Claw rolled his eyes, his scaly ass hitting the ground as he looked up, panting happily and drooling in expectation. His tail whipped against the dirt, the spikes digging grooves into it.
“Clever boy!” Graal exclaimed in delight and tossed him the meat, which appeared to be a leg of some animal. Probably a cow or something.
Claw leaped, taking it out of the air and slinking off to the other side of the small camp to gnaw on it.
“You might as well come out now, little faery,” Graal commented as he stirred the pot over the fire. Her stomach grumbled loudly at the wonderful smell wafting toward her, reminding her of how long it had been since she’d eaten. “Karak won’t be long, and you’ll want some of this inside you before that big lummox eats it all.”
Night had begun to fall, the long fingers of cold air already reaching for her, so she grabbed a smaller fur from the bed before she ventured outside. Graal grunted and nodded in approval as she sat on a log in front of the fire with it wrapped around her shoulders.
“Here, get yerself on the outside of this,” the big orc grunted, handing her a bowl filled with stew.
She breathed in the steam and bit back her moan. “It smells amazing. What’s in it?”
Graal chuckled as she dug in with the spoon he’d given her. The gravy was thick, with huge chunks of meat and what seemed to be vegetables. “Best not to ask that one.”
Her hand paused, spoon halfway to her mouth. “Oh my god, it’s not… it’s not faery. Is it?” She wasn’t a faery, but if they all thought she was, the chances that faeries looked like humans was very high. And becoming a cannibal hadn’t been on her to-do list this week.
“No, we have better things to do with faery prisoners.” He winked, the gesture so overexaggerated she couldn’t help a snort of amusement. “Honestly, it’s probably tree rat or something.”
She eyed the bowl again. Rat. Great. But then her stomach growled again, loudly. She shrugged. Rat for dinner it was then, and then she dug in.
It was delicious. Thick, meaty and delicately seasoned… she went from nibbling on the first hunk of meat to shoveling it in as fast as she could.
A warm weight pressed on her thigh and she looked down to find Claw had laid his head on her leg and was looking up at her with adoring eyes. His tail wagged, and he slow blinked at her.
“Don’t pay any attention to that scav,” Karak warned as he emerged from the darkness, stomping toward them. “He’ll have the food from your plate if you let him.”
“He’s okay,” she kept eating and then looked down again. If she discounted the scales, the teeth, the claws and the yellow eyes, Claw was just like any other dog she’d met.
Carefully she scooped a piece of meat out of the gravy and held it out to him, her heart in her throat as he opened his mouth and she saw all those teeth again. But he sucked the morsel off her fingers delicately with a rumble in the back of his throat.
She gasped. “He purrs!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Karak couldn’t help the smile that curved his lips at her outburst as he returned to the tents. Claw was utterly hamming it up, gazing at the little female adoringly… an adoration that would only last as long as the stew in her bowl.
“He’s a mercenary little shit,” he rumbled, helping himself to a large bowl of stew from the pot before plunking his ass down on the log next to Kelly. “Do anything for a snack. Tell him to roll over and he’ll even let you rub his belly.”
She blinked at him, the surprise on her face almost comical. “Really?”
He nodded, shoveling a large spoonful of stew into his mouth. It was good, well-seasoned and flavorful, and more importantly, hot. The winter weather was closing in fast, and it got cold at nights, so a hot meal was more than welcome.
“Claw, roll over,” he ordered when he’d swallowed.
The dog rolled an eye at him and then back at Kelly, who held out a small morsel of meat. With a put-upon grunt, he flopped onto the ground and rolled onto his back.
“He does!” Her high-pitched squeak of delight was adorable, and she leaned forward to rub Claw’s belly. “Who’s a good doggy? You! You’re a good doggy!”
Claw lapped up the attention. His scaled ears flopped back and his maw widened into a goofy grin as he wiggled happily. For a moment Karak was frozen in place. None of the females in camp would go anywhere near the fearsome hound, yet this tiny slip of a faery female was on her knees in the dirt, Claw’s fearsome teeth and claws totally ignored as she tickled him behind his ears. She cooed to the big kregas hound as she gave him pets.
“Now that one’s a keeper,” Graal murmured. “He’d have eaten the face off of anyone else by now.”
Karak just nodded, watching her from the corner of his eye as he ate. He could get used to the soft sighs and high-pitched giggles, the softness of her body against his… But she was a faery. If only she’d been born something else, anything else… things would have been different. She wouldn’t have been the enemy for a start.
He couldn’t share his life with someone who might stab him in the back while he slept. Sleeping with one eye open all the time wouldn’t work for him. He was a cranky bastard at the best of times. Throw in sleep deprivation and not even Graal, the most laid-back orc in camp, would want to be anywhere near him.
Perhaps he could claim her, he mused. He didn’t think she’d been in league with the dragos demon now. If she had, it would have tried to recover her from the camp by now… or she’d have left the tent to seek out other victims, which she hadn’t. She’d stayed where he put her.
He didn’t think she was high up in the faery ranks, though, if she was even part of their army. Most wingless fae were in the queen’s guard, the hard-faced fae who had trained from birth to protect Queen Oonais. Kelly… was not that kind of person. At first he’d thought the clueless act was just that, an act, but now he realized she really didn’t have any survival skills or abilities.
And a faery that wasn’t part of their army… that could work. He finished his bowl, setting it down next to his booted foot for Claw. Heat surged through his veins at the idea of keeping the little female. She’d warm his bed, riding his cock whenever he commanded. He’d keep her tight little pussy filled with his seed and she’d bear him an orc-son. The thought of her belly huge and swollen with his son brought him to his feet.
“Come, female. We will sleep,” he ordered, holding his hand out for hers.
Behind them Graal snickered, but Karak ignored him, taking Kelly’s hand in his own and leading her the few steps to his tent.
Kelly’s breath hitched in her throat at the darkness in Karak’s eyes as he loomed over her. Butterflies in her stomach, she put her hand into his, a thrill rolling through her as his strong fingers closed around hers. He could snap her in two without breaking a sweat. She’d never gone for big, muscular guys before, but… fuck he was sexy.
The smallest quirk graced the corner of his lips as he pulled her toward him and she let him lead her the few steps into the tent behind them. She knew exactly what was going to happen when they got there. Only a fool wouldn’t, given their previous encounters and the way he was looking at her. A fact borne out moments later when the tent flaps dropped shut behind them and he pulled her into his arms. A second later he’d tumbled her to the furs, a hard knee between hers as he loomed over her.