Finding Her Heart (Orki War Bride #2)

by Isoellen

  Annabell trembled as Doku-ni touched her. He wouldn't let her break their gaze or hide. His cloth found scars, fat, calluses, and age. She was all disappointment, a spinster, and widow. White Eyes washed it all away to find the woman beneath. Every swipe of his cloth was the deepest, rawest of intimacies. Movements slow and deliberate—there was no aggression, no force. Perhaps the custom of washing was unavoidable, but his seduction was not.

  Still silent, he made no noise. Not that luxurious grumble in his chest or the deeper, powerful growl that had come from his throat. What he did was a gift, an honor from him, one he asked her to accept.

  The gift of the Orki to his redress, showing her who she was, what she meant to him. He watered Annabell's thirsty, empty soul.

  When was the last time anyone had touched her?

  When was the last time anyone had loved her?

  He washed her back in languorous strokes. Muscles jumped under her skin as his cloth shaped the curves of her waist to her hips, her bottom, and thighs. She was thick there, thicker than in her girlhood. Strength needed for working the farm by herself stole her soft girlishness and replaced it with the mannish flesh needed to survive. She couldn't help the changes, just like the wrinkles around her eyes from glaring into the morning sun. She told herself that she accepted the price of her choices. There was nobody to care what she looked like, anyway. There never would be again.

  This Orki gave her heartbreaking acceptance and approval—it confounded her.

  Her back finished, he returned to her front, where her breasts ached and her nipples had become extra sensitive. He wet the cloth, wrang it out this time, then washed her breasts. He cupped it around the fullness, lifting, gently squeezing in his big hands, rubbing the material against her skin again and again.

  They stood now, enclosed in their own bubble of privacy. The world did not exist. His breath. His heat. His scent… Bending over her, he brushed a tusk against her brow. Then his lips. The wet tip of his tongue touched the corner of her eyelid at the same time his fingers closed over her nipple through the cloth in a pulling-pinch.

  Annabell cried out, and a whine started behind her teeth that built to a wail of pain. White Eyes had reached inside of her being and found all her dreams and fantasies, pulling them out–seeing them–one by one.

  She was sorrow exposed to the brightest part of the day, fields of unseen wildflowers, the untasted, sweetest peaches at the top of the tree. It hurt like an impossible desire. Lost then found, and now the dream was here, in her hands, too exquisite to endure. The wail rose, spiraled, twisting in the air with raw realizations, lowering into a scream of agony.

  This desire was dead. This fantasy and dream had been dead, but here it all lived, heated and alive, resurrected. She was grief and gratitude, rage and acceptance free-falling into new.

  Chapter 10

  Every dream She Never Had

  The Orki picked out women from the Gathering Lodge yard, but Annabell had seen no other feminine faces. She had heard them. Cries and protests. They were alive. She might have seen Lurann's yellow hair, but she couldn't be sure. She passed out at Doku-ni’s feet, losing track at what happened around her.

  Annabell trusted in her papa's stories. The Orki had good intentions, but their ways were not the customs of the village. With as much grief and woe as they had left behind, it was a hard leap to think the other women might be in danger. Annabell tried to see who else sat with an Orki on the back of his war beast, but Doku-ni stopped each attempt. He pulled her head in close to his chest, covering her eyes with the blanket, cutting off her view.

  "What are you doing, Annabell Roe? What are you doing?" her inner voice asked.

  "I do not know."

  "Look with your eyes and not your emotions."

  "My emotions are all I can see."

  The heat of her white Orki's muscled belly tempted her senses, begged her petting. She opened her hand over the ridges there, enjoying him.

  When the group stopped, they dismounted and, Doku-ni leaned her against Zerzer's side with her face pressed against the big creature's hindquarters where the fur was soft. The moment he stepped away, Zerzer used the opportunity to attempt another lick.

  "Stop that! I know you can tell I don't like it." She turned her back to escape that big pink tongue, wobbling on her feet. Returning with water for his mount, Doku-ni set a bowl in front of the war beast. It was a tiny amount, but the animal had a body chemistry Annabell couldn't understand. Then, giving her a speaking look in the eye, he picked up Annabell and took her to a ditch.

  Unable to focus, she didn't realize what he wanted, or cared much, until she heard the distinct splash of liquid hitting the ground. The sound activated her own need. Catching her hand, Doku-ni kept her from finding a private space, gently pushing on her shoulders.

  "Do you do everything publicly?" she grouched.

  Squatting, she fussed with the wool and fur, not wanting to soil anything until he just plucked them from her hands. "Why do I have to be naked?

  Not looking at the male for answers, Annabell emptied her bladder.

  The land was distinctly rocky here. Impossible to farm. There were plants she had never seen before, growing low to the ground, with plump water-filled leaves. What was dangerous, what was edible or medicinal or too bitter for any kind of use at all? Papa encouraged those questions that irritated others so much she'd stopped asking.

  The Orki kept people out of their territory, refusing to share their secrets. But now she was here. This white Orki welcomed questions, but he had no voice to answer them.

  Finished, she stood, and Doku-ni wrapped her up before carrying her back to Zerzer. He gave her water to wash her hands and the pouch to sip from, mindful of her needs. His ability to see her, and that desire to care for her, tightened her throat. She was a mess, ready to burst into tears at any moment. Emotion and feeling overran all her ability to hold them back. Unlaced, her soft vulnerability exposed, every puff of wind touched a nerve ending.

  The Orki lit torches, though she knew they didn't need them, showing a clearing full of scrubby plants and more volcanic rock. At least some of the Peace River Valley had been like this, before the founders gave themselves the tasks of turning it into viable land for an agrarian humble life. Collected rocks became walls, home foundations, and the roads around the Gathering Lodge. Her ancestors gave up soft lives to toil and sweat. They brought only the simplest, most essential machinery with them, life with tents and axes. Papa taught them that the Orki had helped move some of the larger rocks and placed them up and down the river to mark boundaries to their lands.

  Repositioned back onto Doku-ni's lap, they rode again, taking her and the other human women to their native home. She had heard more feminine sounds of protest. Someone was not happy. Did she know the Orki treated all women with careful, loving honor? Did she understand what it meant to be redress?

  Of course, that was a subject Annabell had a million questions about growing up. Papa loved his stories. He had created one about her great, great aunt being chosen as a redress war bride. Annabell asked for that one at every bedtime.

  She hoped that the voice of protest didn't come from Lurann. They had never gotten on well, but after everything, losing her husband, the invasion of those murderous bastards, Lurann deserved better. Her sister by marriage was everything Annabell was not, but she was also more than Annabell gave her credit for.

  "Kejere told me to take care of you," she said, making sure Annabell's bruised face stayed swollen and bloody.

  Of her six brothers, Annabell had always been closest to Benjere, if only because he took his responsibilities as second oldest seriously. He assumed the role of family patriarch. Their eldest brother had left the family assets to Benjere before Annabell turned sixteen. He cashed out his inheritance and moved to marry a girl he'd met at a village dance. He and Benjere clashed so often that his leaving relieved everyone.

  Kejere was her third eldest brother, softer, less critical th
an Benjere. He’d always been a little protective of her and gentle in his expectations. Saving the lectures and pressures for Benjere, he told her not to marry Mark. Being on the council and sharing the town's opinion of the Orki Originals, he hadn't wanted her to become a bride. He thought it too dangerous, and she was too young. But he also noticed that, even in courtship, Mark could not make her laugh and smile. He told her not to marry him.

  Mark was Benjere's choice and his friend. The bossiest had been livid.

  In turn, Annabell wanted to tell Kejere not to marry Lurann, who wore her tops too low, and teased every young man in the settlement. Her golden, wheat-blonde hair was such a village sensation that other women concocted special rinses to imitate it, but she had a reputation for more than her beauty. Lurann's own circle of friends gossiped about her. She ignored it. Nothing Lurann did, and nothing that was said, no matter how lurid, toppled her from her superiority. There was a coldness to Lurann's personality, a hard-outer mask looking down on the village from an unbreachable tower. Annabell thought Lurann's circle were not her friends at all, but enemies she kept close, manipulating them like pawns. Annabell saw the toxicity and refused to take part in that game.

  The older woman also manipulated the raiders. She knew what to do, when to give in, to cry or to resist. Boss declared to one and all that he wanted young, fresh and pretty. Still beautiful, but neither young nor fresh, Lurann's efforts of distraction saved several of the captured girls. As far as Annabell saw, everyone else in Righteous had been out to save themselves or their own. Shunned, like Annabell, by the women of the town, Lurann sacrificed herself for their daughters with no one asking her to.

  It was more than Annabell had done.

  She hoped Lurann knew she would be safe and cared for with the Orki.

  *

  Belly and guts nagging her, Annabell had no choice. It was time to make this situation known. She needed a private moment. A moment alone, to deal with her stomach grumbling, sounded like heaven. No one, not even a powerful Orki, was going to want to be standing over her when that business happened. After all the stress, her body shifted into purge mode, including a threat of fever.

  The sky had lightened. Close to dawn now, good farm women were out of the house already, checking animals. Daisydoo and her calf were in the short pasture with grass and water, but it wasn't the best place for them. Now, there was no one there to care for them. Perhaps survivors would go through the town, check what remained after the pillaging, find out who lived. Someone would go to the other towns, seek relatives. Boss had sent out teams, she'd overheard, to towns like Rivrtonn and Reed.

  The terrain changed again, pulling Annabell’s thoughts from the past, filling up with trees, tall, reaching things. A hundred different colors of green surrounded them, glistening with dew. There were a few small, strange flowers scattered here and there in the different plants, white, purple, and yellow. None of them were familiar. Following a trail beside a trickle of stream, the war beasts ran in single file down to the bottom of a ravine. The area felt tight and enclosed, but there were too many misty morning shadows to be certain. Cool air kissed her cheeks as she tried to sit up.

  Doku-ni bumped his legs and jostled her back against his chest. His hand opened and closed on her belly. Tipping her head back to look at him, he grunted before she could say anything, lifted his legs in the saddle again, jostling her. "You want me to stay still, I guess."

  Raising and dropping his brow, smiling with his eyes, she took that to mean yes, stay still.

  "Why don't you talk? Can you? I know you speak huumon. I have a hundred questions." It frustrated her. She wanted to hear his voice, his answers.

  He made that throat noise.

  "You want me to ask questions you aren't going to answer?"

  "What are you doing, Annabell Roe?" Mama's voice asked in her head. It sounded like her mother. But Annabell was asking herself because she didn't know. A new world and life surrounded her, difficult to translate, to understand, passing by too fast to take in and study. She felt things during the last rest she'd never thought to feel.

  Those dreams and hopes evaporated years ago. Listening to her brothers, their nagging dried everything up. She let them shame her with their ideas and prejudices. They did it out of love. And fear. They cared about her. Older and more experienced, they knew things she didn't. Benjere, the bossiest, in particular, knew how everyone should live.

  "A cup and a plate go in the cupboard, the blanket and the sheet go in the cupboard, but not the same cupboard," Mama said. But it wasn't Mama, it was Benjere, using that as an example that she had her place in this life as a girl and his sister. To Benjere, staying in one's correct place was important.

  Leaving the sidetrack along the waterside, the war beasts ran under the boughs of trees. They huffed and vocalized as they traveled, some of the other Orki joining in. Annabell thought she might understand a few of the growling words from the Orki, but she couldn't be sure. The Orki language was a complex arrangement of guttural sounds. Vowels in the language appeared in a word like a howl, a groan, or a grunt. There were other sounds and pitches that she knew she couldn't hear or replicate.

  She hoped Doku-ni at least understood when she talked. He seemed to. Some things he understood unexpectedly well.

  Her stomach rumbled, and a wave of heat poured over her. "I need to use the latrine hole, please. Are we stopping soon?"

  Zerzer answered with two happy yips.

  "That had better be a yes."

  Another two yips followed, with perfect timing.

  They went beneath the interwoven branches of two trees, dripping a curtain of delicate lichen vines. On the other side, the slanted wall of the ravine, with rock arching over them in a solid roof of nature. Another Orki camp. Not enclosed, and not stocked with provisions, there were still signs of many visits.

  The large, black Orki, with a lighter-colored war beast, crossed her line of vision, a woman-shaped bundle in his lap. There was no knowing who. Attempting to see better resulted in Doku-ni taking command of her eyes again.

  They went right to a rocky place off to the side, downwind of the widest part of the cliff roof. Doku-ni dismounted, pulling a spade from the pack of things attached to Zerzer's saddle. Another rider arrived, and before Annabell even thought to look at him, Zerzer moved, giving the other male her back.

  "Don't look at anyone or anything. I get it, Zerzer, some custom or another. But I would like to know why. And I would like to know if is it always this way?" Her stomach grumbled and twisted hard. Another wave of heat went over her, in her, burning up under her skin and making her vision double. This felt a little like the sour stomach, a common sickness in the Valley, starting in slow waves, rather than the steady build of having to make waste in one facility while leaning over a bucket to catch the sick from the other end. Doku-ni wasted no time, plucking her off the back of the war beast and setting her down over a fresh hole. He took the animal skin, helping her again while her body trembled weakly.

  This wasn't a sour stomach.

  Squatting to make waste, her legs creaked with pain. Her cycle sometimes hit like this, early days of arousal followed by cramping and sick. As a precursor, arousal vanished with the discomforts. If this was her cycle, something was wrong. She was experiencing everything at once, plus feverish heat waves. Perhaps this sickness came as the result of the emotional trauma of the last days. She didn't know. Familiar and foreign at the same time, as strange as her emotions, this was just one more thing on top of all the other changes.

  Doku-ni brought her damp green leaves in one hand, and a waterskin in the other. Guiding her to his shoulder, his eyes narrowing with sympathy, he encouraged her to lean into him so that he could help. Although she felt weak, his musk-spice smell and soothing purr infused her hungry energy. Opening her mouth, she stole a taste of his skin, unable to stop herself.

  Fumbling at her own clean-up, he brushed her hands away, doing it for her. It was the most humiliating an
d intimate experience of her life. She was a widow, had endured enough living to become dull with it, but everything with this male happened like it was the very first time. He tended to her without making her hate herself, as if it were a privilege.

  He set up the bed as he had the night before, but this camp did not block out the light of the Child the way the other had. The Orki may live with their days and nights in reverse, but she did not. She'd slept most of the ride, not deeply, but enough that while she felt physically tired and achy, she knew she wouldn't sleep under that sun.

  Doku-ni gave her food and water, taking some himself after removing his gear from Zerzer and leaving her to take care of some of her own needs. Annabell's eyes wanted to wander around the camp, curious to see everyone else and take in information, get some answers to her questions.