Chapter 13 Orla #2
Heat floods through me despite the cold rain drumming down on us both, soaking through my blouse and his ridiculous oversized jacket.
My nipples tighten against the fabric. "We can't go back to the shed.
It's forty minutes outside the city, and I don't have a change of clothes packed, and there's no shower facility, and—"
"Hotel?" he interrupts, already shifting his weight as if mentally calculating logistics.
"My apartment is closer." I press against him, feel his immediate response—that hardening against my hip that makes my breath catch. "Three blocks. We could run."
"Or I could carry you." He adjusts his grip with surprising gentleness, one massive arm beneath my knees, the other supporting my back, cradling me like I'm precious cargo rather than dead weight.
Bridal style. In the middle of the sidewalk, where at least a dozen people can see us.
"Faster. More efficient. I have researched optimal carrying positions for maximum speed. "
"Thraka, I can walk—" I start to protest, but it's weak, perfunctory.
He's already moving, those long strides eating up pavement with terrifying speed. I yelp, grab his neck for stability, feel the cords of muscle there tense beneath my palms. The rain plasters his dark hair to his skull, runs down his green skin in rivulets.
"People are staring!" I hiss, mortified, aware of the shocked faces turning toward us, the phones likely already recording.
"Let them stare." He navigates around a businessman clutching an umbrella, who stumbles backward into a mailbox with a metallic clang that echoes down the street. "They see a warrior claiming his mate. This is natural. This is how things work in my tribe. Public declaration. No ambiguity."
"This is insane."
"You love insane. You said so yourself." He takes a corner without slowing. "Which building?"
"The ugly brown one. Next block." I bury my face in his neck, breathing him in. He smells like rain and that cheap body spray he bought because the bottle had a picture of an axe on it. "We're going to catch pneumonia."
"We will generate sufficient body heat to prevent illness." He bounds up my apartment steps two at a time. "Key?"
I fish in my bag, hand shaking. It takes three tries to get the key in the lock. The door swings open, revealing my sterile, minimalist apartment. Everything beige and gray and ruthlessly organized.
Thraka carries me over the threshold like I weigh nothing, like this is perfectly normal behaviour for a Tuesday evening. His boot comes up and kicks the door shut behind us with enough force to rattle the frame. The deadbolt clicks automatically.
"This is very you," he observes, those green eyes sweeping across my living space with the methodical intensity of a warrior assessing a battlefield for weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
The observation carries obvious judgment, the kind that makes my jaw clench.
"Sad. Depressing. Like a corporate tomb. "
I bristle immediately, my spine stiffening with the kind of defensive posture I've perfected over years of boardroom combat.
"It's sophisticated minimalism," I counter, my voice taking on that sharp edge I reserve for people who question my aesthetic choices.
"It's called having taste. Design principles.
Intentional curation." Even as the words leave my mouth, I hear how hollow they sound, how much like I'm reciting a marketing pitch rather than defending something I actually believe in.
"Not everyone needs to live like they're squatting in a war camp. "
"It has no personality. No life. No warmth." He turns in a slow circle, taking in the beige sofa I've never actually sat on, the glass coffee table with its single decorative bowl, the abstract prints in identical frames. "Like you before we met."
The observation hits harder than it should. Because he's right. This apartment looks like a hotel room. Like a staged photograph from a real estate listing. Nothing personal, nothing real, nothing that would indicate an actual human being lives here.
"Rude but accurate," I admit, fingers tightening on his soaked jacket. Water drips onto my pristine hardwood floors, forming small puddles. I don't even care. "Are you going to do something about it?"
"Yes." He strips off his jacket—the one with sleeves perpetually too short, the one I've told him makes him look like an overgrown schoolboy—and drops it directly onto my cream carpet.
It lands with a wet, obscene squelch. A dark stain immediately begins spreading across the fibres. "I am going to ruin your organization."
Heat floods through me in a searing rush, sharp and demanding, urgent as a wildfire consuming dry timber.
It spreads from my core outward, a primal response I can neither calculate nor control, the one variable in my meticulously ordered existence that defies optimization.
My breath catches, and I feel the familiar war between my carefully maintained composure and the raw, unfiltered desire that only he seems capable of igniting.
"Promise?" The word emerges as barely more than a whisper, a challenge wrapped in vulnerability.
I search his expression, those green eyes dark with intent, waiting for the assurance that he means every word, every touch, every dangerous promise hanging between us.
Because with Thraka, unlike with the perfectly curated men from LinkedIn, I've learned that promises aren't just empty corporate commitments—they're oaths.
Sacred things. And somehow, impossibly, he always delivers.
He reaches for me, and I step back, pulse hammering. Walk backward toward the bedroom, never breaking eye contact. He follows, predator tracking prey.
My shoulders collide with the bedroom doorframe, the impact sending a jolt through my spine. I'm cornered now, backed against the threshold between my sterile living space and the one room in this apartment that might actually matter.
"Nowhere left to run, Little Manager." His voice is low, rough, filled with promise and threat in equal measure.
My heart pounds against my ribs, blood singing hot through my veins.
Every nerve ending feels alive, electrified.
"Who says I'm running?" I reach up, fingers closing around his tie, the cheap polyester one from the discount store that he insists on wearing despite my repeated offers to buy him something better.
I yank him forward, hard enough that he has to brace one massive hand against the doorframe beside my head to keep from crushing me. "Maybe I'm leading."
His laugh rumbles through his chest, vibrating against me where our bodies press together. It's dark honey and gravel, smooth and rough all at once, and it sends heat pooling low in my belly. "Then lead."
The permission, the surrender in those two words, the way he's giving me control while we both know he could overpower me without effort—it's intoxicating.
I do.
Pull him into the bedroom. Push him toward the bed. He sits obediently, looking up at me with those wild green eyes. Waiting.
I unbutton my blouse slowly. His gaze tracks every movement, hungry and focused. The fabric peels away from my skin, revealing the black lace underneath.
"You wore that to work?" His voice drops an octave.
"Every day." I drop the blouse on the floor. Corporate Orla would never leave clothes on the floor. Corporate Orla is dead. "Under every blazer. Every button-up. Every boring professional outfit."
"Not boring." He reaches for me, his massive frame moving with surprising grace despite the ill-fitting suit straining across his broad shoulders. His fingers stretch toward me, but I pivot smoothly out of reach, maintaining the distance with someone who has choreographed every move. "Orla."
I arch an eyebrow, letting my gaze linger on him with calculated intention. The power dynamic shifts with every second of silence, every inch of space between us becoming a weapon in my arsenal. "Say please."
His chest rises and falls with barely contained eagerness, those wild green eyes darkening with want. When he speaks, my pulse quickens despite my best efforts to maintain control. "Please." The word emerges as a low growl, rough-edged and urgent, barely restrained. "Come here. Now."
"No." I unzip my skirt, let it pool at my feet. Step out of it wearing nothing but black lace and ruined Louboutins. "You come here."
He stands, closes the distance, lifts me easily. My legs wrap around his waist automatically, and he walks us backward until my spine hits the wall. Cold against overheated skin.
"I love you," he says, and the simple honesty in it breaks something inside me, shatters the last wall I'd been holding up. "My fierce little warrior in heels. My Little Manager who throws binders in puddles."
"I love you too." I frame his face with my hands. "My chaos in a cheap suit. My orc who thinks printers are cursed machines."
He kisses me, and this time it's different. Slower. Deeper. Like we have all the time in the world, because we do. No more sneaking in supply closets. No more quickies in sheds during storms. Just us, unemployed and reckless and completely free.
His hands map my body, learning curves and angles. Mine work at his buttons, peeling away wet layers until there's nothing between us but skin and want and the promise of tomorrow.
"We should probably talk about what happens next," I breathe against his mouth. "Make a plan."
"Later." He nips at the delicate curve of my throat, and I arch into him without thinking, my body responding to his touch with a urgency that bypasses every rational circuit in my brain.
The sensation sends a shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with the cold wall at my back.
"Right now, I have considerably better ideas than talking. "
My fingers curl into his shoulders, feeling the solid muscle beneath damp fabric.
There's a small, rational part of my mind—the part that usually dominates every decision I make—that wants to object.
That wants to insist we establish parameters, set expectations, create a framework for what happens next.
But that voice is drowning under six years of wanting him, of denying myself, of pretending I didn't notice the way he looked at me across spreadsheets and conference tables.
"Tell me," I demand, because even now, even like this, I need to maintain some semblance of control. I need to know what's coming. It's not a request; it's a command, delivered against his jaw in a voice that's barely recognizable as my own.
He does. In detail. In Orcish and English and the language of hands and mouths and bodies moving together.
And for the first time in six years, I don't think about tomorrow at all.