Page 2 of Orc'd At A Wedding
My ex-boyfriend Brandon. Brandon with his perfectly tousled blond hair and his country club tan and his new girlfriend who looks like she was grown in a lab specifically to make me feel inadequate. They're both holding champagne flutes and laughing at something, and the sound carries across the lobby like nails on a chalkboard.
He hasn't seen me yet. I still have time to turn around, flee back to the bathroom, and live there permanently.
Except Aunt Susan is walking toward me from the other direction, her helmet of highlighted hair catching the natural light, her expression already forming into that specific shape of concerned judgment she reserves especially for me.
"Bliss, darling, there you are! We've been looking everywhere for you. Are you here by yourself? I thought you said you were bringing someone?"
Her voice has that sing-song quality that sounds sweet to anyone who doesn't know her but translates directly to "I'm about to emotionally eviscerate you in public" for those of us who do.
I open my mouth to respond, to deploy one of the twelve different excuses I've prepared for this exact scenario, but thenthe heavy glass doors at the front entrance glide open with a soft mechanical whisper.
The lobby doesn't go silent, that only happens in movies, but there's a definite shift in the ambient noise. Conversations stutter. Someone's champagne flute pauses halfway to their mouth.
Because walking through those doors, moving with the kind of silent, predatory grace that makes every instinct in my body sit up and pay attention, is the largest man I have ever seen in my life.
No. Not a man.
An Orc.
He's massive. Not tall in the normal human sense of "oh, he's over six feet, how nice," but tall in the way that makes my brain short-circuit trying to process the actual scale of him. He has to be nearly seven feet, built like someone took a classical sculpture and then decided it needed about forty percent more muscle mass. His shoulders are so broad they make the doorway look smaller. His three-piece suit, charcoal gray, perfectly tailored, straining magnificently across his thighs, probably required its own zip code of fabric.
His skin is ash-gray, and even from across the lobby I can see the dark sprawl of tattoos covering what looks like every visible inch of him from the neck down. They disappear beneath his collar and reappear at his wrists, complex black patterns that look simultaneously beautiful and vaguely threatening.
But it's his eyes that make my breath catch.
Silver. Piercing. Scanning the lobby with the focused intensity of someone conducting a tactical assessment.
And then they lock directly onto me.
Every nerve ending in my body lights up like I've been plugged into a wall socket.
He moves toward me with purpose, weaving through the clusters of wedding guests with the kind of fluid efficiency that suggests he's very used to navigating spaces full of people who are trying very hard not to stare at him. His expression is completely neutral, professional, almost serene, but there's something about the set of his jaw and the slight prominence of his lower tusks that makes him look like he could flip a car if the situation called for it.
Aunt Susan has gone completely still beside me, her mouth forming a small, shocked "o" that would be funny if I wasn't currently experiencing a full-body systems failure.
He stops directly in front of me, and I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes because oh my gods, he's so much taller up close. The scent of him hits me immediately—bergamot and starched linen and something else, something warm and distinctly male that makes my stomach do a complicated flip.
"Bliss Vance?"
His voice is deep. Devastatingly deep. The kind of voice that resonates in your chest and makes you reconsider every life choice that led to this exact moment.
I nod, because my actual vocal cords have apparently abandoned me.
He reaches into his jacket and pulls out his phone, glancing at the screen with the businesslike efficiency of someone confirming an appointment.
"Olog Glore. Professional Plus-One services. I have you scheduled for a forty-eight-hour engagement beginning today at twelve hundred hours, concluding Sunday at noon. Is this correct?"
He says it like he's confirming a dental appointment. Like this is the most normal thing in the world.
I find my voice hiding somewhere near my shoes and drag it back up.
"Yes. That's—yes. Correct."
"Excellent."
He slides his phone back into his jacket, and then—without warning, without hesitation, with the kind of smooth confidence that suggests he's done this exact move dozens of times—he leans down and kisses my cheek.
It's brief. Professional. The kind of greeting you'd give a long-term girlfriend you haven't seen in a few hours.
