Chapter 9 Orla
ORLA
Sleeping next to Thraka is like sleeping next to a furnace that breathes.
I wake up overheated, tangled in sheets that smell like pine and something earthy I can't name. My blazer hangs on the chair across the room, a reminder of the person I was twelve hours ago, before I invited a seven-foot Orc into my bed under the flimsy pretense of space efficiency.
His arm drapes across my waist, heavy and possessive. At some point during the night, we gravitated together like magnets, defying every principle of personal space and professional conduct I've spent years cultivating.
I should move. I know I should move. The rational part of my brain, the part that wrote my college thesis on organizational behavior and efficiency metrics, is screaming at me to extract myself from this situation immediately.
To roll away with dignity intact. To reestablish the professional boundaries that have somehow dissolved overnight like sugar in hot coffee.
Instead, against every principle I hold dear, against every rule in the corporate handbook I've memorized cover to cover, I burrow closer into the warmth.
I press my back more firmly against the solid wall of his chest, tilt my head so it fits better in the curve of his shoulder, and let my fingers rest against the forearm still draped possessively across my waist.
"You're awake." His voice rumbles against my back, vibrating through my entire body.
"Your internal temperature is approximately one hundred and eight degrees Fahrenheit," I hear myself say, because apparently when confronted with intimate physical contact, my brain defaults to reciting empirical data like some kind of malfunctioning thermostat.
"Closer to one-ten, actually." I feel his smile against my neck, a gentle curve of lips that shouldn't register as distinctly as it does through the thin material of my borrowed retreat t-shirt. "Is that a complaint?"
"An observation," I correct, keeping my voice steady through sheer force of will. "A factual statement based on available thermal data."
"You were shivering last night." His fingers flex against my stomach, a deliberate reminder of their presence, of how his palm spans nearly the entire width of my torso. "Now you're not. Problem solved. That's called efficiency."
The fact that he's weaponizing my own principles against me should be annoying.
It is annoying. Except my body has apparently staged a coup against my rational mind, because I'm acutely aware of every point where we connect—his chest against my shoulder blades, his thighs aligned with mine, his breath stirring the fine hairs at my nape.
Heat floods my face that has nothing to do with his body temperature.
Last night rushes back in vivid detail. How we climbed into that absurd twin bed together, stiff and awkward at first, maintaining a careful strip of mattress between us.
How exhaustion from the day's forced team building exercises dragged us both under before anything could happen.
How I woke up sometime around three AM to find myself plastered against his chest, his heartbeat steady and strong beneath my ear, and how I didn't pull away.
"We should get up," I manage. "The morning session starts at seven. Continental breakfast at six-thirty."
"Or." His hand slides lower, skating dangerous territory, leaving trails of heat that my nervous system catalogues with entirely too much detail and precision. "We could stay here instead."
"That's called truancy," I point out, even as my traitorous body arches infinitesimally into his touch. "Violation of the mandatory attendance policy outlined in section four point three of the retreat guidelines."
"That's called priorities," he counters, his breath warm against the shell of my ear, sending an involuntary shiver down my spine that I absolutely refuse to acknowledge in any official capacity.
I twist in his arms to face him, which is a tactical error.
His eyes are warm and sleepy, his hair completely chaotic, and he looks nothing like the corporate disaster I've been trying to manage for the past two weeks.
He looks like something wild that somehow ended up in my bed, defying categorization.
"We have paintball war games today," I inform him, grasping for any topic that doesn't involve the way his thumb is tracing circles on my hip. "Team building through simulated combat."
His eyes light up with an intensity I've only seen when he challenged the copy machine to single combat last Tuesday. It's the look of a man who has just discovered his entire purpose in life, distilled into two simple words.
"War games," he repeats slowly, reverently, like he's tasting each syllable and finding it sweeter than victory mead. His grip on my hip tightens fractionally. "With paint."
"Non-lethal team exercises designed to improve communication and strategic thinking," I clarify, though I can already feel my professional boundaries beginning to crumble like a poorly formatted spreadsheet.
"Battle," he breathes, and there's something almost spiritual in his voice, like he's finally found the common ground between his world and mine. "Finally, something I understand at this cursed corporate gathering."
I should probably warn the other teams about what they're about to face.
File some kind of preemptive incident report with HR.
Draft a liability waiver. Send an email to the retreat coordinator outlining my concerns about mixing actual combat expertise with recreational team-building activities.
Create a contingency plan for when Thraka inevitably takes the "war" in "war games" too literally and turns the paintball course into something resembling the Siege of Helm's Deep.
Instead, and I will blame this entirely on sleep deprivation and the lingering effects of last night's endorphins, I kiss him.
Pull him down by the collar of his ill-fitting pajama shirt and kiss him like I'm not a woman who maintains three separate backup calendars and color-codes her filing system.
The continental breakfast is a wasteland of stale bagels and watery coffee that makes my soul weep. I load my plate with fruit and yogurt, trying to maintain some semblance of nutritional standards, while Thraka stacks pancakes like he's building a fortification.
"Carb loading," he explains when I raise an eyebrow. "For the battle ahead."
Chad swagger over, already wearing his team captain armband like it's a Medal of Honor. "Ready to get destroyed, Peace? My squad's going to paint the forest with your team."
"We'll see."
"Is the green guy even going to understand the rules?" Chad smirks at Thraka, who's drowning his pancake tower in enough syrup to cause a diabetic coma. "No killing, big guy. Paint only."
Thraka looks up slowly from his architectural monument of pancakes, syrup dripping from his fork in thick, amber rivulets that puddle on his plate like evidence at a crime scene.
His eyes meet Chad's with an intensity that I recognize from boardroom negotiations gone nuclear, the kind of look that precedes either violence or extremely uncomfortable HR conversations.
"Paint," he says with a particular resonance that makes it sound less like confirmation and more like a threat wrapped in compliance. A pause, deliberate and weighted with implications that Chad's sales-bro brain is perhaps too underdeveloped to fully process. "Only."
Something in his tone, that careful, almost mocking precision with which he enunciates that single word, makes Chad take a distinctly visible step backward, his confident smirk faltering just enough that I catch the micro-expression of uncertainty crossing his aggressively groomed features.
It's the same instinctive retreat a gazelle might make when it realizes the lazy lion isn't actually sleeping.
"Right. Well. May the best team win." Chad retreats to his table of sales bros, all of them already strategizing like they're planning the Normandy invasion instead of a corporate paintball event.
"You're going to absolutely destroy him, aren't you," I say quietly, though part of me already knows the answer. Part of me has known since the moment Chad made that condescending comment about "the green guy."
Thraka's smile is absolutely feral, all tusks and predatory satisfaction. "Completely."
The paintball field is a section of forest marked off with orange tape and dotted with inflatable barriers that look like they were designed by someone who'd never actually seen combat. Our team gets red armbands. Chad's team gets blue. The yellow team is from accounting and looks terrified.
The instructor, a bored twenty-something who clearly hates corporate groups, drones through the safety rules. "Masks stay on at all times. No physical contact. Paint only. Headshots don't count. If you're hit, raise your hand and walk to the sideline. First team to capture the enemy flag wins."
Thraka isn't listening. He's scanning the terrain with the focus of a predator identifying hunting grounds, noting sight lines and cover points and tactical advantages.
"We should split up," I suggest to our team, trying to sound like I have any tactical knowledge whatsoever. My experience with team-based combat scenarios is limited to that one corporate trust fall exercise I nearly failed. "Cover more ground. Flank them from multiple angles."
"I have a better strategy." Thraka kneels down, his massive frame folding with surprising grace as he scoops mud from the rain-softened ground. The earth is dark and wet from last night's storm, clinging to his fingers in thick clumps.
"What are you doing?" I ask, watching him examine the mud with the same intensity I reserve for quarterly reports. There's a focused quality to his movements that makes me nervous, like he's preparing for something far more serious than a corporate team-building exercise.