Page 35 of Secret Twins for the Orc

I grunt and send a glance her way as I drive. “You don’t want to know.”

I hadn’t meant for it to be suggestive, but the flicker of surprise and then heat that fills her eyes has my fingers clenching against the wheel, and my own thoughts immediately follow down that same path.

“Well, well…” She leans towards me, her smile languid, “now you have to tell me.”

I press my lips together. “Ella…”

She chuckles, the sound light and flirty, and rests her hand on my knee. “I promise you won’t scare me away.” Her fingers shift, palm tracing just a touch higher up my thigh, and my body thrums with sudden tension as my heart rate increases. “We’re both adults, it’s—”

She cuts off as I suddenly veer off course, turning us at a ninety-degree angle as I take a road to get us away from the busier street, before practically slamming the car into a stop by an unlit section of footpath near a small park.

She doesn’t understand what she’s flirting with, just like when we first met. If she wants me, she’s going to get more than one night. And she had better understand that, sooner rather than later.

I turn to look at her in the low light as I shut off the car and unclip my seatbelt, but I have no trouble seeing her features, and she doesn’t seem startled at the turn of events. Just like that first night, when I’d taken her down an alleyway and asked her to bare her throat to me, she’s staring at me with curiosity, and without a hint of unease.

She just waits to see what I plan to do next, unafraid. As if she trusts me.

“Nice spot,” she says as her eyes dart around the darkness, her lips still lifted in a smile. “Very romantic.”

I pull the lever beside my seat and shove it back as far as it will go, giving myself more leg room. “Come here.”

She unbuckles her seatbelt, but doesn’t make a further move, and I reach an arm out to palm the back of her neck, pulling her closer until I can rest my forehead against hers. “Please.”

I don’t know what I’m doing, what I’m planning, I just know I need her closer. When she releases the belt from her fingers and slinks across the car into my lap like we’re both eighteen again, I lean back.

She settles against my lap, one knee on either side of mine, and I grab her hips between my fingers.

“Hi,” she whispers.

“Ella,” I say again, and my hands slide up to her small waist, squeezing as if with a mind of their own. “You need to understand something about me.”

“And what’s that?” she murmurs playfully, her fingers fluttering to rest against my neck.

“If you want me, you’re going to have to take all of me.” Her brows lift and her knees tighten against me at those words. Again, that sounded a lot more suggestive than I’d meant it to, but when I open my mouth to clarify, the faint, sweet scent of her arousal blooms between us.

“I can do that.”

I groan helplessly, closing my eyes and shaking my head. “All of me, beautiful.” I open my eyes again and try to focus, even as I feel my shaft beginning to lengthen in response to her. “My body, my mind, my heart. I won’t take you any other way, do you understand? I’m not an orc who can do casual, it turns out. I don’t want one night with you, one week, one fling. That isn’t good enough.”

She doesn’t say anything, her face unreadable as she gazes down at me.

“Give yourself to me.” Her body once more reacts to my words, her hips moving, knees spreading. “Take all of me.” I can’t help but shift my own hips in response to her, tilting towards her as if I would spear myself into her heat right here. “Or end this now, because I won’t play games. No secrets, no holding back. Bind yourself to me, or don’t. I won’t take anything in between.”

A part of me, the small, logical part, shouts from the back of my mind that I’m doing it again, I’m going for too much, too deep, too fast. But I don’t want to pretend, to play at being casual, or act like I want less, just for the sake of the game. I’m not built for that shit.

At least this way, if she doesn’t want me like that, I’ll know from the start and we can end it before it begins, before she wakes up tomorrow or in five years, and decides to leave me.

“Rhokar,” her voice is quiet as she speaks, her brows are furrowed. She lifts her hand and rests her fingers against my jaw. “Is that what this is about? Why you didn’t want to kiss me after dinner the other night?”

“Oh, I wanted to kiss you,” I growl, sliding my hands down her thighs as I remember that moment, when I’d been so closeto taking her against the side of my truck. “I wanted to do much more than just kiss you, Ella.”

“But you thought that’s all I wanted from you?”

That, and a million other excuses I’d given myself, but beneath it all, yes. That. I didn’t want to have her, only to lose her again.

But I can’t quite bring myself to say it out loud.

She seems to understand though, to read my expression and hear my unspoken words, because she lifts her fingers to trace against my hairline and smiles. “What if I told you I’m willing to try for more?”

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