Page 26 of Orc'd At A Wedding
I pause, forcing myself to meet her eyes, to give her one last chance to stop this.
"Bliss," I say, my voice hoarse. "Are you sure?"
She doesn't answer with words.
She grabs my face and kisses me with a fierce, desperate intensity that obliterates every lingering doubt, her legs tightening around me, her body arching into mine.
And I surrender.
CHAPTER 9
BLISS
Iam pressed against cold marble and overwhelming heat, my mouth still tingling from the force of Olog's kiss, my body vibrating with want and need and the terrifying realization that I just crossed a line I can never uncross.
His hands bracket my hips, pinning me to the counter, and his chest heaves against mine as we both struggle to catch our breath. The bathroom feels impossibly small with him in it, the air thick and charged, every nerve ending in my body screaming for more.
But then he pulls back.
Not far—just enough to look at me, his eyes searching my face with an intensity that makes my throat tighten.
"Why were you crying?" he demands, his voice rough and raw in a way I've never heard before.
I blink at him, my brain still foggy from the kiss, from the feeling of his massive body pressed against mine, from the overwhelming reality that this is happening.
"What?"
"You were crying," he repeats, his grip on my waist tightening fractionally. "In here. Alone. Before I came in. Tell me why."
I swallow hard, my hands still resting on his bare chest, feeling the rapid thud of his heartbeat beneath my palms. His skin is impossibly warm, the black tattoos curving over his muscles like a map I want to trace with my tongue.
Focus, Bliss.
"I—" My voice catches. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me."
The fierce protectiveness in his tone cracks something open inside my chest, and suddenly I'm angry—furiously, irrationally angry—because this isn't real. This can't be real. He's paid to care. Paid to defend me. Paid to look at me like I'm something precious.
"Why?" I snap, shoving at his chest even though he doesn't budge an inch. "Why does it matter to you? You're on the clock, Olog. You're getting paid to give a shit about my feelings. That's literally the entire point of this arrangement."
His jaw tightens, a muscle ticking beneath the ash-gray skin, and his eyes flash with something dark and dangerous.
"You think I'm acting right now?"
"I don't know what you're doing," I shoot back, my voice rising. "I don't know what any of this is. I just know that tomorrow this whole thing ends, and I go back to my real life where nobody actually wants to defend me or feed me hors d'oeuvres or—or look at me the way you've been looking at me all night, and it's killing me, okay? It's killing me because I hate that I had to pay someone to make me feel like I'm worth protecting, and I hate that it's working, and I hate that I'm falling for a man who is contractually obligated to pretend to care about me."
The words tumble out in a breathless rush, my eyes stinging with fresh tears, and I hate myself for crying again, for being weak and desperate and stupid enough to catch feelings for my fake boyfriend.
Olog goes completely still.
His hands are still on my waist, his body still caging me against the counter, but his expression shifts into something I can't read—something intense and almost furious.
"You think this is pretend?" he whispers.
"Isn't it?" I whisper.
He peers at me for a long, excruciating moment, his eyes boring into mine, and then he moves.
