Prime Cut of Orc

Chapter 1

QUINN

The wedding cake is perfect.

I lean back, balancing on the worn stepstool I've owned since culinary school, and take in the full vision of three vanilla bean tiers wrapped in smooth buttercream the color of champagne blush.

Two hundred and forty-seven hand-piped rosettes spiral up the sides in graduating shades of pale pink, each one requiring exactly seventeen seconds of concentrated pressure and a steady wrist. Sugar pearls dot the negative space like captured moonlight.

My alarm hasn't even gone off yet. Five in the morning, and I'm already two hours into my day, flour dusted across my vintage cherry-print dress and my fingers cramping from the precision work.

The Ashford wedding is tomorrow, and Maggie Ashford made it exceptionally clear during our tasting that she expects nothing short of edible art for her daughter's reception.

No pressure. Just my entire reputation and the bakery's survival riding on fondant roses and structural integrity.

I wipe my palms on my apron, the white ruffled edge now sporting a rainbow of food coloring stains, and pick up my piping bag for the final flourish.

The last rosette needs to sit dead center on the top tier, slightly larger than the others, drawing the eye upward in a clean visual line.

I've done this a thousand times. Muscle memory takes over as I position the tip, applying gentle, even pressure.

The wall shudders.

My hand jerks. The piping bag releases a violent squirt of pink buttercream directly onto the pristine champagne surface, obliterating three perfect rosettes and leaving a jackson-pollock-style splatter across the top tier.

"No. No, no, no—"

The bone saw screams to life.

The sound is ungodly. Industrial. Mechanical.

A grinding, shrieking metal-on-bone wail that vibrates through the wall between my bakery and the empty storefront that's been vacant for six blissful months.

The kind of sound that belongs in a horror film, not at five in the morning in a neighborhood where the loudest thing is usually Mrs. Ling's Pomeranian having opinions about the mailman.

My carefully controlled world shatters along with the morning peace.

The cake wobbles on its stand. I grab the counter, steadying both myself and the three-tiered monument to my professional anxiety, and stare in absolute horror at the ruined top tier.

Pink buttercream drips down the champagne sides like a wound.

The sugar pearls I spent forty-five minutes placing have scattered across the work surface.

The saw doesn't stop. It gets louder. Closer to the wall. The entire building vibrates with mechanical violence.

Something inside me snaps with the clean precision of tempered chocolate hitting cold marble.

I am not a violent person. I believe in communication, boundaries, and the inherent goodness of people who haven't yet had their morning coffee.

But I also believe in the sanctity of a 5:00 AM workspace, in the reasonable expectation that one's wedding cakes will not be subjected to what sounds like an active crime scene, and in the basic neighborly courtesy of not firing up industrial equipment before the sun has fully cleared the horizon.

I rip off my apron, toss it onto the counter next to the wounded cake, and march through my kitchen. My vintage red kitten heels click an angry rhythm against the tile floor as I shoulder through the back door into the alley.

The early morning air hits me like a slap.

It's cold enough that my breath mists, and I'm immediately regretting the sleeveless dress, but I'm too furious to care.

The alley between our buildings is narrow, barely wide enough for the delivery trucks that block it twice a week, and it smells like yesterday's rain and the dumpster that needs emptying.

The back door to the neighboring shop is propped open with a concrete block.

Warm air rolls out, carrying with it the unmistakable copper-penny scent of fresh blood and something else, something wild and unfamiliar that makes my hindbrain sit up and take notice.

The bone saw is deafening now, a physical assault on my eardrums. I can see harsh fluorescent light spilling across the alley's cracked pavement.

I don't knock. I don't announce myself. I grab the industrial steel door and wrench it open wide enough to storm through.

"Excuse me, but what in the absolute—"

I freeze.

The shop is a meat locker. Literally. The temperature drops twenty degrees the second I cross the threshold, and my skin breaks out in immediate gooseflesh.

Stainless steel surfaces gleam under brutal overhead lighting.

A line of wicked-looking hooks dangles from ceiling-mounted rails.

The bone saw sits on a massive butcher's block in the center of the room, still spinning, its blade slick with something dark.

Standing behind it, holding a cleaver the size of my forearm, is the largest creature I have ever seen in my life.

Orc.

My brain supplies the word with the clinical precision of someone who's lived in a metropolitan area long enough to not be surprised by much, but clinical precision does absolutely nothing to prepare me for the reality of him.

He's massive. Six-foot-eight at minimum, maybe taller, with shoulders broad enough to block out a significant portion of the back wall.

His skin is a deep, mottled green that looks like forest shadows, marked with darker patches across his arms and what I can see of his chest where his leather apron doesn't cover.

Black tribal tattoos snake up both forearms, disappearing under rolled shirtsleeves.

His hands are enormous, scarred across the knuckles, and streaked with blood that might be fresh or might be stained into the creases permanently.

The apron is worse. Heavy leather, the kind that's meant to stop a blade, splattered and smeared with enough gore to supply a small haunted house. It strains across a chest that's all muscle, and hangs to his thighs, which are encased in dark denim that's seen better days.

His face is all brutal angles. Heavy brow, strong jaw, a nose that's been broken at least twice and a mouth set in a hard line. Tusks curve up from his lower jaw, filed to blunt points, framing his mouth in a way that should look threatening but instead looks unfairly, distractingly attractive.

He's staring at me.

I'm staring at him.

The bone saw is still screaming between us.

He moves first, reaching over with one blood-streaked hand to flip a switch. The saw winds down with a protesting whine, and the sudden silence is almost worse than the noise. My ears ring in the absence of sound.

"The shop's not open." His voice is a low rumble, rough and unpolished, with an accent I can't quite place. He doesn't move from behind the butcher's block, cleaver still gripped in one massive hand.

My brain reboots with the speed of over-proofed dough in a hot kitchen.

"Your shop is not open," I repeat, my customer-service smile snapping into place with the muscle memory of years in food service.

"That's fascinating. Truly. Because my shop, the one on the other side of that wall, is very much open and has been since four-thirty this morning.

And I was finishing a wedding cake when your little horror-movie sound effects decided to redecorate it for me. "

He blinks with surprise.

"Didn't know anyone was over there."

"Well, someone is. Me. Quinn Hayes, owner of Flour & Fancy, the bakery you're currently vibrating into structural instability with your—" I gesture wildly at the saw, the hooks, the entire blood-splattered nightmare of his workspace, "—your murder dungeon."

His jaw tightens. The tusks shift slightly with the movement. "It's a butcher shop."

"It's five in the morning."

"I start early."

"So do I, but you don't see me attacking innocent baked goods with power tools before sunrise."

The corner of his mouth twitches. It might be amusement. It's hard to tell under the general aura of intimidating mountain-man energy he's radiating.

"The cake. Is it ruined?"

I cross my arms over my flour-dusted apron, the morning light from his open door catching on the pastry cutter still clutched in my hand like some kind of ridiculous pastel weapon. "Completely. The entire top tier collapsed when you decided to audition for a slasher film."

He's quiet for a moment. "How much?"

I blink at him, thrown off by the abrupt shift. The cleaver is still in his hand, catching the light in a way that should be threatening but somehow isn't. Not anymore. Now it just looks like a tool, held loosely at his side. "I'm sorry, what?"

"How much. For the cake." He sets the cleaver down on the butcher's block with a heavy thunk that makes me jump. "I'll cover it."

The audacity of it hits me like a delayed reaction. He thinks he can just throw money at this. As if the hours of meticulous work, the carefully calibrated buttercream, the vision I held in my head while piping each individual rosette can be reduced to a dollar amount.

"You can't just pay me off and keep using industrial equipment at ungodly hours."

"Not paying you off. Paying for damages." He wipes his hands on a rag that's seen significantly better days, leaving new streaks across the leather apron. "And five AM isn't ungodly. It's standard prep time."

"For a butcher shop that hasn't even officially opened yet, apparently."

"Soft open. Tomorrow."

"Oh, perfect. So I can expect this delightful concert every morning?"

His eyes narrow slightly. They're dark, nearly black, and deeply unreadable under the harsh lighting. "You got a problem with butchers?"

"I have a problem with noise ordinances and common courtesy."

"File a complaint."

The dismissal in his tone makes my teeth clench. I take a step forward before my brain catches up, and suddenly I'm very aware of how much space he takes up, how the temperature in the room makes my skin prickle, how the odor of blood and wild things fills my lungs.

"I don't need to file a complaint. I need you to be a reasonable human being—"

"Not human."

"—a reasonable person," I correct, my voice climbing, "and recognize that you've moved into an established neighborhood with existing businesses that have operated just fine without the soundtrack to a slasher film."

He crosses his arms. The movement makes his shoulders bunch under the apron, and I absolutely do not notice the way the muscles shift. "You always this aggressive before coffee?"

My mouth drops open, and for a second I'm too stunned to form words. When they finally come, my voice climbs an octave. "I'm aggressive? I'm the aggressive one in this scenario?"

"Stormed in here like you owned the place," he points out, his tone maddeningly calm. "Didn't knock. Didn't announce yourself. Just barged right through my back door."

"You destroyed my cake!" The words come out somewhere between a shriek and a gasp, all pretense of customer-service politeness finally shattering.

"My wedding cake! Four tiers of hand-painted fondant roses and champagne-infused buttercream that I spent hours on yesterday!

It's supposed to be picked up today and it's currently in pieces all over my floor because you decided to play lumberjack with our walls! "

"Accidentally."

"You—" I take a breath. My customer-service smile is gone, replaced by the expression my mother calls my 'stubborn Hayes face.

' "Fine. You know what? Fine. I'll be more careful about my timing.

You be more careful about yours. We're neighbors now, whether either of us likes it, so let's try to coexist without property damage. "

He studies me for a long moment, and I have the unsettling feeling of being assessed. Measured. His gaze drags from my flour-dusted hair down to my kitten heels and back up, slow and deliberate.

"Quinn Hayes," he says finally, like he's testing the shape of it.

"That's me."

"Lanek Grieves."

He doesn't offer his hand, which is probably for the best given the state of it. We stand there in the cold bite of his meat locker, separated by a butcher's block and what feels like a fundamental disagreement about acceptable morning noise levels.

"Well, Lanek," I say, injecting as much pointed sweetness into my voice as possible. "Welcome to the neighborhood. Try not to saw through any load-bearing walls."

I turn on my heel and march back toward the door. Just before I step back into the alley, his voice follows me.

"Sorry. About the cake."

I don't turn around. I don't trust myself to maintain any semblance of composure if I have to look at him again, all brutal edges and blood-stained leather in his frozen kingdom.

"You should be," I call back, and let the door slam behind me.

The alley air feels tropical compared to his shop. I'm shaking, and I want to blame it on the cold, on the adrenaline spike, on anything except the memory of dark eyes tracking my movement like I'm something worth watching.

I have a wedding cake to salvage.

I do not have time to think about the Orc butcher who just moved in next door, with his bone saw and his shoulders and his complete disregard for my morning peace.

I absolutely do not.