Page 38 of Falling for the Orc All-Star
“I want you to get better. I just can’t hear ‘down on one knee’ stuff so soon,” I pant, trying to steady my breathing and put out the fire between my legs with calm, rational thoughts.
King’s eyebrow arches. “Ingrid? No man has ever gone down... on his knees for you?”
Oh, fuck. No calm. No rational. Just the dirty parts of all the romance novels that I read and will never live. I skirt the question as my face flames. “You can’t get down on your knees for a long, long while, buddy.”
He laughs. The bastard! And it’s so smug—but his smile is so sweet. “But you have a couch in there. A floor. A bed...”
“King!”
He stands up slowly. The bulge in his pants is so much more obvious now. I have to pull my eyes somewhere else. Anywhere else. Cobwebs in the ceiling vent. Dog toys in the corner basket.
That was a mistake. Even slowed down by crutches, he moves faster than I’d think possible. I guess he’s a fast learner—especially when motivated. He’s out of the kitchen and halfway to the stairs of my little townhouse.
“What are you doing?” I demand, chasing after him.
“If I can’t go down on my knees, I’ll go flat on my back. That chair wasn’t working out,” he looks over his shoulder, sauciness in his smile. “But I’d make a better one.”
“I’m not going to sit on your lap right now,” I say with as much sternness as I can manage.
King licks his lips. “Of course not. You’re supposed to sit on my mouth.”
Cockiness is sometimes the cheaper, drunken cousin of courage. I can toss off confident words, sexy grins, and walk (okay, hobble) around Ingrid’s home like I own the place, but my palms are so wet I’m afraid I’m going to slip off my crutches and bust my face as well as my knee, and my heart is racing. Yes, I want to make love to her. Bury myself inside of her and feel her tight hole swallowing up my knot, wrapping around it without an inch of room to spare—but that would hurt her without knotting tea. Besides, I’d get something out of it, maybe more than her. That’d be “King the taker.” That’d be “King who wants his ego stroked.”
The guy that I want to be, the guy that’s more than the ability to put it in the net, wants to show that I can give.
Okay, and yes, I’m going to come in my pants if I get to see and touch Ingrid in any kind of intimate way. If she actually does let me lick the source of that amazing aroma that tickles the back of my brain and screams “mate!” I might need to buy her a new set of sheets.
“King the taker” isn’t dead, he’s just... better behaved.
“Sit on your—”
“I want to make love to you and make you scream my name, and make you come, and spoil you with pleasure.” The words, the list of reasons and wants, come rattling out of my mouth, very unsuave. “I want to be close to you and look up at you and see you bucking and grinding on me, feel all your soft curves smothering me—fuck, I want you, Ingrid, but I’m not in a position to give you a good time in another way, so... So, could I give you this? Because I want to?”Because I love you.I think that’s what this is. I love her. I want this more for her than for me, and I don’t want this as a step to the next thing. I just want this. “I don’t expect you to do anything but get worshipped like the queen you are.” My Queen. When I marry her, she’ll be a “King’s” wife, and that’s a queen. And she deserves that title. She’s had fire and sweetness in her from the second I met her, and enough firepower to cut through the fog I’ve been in since I got hurt.
Since I stopped being King Silverbow, son, student, and guy who liked to play hockey, and became King, Orc All-Star, destined to be in the majors and live the high life.
“The stairs...”
I shake my head, cutting off Ingrid’s hesitant protest. The stairs? That’s the objection? “You could go back to the kitchen and move the pizza box. I’d rather eat out than have delivery.” God, I hope she thinks that’s witty.
She’s so pretty when she blushes, especially because she gives off this air of having it all together. Getting under her skin in a good way makes my heart bound. “But I... That’s not something I do,” she finally explains in a soft voice.
“Oh. Like, you don’t believe in it? The—mouth stuff?” I trip over my words, but hey, at least it’s not my crutches.
“No. I’ve never done what you’re describing. I mean, I was with someone who—it was quick.”
“I could be quick.”
Ingrid laughs. “You try hard to be whatever someone wants you to be, don’t you?”
Wow. My girl is a sharpshooter, because that comment went right into the subconscious and under some armor I didn’t even realize I was wearing. “I don’t know where the line between being what they wanted and what I wanted got blurred, but it’s clear now. I want to do this with you, if you want to. I want to do things how you like, because then I’ll like it, too. I could never be happy if you weren’t,” I whisper, and it’s true.
“Well. Upstairs, then. But my room is a little bit of a mess.”
“I don’t mind. My leg is a little bit of a mess.”
“Speaking of body parts. I’m not... I would say I’m comfortable in my body—but I don’t share it. Sharing it makes me uncomfortable. Nervous.”
I shake my head. She really can’t see how gorgeous she is. “What if you can tell how much I like your body and I thank you—repeatedly—for sharing it with me?”