Page 18 of Orc'd At A Wedding
The second rumble is closer.
The third rattles the windows.
Bliss stirs beside me, a soft sound of sleep-disrupted confusion, and I keep my eyes on the ceiling, breathing slowly, giving her space to resettle. She shifts again. The storm intensifies, rain hitting the glass in heavy sheets, and the temperature in the room seems to drop slightly as the system works to compensate.
I feel her move before I hear it.
She rolls over in her sleep, a natural, unconscious motion, seeking warmth the way any creature does when the environment shifts, and suddenly the three feet of careful space I maintained ceases to exist.
She plasters herself directly against my side.
Every muscle in my body locks.
Her head tucks under my chin. Her arm slides across my chest. One of her legs hooks over mine, her thigh pressing against the muscular plane of my hip, and the soft weight of her body molds itself to me with the kind of unconscious trust that obliterates every rational boundary I constructed.
She's asleep.
Completely, deeply asleep, her breathing slow and even against my collarbone, her scent flooding my senses at point-blank range.
I should move.
I should gently extract myself, reposition her on her side of the bed, reestablish the neutral territory that keeps this professional.
I don't move.
I can't move.
The part of my brain that has been held in check by sheer discipline and three years of customer service excellence looks at the current situation and stages a full revolt. She is soft everywhere I am hard, warm everywhere I run hot, and her against me triggers something so fundamentally Orc that myhindbrain simply reaches up, flips a switch, and decides we are done pretending.
Her scent is stronger here, this close. Jasmine and something underneath that's just her, clean and faintly sweet and utterly specific. My hand, which has been locked at my side in a death grip of control, moves of its own accord and comes to rest against the small of her back.
She makes a soft sound, not quite waking, and burrows closer.
The control I have been maintaining fractures cleanly down the center.
My other arm shifts, curving around her, my palm settling against her hip where the oversized t-shirt has ridden up to expose warm, bare skin. She fits against me like she was designed for it, like every inch of her was calculated to align perfectly with the architecture of my body, and the biological reaction I warned her about ceases to be theoretical and becomes extremely, undeniably physical.
I close my eyes and focus on breathing.
The storm continues outside, thunder rolling across the sky, rain drumming steadily against the windows. Bliss sleeps on, completely unaware that she is currently draped across two hundred and seventy pounds of Orc who is using every remaining shred of willpower not to roll her onto her back and find out what sounds she makes when she's awake.
Her leg shifts higher.
Her thigh presses directly against me.
The groan starts somewhere deep within me as a low, involuntary rumble of sound that I have no ability to suppress, and it vibrates through my body and into the mattress beneath us.
Bliss stirs.
Her breathing changes, the slow rhythm of sleep breaking into something faster, more aware. I feel the exact moment consciousness returns because her body goes still against mine, every muscle tensing as her brain registers the position we're in.
She doesn't pull away.
"Olog?" Her voice is sleep-rough, barely a whisper against me.
"Yes."
"Are you..." She shifts slightly, her thigh dragging against me again, and her breath catches. "Oh."
