Page 14 of Alien Orc's Prize

“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’syou.”

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.

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