by Pixie Unger
I shook my head. “What a pair we make. I didn’t think you were ready.”
Tybalt sucked my fingers, then pressed my hand to his hard and leaking cock. I gave it a stroke, then slid my hand a little further down to cup his balls. He absolutely moaned. I kissed his lips as I gave his balls a gentle squeeze.
“You have to be first,” he whimpered.
I shrugged. “We have time.” I pushed him onto his back and rubbed myself against the underside of his dick. Tybalt put his feet flat on the floor so I could lean back against his thighs.
“That’s nice—” I hadn’t even made it to the end of the sentence when his hands went to my hips, big enough to thumb at my clit while he held me. “Easy there,” I murmured, moving his hands to my breasts. “You just keep me warm.” Tybalt nodded, chewing his lip a little as I eased him inside of me. He tensed and whimpered as I concentrated on holding still to adjust. After a moment, I started to grind against him again.
Tybalt pushed himself up onto his elbows which let me lean forward to kiss his lips as I rubbed my clit against him.
“You are so perfect, Mina,” he whimpered. “I wanted you so long. Too pretty for me. So smart. So patient with me. I want everything. I want you to smell like me. I want you to eat my food and sleep in the house I made you. I want to watch you laugh. I want to make you laugh. I want to see you happy and know that I helped.” He gasped and growled before switching back to English. “I want to hold your hips and feel you move.”
That sounded like a good idea, so I moved his hands to my ass. He gave me a gentle squeeze, whimpering incoherently again. “I want to spill! Please let me spill in you, Mina!” he begged urgently.
“Wait!” I gasped.
He whined, and moved his hands from my ass to clench his fists in the blanket. His whole body was tense and he was making a steady whining stream of “Please! Mina! Please! I need to!”
Moving my fingers to rub my clit, I was gasping and chasing my own pleasure. I came with a grunt rather than a shout and my legs started to shake. Tybalt sobbed.
“Now!” I urged. “Now, Tybalt!”
He caught my hips and slid me up and down his cock, curling up towards me until he was bent nearly in half with his forehead against my shoulder. Tybalt gave one last broken “Please!” before his body tensed and he crushed me to his chest. He gasped for breath and trembled as he flooded into me. We collapsed in a tangle of sweaty limbs and lay there panting for a moment.
I must have dozed off, because I woke to a much more polite knock at the door.
“Go away!” I yelled.
The door opened and I contemplated the best way to kill an orc before Jo hesitantly called, “I have clean clothes and more food. I’m leaving them by the door and I’m sending everyone to work on the other building until noon.”
“Thanks, Jo!”
“No problem, but we’ll have to laugh about this later.”
The door closed and I chuckled to myself.
Tybalt was watching me intently. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Good job, soldier,” I teased.
“Better next time,” he promised.
I gave him a quick kiss before I pulled away from him. “I just wish it was under better circumstances.”
“With you in this house is good circumstances.”
“Aww, that’s sweet!” I gushed.
He nuzzled my face. “Others will be here, too. Waiting with Jo.”
I groaned. “Time to clean up and get dressed.”
He shrugged. “Your house. Don’t have to get dressed if you don’t want to.”
It was my house. Huh. My house. My stupid pans to cook on my stove. My bathtub, that I was itching to try out. My orcs. My weird little family. I actually had those now.
And they were mine. The other orcs had left when I ordered them out. This space was mine. Ours. In a way, it was a love letter from the boys. Iago helped find the site and so many of the things inside it. Romeo had figured out the heat and power to make this possible. Tybalt put in countless hours to build the house. Mac worked away in the background keeping me alive and helping them talk to me.
They had all been there for me when I needed them. Even at the points where I had resented them for it.
Tybalt walked unashamedly naked past the huge wall of windows to get whatever Jo had left for us. “Mina?” he asked, sounding worried.
“Yes, Tybalt?”
“This is wrong. Jo made a mistake. This isn’t breakfast. But there is a human message.”
I grumbled to myself as I wrapped myself up in the blanket and went to see what he was talking about. He was holding a cloth bag and a scrap of paper, which he gave me.
“Let’s see how brave you really are.” I read. “What is she talking about?”
I looked over to where Tybalt was carefully setting the items from the bag on the table. It was eggs and raw sausage patties. My eyes went wide. “Tybalt! We get to cook breakfast in the new house!”
He eyed me nervously. “Get dressed first,” he insisted. “No cooking naked.”
I laughed. “What happened to ‘it’s your house, you don’t have to get dressed’?”
“Blankets catch on fire and cooking splashes,” Tybalt replied. “Don’t want Mac asking why you have splash burns.”
I snickered. “Not brave enough to fry bacon naked,” I mused.
He just looked confused.
“C’mon,” I suggested. “You can show me how the shower works.”
----
My other three were fussing outside, pulling weeds or amending the soil near the house or something. Jo had found a chair and a patio umbrella with a patched rip and was reading a book. Well, at least that explained why there was so much food.
“Come in and have breakfast!” I called.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Jo announced as she stood up. “I wasn’t expecting to start my day with an impromptu sex ed lesson to a gang of construction workers; I have earned a sunny side up with hash browns.”
I blushed. Iago and Romeo glared at her, but Jo ignored them and walked resolutely towards the door.
“You have to fry the hash browns,” I admitted, “I’ve never made them when they didn’t come out of a bag.”
Jo considered that as she looked around the place. “I can skip them then. Too much effort. This is nice, Mina. Tybalt did a really good job.”
“Others helped,” he protested.
She patted his cheek. “I know, sweetie, and it’s good of you to share the credit.”
“I don’t know how the stove works. Can someone help me turn it on?” I asked as I rattled the door to the fire box. It was stuck tight.
Romeo’s hand gently pulled mine away. “Don’t open that. The sun is in there.”
“That’s the solar panel?” Jo asked. “How does it get enough light?”
“Not light,” he explained. “Tiny sun making heat and power and … light,” he finished lamely.
Tybalt pulled out the rather pathetic translator and growled at it.
“Hydrogen binding to make helium, fusion, nuclear fusion, recombinant atomic technology. In present tense.”
Jo and I both stared at him. “That … can’t be right,” she muttered softly.
I shrugged. “It isn’t a great translator,” I admitted.
“It would explain why Warden really wants Romeo making more of those.”
“Don’t open the door. Controls are here,” Romeo continued, as though having a nuclear fusion stove was perfectly normal. He pointed to the touch pad. “This is more hot. This is less hot. I’m going to try to get it to show a human number for how hot, but it can’t yet.”
I cooked while Jo set the table. The guys watched us nervously.
“I miss pepper,” I admitted to her as we sat. “I’m happy to have salt, but I miss pepper.”
Jo smiled sadly. “We’ll get trade going again eventually,” she assured me. “Humans are adaptable. I, for one, plan on spending the winter learning to us
e a drop spindle.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I admitted, “but I’m always keen to learn new things.”
“Yeah. I like that about you,” she admitted. “You actually do things instead of just whining about it.”
“Some of the time,” I added, wanting to temper that statement.
She just smiled and had another bite of her egg.
----
It took a couple of days to get everything finalized in the house. Then it took a couple more to get stuff moved around to work for us. I didn’t go back to the house by the camp. Not to sleep in, anyway. It was one more night on the floor, this time with all five of us, before I admitted to the guys I wanted to stay here now. They brought over sleeping mats first thing the next morning.
The bedroom was mine, but mostly we all just slept in the common space with the plants and the big windows. It was very peaceful. Deer came right up to the windows. That was going to be a problem in the spring when they would be eating our garden, but we would figure that out later.
Tybalt found me a desk for my room, and Romeo made me a chair. Mac kept telling me to take more stretch breaks, but since he did that when he was massaging my back and shoulders, he wasn’t exactly making a convincing case of it.
It was good. Erika was right; if I didn’t make a big deal of things, neither did they. No one commented at all if I was talking to one of them or whatever, and I ended up taking them back to my room to finish the conversation.
Or whatever.
It was nice being out in the middle of nowhere because I didn’t have to try to be quiet anymore. My guys were learning better than to check in when I screamed.
The nights had gotten longer and colder. We were all around the house almost all of the time. I still went to visit Erika five or six days out of ten, and I saw Jo about half of that time. I would drop in on them or they will come by here. Jo was really busy, but I thought she was lonely, too. She was still living in the school, but kept saying one of these days she would organize a house for herself. But that hadn’t happened yet.
In the meantime, I think she was plotting with Iago. He was sneaky, but the other three were sure he was up to something. Orcs are terrible gossips, so he was keeping his plans to himself. On the days when I was out visiting, he still disappeared. He insisted he wasn’t hunting people, either orcs or humans, anymore, but he still wouldn’t tell me what he was doing.
I was trying to be patient. I knew he would tell me when he’s ready.
I was laying in bed with my head on his chest feeling the bass of his voice rumble through my body as he was talking about how he wanted to go ice fishing. I wouldn’t mind the trout, but I didn’t really want to talk about that just now. I shifted and stretched up to kiss him. It was an obvious yet effective distraction technique, and Mac chuckled at us when it worked.
Iago just gazed at me with his expression all soft.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“Yes. I am. Are you?”
“Yeah. It isn’t how I thought my life would go, but I am happy. I feel safe here.”
He smiled and nuzzled the top of my head as Mac grinned a little harder.
“Iago?” I asked. “Will you be able to stop leaving for days at a time to hunt and just live here with me?”
He smiled and nodded. “All yours now.”
“Good.”
And it was.
----
It turned out that I kind of sucked at drop spindle, but I made up for it by being not horrible at weaving. I’m just not good at the sitting part. I would rather be out stomping around in the woods with Iago, or helping Mac treat whatever critters people have found to add to their farms.
Tybalt had the right attention to detail that he was really good at both spinning and weaving. Most of the time when I helped, I think he was just politely humouring me, but it was something to play at in the evenings.
I still had no idea what Romeo did with his days. He went out, did science, and came home to me.
There was always so much work to do, but it was also so peaceful. At night I could see the stars and, occasionally, the faint light from Erika’s house. She was close enough that it was easy to walk over for a visit, but far enough to have some privacy.
That night, though, it was already dark out. It had started to snow, but Iago wasn’t home yet. The rest of us had eaten and cleaned up, and I was down to pacing. No one else seemed worried. The three of them were playing cards and I was pretty sure Mac was cheating, again. I finally figured out he didn’t do it to win. He was waiting to see how long it would take them to notice.
“He promised to come home every night,” I mumbled. “But I just want to know he’s safe.”
“Want me to check?” Tybalt offered.
I shook my head. I had called him just before sunset, and he said he was fine, but he was definitely unhappy with being interrupted. I put the kettle on for tea and kept watching out the window.
I had finished my tea when the door opened. Iago came in carrying something bundled in his coat. I took two steps towards him before he snapped, “Stop!”
I froze. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you wearing your jacket?”
He just shook his head and sagged to the floor. I was about to take another step towards him when Romeo caught me and physically moved me back towards the table.
“Can’t you smell it?” he asked.
“Yeah, okay, Iago doesn’t smell great right now, but I need to know he’s okay,” I explained, squirming in his grasp.
“Mina! Stop! I’m fine,” Iago assured me. That’s when I noticed his coat was moving. He carefully unwrapped a skinny, dirt-coloured dog that had to be at least part lab. “Holy shit!” I gasped and bit back a shriek of excitement. The poor thing was shaking; it didn’t need me scaring it even more. It was a huge struggle for me not to rush right over to pet it.
“She doesn’t bite,” he explained softly, “but very afraid.”
“Poor thing is probably hungry,” I replied, my tone slightly hushed. I tried again to wiggle out of Romeo’s grasp.
“Yes,” Iago agreed. “Ate my lunch for days. Took long time for her to let me catch her. Getting fatter now.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That is fatter?”
He nodded then gave me a look. “I checked with Jo. She is a dog, not a coyote.”
I snorted; the dog flinched. “How did you find her?”
“She was watching me fish.” Iago hadn’t moved and the dog was cautiously looking at the rest of us.
I patted Romeo’s arm so he would let me go. I got out a paring knife and an apple and sat on the floor. “I don’t have any dog food, but apple is safe for dogs.”
“Eggs?” Tybalt suggested.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure I can get her to take eggs from my hand.” I held out the slice of apple. “You’re going to need a name,” I mused as she walked towards me, head down and tail tucked.
“Answers to Treat.”
I chuckled. “I bet. Did Jo tell you to try that?”
Iago nodded.
Treat was very gentle when she took the apple slice. She laid down to eat it. By the time she had finished the apple, Tybalt had made an omelette, and she was letting me pet her while she ate. She had a bowl of water, then went to whine at the door. That caused a flurry of activity as we found a makeshift leash for her.
I took her out under Iago’s watchful eye, and Treat was happy enough to follow me back inside after she watered a tree. Mac gave her a quick med scan. She had a chip, but there was no way to get the information from it. He also announced that we would need to get her some meds, but it could wait until the morning. I was glad it wasn’t flea or tick season.
The bathtub was big enough that Treat was happy to swim in it. I gave her a good scrub and the guys’ reaction to her shaking dry was hilarious. Once I stopped laughing, I had to explain that Treat hadn’t exploded water. Tybalt volunteered to clean the tub afterwards; it needed it.
She loved getting towelled off, and was more than happy to lay down in a nest of towels near the stove. I knew I should give her some space but I wanted to stay close to her. I had known this poor, scared dog for maybe an hour and already I would do anything I could to keep her.
The guys weren’t sure about her sleeping on the mats with us that night, but when I suggested she could sleep in my room instead, that was quickly vetoed. I just let her have free range as Iago ate and we all lay down for the night.
He was a little surprised when she decided to sleep between him and the door, but he let that pass. So while Iago was spooning Treat, I curled up behind him, and Mac was behind me. I knew rescuing a dog would be complicated, but I didn’t doubt that we would be fine. After all, if these guys could put up with a scared and slightly feral me, Treat had nothing to worry about.
“Mina?” Mac whispered as I was starting to doze off.
“Mmm?” I mumbled, half asleep.
“Do you want more than one dog?”
“Maybe,” I murmured. “One for now though. Go to sleep, Mac.”
“Okay. One for now. More in thirty-five or forty days.”
I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. It was another few weeks before I figured out what he meant. Then I actually did shriek in delight. Fortunately, Treat was more used to me by then.
----
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