Tatted Tusk Daddy

Chapter 1

COLLETTA

Iwake up with what feels like a colony of fire ants doing synchronized swimming in my skull.

The light piercing my curtains is a personal attack. I roll over, groaning, and my hand hits something crisp on the nightstand. Paper. My fingers fumble across expensive cardstock, the kind with embossed lettering that screams professional.

I force one eye open, then immediately regret the decision as the morning light lances straight through my pupil like a laser beam designed specifically to punish bad life choices.

There are words on the paper. Big ones. Professional ones. The kind that belong on documents signed by people who have their lives together.

PROTECTION SERVICES: WEDDING PACKAGE

The letters refuse to cooperate with my hungover brain, sliding around like they're doing the cha-cha across the expensive cardstock.

I squeeze my eyes shut, then open both of them, blinking rapidly in that way that probably makes me look like I'm having some medical episode. Once. Twice. Three times.

The words finally stop their drunken swimming routine and hold still long enough for me to read them properly.

My stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with the tequila.

Below the header, there's a signature. Mine. The loops in my name are too enthusiastic, the flourish that only happens when tequila convinces you that you're a confident person who makes good decisions.

"No."

I sit up too fast. The room tilts. My stomach lurches in protest, and I have to breathe through my nose for a solid ten seconds to convince my body not to mutiny.

The contract stares at me from the nightstand, smug and damning.

I snatch it up. The paper crinkles in my fist as I scan the text. Client agrees to full protection detail for wedding event on June 12th. Services include but are not limited to: perimeter security, threat assessment, personal escort, and—

My eyes snag on the next line, catching on it like a loose thread that unravels everything.

—fiancé simulation as required for emotional defense.

The letters seem to pulse on the page, each a tiny accusation.

"Oh god." The words come strangled, barely more than a whisper.

My free hand comes to cover my mouth, but it's too late. The horror is already spreading across my face, and the heat creeps up my neck.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god."

The words unlock the memory like a trapdoor under my feet, and suddenly I'm falling backward through last night, through the tequila haze and the bad decisions, plummeting toward the exact moment when drunk-me decided that hiring a fake fiancé was not just acceptable, but brilliant.

Last night.

Margarita number three, the one that tasted like poor choices and salt. I'd been crying into the glass, which is disgusting in retrospect but felt poetic at the time. The bartender had stopped asking if I was okay. He'd just kept refilling.

"Derek's the Best Man," I'd told the stranger next to me, a woman in a leather jacket who looked like she fought people for money. "My ex. At my sister's wedding. Do you know what that means?"

She'd shrugged. "That he's a dick?"

"That I have to sit through speeches about true love while he smirks at me from the head table." I'd drained the margarita. "I need backup. I need someone who'll make him feel as small as he made me feel when he said I was 'too much.'"

The woman had her head tilted behind the bar. "You want intimidation? That guy's been standing there for two hours without blinking."

I'd turned.

And there he was.

An Orc. Not the cute, slightly-green-skinned romance novel kind.

The terrifying kind. Shaved head except for a single thick braid that hung down his back like a war trophy.

Tribal tattoos crawling up his neck and onto his face in patterns that looked like they meant something violent.

Gold-capped tusks glinting under the dim bar lights.

He'd been wearing a tuxedo t-shirt, one of those things that's supposed to be ironic but on him looked like some bizarre formal declaration of war.

I'd stared, frozen with my empty margarita glass still raised halfway to my lips.

He'd stared back, utterly unblinking, his pale eyes tracking over me with the methodical precision of a predator cataloging weaknesses.

I could practically see him noting down small, unsteady on feet, reeks of tequila in some mental ledger.

The silence stretched between us across the dimly lit bar. Somewhere behind me, someone dropped a glass. I didn't flinch. Neither did he.

"He's perfect," I'd whispered, and I think I might have been drooling a little.

Margarita Colletta, it turns out, had absolutely no sense of self-preservation. Sober Colletta was going to have opinions about this decision, but Sober Colletta wasn't driving right now, and Margarita Colletta had just found her emotional support Orc.

I walked over. He'd looked down at me, all six-foot-something of muscle and menace, and waited.

"I need to hire you," I'd said.

His eyes had narrowed. "For what."

"My sister's wedding. I need a fiancé. Fake," I'd added quickly. "Just for the day. You stand next to me, look scary, maybe growl at my ex a little."

He'd considered this proposal with the slow, deliberate gravity of a general reviewing battle plans before a siege.

His massive arms had crossed over his chest, and I watched the leather of his vest creak ominously under the strain.

The bar noise faded into a distant hum as those pale eyes fixed on me with an intensity that suggested he was genuinely weighing the strategic merits of my absurd request.

"You are being threatened?" His voice had been low, rumbling from somewhere deep in his chest.

I'd blinked, trying to organise my tequila-soaked thoughts into something resembling coherence.

"Emotionally," I'd clarified, nodding perhaps too enthusiastically.

"Very emotionally. There's passive aggression.

Pointed comments about my life choices. My sister will definitely mention my career at least six times, and my mother has opinions about my hair. "

He nodded slowly, like that made perfect sense, like emotional warfare was still warfare and therefore fell well within his professional purview. "I accept."

The relief had been dizzying. Or maybe it was just margaritas. "Great. That's—that's great. How much do you charge for something like this?"

He'd named a price. I'd written a check I definitely couldn't afford and signed a contract on a bar napkin. Then he'd pulled out an actual contract from somewhere, the fancy one currently crumpling in my hand, and made me sign that too.

"I will protect you," he'd said, and it sounded like a vow.

I giggled.

He hadn't.

My consciousness jumps back to the present.

"No, no, no."

I lunge for my phone, which is hanging half off the bed like it tried to escape during the night. The screen is cracked. There's a text from my sister, four crying-laughing emojis and the words cant wait for u to meet Dereks new girlfriend shes SO SWEET.

I make a noise that belongs in a haunted house, something between a wheeze and a whimper, strangled and desperate, the sound of every bad decision I've ever made condensing into a single vocalization.

My fingers fly across the screen, swiping frantically through my contacts.

I need to scroll. I need to find his number.

Find Kruk's number, it's in here somewhere, filed under what, exactly?

"Orc Bodyguard"? "Margarita Mistake"? I can't remember what I put in.

My thumb slips. The phone tilts dangerously.

I need to cancel this before he actually shows up, before this becomes real, before—

My doorbell rings.

The sound cuts through my apartment like a guillotine blade.

I freeze completely, every muscle in my body locking up at once. My thumb hovers over the screen. My breath catches somewhere between my lungs and my throat and just... stays there.

It rings again. Not the polite double-tap of a delivery person. A single, long press. Assertive. The ring that says I know you're there.

My brain goes into freefall.

It can't be him. It's nine in the morning. The wedding isn't for three days. Maybe it's a package. Maybe it's my neighbor asking to borrow an egg again, even though I've never baked anything in my life and she knows this.

I tiptoe to the door, still wearing yesterday's shirt, which has a coffee stain shaped like a continent I can't identify.

I press my eye to the peephole.

Kruk stands on my doorstep.

He's wearing a tuxedo t-shirt. It stretches across his chest in a way that seems structurally unsound. His arms, bare and tattooed, look like they could bend rebar. In one hand, he holds a battle axe.

An actual battle axe.

The blade gleams in the morning sun. There's a leather strap around the handle.

He rings the bell again, staring directly at the peephole like he can see me through it.

I stop breathing.

Maybe if I'm very quiet, he'll think I'm not home. Maybe he'll leave. Maybe this is a nightmare and I'll wake up in a reality where I make good choices and drink water between cocktails.

His voice comes through the door, deep and certain.

"I know you are inside."

Of course he does.

I close my eyes. Debate fleeing out the back window. Remember I live on the third floor.

"Colletta Fears," he says, formal and final. "I am ready for the mission."

The mission.

Oh god.

I unlock the door because my body has apparently decided that humiliation is less fatal than making an Orc wait. It swings open. Kruk fills the frame, all massive shoulders and gold tusks and unblinking focus.

He looks me up and down. Takes in the stained shirt, the hair that's staging a revolt, the smudged eyeliner I forgot to remove.

"You are not ready," he observes.

"It's nine a.m."