Chapter 1 #2
He collects a tray and nods at the cook. It’s barely even a nod, and the cook visibly grows an inch. Nobody at our table has said a word in thirty seconds. Understandable.
He’s carrying his tray and halfway across the room when he stops. His head comes up.
For a second, he goes completely still, and his eyes sweep the cafeteria like he heard someone say his name.
The room is loud and smells like soup. Whatever he’s checking for, he doesn’t find it.
He carries his tray to a corner table, sits with his back to the wall, and says nothing at all for the next twenty-five minutes.
I eat and try to keep myself from looking at him every few minutes.
I fail spectacularly. He has broad hands and a scar through one eyebrow.
When he chews, it’s slow and methodical, and I try not to wonder what his tusks would feel like against my skin.
At one point, the women at my table erupt over a new tally, and his scarred eyebrow rises one millimeter, holds, and settles.
A thought pops into my head.
I’d let him.
I set my spoon down and spend way too much time trying to not think of all the things I’d let him do.
At this rate, I’m going to be joining the betting pool and sighing over elevator rides by the time the two weeks are up.
The afternoon session is witness testimony, and the panel is interviewing program participants about conditions on the island.
A matched couple goes first, then an applicant who cries about how happy she is with her mate.
At 3:40 p.m., the chairperson calls the longest-waiting unmatched candidate in residence.
The door opens, and the room’s air pressure changes.
Valdrek of Clan Stormbreak has to come through the doorframe at an angle. Up close, he’s bigger than he looked in the cafeteria, and this room is a lot smaller. He crosses toward the witness chair, and that’s when I smell him.
Rain on stone, like a granite ledge in a storm, then a sharp juniper. The third note is warm and completely at odds with the rest of it. It’s banked embers, a fire covered carefully for the night.
My hands stop on the keys.
My hands never stop. They’ve kept a clean record through screaming matches, seizures, a fire alarm, and one attorney’s full cardiac event.
They do not stop for anything on this Earth.
They hover over the keys while the scent of him pours in, and every nerve ending in my body tingles.
Heat drops straight through me. My skin pulls tight, my nipples go hard so fast it’s embarrassing, and between one breath and the next I’m soaked and aching.
I press my thighs together under the table and try to hold it together.
I’ve been in the room with him for nine seconds.
Then the air conditioning kicks on behind me. It’s the same damn vent that has been freezing my ass off since 8:30, and it pushes its current across my neck and out into the room.
Valdrek stops mid-stride like he’s hit the end of a chain. His head snaps up. His chest fills, the biggest breath I’ve ever seen anyone take, and his eyes close. When they open, they come straight to me. His pupils are blown wide and swallow the color of his eyes.
Oh, wow. I can feel my eyes widening in reaction as I hold his stare.
His ears pin flat to his skull. The pitcher of water on the panel’s table starts to slosh up the sides as if reacting to a sound humans can’t hear. I know it’s something he’s doing because I feel it in the soles of my feet and in one other place I’m not going to acknowledge at a work hearing.
He says nothing. The water keeps rippling.
Then he goes to war with his own body, and I get to watch.
He makes himself take the next step, and the one after that.
He fists his hands at his sides, and his jaw is set so hard the muscle stands out under the gray-green skin.
He reaches the witness chair and grips the back of it.
He breathes in deeply and lets it out slowly, like he’s counting.
Several people’s eyes flick to the water in the pitcher and away again. No one mentions it.
“Candidate Valdrek?” the chairperson says. “Please take the witness seat.”
Valdrek holds my gaze one second longer. My whole chest leans toward him, even though I’d mock another woman for that. Then he sits, and the chair creaks a warning under him. Whatever this is, it’s happening to both of us at maximum volume in absolute silence. The hearing resumes.
He testifies. I get down every word, which, considering the state I’m in, I deserve a fucking medal.
Q: Do you affirm your testimony will be truthful?
A: I do.
Q: You have been in the program fourteen months, the longest current residency. In your own words, describe those months.
A: I am still here.
Q: Have program staff treated you well?
A: Yes. They try hard.
Q: Does the length of your wait indicate a flaw in the program?
A: Some matches take time.
Q: Do you remain hopeful of a match?
There are four seconds of silence, and I look up from my keys. He’s watching me with his ears standing straight up.
A: Yes. It will happen.
Q: Anything further you wish to add?
A: No. Thank you.
Twenty-one words, total, including the oath.
The redhead is going to lose her mind. He rises to leave.
He doesn’t look at me again, but as he makes his way past the orc representatives, he bends to Dargan’s ear and says something.
Dargan’s coffee cup stops halfway to his mouth and descends, slowly, back to its saucer.
Dargan looks at me for a long moment with an expression I can only describe as delighted sympathy as Valdrek angles himself through the door and is gone.
The hum under my breastbone stays all afternoon.
That evening, I’m in my quarters, ignoring that the room is the size of a walk-in closet, and eating a granola bar over the sink while I lose an argument with myself.
I’m thirty-five years old, and I don’t get soaked over a stranger who said twenty-one words. There’s a rational explanation, probably glandular, possibly related to ferry exhaust. Tomorrow I’ll sit in the room and take the record like nothing happened.
That’s the argument. My body isn’t having any of it.
My nipples have been hard all afternoon.
There’s a pulse between my legs that hasn’t let up since he came through that door, and every time I stop moving, I can feel how wet I still am.
I keep catching myself with my thighs pressed together, squeezing, which does nothing except remind me how empty I am, which is not a thing I have ever once thought about before today.
It doesn’t help that I can still smell him. I’ve raised my wrist to my face twice to check if it’s me, and both times, there was nothing there.
It doesn’t stop the fantasies. It’s small ones first. What the braid would feel like wrapped around my fist. Whether he’d growl and if my nipples would respond if that growl was against my mouth. What those massive hands would look like undoing my buttons while I forget how to breathe.
Then bigger ones. His palms spanning my waist, getting picked up like I weigh nothing and set down exactly where he wants me. I know exactly where I want that to be.
The newest one has him on his knees, and I’ve already figured out where the tusks go, because I’ve just gotten to the part where he hooks my knee over his shoulder and tells me to hold still in that voice I felt through the floor. The tusks graze the inside of my thigh, and—
Someone knocks.
Shit. I straighten up, like the person can see me through the door. Diane barely waits three seconds before opening it, which I’d find rude if I were in any sort of frame of mind to think straight.
She comes in with the folder and the determined face of a woman who has important news.
“Ms. Delgado. There’s been a development.”
She sits on my desk chair, pulls a pamphlet from the folder, and slides it across the desk. It says UNDERSTANDING SCENT RECOGNITION.
“This afternoon, a candidate reported a recognition event.” She laces her fingers.
“It’s called kel’ahn. A scent-match. It’s involuntary and once in a lifetime.
” My brain freezes, refusing to accept the obvious while she continues.
“The orc’s body identifies his mate. It’s like puzzle pieces clicking together. It’s never wrong.”
“Okay,” I say, like an idiot. “Whose mate is he?”
Diane looks at me with tired kindness and doesn’t say anything at all. Message received.
“No, you’re wrong. I’m staff,” I rush out. “I’m the court reporter. I’m not even in the program. I’m just here for two weeks.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s been paired with other applicants in the last fourteen months. None of them were right. He walks into a room with you, and he files paperwork the same hour.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
“He wants to meet you tomorrow after the hearings. Thirty minutes, supervised. You can decline, and nothing bad will happen. He made very sure we told you that. Four words, actually.” Her mouth twitches. “Only if she wants.”
I look down at the pamphlet I don’t need to read because I know what the damn scent recognition feels like.
Somewhere in this building is an orc who said twenty-one words in a hearing — more words today than he’s said in a long time — and then he spent more on me.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll meet him.”