My Orc Santa Claus (Eastshore Isle #5)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Nikki

I didn’t leave.

I didn’t leave after the party on Sunday, I didn’t leave on Monday, I didn’t leave, period.

I hated myself for not being strong enough, and there were times when I was wrapped in Sakkara’s arms, and he was asleep, that I just stared at the ceiling and felt the guilt eating me up inside. I should’ve gone, I should’ve protected them.

But…

But this Christmas stuff was addicting.

Emmy and Sakkara were addicting.

This cozy feeling of togetherness and exasperation and anticipation and fun ? I’d never had that before. Growing up, the Christmas season was rarely special. Oh, some of my homes tried to make it so, but it was always like Forced Family Fun; I wasn’t really part of it. Then there was my time with Peter and his gang, and Christmas just meant the time of year where more people traveled and thus their houses were likely to be empty.

When I was on my own, during school, I tried to make the season special, but it was just me , and that was silly. Even this year, the apartment had been decorated by my roommates, not me.

When I’d moved into my car last week, I’d texted them to let them know I’d be gone for a few days. If Peter had found my place of work, he’d know where I lived too, right? So I let them think I was visiting friends on the mainland, and I’d been texting them for the last few days, keeping up that ruse.

They had no idea I was still on Eastshore.

But the longer I stayed, the less I wanted to leave. I had fun at Sakkara’s party, laughing and joking with the ladies, judging the males on their ability to hang lights on the back porch to Emmy’s satisfaction, and listening to their praise about my cooking.

I had fun with Emmy and Sakkara, checking items off her Christmas to-do list and reading to her in the evening.

And you can damn well bet I had fun at night too, every night with Sakkara. Multiple times a night, and often in the morning too. The male was…insatiable wasn’t the word, because he often ignored his own pleasure to focus on mine. He’d wake me up in the middle of the night with his tongue, those glowing green eyes all I’d see before I rocketed over the edge of bliss.

I honestly couldn’t imagine a more attentive, kind lover. He took care of me.

In every way.

Yeah, I was addicted to it, to him . I didn’t want to leave him.

So I hesitated. Each day I wondered if this would be the day I worked up the guts to go, and each night I fell into Sakkara’s arms and eagerly learned all he could teach me about pleasure.

Did you know orc cum tastes like cinnamon? Now you do, you’re welcome.

One morning, I made another batch of stove-top potpourri, and when I pulled out the cinnamon sticks, one whiff sent my pussy throbbing. He can always tell, of course, and wouldn’t stop chuckling.

He made me laugh too, and so did Emmy. Even a week ago, this precious little girl wouldn’t speak around me, and now she was speaking to me. I was able to tell the difference between her moods, her teasing, her exasperation, and I was honored she’d accepted me into her circle of trusted friends.

What’s going to happen to her when you leave ?

She’d be safe, that’s what.

Yeah, but she trusts you. If you leave, are you betraying that trust?

Trust.

Damn.

I was thinking about trust as I helped Emmy open the little bags of gingerbread-house-decorating candy on Friday. She trusted me, didn’t she? Not as much as she trusted Sakkara of course, but I’d been her teacher for the last few months. She expected me to be her teacher for the next few months.

Could I betray that trust?

I would have to, to keep her safe. Wouldn’t I?

“ Taba ?” Emmy asked as we finished laying out everything we needed.

I jerked my thumb at his office door. “He said he had to send two emails, then he’d be out.”

I’d learned that a lot of small-town mayoring could be done from his home office, and it wasn’t a full-time commitment. Apparently, there was a Town Administrator who kept everything going, and whoever was elected mayor was more about the smiling and waving and dressing like Santa on demand.

“How hard can gingerbread-house-making be?” I asked Emmy, pulling out the chair for her. “Let’s construct them while we wait.”

Turned out, the actual building of the gingerbread houses was a huge pain in the butt. Yeah, the walls were pre-cut in the kits, and yeah, we had tubes of icing…but the instructions don’t tell you that you have to stand there and hold the two walls and the roof together while the icing dries, or the whole thing will fall apart.

And each house had four walls and two roof panels.

“Move yours to the left. Your other left!” I tried to use my lips to point, since my hands were full. “No, no, the other other left!”

Emmy huffed in exasperation, trying to shift the walls she was holding in the direction I needed. “This is dumb.”

“But it’ll be pretty.”

“Better be delicious,” she muttered, and I was so impressed by her carrying on a conversation with me—and the teen-level snark—that I almost dropped my side of the house.

Sakkara swooped in—literally—to rescue us. One moment we were both struggling with the house, the next, he was leaning over my head to wrap his hands around the house, holding it all in place.

“Grab the saltshaker, Nikki, and place it under this eave to hold this side of the roof up. Squirt another layer of icing along the ridgeline. Emmy, do the same on your side with the pepper.”

I was so relieved to have him see what needed to be done, and jump in to take charge, that I blurted, “Yes, Daddy,” and grabbed the saltshaker.

I felt him freeze, then realized what I’d said.

Peeking across the table, dread filling my stomach, I held my breath and waited for Emmy’s response.

But to my surprise, the little girl just shook her head, clucked her tongue, and corrected me. “He’s Taba .”

I exhaled and heard Sakkara echo it.

He did drop a kiss on my head, though, as he moved to the chair at the head of the table and began to expertly craft the next house. Emmy didn’t blink at that kiss, or the other ones she’d witnessed. Come to think of it, she hadn’t thought it strange that I had apparently moved in with her—or rather, with her father.

Maybe she thought this was normal. Maybe it was normal to her.

I, on the other hand, felt a little awkward.

“There,” Sakkara declared, finishing up the construction on the second house, “while that one hardens, we can work on decorating the first one.”

Turned out, when Emmy said she wanted to make gingerbread houses, what she meant was she wanted to eat the candy.

“If you keep that up, our houses will be naked,” I pointed out.

She just shrugged and popped another gumdrop in her mouth.

Her father sighed. “Emmy, take six more gumdrops. And half the chocolates. You can have two candy canes and all those little sprinkles. That’s it.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Those sprinkles are really hard.”

“That’s why I don’t want them on my gingerbread house.” Sakkara mugged for Emmy. “And orc teeth are hard, right? ”

Emmy responded by crunching down on those horrible little candies loud enough that I winced.

“Are you sure she doesn’t have human teeth?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “You don’t have tusks, do you?”

Without looking up from where he was carefully piping shingles for me to cover with cereal squares, Sakkara shook his head. “In orc-human hybrid offspring, it is traditional for the sons to look more like the fathers, while the daughters have fewer orcish characteristics.”

I studied Emmy, who was happily munching on her candy and leaving the actual decorating to us. I guess her skin was paler than the other orcs I’d seen. “I thought it was really rare for humans and orcs to reproduce.”

Sakkara glanced at his daughter, and apparently decided it was okay for her to be a part of a conversation about reproduction , because he shrugged. “In our world, it is. Our legends tell of a time, hundreds of years ago, when it was more common, and my theory is that’s what ensured our clans’ survival. When the humans began to destroy North America, the elders made the decision to cut off contact, which is when our people began to die.”

I knew all this from my research. “But children can only be produced between Mated pairs, right?”

He went very still, gaze locked on me, icing bag dribbling in his hand. “What do you know about Mated pairs?”

I shrugged, thinking of the party he— we— had hosted over the weekend. “Your brothers have found Mates. It’s…more than just falling in love and getting married. It’s biology.”

“It’s a knowing,” he whispered, gaze intense, as if he was repeating something he’d memorized. “It’s a feeling of rightness, of completion. A connection deep in our souls, something which cannot be denied.”

“It sounds…handy. ”

He blinked. “What?” That’s when he noticed the dripping icing and hurried to wipe it on the gingerbread house.

“I mean, it must be convenient to look at another being and just know , beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is the one you want to spend you life with.”

As soon as I said it, my breath caught.

Because it was as if there’d been this longing deep inside me, and all it took was saying those words to break it free.

I want to spend the rest of my life with Sakkara .

Yes.

Yes, it was the truth. I’d known him for months, although it had taken fear and panic to find him in person. I knew him . I knew I wanted him. I wanted to be wanted by him. I wanted to be a part of his life.

Forever.

I loved him?

Yes, but this was more than that.

It is a knowing.

Sakkara was watching me, his eyes glowing with that strange green light again.

Mierda .

Shaking my head, I reached for the bowl of gumdrops…or what remained of them. “Hey!” My voice was shriller than normal. Grateful for the distraction, I held the bowl toward Emmy. “You ate all the red ones?”

The little girl shrugged, and when she smiled, I could see the way the candy stained her lips. “They’re the best.” She pushed away from the table. “Going to swing, bye!”

As she darted toward the back door, I opened my mouth to call her back…but the door slammed before I could. I turned helpless eyes back to Sakkara. “Did she just leave us to decorate these things all on our own?”

He was making icicles along the eaves of his house with the frosting. “I could’ve told you that,” he hummed. “This thing won’t be dry before she starts breaking off pieces to eat, that’s what she’s in it for. Thank the gods for her high metabolism, I guess.”

I glanced out the back window. Emmy was on her swing set, pumping her little legs fiercely, sending herself higher and higher, a big sugar-fueled grin on her face.

“She’s speaking to me more,” I murmured.

“What?”

I turned back to him, took a deep breath, and reached for the other icing bag to work on the second gingerbread house. “Emmy is speaking to me more each day. A week ago, it was single words.”

He nodded without looking up. “That’s because she trusts you.”

That’s what I thought.

It wasn’t until he glanced up that I realized I’d gone stock-still, holding the icing bag over the roof of the gingerbread house.

“Trust is very important, Nikki.” His tone was grave. “Emmy considers you part of her circle now. She trusts you will be there when she needs you.”

I swallowed.

Dammit.

“I…I’m honored she thinks I’m worthy of that trust.”

Sakkara placed the icing bag down and reached for the bowl of unwrapped peppermint candies. As he laid them along the ridgeline of his roof, he hummed. “I’m glad she trusts you. I think you’re trustworthy.”

Oh crap. Oh crap .

“But you don’t trust us, do you?”

The icing bag fell out of my hand and landed on the roof of the gingerbread house with a wet squelch.

His lips pulled ruefully to one side, Sakkara glanced up. “ I don’t blame you, Nikki. You don’t trust me enough to tell you what you’re afraid of, and I can’t very well insist you tell me, can I? Because I haven’t trusted you enough with what I’m afraid of.”

My eyes went wide.

“What are you afraid of?” I whispered.

He opened his mouth to reply, then seemed to think better of it and closed his mouth to study me.

I held my breath.

Sakkara was so strong, so certain of himself. Always. He was the leader, the town’s D’malk . To hear that he was afraid…

Suddenly, he pushed away his gingerbread house as if he couldn’t concentrate. Instead, he dropped his gaze to the bowls of candies. “I told you Emmy’s real parents died in front of us?”

“Her biological parents,” I gently corrected. Sakkara was her real father just as much as her biological father had been.

He nudged the bowl of peppermints in line with the bowl of round chocolate candies. “I didn’t tell you how.”

“No,” I whispered.

He pulled the cinnamon candies over and lined that bowl up just so. “There was a flood. We were all in the car, I was in the front seat with Dahshur, and the bridge gave out.” He said the words in a monotone, as if he’d said them a million times before, as if they meant nothing. “I hit my head and couldn’t focus.”

The bowl of spice drops ended up in the row as well, precise and straight. “When we hit the water, the flow took the car. Dahshur didn’t hesitate. I remember him reaching over me and slicing the seatbelt off. He opened the door and kicked me out as the water began to flood the car.”

Finally, Sakkara looked up at me. His expression was blank. “As I went out the door, I was seeing double, triple…but I saw him wedge himself into the backseat.”

There was a band around my chest, I couldn’t inhale properly. I couldn’t make a sound or do more than grope across the table for Sakkara’s hand. He took it and squeezed.

“I tried to stay with the car, but it went under.” He swallowed. “Then Dahshur was there, and he shoved Emmy into my arms. She was so tiny, coughing and screaming, and it was everything I could do to keep her head above water. Dahshur grabbed my shoulder, shook me, and said…”

He swallowed again, as if the words were difficult to say, and dropped his gaze to the carefully ordered bowls. “ Keep her safe .” He inhaled a shuddering breath. “Then he went back into the water.”

“For Stephanie?” I whispered.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment, then nodded jerkily. “When we found their bodies, it was apparent she’d drowned quickly. By the time he reached her, she was likely already gone. And he…” Sakkara finally lifted his gaze again, his expression agonized. “A Mate bond is everything ,” he whispered. “I think he went a little crazed when he found her dead… and decided to stay with her.”

I reared back, even as I squeezed his hand. “He chose to die?”

Sakkara shook his head. “I don’t think he was thinking like that. He knew I would keep Emmy safe. I don’t think he was thinking at all, just…feeling.”

I remembered what he’d said about finding your Mate…that sense of oneness. To lose your Mate like that, how difficult would that be to move on from? Could I blame Dahshur for giving up when he realized he’d lost that ?

But I wasn’t there. I wasn’t the one who’d had to move on. Maybe Sakkara was angry at Dahshur for making that choice.

I placed my other hand on top of our joined hands. “How did that make you feel?”

“Afraid,” he admitted. Then he snorted, his lips pulling ruefully as he dropped his gaze down to our joined hands. “I felt everything in those first few months, but overwhelmingly I was scared shitless. I had a tiny kitling in my life, not only depending on me to keep her safe, but depending on me to keep her sane . Those first few months, she cried so often, and then she just…withdrew.”

“Is that what you’re afraid of?” I asked gently.

“I’m afraid of failing her.” His gaze jerked up, and I sucked in a breath at the intensity I saw there. “I’m afraid of not being able to protect her, not being able to protect the people I love.”

Love .

I squeezed his hands as tightly as I could, knowing he was so much stronger than I was. “Sakkara, you can. You do .” How to make him understand? “You were only on Eastshore for a few months, and you understood how to protect the island’s future. You stepped up here, the same way you stepped up to become your brothers’ leader, didn’t you?”

At the party the other day, I’d heard all sorts of stories from the ladies about their Mates’ past, and how Sakkara had been the one to hold them all together for the last decade, despite being spread all over. He’d been the one to reach out to each of them individually and entice them to Eastshore. He’d been the one to handle their investments and ensure their futures.

He’d been able to do all that while raising Emmy, a little girl who desperately needed his love and attention .

Without dropping his hands, I stood. “Dahshur made the decision not only to go back into that water, but to stay with Stephanie when he found her. You couldn’t have protected him.” I moved around the table to stand at his side. It was proof of how short I was that he didn’t even have to look up at me. “But he died knowing you’d protect Emmy. Not just her life, but her heart.”

There was something very much like hope in his eyes as he gazed at me. I wanted to give him more.

More reassurance.

More love.

More of myself.

I dropped his hands to climb into his lap, placing my hand on his cheek to turn his face toward me. “You protect us all, Sakkara, and we love you for it.”

I trusted him.

I needed to tell him.

Everything.