Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
OTIS.
The first thing I remember when I wake up is that there’s a super cute human sleeping in the room opposite mine.
Naked.
Somehow I need to sneak into the bathroom and shower before she wakes up.
I don’t want a repeat performance of last night.
Or maybe I do.
Don’t fucking think about it.
I glance at the alarm clock. Not yet 6 am, my normal wake-up time.
I sigh. The day ahead is chock a block as always. Checking in with the law enforcers on each level of the Labyrinth, sorting out rosters for the week. Doing the rounds of level one and hoping no incidents will take time away from my already stretched resources.
And then there’s the programming that will take me well into the night…
I need to make sure Clem is settled in properly, with work to get on with before I leave.
An image of her in that bed across the corridor, snuggled under the covers, her soft, nubile little body so temptingly close, springs into my mind.
Maybe she’s hoping I’ll join her.
Shut the fuck up, you big green doofus, she’s probably fast asleep.
Nevertheless I feel my cock rising to the occasion.
I sigh and order the fucker to subside. When I swipe my hand over it—just to check, you understand— it bucks hopefully.
Shit, I’m getting desperate here.
The only place I’m prepared to relieve myself is in the shower, due to the copious amounts of cum that orcs produce. And there’s no lock on the bathroom door, because I never freakin’ needed one up until now.
Oh gods, imagine if she walked in on me in the middle of jerking off…
I groan.
What kind of fucking bad joke is this? It’s the first time in two years that I’ve had any real action happening below deck, and already my knot is throbbing at the base of my dick. But now that I’m sharing my home with a female, I don’t have the freedom to relieve the frustration.
We orcs make a fair bit of noise when we come.
We shout. Loudly.
It’s just what we do. Shouting heightens our orgasm and is very hard to control. I’d have to slam one big fist over my mouth, and there would still be no guarantees that she wouldn’t hear my grunts and growls as I came.
The thought propels me out of bed. Putting on my pajama pants (with difficulty, thanks to the fucking green tent pole between my legs), I pace around my bedroom thinking about computer coding until my dick has shrunk enough to sneak out of my room and into the bathroom next door.
I undress, turn the shower to “cold” and jump in, gasping as the freezing water hits my warm body.
No place for hard-ons here.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m dressed in my sheriff uniform and frying eggs and bacon in the kitchen when I hear a sweet human voice behind me. “Mmm, that smells delicious.”
I swivel round to see her dressed in my checked shirt. Her usually sleek bob is tousled around her face and her eyes still dewy from sleep. Too cute. Despite my best efforts to keep my eyeballs fixed on her face, my gaze dips to her shapely legs. Ah, fuck. I feel the tide of my libido rising again.
Abruptly, I turn back to the bacon, and a snap of fat obligingly pings into my eye. I let out a low expletive.
“Are you okay?” She’s at my side now, and I have to glance down quite a way as she looks up at me, her green eyes worried. It’s been such a long time since a woman has showed me concern that I blink, and not because of my stinging eye. “Sure,” I say gruffly. “Just got hot oil in my eye.”
“Ouch.” She gazes at the contents of the pan and her nostrils visibly quiver. “That looks like great bacon, where does it come from?”
“We have farmlands on the other side of level one, lit by a million lumen lamps. It’s where we grow our vegetables and fruit and keep our livestock.”
“We have something very similar in Sparkle.”
“In the early days we taught you guys how to farm, how to harness lumen light and we sent up mineralized soil for your farmlands.”
“Oh my. So that’s how it happened. We were told it was a miracle that the soil and light appeared. We even have days in the year when we give thanks to the Dome Gods.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoff lightly. “Well, they wouldn’t tell you the truth, would they? Then you’d have to worship monster gods instead.”
“What horrible lies they’ve perpetrated,” Clem says quietly.
I look down at her and see her biting her lip pensively. I don’t want her to dwell on it.
“I’ve cooked plenty for two, want some?”
“Yes please.”
“Eggs?”
“Just one.”
“Sunny-side up?” Funny how we say that when we’ve never seen the sun.
“Please.”
I crack another egg into the pan.
“You sure are an adept cook,” she observes wistfully, watching me flip the eggs and bacon.
“It’s how I relax,” I reply. I try to not recall Leanna’s parting shot as she walked out on me. “If it wasn’t for your cooking Otis, I’d have left months ago.”
My gut constricts. Why would I even let myself imagine anything happening between me and this gorgeous little human?
I’m not the kind of guy women stay with for my appeal.
I must have imagined her arousal last night in the shower; it was probably just fear of the octomopede I saw reflected in her eyes.
She’s here to hide from the human authorities in Sparkle, I remind myself sternly. That’s all.
As we sit at the table with its checkered red and white cloth, I clear my throat. “Did you sleep okay?”
Those dimples dip into her cheeks. “To be honest, I was eyeballing the walls and ceilings for another of those octo… octo… things for quite a while.”
“Octomopedes,” I supply, unable to hide a smile at her attempts to name it.
“Yeah, them.” She gives a little shudder.
“They like warm, damp places, so, er…”
Her eyes widen just a little, and I realize the other connotation of those words and groan inwardly. I dig furiously into my breakfast, cramming bacon into my mouth to stop myself saying anything else inappropriate.
Finally, I wipe my face with a napkin and get started on explaining practicalities.
“Okay, first things first.” I put on my best sheriff voice, gruff and to the point. “I have to go into the sheriff department offices this morning, but Tippy will be coming round to bring you some clothes.”
She casts a little grimace downward. “Your shirt is very comfy, Otis, but yeah, normal clothes would be good. Guess I can’t really work in my bikini, can I?”
I shake my head. “No, you cannot.” It comes out sternly. I try to soften my tone, adding, “You’d get chilly.”
And I’d get fucking turned on.
“Maybe, but it feels a really pleasant temperature here.”
“We ensure we keep things just right,” I answer, glad of something practical to focus on. “The thermal pumps keep the houses at a steady 24 degrees Celsius.”
She leans on her elbows and cups her chin in both hands, looking across at me quizzically. “How long has Jax been planning to bring me down here?”
“We first discussed it a few weeks ago.”
“It was a complete surprise to me. I hadn’t heard from him for well over a month.”
“I’m sorry. He should have given you advance warning.”
She shrugs. “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault. Jax has been a complete wild card since we lost our mom.”
I nod. “Jax told me a while back that your mom died when you were kids. Sorry to hear that.”
She sighs. “Truthfully, we don’t know if Mom is dead.
Not for certain. She just disappeared one night when I was nine and Jax was thirteen.
We did everything we could to find out where she’d gone.
My dad took it to the top authorities, but no-one had seen her.
Not a trace. Maybe she ran away, or maybe they took her into custody or something. ”
“Why would they do that?”
“I have no idea.” Her frown deepens. “Mom worked as an office cleaner, she never did anything wrong. She was a model citizen. Always smiling, always kind. She really loved us… she wouldn’t have left us by choice.” She sighs. “Before we lost Mom, Jax was a really sweet kid, y’know.”
I laugh. “Jax, sweet? Nah, doesn’t add up.”
“I know, right? Hard to believe now. He changed after Mom went missing. Though I missed her heaps, I got on with life because, well, I had to; the social services made sure I went to school. But Jax took her disappearance real bad. He stopped attending school, got into trouble a lot. He was caught trying to dig his way out of the dome, looking for her. That’s a very dangerous thing to do, and when he wouldn’t stop doing it, the authorities put him in a special school for troubled teens, and then from there he was sent to the Periphery to work. ”
“What about you?”
“It was just me and Dad for years in our little apartment. Dad worked as an accountant all his life. I studied, got good grades, and looked after Dad when he got sick with cancer. I took a job straight from school so I could pay for his treatment.” She glances at me.
“Smoking killed him in the end.” She sighs, her eyes clouding over.
“That’s why I’ve always hated Jax smoking.
At least he vapes now, which is an improvement, I guess.
” She smiles across at me, but her eyes shine a little too brightly.
“Enough talk of my shitty childhood. You’ve got work for me to do, I believe.
” She jumps up and starts gathering our breakfast plates. “I can start by washing up.”
“You’re not here to do my cleaning,” I growl.
“Of course I’ll clean as well. I kept house when I was a kid so I’m a pretty good homemaker.”
Homemaker. I love the sound of that word, like she’s going to build a nest here with me. Bring the life and soul back to this old place.
I ruffle a hand through my short hair and say, “I’d be really grateful if you could sort out the papers in my office to start with.”
She nods, but still clears the plates and puts them in the sink. “Leave them, and come with me,” I say, striding out, and immediately I hear her soft footsteps pitter-pattering behind me
In the office, we stand together staring at the mess of papers strewn everywhere.
“It would be great if you could sort this shit into piles,” I say.
“If there’s any papers covered in scribbled numbers and signs, like these,” I pick up a pile of notes covered in my untidy handwriting, “they’re coding I’m working on.
I’ll get you some sticky notes and you can mark the pile, ‘Important: Keep.’”
“Any official-looking documents with an insignia of a crown with wings on the top of the page need to go in a file for ‘Sherriff duties.’”
“Same as your badge.” She stares at the big silver winged star on my chest.
“Exactly. I need to take all that stuff back to my work—they’re warrants and the like. I try not to bring back paperwork from the station, but sometimes it backs up, so I have to finish it of an evening.”
“Do you ever sleep?”
“Yeah, often at my desk,” I mutter.
“Oh, that’s not good for you, Otis.” Her brow crinkles. “You need to get a decent eight hours.”
I grunt. “Lucky if I get five.”
“You stay awake worrying, huh?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“What do you do to relax?” she asks.
Ah shit. Glancing at her, I know what I’d like to do…
Shut that thought down, man.
“Not much. Work out at our local Labyrinth gym—um—bake, I guess.”
“Do you bake at your desk too?” I follow her gaze to one corner of my desk, frowning.
“Is that why there’s a bag of sugar in here?” She grins. “Or do you snack on sugar while you’re working late into the night?”
I look at her, affronted. “Sometimes I just forget to put the groceries away.”
She picks up a book from among the papers. “Baking for Beasts. Love the title.”
“Yeah, I was checking through recipes. I need to bake a cake for my mom tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s nice, is it her birthday?”
“Not yet. I bake her a cake every week,” I explain.
“And we share it with the other residents in the care home. It gets her to socialize. She tends to isolate in her room otherwise.” I smile, a little sadly.
“When Dad was alive, we were a very social family. There were so many parties here when we were kids, and Mom was at the heart of that, feeding everyone. So y’know, anything I can do to get her to smile, and remember the good times. ”
“That’s so kind of you.” She looks wistful, and I remember that she doesn’t have a mom of her own. Even though my mom is in care, and I’m sad every time I visit, it’s better than having no mom at all.
“You do what you gotta do,” I say gruffly.
“You are really sweet. She’s lucky to have you.”
“Aw, psshaw,” I snort. But even so, I feel a warm glow at her words. I’m not used to compliments. And no-one, to my knowledge, has ever considered me even remotely sweet. I find myself opening my mouth, about to suggest she comes with me to visit Mom next time I go.
There’s a knock on the door and I swallow the words. Which is probably for the best.
“That will be Tippy,” I say. “You go and let her in, while I find you those sticky notes.”