion. I am already slick, already open from his mouth and from last night, and he sheathes himself to the hilt on the first thrust. The sound that escapes me is not a gasp, not a moan, but a broken cry that hangs in the morning air.
Gromm does not pause to let me adjust. He sets a rhythm immediately, hard and driving, his hips slamming against mine with a force that rattles the bed frame. The headboard knocks against the wall in a steady, pounding rhythm, and I hear the distant echo of it through the stone corridors.
But his hands come up to frame my face.
His palms cup my cheeks, his thick fingers threading into my hair as he lowers his head. His tusks brush my jaw as his lips find mine. The kiss is not rough. It is deep, searching, almost tender, and the contrast steals my breath. His tongue slides against mine, tasting me, claiming me, while his cock pounds into me without mercy.
I kiss him back. I do not think. I simply do. My hands find his shoulders, gripping the hard muscle as he drives into me, and I feel the orgasm coiling in my belly again, building faster than I thought possible. His lips leave mine only to trail along my jaw, my throat, my collarbone, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses wherever they land.
"You feel that?" he rasps against my skin. "That is what it means to be claimed, little queen. Your body remembers. It knows who it belongs to now."
His thrusts quicken, harder, deeper, and I feel myself climbing toward the peak. My vision blurs, my thoughts scattering like leaves in a gale. I am nothing but sensation, nothing but the fullness of him inside me and the weight of his body pressing me into the mattress.
"I am close," I gasp, the words tumbling out unbidden.
His forehead presses against mine, his amber eyes locking onto my violet ones. "Then come for me, Liana. Come undone."
The name. He uses my name.
Something breaks inside me. The orgasm crashes through me like a wave, and my eyes roll back into my head as I shatter beneath him. My body convulses, clenching around his cock, and I hear myself crying out his name in a rhythm that matches the pounding of my heart.
Gromm's hips slam forward once, twice, three more times, each thrust driving deeper as his own release barrels through him. I feel the hot flood of his seed spreading inside me, mixing with what remains from last night, filling me until I am sure I will overflow. He groans my name against my throat, the sound raw and shattered, and the vibration of it against my skin sends another tremor through my already oversensitive body.
He collapses onto me, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his breath hot and ragged against my neck. For a long moment, neither of us moves. The only sounds are our mingled gasps and the creak of the bed settling back into stillness.
Then he lifts his head, and his amber eyes find mine. They are soft, softer than I have seen them, and he brushes a strand of hair from my face with a tenderness that makes my chest ache.
"Look at you," he murmurs, his voice thick with wonder. "My beautiful little queen. Do you feel it? My seed filling your womb?"
I do. I feel the warmth pooling inside me, the wetness seeping onto the sheets beneath us. I nod, unable to speak.
Gromm's hand slides down my belly, pressing flat against the soft curve below my navel. "I want to see you round with my child," he says, and his voice drops to something almost reverent. "I want to watch your belly swell, knowing I put that life inside you. I want to feel our child kick beneath your skin."
A shiver runs through me. I should be horrified. I should be repulsed. But instead, I feel a strange, treacherous heat blooming in my chest.
"Think of it, Liana." His thumb traces circles on my stomach. "An empire born from the union of orc and elf. Our child will be beautiful. Half my strength, half your grace. Tusks like mine, but with your violet eyes." He chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest. "A hybrid that will unite our peoples. The beginning of something greater than either of our kingdoms alone."
I should hate the image he paints. I should close my eyes and turn away.
Instead, I find myself looking at him, at the raw hope flickering in his amber gaze, and I feel something stir in my belly. Not just his seed. Something deeper. Something that terrifies me.
"A new empire," I whisper, testing the words on my tongue.
"Yes." His hand presses gently against my stomach. "One that starts here. With you. With our child."
I swallow hard, my heart pounding. I do not know if it is fear or excitement that quickens my pulse. Perhaps both.
"Tell me more," I hear myself say, my voice barely a whisper. "Tell me about this empire."