Page 50 of The Orc’s Comfort

“I'm memorizing.” I cup her breasts, my hands easily encompassing them, my thumbs brushing the stiff peaks. “I have imagined this. It’s not the same as having it.”

I lower my head and take her into my mouth, slowly, with intention. My tongue finds the peak and flicks, light and quick, and her breath stutters in response. I circle. I learn exactly what makes her fingers tighten in my hair and I return to it, again and again, until she stops trying to be quiet about it. Then I switch and give the same attention to what I've neglected. The sound she makes is entirely undignified and completely unguarded.

I take my time. This is what I have, what I have always had, the patience that my grandmother called a gift and my clanmates called maddening. I learn her responses, and I return to what makes her gasp until she is arching into me and her fingers are tight in my hair and she has forgotten entirely that she ever intended to be composed about this.

“Rhazgar—”

“I know,” I say against her skin. “I know what you need.”

Her hands slide from my hair to my chest. Then lower, tracing the markings down my abdomen with slow curiosity. Her fingers find my belt, and she pauses. Not hesitating, I realize, but deciding. Then she looks up at me.

“Can I?”

“Yes.” The word comes out low and rough.

She works the buckle with the same careful concentration she brings to everything she wants to understand. The button. The zipper. Her breath catches when her hands find me. She makes no attempt to hide it.

Her touch is unhurried, almost unbearably light as her fingers follow every ridge from base to tip. I am going to disgrace myself before she reaches the top.

“The ridges,” I manage. “Run your thumb along the underside.”

She does. Exactly as I asked. My hips move toward her without permission, and I lock every muscle to keep from doing it again.

Her fingers wrap around the base, but her hand can’t fully encircle me. She looks up at me, fascinated and warm with something that is not only desire. There is no fear in her expression. Only curiosity and unmistakable want.

She lowers her head.

The sound I make when her mouth closes over me is not a sound I’ve ever made before. My hand goes to her hair, not directing, simply there, and I stand above her with every muscle locked against what she’s doing to me.

She’s thorough. She finds the ridges with her tongue and returns to them. She reads what my body tells her, the way my breathing changes, the little hip thrusts I can’t control, the sounds I stop being able to suppress, and adjusts with the absorbed focus of a librarian handling something rare. And I am going to—

“Julia.” A warning. A plea.

She doesn't stop. She takes me deeper, and I feel my control splinter. I warn her with one rough sound, and then I am finishing with her mouth on me and my hand tight in her hair and every last thread of my control finally, finally, releasing.

She stays with me until I stop shaking.

When I can see properly again, she's looking up at me, satisfied and just smug enough to make me want her all over again.

I bring her back up, and when her feet find the floor again, I hook my fingers into her underwear and draw it down her legs. She steps out of it without being asked.

Then I lift her and carry her to the wall. I hitch her higher and position her thighs over my shoulders, supporting her entire weight, her ass in my hands. Her back presses against the wall. She gasps.

“Your ankle,” I tell her. “Your ribs. Tell me if anything hurts.”

“Nothing hurts.” Her hands grip my shoulders. “Rhazgar, this is… I've never…”

“I've got you.” I press my mouth to her inner thigh. I've been imagining her taste for months, and I intend to take my time with this too. “Now hold still and let me feast on you.”

The first taste of her hits my tongue and I groan against her. She’s exactly as I imagined, and nothing like I imagined. I stop thinking about anything except her sounds and her grip in my hair and the breathless way she says my name when she is losing her mind.

I work her thoroughly. I learn every response. When I find what makes her sob my name, I return to it and stay there. I hold her steady while she comes apart. I don't let her down until the last tremor has quaked through her and she is breathing hard against my neck and saying my name like a question.

I lower her carefully, setting her back on her feet and pulling her against my chest so she doesn't have to hold herself up. She sways. I catch her.

For a moment, she simply breathes, her warm breath brushing my skin, her hands clutching my shoulders, her whole body still faintly trembling.

“Okay?” I ask.