Chapter 6 Olog
OLOG
The words hang in the air between us, unambiguous and direct, and every protocol I've established over three years of flawless service reviews combusts simultaneously.
I should decline.
Professional boundaries exist for exactly this reason.
I have maintained them through seventeen separate assignments involving attractive clients, two of which included explicit invitations I deflected with polite, unshakeable firmness.
The code is simple. The client pays for a service.
I deliver that service within clearly defined parameters.
Physical proximity beyond what is required for the performance ceases to be professional and becomes something else entirely.
I know this.
I have built my entire reputation on knowing this.
Bliss sits on the bed with her hands folded in her lap, still wearing the silk dress from the mixer, her dark hair slightly disheveled from running her fingers through it during Aunt Susan's interrogation.
She's looking at me with an attitude that contains no manipulation, no calculated seduction.
Just exhaustion and something rawer underneath, something that bypasses every rational argument I'm constructing and hits directly against the part of my brain that has been quietly unraveling since I walked into this lobby and first caught her scent.
"Bliss. Sharing a bed with you will compromise my professional detachment."
She doesn't flinch. "Okay."
"I am not certain you fully understand what that means."
"You'll stop treating this like a customer service transaction and start treating me like a person you actually want to be around?" Her eyebrows lift slightly. "That sounds terrible. Truly devastating."
"I have maintained clear boundaries on every previous assignment."
"Good for you." She stands up, reaching behind her back for the zipper of her dress, and I force my gaze to remain on her face with an effort that costs me.
"I'm not asking you to violate some sacred code, Olog.
I'm asking you not to sleep on the floor like a punished dog when there's a massive bed right here that we can both fit on without even touching. "
The zipper descends. She catches the dress before it falls, holding it against her chest.
"I'll stay on my side," she continues. "You stay on yours. We're both adults. We can handle sleeping in the same bed without it becoming a whole thing."
The logical part of my mind, the part that has kept me employed and highly rated, knows I should retrieve my precisely folded sleep clothes from my bag, excuse myself to the bathroom, and return to claim exactly eighteen inches of mattress at the far edge.
I should lie there with my back to her, regulate my breathing, and treat this like any other night of light sleep in unfamiliar territory.
The rest of me, the part that has been steadily gaining ground since I removed her ex-boyfriend's hand from her wrist and felt the way her pulse jumped under my fingers, wants to cross the room and find out exactly how soft her skin is under that silk.
I do neither.
"I will accept those terms," I say, and my voice has dropped another register without my permission.
She blinks. "Oh. Good."
"However, I want to be transparent about the risk."
"What risk?"
"I am Orc." I keep my tone even, clinical. "My biology responds to proximity differently than yours. Spending the night in close quarters with someone I am..." I pause, searching for the correct terminology. "...attracted to will make maintaining boundaries significantly more difficult."
Her lips part slightly. "You're attracted to me?"
"Yes."
The single syllable lands between us like a stone in still water.
"Since when?" she asks.
"Since you emerged from the bathroom in the lobby and I observed you attempting to project confidence while clearly experiencing a panic response.
" I pull the undershirt over my head because I am already committed to this course of action and prolonging it serves no purpose.
"Your scent spiked. Fear and adrenaline and something floral.
It triggered an immediate biological reaction I have been suppressing for the past six hours. "
I drop the undershirt onto the chair.
Bliss looks at me, the dress still clutched against her chest, her breathing slightly faster than it was thirty seconds ago.
"What kind of biological reaction?" Her voice has gone quieter.
"The kind that compromises judgment."
"Olog."
"Yes."
"Get in the bed."
I retrieve my sleep pants from my bag, change in the bathroom with the door closed, and return to find she has done the same.
She's wearing an oversized t-shirt that falls to mid-thigh and her face is scrubbed clean of the makeup she wore to the mixer.
She looks younger like this, softer, and the protective instinct that has been running parallel to the attraction intensifies sharply.
The bed is enormous by human standards.
By Orc standards, it's adequate.
I approach my side, pull back the duvet with careful precision, and lower myself onto the mattress with the kind of control I use when moving through spaces not designed for my size.
The mattress dips under my weight. Bliss is already under the covers on the opposite side, a good three feet of empty space between us, her head on the pillow and her eyes tracking my movements.
"See?" she says. "Plenty of room."
"Yes."
I settle onto my back, arms at my sides, and stare at the ceiling.
The bed is comfortable. The sheets are high-quality cotton with a thread count I could probably identify if I cared to focus on it.
The room is temperature-controlled to a degree humans find pleasant and I find slightly cool.
All of these observations are logical and irrelevant because the only thing my brain is registering with any clarity is the fact that Bliss is eighteen inches away from me, breathing steadily, and I can smell the faint jasmine of her perfume mixed with something warmer and entirely her.
"Olog?"
"Yes."
"Thank you. For tonight. For all of it." She shifts slightly and the mattress moves. "You were incredible."
"I was fulfilling the terms of our agreement."
"You terrified my ex-boyfriend into a full retreat and fed me seven different hors d'oeuvres while staring down my aunt. That's not standard service. That's..." She trails off. "That was you giving a shit."
I turn my head to look at her.
She's already looking at me, her face half-buried in the pillow, her dark eyes catching the dim light filtering through the curtains.
"I do give a shit," I say.
Her mouth curves. "I know."
"You should sleep. The rehearsal brunch begins at nine."
"Ugh. Don't remind me." She closes her eyes, her breathing evening out almost immediately in the way of humans who have burned through their adrenaline and hit the wall.
I return my gaze to the ceiling and begin the mental discipline exercises I use to maintain control in high-stress situations.
I catalog the room. I regulate my breathing.
I focus on the fact that I have successfully navigated the most dangerous part of the evening and now simply need to maintain position until morning.
It works for approximately forty minutes.
Then the storm rolls in.
The first rumble of thunder is distant, more vibration than sound, but it pulls me out of the light meditation I've been holding. I clock it as non-threatening, adjust my position minutely to avoid a pressure point developing in my shoulder, and return to disciplined stillness.
The second rumble is closer.
The third rattles the windows.
Bliss stirs beside me, a soft sound of sleep-disrupted confusion, and I keep my eyes on the ceiling, breathing slowly, giving her space to resettle.
She shifts again. The storm intensifies, rain hitting the glass in heavy sheets, and the temperature in the room seems to drop slightly as the system works to compensate.
I feel her move before I hear it.
She rolls over in her sleep, a natural, unconscious motion, seeking warmth the way any creature does when the environment shifts, and suddenly the three feet of careful space I maintained ceases to exist.
She plasters herself directly against my side.
Every muscle in my body locks.
Her head tucks under my chin. Her arm slides across my chest. One of her legs hooks over mine, her thigh pressing against the muscular plane of my hip, and the soft weight of her body molds itself to me with the kind of unconscious trust that obliterates every rational boundary I constructed.
She's asleep.
Completely, deeply asleep, her breathing slow and even against my collarbone, her scent flooding my senses at point-blank range.
I should move.
I should gently extract myself, reposition her on her side of the bed, reestablish the neutral territory that keeps this professional.
I don't move.
I can't move.
The part of my brain that has been held in check by sheer discipline and three years of customer service excellence looks at the current situation and stages a full revolt.
She is soft everywhere I am hard, warm everywhere I run hot, and her against me triggers something so fundamentally Orc that my hindbrain simply reaches up, flips a switch, and decides we are done pretending.
Her scent is stronger here, this close. Jasmine and something underneath that's just her, clean and faintly sweet and utterly specific. My hand, which has been locked at my side in a death grip of control, moves of its own accord and comes to rest against the small of her back.
She makes a soft sound, not quite waking, and burrows closer.
The control I have been maintaining fractures cleanly down the center.
My other arm shifts, curving around her, my palm settling against her hip where the oversized t-shirt has ridden up to expose warm, bare skin.
She fits against me like she was designed for it, like every inch of her was calculated to align perfectly with the architecture of my body, and the biological reaction I warned her about ceases to be theoretical and becomes extremely, undeniably physical.
I close my eyes and focus on breathing.
The storm continues outside, thunder rolling across the sky, rain drumming steadily against the windows.
Bliss sleeps on, completely unaware that she is currently draped across two hundred and seventy pounds of Orc who is using every remaining shred of willpower not to roll her onto her back and find out what sounds she makes when she's awake.
Her leg shifts higher.
Her thigh presses directly against me.
The groan starts somewhere deep within me as a low, involuntary rumble of sound that I have no ability to suppress, and it vibrates through my body and into the mattress beneath us.
Bliss stirs.
Her breathing changes, the slow rhythm of sleep breaking into something faster, more aware. I feel the exact moment consciousness returns because her body goes still against mine, every muscle tensing as her brain registers the position we're in.
She doesn't pull away.
"Olog?" Her voice is sleep-rough, barely a whisper against me.
"Yes."
"Are you..." She shifts slightly, her thigh dragging against me again, and her breath catches. "Oh."
I should apologize. I should extract myself and return to my side of the bed and reinstate every professional boundary I just incinerated.
"I warned you," I say instead, my voice coming out lower and rougher than I've ever heard it.
She lifts her head, her eyes finding mine in the darkness. Her pupils are blown wide, her lips slightly parted, and I can feel her pulse jumping against my palm where my hand still rests on her hip.
"You did," she agrees.
Neither of us moves.
The rain continues. Thunder rolls somewhere in the distance. Her scent wraps around me, and I am acutely, devastatingly aware that the only thing separating us is a few layers of fabric and the last fragile thread of my professional code.
"Bliss." My hand flexes against her hip, fingers spreading. "Tell me to let you go."
She looks at me for a long moment, her expression unreadable in the low light.
"No," she says.
The thread snaps.