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She snorted out a laugh and elbowed him in the ribs. He found himself smiling despite himself, and some of that sadness dissipated.
“You are a shit,” she surmised with the embers of her laugh still glinting in her dark eyes. “But I think that I’ve been sufficiently humbled enough in these past weeks that I can learn to set aside my grudge and to follow your lead.”
“Humbled? You?”
“Yes, it would seem that getting turned down by a human and left standing naked in the middle of the jungle can do a lot to bring down even my pride. And then there was that time I lost my mind with the human, attacked him from behind, and swilled the remnants of my honour down the nearest cesspit. Things like that can make you take a long, hard look at yourself. Ulf? Are you alright?” She looked over her shoulder as if half expecting to see a dragon flying overhead due to the look on his face.
Ulf’s expression had shifted considerably. His jaw hung open and his eyes were wide and slightly vacant in their stare, as if his head had to process something he couldn’t quite bring itself to believe.
“Ulf?” Ulla shifted her attention back to him after making sure the skies were dragon-free. “Ulf, you’re disturbing me. What is it?”
He closed his eyes tightly and then opened them wide again as the focus seemed to return to them and it centred upon her.
“You didn’t… You mean… You and he didn’t… You weren’t…”
“We didn’t rut? No.” She shook her head. “I could tell that a part of him wanted to. I tried to flatter his ego by telling him that he should be the alpha, but he wasn’t having any of it. He seemed to firmly believe that was your job, and that he would follow you in whatever path you chose for the pack. I didn’t think he was serious at the time but after today… I always thought humans struggled with matters of honour, but he seems to find it annoyingly plentiful.”
In response to this, Ulf made a noise that was somewhere between a roar and a howl whilst standing up and giving one of the hard stone steps a stout kick. This led to a lot less roaring and a lot more howling. He spent the next few minutes hopping on the spot whilst nursing several broken toes.
“Shit, piss, and rot!” He yelled to no one in particular before finally putting his foot back down and limping his way back over to her. “I am an idiot!”
Ulla had watched the display with an expression of mild amusement and not-so-mild bafflement.
“Well you just tried to kick a solid stone block, so you’ll hear no argument from me.”
“No, it’s… Aaaargh!” He smacked his fist against his brow several times before facing her. “All of this today? It was because I thought you two had…”
Ulla’s eyes widened with understanding.
“Oh. You mean that’s why you decided to turn away from his ways and weapons and charge headlong into the opponents like an…” She trailed off, as the understanding grew deeper. “Oooooh. Wow, Ulf. I thought I was the bigger fool here. Gregory has always been your friend. After what I said to him I’m convinced that he could be faced with all the temptations of the dark realms and he still wouldn’t turn on you.”
This did little to stifle Ulf’s growing rage with himself. When he knelt down and started winding up to try and break another stone block with his forehead, Ulla quickly interceded. She grabbed him and quickly wrestled him to the ground, he lashed out a few times, but he wasn’t exactly in the right mind to put up a decent fight just then. She deftly pinned him and lowered herself until her dark eyes were settled just above his.
“Ulf, stop this. It does no one any good. I think that we must both face Gregory together and ask for his forgiveness. As well as that of Wrut, Frelki, Nullik, and Frun.”© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.
With her settled atop him, he felt his rage calm whilst something else stirred. Something old and powerful that he had kindled for far too long. She soon felt it in the pressure against her groin, and decided if it was time for them both to grow up then they might as well take the journey together.
“I will go to them and offer my fists for whatever fights may come,” said Ulf. “But I am ashamed to be their alpha after today. You are right. The human is the better choice to lead them, and to lead you.”
“Ulf, you aren’t wrong to feel shame for your actions today, but you aren’t alone in it either. You were the one who gave me my chance long after the other packs wanted rid of me. I confess that I was humbled by the human, and that I wish to do better in part because of my actions, but the truth is that I wanted to return because I missed you. Even if you are an idiot. You will always be my alpha.”
Hearing those words had the effect of filling that empty void Ulf had been feeling in his chest with warm, bright light. The momentary look of disbelief on his face as he processed what she’d just said brought a little laugh from her that was silenced as she looked into his eyes and saw a glimpse of his thoughts.
“Since we are both aiming to change for the better, I feel we should mark the occasion.” Her voice was lower than usual, and there was no hint of the usual teasing now.
“What did you have in mind?”
“I think that I should start by fixing a mistake I made a long time ago.”
With that said, she made her intentions clear by untying the straps that held her top in place to pull the leather garment up over her head. Before she could even look down upon him again she felt something rise in his trunks. The unexpected reaction of enthusiasm warmed something inside her, and when she finally did look down at him she was smiling.
“Do you like them?” she asked, lifting her hands to cup her generously proportioned breasts.
Ulf’s mouth had gone very dry, and he only managed to nod his head in response. His jaw hung open when he finally looked upon a sight he’d long dreamed of for the first time and found the reality to be much more pleasing.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then, shall I?” she noted with some confidence as her hands left her tits and she sat upright on him to place her own hands on his chest. “You should know I’ve thought about doing this a lot. Not really when we were together, because you’re so serious and it’s fun to tease you. No, it’s more when I’m alone and thinking warmer thoughts, my fingers slip between my legs and I think about what it might be like to feel you against me. Let’s see…”
She leaned forward to press her breasts to his chest, flattening the soft globes against hard muscle and wasting no time in kissing him. Orcs didn’t usually kiss to show affection, since the tusks usually got in the way. Yet she’d seen Gregory kiss Algra and liked how it looked, and as her lips met Ulf’s they moved slowly together rather than with the usual fierce passion that came naturally to orcs. It took them both only a few moments of that before they realised just how much the humans were on to something.
Ulf was in a state of heightened arousal, utter delight, and growing panic. After all that time, Ulla was kissing him. It was happening! What the fuck would happen if he did it wrong? She might never look at him again. He’d shame his family. Damn, she felt good.
She soon felt his hesitation, and lifted out of the kiss to lick her lips appreciatively. He tasted good. She wanted more. Judging from the way the bulge in his trunks was pressing against her pussy she considered her chances for getting it to be pretty damn good. Just when she was getting to enjoy herself, she noticed that Ulf seemed like he was about to turn into a puddle of nervous goo. Oh dear. Better fix that.
“Did you not like the kissing?” she asked him, a knowing smile lingering on the corners of her lips.
“U-Ulla, I… It was…”
“This would be your first time then?” she asked.
He fell silent for a moment, and then nodded his head whilst not quite being able to maintain eye contact with her as his nerves got the better of him.
“Mine too,” she said.
That helped him rally his courage, for though he had hoped she hadn’t been with another, he couldn’t be certain.
“How do you think we should begin?” he asked.
“Perhaps we should fight. I always liked wrestling with you.”
“I’m injured; my foot feels like I just kicked a chunk of stone.”