Page 12 of Orn and the Real Girl

SARA

ORN WAS scaring me, a murderous rage flaring along every line of his body, only easing whenever he looked at me. It made my chest do strange swooping things that were entirely inappropriate right now.

Big angry, Lena said, watching Orn from my shoulder. Why leave? Snuggles good. I smiled sadly, scratching her chin.

“I don’t know,” I whispered, watching Orn pace and fume, occasionally grabbing an item of clothing and just about shredding it in his big clawed hands. Those hands had been so gentle and delicious on my body not all that long ago, but now their purpose as a murder weapon was clear as day.

“Orn,” I called again, trying for perhaps the dozenth time to get an explanation from him, “what’s going on? Are you leaving?”

This time he paused, my words finally reaching him. “Aye, I’m leaving,” he said, his Fenns accent stronger than I’d heard it yet. “I’ve important things to do, my sweet one.”

I ignored the pleased glow that settled in my belly at his tenderness, lifting my chin and squaring my shoulders, trying to look stern despite being utterly naked outside of the clumsy snake adorning my neck and shoulders.

“I don’t want you to leave, though.” I glanced at the nearest window.

While the storm was beginning to calm, it was certainly far from safe for traveling.

Orn couldn’t go out in that, no matter how important whatever it was he was trying to do was.

“It’s not safe. And I...I’d rather not be alone right now.

I—I want you to stay close.” I lowered my eyes, just for a minute, hating how bare I felt, but I re-firmed myself a moment later; he needed to know I meant it.

Orn groaned, tossing aside the belt he’d been trying his best to strangle, and going to his knees at the bedside.

He reached for me, cradling my face carefully.

“I know now’s not a good time, but there’s no reasoning with it, sweetheart.

It’s either give it what it wants or turn into a mindless beast. Gods know my words to be true: I don’t want to leave. But the song...”

Something tickled at my memory, something whispered about orcs, but that I’d never been sure was real. “The blood song?” I asked.

He nodded, his handsome face so tense, his neck a stark roadmap of tendons and veins, like he was holding back something massive. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t tend to it. It’s never come on before, not for me. Can you understand that?”

I nodded. “What is it that you need to do?”

His fury morphed into sheepishness, his thumbs stroking my cheeks. “It’s uh…well…”

I arched an eyebrow. “What is it?” I deadpanned, my hands coming up to rest over his, still cupping my face. I squeezed what I could of his huge mitts, looking up into his dark eyes. “Tell me, Orn.”

“It’s just…I-have-to-find-your-coven-for-you-and-murder-whoever-took-them-and-made-you-sad,” he finally spat out in a breathless rush.

I considered that. It made me uncomfortable to take still more help from him, to impose on him yet again when I’d already done so much of it, but I wasn’t actually asking for this.

Strictly speaking, he wasn’t even offering to help me in this way; he was just telling me that he was going to do it no matter what.

And there was no denying that having help with such a huge and frightening task was an enormous comfort.

Plus, there was just something so sweet about a man threatening murder for you. Big man is good, like him much, Lena murmured in my head. No more sad with him.

“Whoever it was might be dangerous, Orn,” I said softly, carding my fingers through his thick chest hair. “They took almost an entire coven, and they—they b-burned our home down.”

Orn frowned, a dark inferno behind his eyes.

His gaze was pointed towards the far wall, but was clearly focused on something else, something only he could see.

His hands gripped me more firmly, pulling me tight against him.

He was burning up, feverish, every muscle taut.

“They…burned your home down?” He began growling, the sound so low I almost couldn’t hear it.

His nostrils flared as he met my eyes. “I must destroy them, Sara. I must.”

I should probably have told him “no”, should have grabbed all my things and run off into the storm rather than stay in the company of someone so quick to promise violence. But that wasn’t what I did.

“If you have to go, then you’re not going alone,” I told him, narrowing my eyes when he opened his mouth to protest. “How will you even find your way to our hamlet without me? How will you hunt for clues with no knowledge of the—of the victims?” As soon as the words left my mouth they felt good, a bloody promise of my own twining with his.

“You’re still recovering,” he protested, but I could feel his resolve to leave me here starting to weaken.

“I’m fine,” I insisted, leaning closer. “If I’m going to let you do this, Orn, then I’m a part of it.

No matter what, I’m coming with. So your choices are these: try to bind me here, which will not work unless you drug me and leave me incapable of spellwork…

” He blanched, and I pressed on: “…or you can bring me with. Let me help, let me..let me have some small vengeance.”

He looked into my eyes for long minutes, then sighed, bending awkwardly to rest his forehead against mine.

“Alright, Sara. I know it’s your fight by rights, that I’m forcing my way somewhere I might not be wanted, but you’re letting me lead, and you’re letting me carry you.

It’ll be faster and easier that way, unless you’ve got power enough to stop the storm and melt the several feet of snowfall. Do we have an agreement?”

I frowned at him, not liking the idea of being babied like that in the slightest..

.but if I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t exactly keen on slogging through the snow, either.

I nodded, tilting my face closer to kiss him again.

It shouldn’t feel so good to kiss him, not with those tusks, but somehow it did, and I couldn’t stop taking every opportunity to do so.

“I must be crazy, but…it’s a deal, big guy,” I murmured against his mouth, and he grunted, getting to his feet and offering me a hand up.

“Then we’ll get ready. You finish eating and I’ll assemble a pack.”

I managed a small smile, adrenaline beginning to buzz through my body. “Whatever you say, honey,” I told him, snagging my plate of nibbled-on food. When I turned back to him he was smiling at me in a way that the world “feral” only just began to capture.

“I like it when you call me that,” he growled, every inch of him painted in manic animal fury. My pussy clenched on nothing, heat creeping up my neck.

“Then I’ll have to make sure I do it a lot,” I rasped, picking up a bite of apple cake with my fingers and putting it into my mouth as lewdly as I could manage, with far more moaning and licking than was in any way necessary.

I was gratified when his eyes rolled up and he shivered. Since we were both still naked I was treated to the sight his great green spear of a cock flushed and leaking for me just from that.

“You will be the sweetest death,” he said, stomping off to the front door with a dopey grin ghosting at the corners of his lips. He threw it open and then dove into the frigid drifts, making me laugh so hard I nearly choked on my bite of cake.

WITHIN MINUTES OF getting underway, I was blessing all the gods for Orn’s stubborn insistence on carrying me.

Though the wind and the snow had eased, the cold was sharper and more bitter than ever, and being strapped to Orn’s big warm body might have been the only reason I didn’t die from exposure.

He had been warm before, but the blood song was gradually turning him into a furnace, heat pouring off him in a delicious blanket that eased the biting cold.

He had me bound to his front, a huge pack taking up all of the real estate of his back, and at first it felt humiliating to be spread out and pinned to him, but between his soothing warmth and the addictive musk of his scent flavoring my every breath. ..

Yeah, I was fine with this.

Lena sent me another snaky farewell from the cabin, our mental link too weakened by distance to be more than a feeling and a whiff of an image, but my heart twinged anyway.

This cold was no place for my reptilian familiar, but it still felt wrong to leave her behind.

Beyond her friendship and her comfort, what if I needed her for spellwork?

She was both my conduit and my anchor to the natural world, and without her, I may have lost myself to the aether, or failed to reach when I needed it most. It made me panic, shivers wracking my body that had nothing to do with the cold.

But it was only by Vitrin’s grudging mercy that she’d survived that first trip, and the unknowns that I was anxious about confronting without her could make this trip even more dangerous to her.

Ultimately, losing her was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

Somehow sensing my unease, Orn’s big arms wrapped around my body, squeezing me tight against him, and I sank into his comfort, so, so thankful for it I could have cried.

One hand rubbed my back while the other yanked his scarf down from his nose and mouth so he could press a kiss between my eyes, which was the only exposed skin on my entire body.

“We’ll find the bastards who did this and make them pay, sweetheart,” he said over the wind. “I’ll not let anything happen to you. I swear it to all the gods, Sara. Not a hair on your head will see harm.”

I wriggled until I could press my mittened hands flat to his huge chest, his heart beating a wild, insistent rhythm against my palms even with the layers of fabric between us.

“I know,” I said, and I was startled by just how much I meant it.

Why was it so easy to trust this half-mad orc?

But then something else occurred to me, and one of my hands slid up to press to the side of his face.

“But you can’t come to any harm, either.

” I narrowed my eyes, trying to sit taller and look firm despite being strapped to him like a little baby.

“If you get hurt then I’m vulnerable and—and it’ll hurt me, to see you.

..like that.” My cheeks flamed, and I was glad he couldn’t see it beneath my own scarf, still snugged over the lower half of my face.

Orn froze mid-stride, his dark eyes boring into mine, stealing my breath and stirring things that had charred to ash when I came upon my destroyed home.

What is this? I wondered, panic and want warring in my aching chest. Then he seemed to shake off whatever had come over him, his face flushing deeply as he re-situated his scarf on his face.

“I said what I said,” he barked, but his eyes were soft when he looked at me. “So just get comfortable, lass, aye?”

I bit my lip under my scarf and nodded, wrapping my limbs around him tight and leaning my cheek against his chest, catching the barest glimpses of the forest past the lengths of fabric that made up my wrap.

It had been difficult for me to remember much about my journey from our ruined hamlet to Orn’s cabin, but Lena had been a surprising help in plotting out a rough map before we’d set off.

She’d been tucked under my clothes, blind to the outside world, but her incredible sense of smell had picked up many helpful scents.

She’d scented a wolf pack, the only one on this mountain, according to Orn, because he’d made sure he knew their territory well.

A copse of honey pine, the metallic bite of fresh-cut ironwood, and moldering apple also proved helpful, and by the end of it Orn was fairly confident he knew the route I’d taken and could retrace it.

“You did remarkably well to walk a straight path, considering the storm and how upset you were,” he’d commented with something like pride. “I don’t think I’d’ve done any better.”

The more time I spent with Orn, the more I liked him.

He was sweet and kind, but he knew how to bite and growl when the situation called for it.

He was handsome and strapping and has an incredible cock, but when my mind wandered back to our mind-blowing sex, it was his care and intensity that had left the strongest impression.

I’d been with other attractive people who were skilled in bed, but I’d never felt that connected to any of them during our couplings. Had never felt so...worshipped.

I squirmed a little, my pussy throbbing with interest at the memory of Orn’s attentions, and when the friction of my clothes’ seam felt delicious against my clit I found myself doing it again before I could help myself. Now is not the time, Sara, I chided myself, forcing my hips to still.

“Are you uncomfortable? Do you need to stop?” Orn asked, and I flushed, knowing we’d barely been walking for an hour and here I was derailing things with my wandering mind and poor impulse control.

“No, I’m fine,” I squeaked out, cursing how not-fine I sounded. Sure enough, Orn stopped walking, hefting me a little higher so he could look in my eyes.

“Are you certain you’re well, sweetheart? We can stop whenever you want. We’re already doing well with time.” One huge hand came up to palm the back of my head through our layers of protection, and for some reason his tenderness only made me feel more needy. What is it about this orc?!

I squirmed again, the satisfaction of my clit rubbing against my clothes far too short-lived. Orn dropped his scarf again, presumably to see me better, but as soon as his lower face was revealed his nostrils flared, dark eyes going darker as his pupils blew wide.

“Ah, I see now,” he growled, plunging forward at an angle until my back pressed into a tree. “My sweet little witch is in need.”