Page 15 of Alien Orc's Prize

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.

“Whatis 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, Idid 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, mywife. 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 itfor 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 weresupposedto 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? Frompinpricks?”

“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.”

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