Page 83 of Orcs Do It Wilder
Instead I reach for her arm and pull her inside.
My hand closes around her forearm to steady her, to get her out of the exposed hallway. She stumbles across the threshold and I catch her with my other hand on her shoulder. The cat carrier bumps against my leg. I take it from her and set it on the floor.
“You’re safe,” I tell her. “No one is going to hurt you. I’m going to?—”
And then it hits me.
Her scent.
It doesn’t hit the way scents normally register. Humans smell pleasant enough to orcs — neutral, unremarkable, background noise. I’ve been around humans my whole life and they all smell more or less the same to me. Faint and forgettable.
This is not that.
This is a scent that goes straight into my blood. Into my bones. It’s warm and complex and it fills my lungs like I’ve been breathing wrong my entire life.
My body responds to it, for the first time, ever.
I go completely still. My hand tightens on her arm. My nostrils flare, drawing in more of her, and each breath makes it worse. Or better. I can’t tell the difference anymore.
I know what this is.
I sat in a chair in Garlen’s basement for months and watched my cousin howl and strain against chains because of this exact thing. I read Kelt’s briefings about what happened to Keric in Maine. Three days ago, I watched Jonus transform into something ancient and terrifying and crash through a second-story window with Sloane over his shoulder.
I’ve been telling myself for months that my interest in Lucy Rodriguez is professional courtesy.
I’ve been lying to myself with increasingly creative vocabulary.
My body has been waiting thirty-three years for this specific female. She’s been on my phone, in my texts, in my thoughts for weeks now and I told myself it was nothing. But my body was waiting until she was close enough to scent. And now she’s standing in my hotel room with a cat carrier and tears in her eyes and my cock is stiffening for the first time in my life and I am absolutely certain that everything is about to change.
“Aldar?” Lucy is looking up at me, confused by my sudden stillness. Her brown eyes search my face. “Are you okay?”
Lucy Rodriguez is standing in my hotel room with a cat carrier and terror in her eyes and all I can think is that she smells like the rest of my life.
And I am in so much trouble.
