Alien Orc’s Prize (Starlight Brides)

10. Galbrath

CHAPTER 10

GALbrATH

I swung wildly back and forth between feeling offended and pathetically, helplessly aroused by my human wife’s surprising audacity.

She’d taken up her tiny human fingers like they were weapons and flicked me with them. As if I were a sea gnat that she’d decided to violently disperse.

I could not remember the last time anyone had touched me in such a disrespectful manner. Whenever the last time had been, it had probably been Althrop who’d done it.

But idiotic Althrop didn’t make my cock hard.

Luna did.

I’d learned my wife’s name, at least. That was something I could console myself with as my cock throbbed, neglected, in the constriction of my pants. Neena and Noona had both said her name at various times during the lively conversation the three of them kept up together. My sisters seemed to be quite taken with my wife, engaging with her throughout the meal, their eyes keen and bright as Luna’s cheeks bunched with her strangely pretty, tuskless smiles.

Jealousy flared that such smiles were directed anywhere other than me.

No. I got flicked.

Not that I’d done anything to deserve a smile from her. I sat behind and beneath her. Mostly immobile, silent, chair-like.

If a chair was capable of nearly ejaculating into its leathers every time its wife shifted her little rump, that is.

All in all, the meal was rather agonizing. I distracted myself from how good the curve of Luna’s waist felt beneath my hand by shoving bite after bite of food into my mouth, followed by several large flagons of mead and then several more tumblers of whisky, something I hadn’t partaken in since my father’s funeral.

I could handle my drinks just fine. But the smooth buzzing in my limbs was undeniable as the meal ended and I lifted Luna down to her feet before immediately standing up behind her.

“We are departing for bed,” I announced, my voice sounding oddly husky in my own ears. Neena and Noona jumped up and screeched their disappointed goodbyes at my wife, completely ignoring me, their elder brother and their prince, soon-to-be king. Their eyes lingered on Luna, and then on the doorway we exited through, long after I’d pulled her away.

It was only when Luna began gently trying to tug her hand from mine that I even realized I was still holding hers. My fingers wrapped all the way around it so easily. The pad of my thumb was nestled against the inside of her wrist, feeling out the pulse that flapped there like a manic, trapped bird.

Humans must have very fast heartbeats.

Never would I have imagined touching my new wife’s hand in such a way. Never would I have seen myself letting my thumb not just rest, but roam up and down the silken skin, as if I could not stand not to touch her. Never would I have anticipated the amount of irritation I now felt when she tried to pull her hand away.

“Stop that,” I grunted.

“Stop what?” Luna asked, sounding startled. She turned her head to look at me, her eyes lush and luminous in the low lantern light of the long, stone hall we now traversed.

“Stop trying to stop holding my hand.”

Ah. An eloquent and elegant sentence. Songs would be written of the great poet King Gal, who’d once ordered his new wife to stop trying to stop holding his hand. Right after he’d compared her face to cheese.

“Oh! I… I just… My hand is kind of sweaty. I guess I didn’t want you to notice.”

I hadn’t noticed one bit.

“I notice everything,” I declared sternly. “Do not attempt to hide anything from me.”

“Oh. Alright.” She sounded a little quieter now. I groaned internally, realizing I was speaking to her the way I’d speak to some conniving farmer trying to evade taxation.

Since the death of my father, that’s all I’d been. The authority figure. The leader. The one responsible for keeping this kingdom running. I’d already been a hard man and my father’s death had made me harder. Not that I didn’t care for my people – I did. More than my own life. But I did not let things slip. My orders were firm and final.

And now I was giving them to my wife.

I realized, with no small amount of grim concern, that I had no idea how to actually treat a wife. Especially one, it turned out, I actually wanted. My father had doted on my mother. But they had been best friends. They’d known each other since childhood. By the time I was alive to observe the goodness, respect, and affection they shared, they’d had the foundations of most of a lifetime to smooth the way between them. Not to mention they came from the same world, the same culture.

I glanced down at Luna, so alien and so new, and wondered if she’d ever want to be best friends with me.

Likely not.

It was a surprisingly wistful thought. A stab through the ribs with a very dull knife. Only something like loneliness could both slice you and yet be as oppressively dull and heavy as a rock.

By the seas. I was pathetically morose tonight.

This is why I don’t drink whisky often.

I sighed, inhaled, then froze. Luna, who’d continued walking on without me, came to a confused and abrupt halt when her arm, with its hand trapped in my fist as it was, would not let her go any further.

“What is it?” she asked, her light brown eyebrows pushing together.

“I don’t know. I smelled…” I stopped to huff a great, deep breath in through my nose. My eyes instantly narrowed. “It’s you. ”

I’d caught her scent at dinner, on my lap as she’d been. But this was a new scent. Deeper and laced with a tang that made me want to punch someone.

Or kill someone.

Luna’s cheeks went as bright as seaberries and she gasped. When that happened, the scent changed, taking on a new, maddening tone. What in the blasted seas was this? It reminded me of those colour-changing sea rocks Orhalla children would wear as pendants against their chests. The stones would change colour based on body temperature, but we’d all pretend the varying shades meant something about how your future would unfold.

“Are you too cold?” I asked, lifting her hand high in the air and casting an investigative eye down her form. “Or hot?”

“No! I’m perfectly… perfect, thank you!”

“You can’t be,” I growled. “You are emitting smells.”

She smacked her free arm across her chest, as if she were naked and wanted to shield herself from my eyes.

“What sort of smells?!” she demanded, trying to back away from me even as I drew her inexorably closer. When her front was flush to mine, I placed my free hand on her waist and bent my face to her neck, taking in a lungful of her.

My tusks brushed the side of her throat. She made a squeaky sound and flinched. I could feel the tension vibrating through her tiny frame as I dragged my nose up and down.

The scent changed again. Blooming, luscious, and sweet.

“Oh,” she said, a reedy, whispery moan that made my balls go hot and tight beneath my throbbing shaft. Then, much louder, she said, “Ouch!”

Her scent went sharp and metallic. Something inside me reacted instantly, though I did not even know what I was reacting to. All I knew was that something was wrong and I needed to fix it for her. Now.

“What is it?” I hissed, drawing back and cupping her small face in my hands. “What’s hurting?”

“Oh. It’s nothing serious. It’s just – ow! ”

Her face contorted with pain, her eyes scrunching shut.

Even the failing wheat had not left me feeling quite so helpless. I wanted to dance back and forth from boot to boot with the devastating panic of it.

“What is it ?” I snarled the words and her eyes whipped open.

“It’s the dress! That’s it! It’s way too big, so it got pinned in place. But now the pins have come loose and they’re poking me.”

I breathed out, panic ebbing, replaced by the hollow-boned feeling of relief.

“Where is the dress pinned?”

“Where isn’t it pinned?” she said with a small laugh that made me feel, bizarrely, like someone had just built a great and crackling fire and then tossed me right on top of it.

“Stay still,” I muttered. I dropped my hands from the pretty lines of her jaw and returned them to her waist. This time, I did not blindly, possessively grip her. I got down onto my knees. Then, I skimmed my fingertips up and down the generous curves of her waist and hips, feeling carefully along for the tiny metal studs that would indicate the heads of pins.

When I found them, I began to pull them out.

“You don’t have to do that!” Luna cried, staring down at me. She flapped her hands around, seeming to indicate that I should rise. When I did not, she gave up. But then it appeared she did not know what to do with her hands. She could not plant them on her hips as I’d seen her do before, because my own hands were there. She attempted to clasp them behind her back, but immediately winced when some unseen pin poked her.

“Just put your hands on my head,” I grumbled. “All that jostling about is just making everything worse.”

I was looking at the dress, my eyes seeking out every glint of the pins that dared to poke and prod the high princess, my wife . So I did not see her hesitation. I felt it, though, in the three or four – or probably twenty, in her rapid case – heartbeats that passed between my words and her response.

But, hesitation or not, she did comply. Like the exquisite touch of warm spring rain, her fingers fell upon me. Without even realizing I’d done it, I let my eyes close, just for a moment, to savour the sensation.

“Your hair is very soft.”

My eyes opened.

“I should have braided it.” I left the rest of the sentence unsaid. I should have braided it for you . That would have been the proper thing, the appropriate, formal way to greet someone as important as my own bride. Instead, I’d worn it long and loose, not caring for what she’d thought of it. Not caring about any of it at all.

Until I’d met her, that is.

But she seemed not to mind the rudely casual nature of my hair, as her fingers were slowly burying themselves between the unbound strands. I suppressed a rasping groan at the pleasure of her touch against my scalp.

Her scent softened, the harsh spike that had sent me into a flurry of panic dissolving away. It soothed something primal and deep inside me. To know that I was likely the cause for the change in her scent. That I was taking care of her. As if I were supposed to be taking care of her. Like I’d been meant to, all my life.

Which didn’t make a blasted lick of sense, all things considered. Like the fact she was human and that I hadn’t even wanted her until I’d gotten a glimpse of her and decided she wasn’t exactly torturous to look at.

And yet, even knowing that, even knowing how foolish this all was…

I still felt it. That satisfaction. That soft stroke against the possessive thing inside me, like Luna’s hands stroking my hair, that told me I was doing something right.

I was running out of room for all the pins in my left hand. I would have tossed them carelessly down to the stone, but Luna only had little slippers on, and I didn’t want her stepping on one.

“How many of these bloody things are there?” I bit out, beginning to shove pins into the leather of my vest just so I could have a place to store them all. “Which one of my sisters is responsible for this abomination of a job?”

“It was one of the maids. And it’s not an abomination!” Luna admonished, her fingers stilling on my head. “I think she did a really good job, all things considered! The dress is just way too big for me, that’s all.”

“A good job? You could have died from blood loss.”

“Blood loss? From pinpricks ?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, pulling out what I hoped was the last pin at her waist and watching the garment sag. “How much blood does a human have in their body?”

Luna gave a chime-like cry of high laughter. And someone threw me on an inconvenient fire. Again.

“Enough blood that getting poked by a pin won’t cause me any harm.”

“One pin, no,” I agreed, rising to my feet. “But there had to be a thousand of them holding up your dinner dress.”

“A thousand!” She gaped at me. “Either that’s a translation error, or you are being extremely dramatic right now.”

“Dramatic?” I gestured at the front of my vest, glinting all over with the pins I’d stuck there. “Look at me. I look like some miniature archer has been using me for target practice.”

Her eyes glinted and then went to my forehead.

“Well, then their aim isn’t very good. They should have aimed right here .”

To my credit, at least I did not flinch when she flicked me this time.

I scowled at her, trying to suss out why I’d earned another forehead flick after I’d taken such pains to make sure she didn’t die from the cuts of ten thousand ill-placed pins. My wife seemed rather ungrateful for my efforts. But perhaps she did not know that the idea of Prince Gal down on his knees, pulling pins out of a human’s dress, was heretofore unfathomable.

I would have laughed at the thought myself.

Before today.

At least she was smiling at me. Her cheeks were pinkish now. Her scent was enticing, heady, and wafting more strongly towards me as her unpinned dress began to slide and collapse down. She caught it and held it fast against her breasts before I could see much of anything. I found myself rather sulky about the speed of her reaction time.

“Just,” I waved my hand vaguely at her and then the floor, “let it fall.”

Luna looked at me as if I’d just suggested she eat the dress and then shit it out onto a plate for my breakfast.

Blast. I’d never been much good at using words to seduce a woman. I’d had my fair share of sexual encounters, but it was usually because the female involved had been interested in me first and had pursued the rutting. I was a prince. This had always just been… easy.

I found myself completely at a loss at how I might encourage Luna to get naked. I stared at the dress as if the weight of my eyes alone could make it fall and save us both the awkwardness.

“No one comes this way unless I call for them,” I added gruffly. “We’ve nearly arrived at my chambers.”

I jerked my chin towards the door not a dozen steps from us.

She followed my gaze, gave a nervous-sounding laugh, and instead of responding to what I’d said, she rather nonsensically replied, “I don’t even know what I’ll wear to sleep.”

“I don’t wear anything to sleep. Why should you?”

Her head snapped to me so quickly it was a bit of a wonder it did not fly right off her shoulders. Human necks were stronger than I would have previously given them credit for.

“Of course you don’t.” She shook her head slightly. “Well, whatever state I sleep in, I’m not undressing out here in the hall.”

With that, she turned and headed for my chamber door. To my grave disappointment, she held up her dress the entire way.