Page 39 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

I unlaced his trousers. His cock sprang free, hard and flushed dark, the head slick with pre-cum. I wrapped my fingers around him and he bucked into my hand and swore, a word in trollish that needed no translation.

“Good boy,” I said. “That’s my good boy. I know you have needs, sweetheart, but I want you to trust me.”

He whimpered.

I stroked him in slow pulls, my grip tight, thumb circling the head on each upstroke while my other hand worked the trolgar point at the base of his horn. He shook. His head fell back against my shoulder, his eyes closed, the reins went slack, and Clover, bless her, kept walking.

For a moment, I wished I could feel his emotions the way he seemed to be able to feel me. I wished I could feel what my hands were doing to him.

But I didn’t need the trolgar to read what was on his face: the helplessness, the vertigo of letting go after years of rigid control. My hand was on his cock, and his defenses were gone, and the rawness of it was right there in his expression, in the tremor in his jaw, in the way his body curved toward mine like I was the only solid thing in the world.

I sped up, five hard, fast strokes, my fist twisting on the upstroke, and his hips bucked, his breathing fractured, and he was getting close, the tension coiling in his thighs, his cock pulsing in my hand—

I stopped, released him, sat back. He cried out, and his hips chased my hand, thrusting into empty air. When his eyes snapped open, the look on his face was desperate, stunned, furious.

“No. No, Sky, please—”

“Not yet. I’m on book four of your collected works, remember. I know exactly how you write this part. The waiting is the good part.”

“I was… I need—”

“I know exactly what you need.” I traced one finger down the length of his cock, feather-light. He shuddered from head to toe. “But first, I have a question.”

“I will answer anything.” He sounded so raw and broken that I almost gave in. Almost.

“You haven’t told me the whole truth.”

His whole body went still. The blue in his ears darkened. “What do you mean?”

“First, you obscured the truth about the trolgar gland, about what my innocent touches were doing to your body, but there’s another lie, isn’t there?”

“Sky,” he whispered.

“The walls of your house aren’t thick, and Tedaar is very loud.” I wrapped my hand around him again, keeping it lazy. “What did you tell them about me?”

“That you are my… that we are—” He shuddered as I thumbed the head of his cock. “I told them you are my soulmate. It was a convenient fiction to stop the matchmaking—”

“A convenient fiction.” I stopped stroking. “Have you been telling everyone I’m your soulmate?”

He blew out a breath. “It sort of got out. Troll gossip spreads like wildfire.”

“And you just let them think that?”

“Sky, please don’t stop—”

“Why, though?”

“They all… they want me to be happy, and I just. Oh fuck.” He groaned, rutting up into my hand. “I can’t focus while you do that.”

I reached up and skimmed the fingers of one hand over his trolgar point, stroking his cock at the same cadence. His whole body arched off the bench, with a cry of pleasure that startled Clover into a trot for three steps.

I released his cock again. He growled, his hands shaking on the reins, his whole body trembling.

“Say it properly, then. Without the distraction.”

“I just wanted them all off my back, and when my sisters saw how you touched me, it seemed perfect.” The words tore out of him. “But you feel too good, Sky, and I don’t know what to make of it. I cannot… I need you, I need—”

“What do you need, sweetheart?”