Page 16 of Orc'd At A Wedding
It doesn't come.
He turns around.
CHAPTER 6
OLOG
The words hang in the air between us, unambiguous and direct, and every protocol I've established over three years of flawless service reviews combusts simultaneously.
I should decline.
Professional boundaries exist for exactly this reason. I have maintained them through seventeen separate assignments involving attractive clients, two of which included explicit invitations I deflected with polite, unshakeable firmness. The code is simple. The client pays for a service. I deliver that service within clearly defined parameters. Physical proximity beyond what is required for the performance ceases to be professional and becomes something else entirely.
I know this.
I have built my entire reputation on knowing this.
Bliss sits on the bed with her hands folded in her lap, still wearing the silk dress from the mixer, her dark hair slightly disheveled from running her fingers through it during Aunt Susan's interrogation. She's looking at me with an attitude that contains no manipulation, no calculated seduction. Just exhaustion and something rawer underneath, something that bypasses every rational argument I'm constructing and hitsdirectly against the part of my brain that has been quietly unraveling since I walked into this lobby and first caught her scent.
"Bliss. Sharing a bed with you will compromise my professional detachment."
She doesn't flinch. "Okay."
"I am not certain you fully understand what that means."
"You'll stop treating this like a customer service transaction and start treating me like a person you actually want to be around?" Her eyebrows lift slightly. "That sounds terrible. Truly devastating."
"I have maintained clear boundaries on every previous assignment."
"Good for you." She stands up, reaching behind her back for the zipper of her dress, and I force my gaze to remain on her face with an effort that costs me. "I'm not asking you to violate some sacred code, Olog. I'm asking you not to sleep on the floor like a punished dog when there's a massive bed right here that we can both fit on without even touching."
The zipper descends. She catches the dress before it falls, holding it against her chest.
"I'll stay on my side," she continues. "You stay on yours. We're both adults. We can handle sleeping in the same bed without it becoming a whole thing."
The logical part of my mind, the part that has kept me employed and highly rated, knows I should retrieve my precisely folded sleep clothes from my bag, excuse myself to the bathroom, and return to claim exactly eighteen inches of mattress at the far edge. I should lie there with my back to her, regulate my breathing, and treat this like any other night of light sleep in unfamiliar territory.
The rest of me, the part that has been steadily gaining ground since I removed her ex-boyfriend's hand from her wrist and feltthe way her pulse jumped under my fingers, wants to cross the room and find out exactly how soft her skin is under that silk.
I do neither.
"I will accept those terms," I say, and my voice has dropped another register without my permission.
She blinks. "Oh. Good."
"However, I want to be transparent about the risk."
"What risk?"
"I am Orc." I keep my tone even, clinical. "My biology responds to proximity differently than yours. Spending the night in close quarters with someone I am..." I pause, searching for the correct terminology. "...attracted to will make maintaining boundaries significantly more difficult."
Her lips part slightly. "You're attracted to me?"
"Yes."
The single syllable lands between us like a stone in still water.
"Since when?" she asks.
