Page 82 of Rough Riding Orc Cowboy

Dinner passed in a blur of laughter and warm firelight, but my mind stayed on Beth. Always Beth. The way she smiled at something Mary said, the way her fingers twisted in her lap when she was uncertain. And how the glow from the fire softened her face and made her eyes seem endless.

When the meal was done and the dishes put away, someone suggested we lay in the field and gaze at the stars. You couldn't see them as well with the firelight. Pete said it, probably. The man knew things like this better than me.

Blankets in hand, we walked a short distance away from camp, stopping on a grassy knoll near the lake. The air had cooled, but the sky stretched vast and clear above us, thick with streaked galaxies and pulsing stars. A perfect night.

Mary and Carol whispered to their husbands as we settled in, their glances toward Beth and me too knowing.It wasn’t subtle. Nothing about those two ever was. Beth didn’t sit by me at first. She stood a little way off, her arms wrapped around her waist to ward off the chill. With her head tipped back, she looked at the stars as if they held the answers to all her questions.

When I shifted my feet, Carol spoke up. “Enough of that.” She tugged a few extra blankets from Joel and tossed them at Beth. “Sit down before you freeze.”

Beth hesitated, then laid the blanket right beside where I stood, wrapping the second around her shoulders. Glancing my way, she lifted one side, offering to share. My heart pulled tight as I joined her, letting the warmth of her settle around us both.

Shoulder to shoulder. Heat to heat. I didn’t move away. Neither did she.

Around us, the group talked about the constellations, the distant worlds, and wished on stars. Orc didn't do the latter, but I closed my eyes and made a wish anyway. Every one that I could come up with involved Beth.

Could wishes on stars come true?

Voices blurred into the night, overlapping the rustling grass and water lapping the shore of the lake. All I could focus on was Beth. The way she tipped her head back, her eyes wide and lips parted. Her breath misted the air.

I wanted to remember this moment. Capture it like a streaming image in my mind.

A knot formed in my throat, too thick to swallow. I loved her so much.

Eventually, the others stood and shook out theirblankets, drifting toward the campsite while murmuring their goodnights. But not without more knowing glances and winks tossed in our direction. I'd only recently figured out what closing one eye while keeping the other open meant. A kind of tease with a sexual slant is what I determined. Whatever it was, they kept directing them at Beth after looking at me.

Pete gave me one long two-eyed look before joining Carol to walk to their cabin.

Then it was just us. Beth pulled the blanket tighter around her other side, scooting closer to me.

My pulse pounded. My throat went dry. Words rushed up to my mouth, desperate to be spoken. I couldn’t hold them back in anymore.

“I’m falling in love with you,” I said.

She froze.

My stomach dropped. I'd said too much. Too soon. Maybe I should've held the words back forever.

I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.” My chest squeezed, my voice going rough. “I don’t want to pressure you. I understand if you don’t feel the same. You have a life and plans for a new, shining future where you'll be free. And I…” My fingers tightened on the edge of the blanket as my voice dropped to a bare whisper. “I’m just an orc living in the middle of nowhere.”

Beth turned, watching me with something unreadable in her eyes.

I sighed, shaking my head. “Forget I said anything.”

“No.” A single word, but it stopped my breath. “Don’t take it back.”

I went still.

Her hands trembled as she pulled them free of the blanket as she reached for mine, catching it in her small grasp. She swallowed hard. “Because I love you too.”

The world tilted. The stars, the lake, the distant shadows of the trees all blurring into nothing.

Everything inside me seized. Shelovedme.

Something broke free from deep inside me before I could stop it. I rose to my knees in front of her, where I cradled her hands in mine, my thumb brushing over her palm, memorizing every line, every tiny scar.

Holding her gaze, I bent forward and brushed my tongue over each of her palms, slowly gliding my tongue up to each wrist. My heart thundered at the meaning of the gesture.

The moment my tongue met her skin, a golden, circular mark flared to life on her inner wrist.

---