The pit of anxiousness in my stomach urges me to say ‘You first’ in regards to the pool, and then bolt out of the room the moment he’s not looking directly at me, and yell something about getting more of that herbal oil stuff over my shoulder.
It would be a smart decision, to remove myself from temptations now that I know what I should be doing.
I look at Khent and the sheen of sweat on his skin and it melts away.
I have not been making smart decisions.
Approaching the pool, I dip a toe in. The water is warm, like everything in here. Only I’m not so much worried about the temperature, but what might happen in it.
I take a step into the pool, aiming for the little stone stairs that draw you in. My foot plunges into the water much further down than I anticipated.
Khent’s hand catches mine and balances me as I wobble and nearly slip. The water nearly comes up to my knee, my other hand is bunching up the luxuriously huge towel to keep it from getting wet.
I stand there uncertainly a moment, clutching Khent and the towel.
Clearly everything here is tailored to a differently sized clientele. I feel like a goddamn gnome. The towels I was daydreaming about somehow masterfully folding into a shape that would fit into my purse so I could bring one home, have suddenly become a death trap. If I try to take a soak in this hot spring with a big fluffy towel the size of a bedsheet, it’s going to absorb all the water instantly and be impossible to move in. It’ll pull me down into the bottom.
I glance back at Khent, whose head is turned away just enough to give me some semblance of privacy.
Does it really matter if I’m naked in front of him if he’s already eaten me out?
I wrestle with the towel a moment, one handedly tugging it off and trying to toss it aside without it getting too wet.
The humidity hits my skin and makes me all too aware of how alone I am with Khent. I take another step in and let go of his hand. I sit down on the first step, and the water comes up to my collarbone.
I take a moment trying to figure out how to sit in a way that hides my bits, like some kind of tasteful sculpture and not a NSFW bonding activity. I settle for propping my elbow on my knee to censor my nipples. Good enough.
“Relaxing. Like this?”
“In whatever way you feel best,” he says, his voice a soft rumble.
Another ounce of tension seeps into my jaw in at the vagueness of his words. I need clearer instructions, dammit.
I barely relax on my days off. I mean, how does anyone relax in late-stage evil empiricism? You work all week, then maybe get a couple of chores and enough laundry done on the weekends to survive another few days. I’m always trying to out-work the system, like if I can just get up early enough I’ll somehow find a secret stash of hours to use, instead of just stealing sleep from my body. There’s the sound of another towel falling to the ground and it takes everything in me not to whip around and watch. No, I’m going to try to afford Khent the same professional courtesy he just showed me. Because we’re professionals. And coworkers.
The one thing I think this place has going for it is that there’s so many sensations from the heat and humidity and the water, that I can almost tune out the feeling of my cunt aching to be touched.
At least, until I look at Khent again.
A small wave brushes past me. Khent enters the pool and makes himself comfortable on the step next to me.
Don’t look into the water. Don’t look. Don’t look.
My eyes dip down. The water quickly distorts anything more than a couple inches down out of view. Damn.
Sitting beside me, he still towers over me, but it feels a little less stilted between us as he takes on a relaxed pose. The way the water laps at his abdomen and leaves little droplets behind makes me want to lick them off of him.
I swallow and try to school my face into something less blatantly obviously ogling. I glance back at the heated stones he had poured the tea over before. “Can you go through the steps with me again?”
He gives me a look that I can’t parse. What, am I wasting his hour? I’ll find him another coupon or something.
“I just— I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing in here and I don’t want to do it wrong and then this doesn’t work, you know?”
“Mate-bonding is really all that much of an inconvenience for you?” His face sort of pinches even as he says that word, inconvenience.
I can’t stop the way my face falls at his question. I’m ashamed that I haven’t been better at hiding that. He’s been so nice and understanding through this whole mess. I don’t want to keep trampling on cultural norms the public education system never really taught me about. I don’t want to hurt him.
Instead, I curl my legs up to my chest and hug my arms around myself. “It’s just– it’s different. It’s such a sudden attachment and I– I’ve always been self-sufficient, y’know? You know what it’s like, being like that.”
“Can’t say I do,” he sighs. That’s where we differ, I guess.
I look away. We’re an odd pair. We never would have gotten together on our own, it only happened because of a mistake that occurred when we crossed paths.
I don’t really register the way the water ripples with Khent’s movements as he leans out of the water, the sound of a ceramic jar scraping across the stone.
“Here,” Khent says, drawing my attention. He’s unscrewed the lid of some jar, and holds out a hand.
I offer him mine, raising an eyebrow. “That also some salve for relaxing?”
“It’s just plain massage oil.” He takes a gentle hold of my wrist. With his other hand he starts to spread the oil all the way up my arm. He starts to massage the oil into my skin, the circular motion of it easing the tension from my muscles.
“I’ve always been surrounded by attachments,” he says, the words quiet as the water lapping at the stones. “It’s hard to be a loner in Orc communities, there’s always someone that needs you, family or friends. Sometimes it’s too much to keep up with. But I guess it always made me look forward to having this kind of…attachment.”
I hum a note of amusement. He’s using the word I did, but it sounds less clinical coming from him.
He’s worked his way to my shoulder. This stuff is amazing. I don’t know why we started with the tea on the hot stone when this was an option.
“It’s someone who’s on your side, on your wavelength. When you can’t keep up with life, they’re there to help you.”
“I guess. I haven’t had much luck finding someone like that. I mean, none of my exes ever did the dishes,” I say. It’s half a joke, mostly true.
“You don’t believe there’s someone out there that completes you?”
“I— well,” I choke on my words backtracking. I doubt there’s anyone out there willing to put up with my bullshit. To date, no one has. I just knock heads with everyone. But I’m going to try not to put my foot in my mouth.
“I believe there’s someone out there that completes you,” I try, and that much is genuine. I really hope there’s someone out there that deserves Khent, as kind and patient as he is. And if his soul-mate isn’t totally worthy of him, well, I guess I’m going to beat her up or something.
“I’ve never really been much for taking initiative. I’ve been told I’m conflict avoidant,” he says, a sort of ponderous tone that suggests he’s given this a lot of thought. He’s probably spent his whole life wondering what the person who completes him would be like.
That solidifies it in my mind. I will totally take this bitch to the woodshed if she even thinks about not being good enough for him.
“But I’ve always admired people who take charge and stand up for themselves,” he shrugs.
I imagine there’s a lot of Orc women like that. I get lost in thinking about some other woman completing Khent. I realize after a moment my heart is beating a little too fast.
He lets go of my arm that’s closest to him, and I feel weirdly unbalanced. The one side of me is soothed and unwound, and the other side is still tightly coiled with all the stress I’ve been carrying around.
I scoot up on my ankle to try to pivot around so he has access to my other arm, but that has me kneeling on the step and my knees don’t like it.
I think about it for all of ten seconds. I mean, we’re naked in a hot spring together. How much worse is it to sit on his lap?
It’s definitely my best decision in a while. The relief my body feels at the contact, my bare ass against his thighs, it’s doing much more for me than the steam bath did.
If Khent is surprised by the boldness of my actions, he doesn’t voice it.
I have to keep talking or I’m going to keep thinking about what sitting in his lap means. “That’s kind of the part of the whole soul mates thing that doesn’t click with me. I’m complete all by myself, y’know? There isn’t some incomplete half of me wandering around out there that I’m waiting for.”
Khent hums, a deep rumbly sound that reverberates up through where my ass meets his thigh into my core. Maybe that’s just my imagination, or wishful thinking. He sounds contemplative, nonetheless.
“I can see how people take issue with the way a lot of people talk about it. It does make romantic love sound like the end-all, be-all,” he says after a while, his hands taking to working the oil into my other shoulder, down my arm. “But whatever language it gets couched in, or however people try to explain it, I think at the core of it all, it’s just trying to describe someone whose presence makes you happy.”
I twist around to look at him, I have to lean back against his chest just to balance myself. I think he’s massaged his way past my muscles into my…feelings? Ick.
Whoever buys into stereotypes about Orcs being all grunts and no vocab clearly never met Khent. He’s soft spoken with an insightful gravity in the way he speaks, like he’s given a lot of thought and care to what he says.
He looks at me, my head against his shoulder, and his face softens. I wonder how well he can see me without his glasses. “You don’t believe someone can make everything better, just by being there?”
The way I feel sitting in his lap, I would believe he could make my day better just by touching me. World peace would be achieved instantly if I had his cock in me.
“I don’t—” I say, the words making me aware of how deeply I’m breathing. “I don’t know.”
The way he sounds when he talks about it makes me want to believe it. I don’t think I have it in me to believe so genuinely in something as uncynical as that. But I want that kind of feeling he’s talking about. Just leaning against him makes all my worries about work and life slip away.
It’s not fair of me to want that much from Khent. I’d be taking advantage of his belief in this whole soul mates by Blood Fever thing if I just gave into it.
I shake my head, as if I could fling that thought out of my head like flinging droplets from my hair. Am I an asshole if I keep giving in to this?
I look at Khent, desperate to ask if the steam bath or the hot spring is working for him. Because I’m not convinced it’s doing anything for me. But if I ask if it’s working yet, he’s just going to think I’m so inconvenienced by our bonding.
“Is– am I feeling all this because I’m right next to you?” I ask, making a sort of vague gesture that doesn’t really illustrate my point.
Khent raises his eyebrows, a mixture of surprise and concern in his face, probably at how badly I’m expressing myself. “Sorry?”
“I don’t know how to explain that being this close to you has made everything the Blood Fever is making me feel somehow better and worse at the same time–” I catch the way Khent’s cheeks turn a darker green, flushing. “I think if I get out of your lap, my vagina is going to implode in on itself in horniness.”
“Oh,” he says. “I don’t know. I’ve never been in a situation like this before.”
A moment passes, he continues to rub my shoulders. The rest of my body might be content to melt into his massive hands, but my cunt has yet to stop upping the ante.
“Maybe you can–” he turns his head away so fully his body turns too. He seems to forget I’m in his lap and he’s taking me with him. “If you need to take care of yourself–”
He doesn’t finish the offer, like the thought is too much to suggest. Like it doesn’t merit the effort it takes to say.
I can feel his heart pounding through his chest to mine.
Wondering distantly if I care about holding him at arm’s length anymore, I slip my hand between my thighs. I bite down on my lip as I find my clit, the sensation is needed, so wanted.
The relief I felt starts to crumble into need-want-need-please again. I wiggle a little, trying to scrape back that feeling. It works for a second before it falls back into craving.
His cock stiffens and brushes past my thighs in the water, the concave tip poking out of the surface. My mouth waters a little at the sight of the twin slits within the head. I can’t take my eyes off him. It’s kind of nice to know I’m not the only one affected.
“I want you to touch me,” I beg, and I don’t have it in me to be ashamed of how desperate I sound. Masturbating in his lap with him just wanting to touch me, but can’t, is its own entirely appealing thought, but it needs to wait for an occasion when I can find a little more self-control.
Slowly, his hands draw up my thighs up my stomach to my breasts, still continuing to massage. Even though his hands are giant against me, his touch is staggeringly gentle. I want to be entirely wrapped up in this feeling. The brush of the pad of his fingertips against my nipples makes me want so much more.
I turn around, straddling him to the best of my ability. My mouth falls on his without even a thought.
Kissing Khent does something for my mind, the way taking a deep breath of cool air feels to my lungs. I pull back, breaking the kiss and remember I was trying not to do this. I can’t give in to my body, this fever.
“Khent, but we shouldn’t, right?” I say, even as my hips roll against him, his thick, heavy cock trapped between us. My hands are in his hair, and before I think about it, I pull myself up on my knees, as high as I can go. I find his cock, my hand stroking its incredible thickness, unable to fully circle around it. I’m doing the mental math, realizing that in order for his cockhead to peak above the water means that what I glimpsed before he was hard isn’t lining up.
Evil Overlord, how is it possible that his cock was already huge to begin with and he’s a grower??
I position the tip at my entrance. I know I can’t. I shouldn’t. We’ve been working so hard to get through this Blood Fever and just let the bond fade away. This is just going to make us need to start over again.
And besides, it might not even be physically possible.
“Then we should stop,” he says, though nothing in his voice sounds like he agrees.
“Maybe, maybe just the tip,” I say. I don’t know enough about how mate-bonding and Blood Fever work to make that assumption, but my body is willing to run with that theory. “Maybe just a little bit is ok.”
His hand curls around his cock, covering mine. He drags the tips back and forth through my pussy, teasing, torturing.
I almost whine in frustration, and move my hips, sinking down the smallest amounts to take him inside me. Even the first inch or so stretches my cunt to its capacity. It’s wholly possible even just the tip is going to be too much for me.
I wonder distantly if my health insurance covers being eviscerated by Orc cock.
He nods, and his massive hands cup my ass, supporting my weight.
I rock my hips, gasping with every inch I’m slowly taking inside me. I’m going to have to make peace with the fact I’m just physically not going to be able to take all of him. Eventually.
I can see the way this is teasing him, the color in his cheeks and the strained cords in his neck. He’s holding back while I work myself open.
I’m taking in more than the tip, sinking down a little too ambitiously with each thrust. Each time I nearly cry out from pushing myself too much, but my body adjusts after a few moments and craves more.
At least from what I can tell, I think he’s a little more than halfway inside me, and that may truly be my limit. I should stop before this sends me to the ER.
“Maybe I could be there for you,” he says, suddenly, snapping my thoughts away from death by dicking to something equally dangerous. Tenderness.
“What?”
“When you need someone to be on your side, or when you just need someone there.”
That’s not fair. He can’t say that, not while I’m supernaturally horny and balanced on the tip of his dick, not when he’s soothed every knot of tension out of my body and I just want to melt into his arms and kiss him again.
I look at him and try to find the words to tell him how completely unfair a suggestion that is. His expression stops me. I can see he actually wants that.
Maybe I want that too.
“Just, just a little,” I manage to say.
Finally, he starts to roll his hips, pushing in and out of me, working more and more in. It’s simultaneously too much and everything my body has been craving since that first incident.
He lifts me out of the water, rolling us over onto the soft mossy ground to continue to rut into me. I lift my hips to meet his rhythm, each time nearly enough to push me over into oblivion. More than once I lose my sense of self to the mere sensation of it all.
“It’s– it’s kind of been a while,” he says, bringing my attention back to the moment. “Since I’ve been with anyone. Uh, sexually.”
I kind of blink at him. Did he forget the encounter in my office? Either he’s not making sense, or his dick has drained my brain power. He usually makes sense so I’m willing to believe the second option. “What?”
“I’m not going to last very long,” he grunts, glancing away from me as he slows his thrusts.
My brain is so drenched in the endorphins, it takes me a few moments to realize what he’s getting at.
“I’m on birth control,” I gasp out, which doesn’t sound great as a response to a conversation, but it’s better than ‘fuck just cum in me please’. My voice hitches on those words, and a burst of heat in my cunt, or maybe my clit, or just kind of that general area, I don’t know anymore. I don’t think I could tell my hands apart right now. I just know that the thought of him cumming in me is so completely appealing, it’s enough to push me over the edge. My cunt spasms and clenches around his cock, eliciting a noise of need from him. A wave of pleasure so complete it knocks the breath out of my body moves through me.
Khent’s own movements grow more harried and less elegant, rocking into me through my orgasm until he groans and stiffens. I feel the hot flood of his cum inside me, filling whatever space there’s left.
He pulls out of me, the head of his cock glistening with a mixture of my wetness and his own cum.
I lay still on the ground but my legs are shaking, and with every residual pulse of my orgasm more of his spunk drips out of me.
He curls an arm around me, enveloping me in his embrace. We lay there on the floor, no words, just our breathing and heartbeats falling into step.
For the first time in weeks, the Blood Fever has almost entirely subsided. I can’t remember when I last felt this relaxed, this comfortable and safe. Even before I broke his nose. I don’t need to hold any kind of guard up because he’s here, holding me.
Maybe I could try to believe in soul mates, for Khent’s sake.
