More of him. She opened her eyes and looked up into his cruelly handsome face and the penny dropped.
“You’re… oh my god, you’re not human. Are you?”
Her words made Karak pause as he looked down at her.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Humans are just a myth,” he told her and then slipped his hand from between her legs with a growl. “Make yourself presentable. We’re about to have company.”
He gritted his teeth as the swirl of dark energy he’d felt drew closer. He recognized the feel of Batak’s power as easily as he’d recognize his own.
They’d grown up together, picked up a sword within minutes of each other… and Batak had a habit of stealing any woman Karak took an interest in. Well, he didn’t really steal them. It was more that as soon as they realized who he was, they threw themselves at him.
That wasn’t happening with his little faery. She was his.
His body raging with lust, he rolled to his feet and shoved the little faery female behind him. Not a second too soon as the tall, broad-shouldered figure of the orc king took shape from the darkness. Behind him were his ever-present half-troll bodyguards, hulking brutes the lot of them.
Dregar, the biggest bastard of the lot, glared at Karak. He ignored the big, asshole. The enmity between them had nothing at all to do with the current situation and everything to do with the black eye Dregar currently sported. It had been a present from Karak three days ago.
But Dregar wasn’t Karak’s problem, so he switched his attention to Batak. The king was far too cunning. Karak was sure he’d orchestrated half the feuds that were currently raging. Better to have his warriors fighting among themselves than casting eyes on the throne.
Karak didn’t do feuds, nor did he want the throne. A rotted lump of carved wood, possession of the damn thing through birthright or right of conquest only took a warrior off the battlefield where he belonged and thrust him into a world where words were cheap and everyone lied. Karak wasn’t into politics for good reason. Killing your opposition for lying was frowned upon, even in the orc court.
“Well, hello, hello. What do we have here?” Batak smiled, his quicksilver eyes warming as he spotted the slender woman half hidden behind Karak.
“Nothing you need to be worried about.”
Karak sidestepped to block Batak’s view. A glance over his shoulder made him groan inwardly. Kelly’s hair was tousled, an artful tumble of curls around her pretty heart-shaped face that invited a male to run his hands through it. Her big dark eyes were wide and her lips were swollen from his kisses. She was a siren enough to tempt any man, and orcs weren’t known for their restraint.
“Just an enemy scout I’m questioning,” he growled as Claw finally joined him, his heavy weight reassuring against Karak’s lower leg. The war-hound was lethal in battle and had a reputation just as fearsome as Karak’s.
“Questionings? Is that what we’re calling it now?” Batak’s eyebrow shot up. “I thought we just called it f—”
“Questioning.”
Karak kept his expression flat and hard, his hand itching to reach for his war axe. It was suicide to challenge the king in front of his lapdogs, but anger overruled any and all common sense. He glared at the line of half-trolls, silently daring any of them to say anything.
Batak chuckled. “Very well, questioning it is. Bitch queen has deployed dragons, so we’re moving back. Join us when you’re finished… questioning.”
“As you command.” Now walk on, kingling. Get the fuck out of here.
Karak didn’t move as he watched the trickster king and his entourage depart, blending into the darkness as silently as they’d arrived.
“Trolls. Fucking filthy animals.”
He spat on the ground in the direction they’d left and then turned back to Kelly. She looked off into the darkness after the departing group.
“Who was that?”
“Batak the Bloodthirsty, the orc king,” he snapped, jealousy filling him that she was thinking about another male. “Around here we generally call him Batak the bloody annoying. Come on, unless you want to be here when some of those trolls double back for a taste of faery flesh.”
“Orcs? Trolls? But I’m not a faery. I told you that…”
Her voice was soft and full of fear as she stepped closer to him. The tiny movement, as though she trusted him to protect her, fed his male pride. Pity she was wrong. He had no interest in protecting her for anything other than his own purposes. Definitely no soft feelings toward her at all. Not even when she melted against him with those lovely little soft sighs.
Reaching out, he imprisoned her wrist in a manacle of firm fingers and then pulled her up against his solid body.
“What else could you be? And you don’t need to be scared of them, little one.”
He stroked a thumb along her full lower lip. Her breath huffed against his skin and her eyes darkened at the touch, becoming pools of darkness he could drown in. Leaning down as though to kiss her, he paused a fraction from her lips to whisper a warning.
“You need to be scared of me.”
CHAPTER SIX
You need to be scared of me.
The words swirled around inside Kelly’s head as Karak dragged her back through the forest the way they’d come. The big devil dog was back, slinking through the underground on the other side of Karak. How he knew which way to go was beyond her. Everything looked the same, the trees crowding in around them with eager whispers as their branches reached out long fingers to pluck at her hair and clothes. She gasped, moving faster to stay closer behind her fearsome-looking captor. None of the enchanted trees dared touch him, their questing branches falling away as he turned at her sound.
Anger flared across his face as he saw the movement. He barked an order in a language she didn’t understand, glaring at the blackened branches. They quailed under his look, shivering and trying to wrap around each other as though to escape his furious glare.
Fear and excitement warred within her, making her stumble as they moved again and plowed through the darkness. Fear that those—fuck, trolls?— would come back and excitement because she hoped that he would kiss her again.
He shouldered his way through a last set of branches to reveal the small camp she’d woken up in. Yanking her around, he threw her onto his furs and loomed over her. The size and breadth of him took her breath away as she looked up. The heat that had been dampened by the arrival of the king and his brutal bodyguards flared into full life as she took in every inch of him.
He was tall, easily as tall as the trolls, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and what she would have called horsemen’s thighs if she’d suspected he’d ever been anywhere near a horse. He didn’t move like a horseman and seemed entirely too comfortable with his own two feet on the ground. And fast… did he even need the horse. Ohmygod, he really wasn’t human.
His feet planted, his face was a mask of concentration as he muttered under his breath. She opened her mouth to ask if he’d finally lost his mind when she registered an electric buzz in the clearing. Startled, she looked around as something—not the wind or rain—swirled around the trees in a tempest of air and glittering points of light, circling the clearing and the guy standing at the center.