Page 21 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
I am her anchor. Her whole body trembles as I lower her onto my cock. Slow. Cruel. Her scream fractures the twilight. Buried to the hilt. Wet. Clenching. Mine. Her thighs clamp my hips. "Move," she hisses, nails biting my shoulders. "Fuck, please, move!"
I pull out until only my head breaches her before thrusting hard back in. It punches a ragged moan from her throat, eyes wide. Her pussy grips like roots holding earth, pulsing. I set a rhythm—deep, unrelenting. The wet suck of our joining echoes under the willows. Each inward stroke shreds her words. "Garruk—" "Harder—" "There, gods?—"
Her legs lock around my back. "I'm close."
"Then fall." One hand yanks her nipple taut. Teeth against her shoulder. Her backbows. Inner walls flutter violently . Ivy’s scream is caught in my mouth—salt and lightning and relief.
I sink deeper with each stroke, our bodies a slick collision of heat and need. Ivy arches against me, inner walls still fluttering from her climax, her grip tightening on my shoulders.
"Again," she gasps, voice raw. "I need it again."
My cock throbs inside her, the rhythm unyielding. Slow drags out. Forceful plunges back into her dripping pussy. Every snap of my hips punches a sharp cry from her lips. She shifts, locking her ankles above my ass, heels digging into my lower back.
"Yes,like that?—"
Her pulse flutters against my tongue as I bite at her throat, not hard, but claiming. She tastes like summer thunderstorms. Her back bows when my thumb circles her clit. Not idle worship—demanding, insistent pressure. Her whimper fractures.
"Garruk, it's—ah! Too soon?—"
I grind the heel of my palm harder. "Give me another one."
The demand unravels her. Pleasure wracks her trembling as her second climax crests, muscles clenching like a fist around my cock. Warm wetness spills between us. Sweat slicks our skin where her breasts press against my chest. "My turn," I rasp. My thrusts lose control, turning rough, jagged.
She fists my braid, dragging my face to hers. Her kiss is messy, desperate. Teeth and tongue and shared breath. When we break, she pants against my mouth. "Come inside me. I want to feel it."
Her words sear through reason. My groan tears from deep in my chest. The shattering crest hits—my cock surges, flooding her as heat explodes up my spine. Ivy’s name rips from me like a prayer as she takes everything.
We collapse onto the moss. Twilight paints the canopy above us violet-gold. Her fingertips trace my jaw just below my tusk.
"Still think it’s complicated?"
She laughs, husky and exhausted, hooking a bare leg over my hip to hold me in place. "Never cared about complications."
CHAPTER 13
IVY
Iwake tangled in warmth that doesn’t belong to me, the sheets tangled like vines around my legs, and the sunlight too bold as it fingers through the slats in the curtain, lighting everything it touches with an unfair sort of honesty. My body feels both heavy and aching in that afterglow sort of way, every nerve ending tingling like I’ve been stitched back together differently—moved around slightly so that nothing is quite where it used to be. Garruk is already gone from the bed, but his presence lingers like smoke in the rafters, like the scent of pine crushed under boot, like the weight of someone who doesn’t leave until you say the word.
And I haven’t said anything. Not yet.
The flannel he left behind—his shirt, the one I’d laughed at for being more holes than fabric two nights ago—is slung over the end of the bed, so I pull it on out of reflex, burying myself in the scent of woodsmoke and the sharp clean smell of him that seems to cut through even the stale air of my childhood bedroom.
The house feels like it’s holding its breath.
Downstairs, the boards groan underfoot as if remembering the weight of arguments long settled in silence. I don’t make tea.I don’t make anything. I just open the back door and step out into a world that feels too green for October.
The orchard has exploded.
It’s not just a few wayward buds testing the season. It’s full, violent bloom—white and blush and deep magenta petals swarming the air, blanketing the ground, clinging to the bark and eaves and fence posts like frost that forgot how to melt. The air is thick with the perfume of sap and soil, so rich and heavy it makes my stomach twist, and the ground buzzes under my bare feet like it’s exhaling with every step I take.
Something has shifted. That’s clear enough.
And I can’t tell if it’s because of what happened between Garruk and me—or because the land decided it’s finally time to say what it’s been holding back all these years. Either way, I feel it in my skin, under my ribs, in the way the orchard tilts its silence toward me like a head cocked in recognition.
I want to ask it what it wants. I want to demand that it stop treating me like I’m part of it now.
Instead, I stand there for a long while with one hand curled tight around the porch railing and the other pressed flat against my belly like that’ll steady the wildfire churning beneath my skin.
