Most of what I found was junk. Old brochures from when this had been a concert venue. Boxes with papers covered in faded text. Games—which I took to the locker room for the guys to occupy their time with. It was the coach’s office where I found a stack of magazines buried in the corner of a closet behind a box labeled “coffee filters.”
By the mountain gods, these magazines had pictures of naked human females in very erotic poses. A few of them even included human males having sex with the females.
I lugged the entire stash to the locker room and selected one at random. The other orcs had left, so I sprawled out on the scratchy carpet and paged through the magazine. If this had been my first exposure to human women, I would have thought them all sex-obsessed with huge breasts, sunshine-colored hair, and rounded bottoms.
Again my mind drifted to a midnight-haired female with the tightest ass imaginable, powerful thighs, muscled stomach, and breasts that handily fit in my mouth.
Pushing those enticing memories away I focused on the pictures. They reminded me of the eager women I’d bedded back home, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Flipping through the pages, I came to a section of text, a story. It was a true retelling from a man who had delivered a pizza to a human den and had been greeted at the door by a female without clothing. She’d brought him inside and initiated sex. It had all ended with them naked, eating the pizza—which sounded like an ideal situation all around.
Did the shrew like pizza? I’d never had the food, but would be willing to purchase one and deliver it to her if that initiated sex.
My hand axe hardened painfully. I’d been semi-erect looking at the pictures and reading the story, but it was the thought of the dark-haired female that had me hard as steel and ready to go.
Throwing the magazine into my locker with the rest, I walked home where I tried to sleep and make it through another day in this mountain-gods forsaken place.
“What’s ‘Tinder,’”I asked Bwat one morning. “Is it a city? Because males in these magazines seem to meet a lot of females there.”
He squirmed, averting his gaze. “Look it up on your phone.”
I could have done that, but I refused to “Google” anything unless absolutely necessary. “No. Just tell me.”
“It’s an application where available females and available males meet each other,” he said.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and eyed it. An alert on the screen told me that the battery was low, whatever that meant.
“Here.” Bwat took the device. “You need to charge it every night. I’ve got a cable and plug with me.”
I rarely used the thing. It had taken me only a few weeks to learn this basic human language, and I had found the device confusing. While it would have been embarrassing and beneath me to ask Bwat for assistance, his offering it without my request made the whole thing acceptable.
“There.” The device beeped as he pugged it into a cord and the other end into the wall socket. “I’ll download Tinder for you and help you set up a profile.”
“Doyouhave a profile?” I asked, not knowing what a profile was but not about to admit that.
Bwat flushed, his green cheeks turning a darker, more olive-colored shade. “Yes, but none of the matches I’ve made have resulted in a date yet. I do know there are several princesses there looking for marriage though.”
I sat up straight, eyeing the phone. Human princesses? My father would be ecstatic if I were to bring home human royalty as a bride. I mean, human was human and no female would ever be considered quite the equal of an orc, but a female of status here would absolutely impress our populace.
While we were waiting for my phone to “charge,” Bwat took a picture of me with his device, then began grilling me about my kingdom and my prospects. Minutes later I had a “profile” on Tinder announcing that I was searching for a bride.
Mountain Gods above, if only I had known it was this easy. All these weeks prowling the streets, getting wide-eyed alarm from the human females I’d approached… This stupid human device that I’d scorned since we’d arrived might be the key to my finding a bride and getting out of here.
Bwat showed me how to “swipe right” on matches and how to reply to messages. By the time I’d arrived home I had two hundred matches and a dozen messages from females willing to be my princess.
Which bothered me. There had been plenty of eager females back home, but father had insisted I needed to set an example and be the first from our kingdom to bring home a human bride. Fine. Pick one of these and leave. It should be easy, but every time I clicked on a profile, I got an uncomfortable feeling that these females were too willing and too eager.
Meek. Obedient.
I stared dead-eyed at the images, reading the messages that felt so flat and canned. In the end I finally picked the least nausea-inducing of the matches and swiped right, composing a short and to-the-point message.
Then I tossed the phone on my sofa and went to bed, enduring yet another night in this hell hole.
5
WILLA
Iwanted a boyfriend. I wanted a relationship that had the potential to grow into a partnership and maybe eventually marriage. I wanted to stop dating bad boys and instead find a man who wanted a commitment and was willing to be an equal provider. I wanted a potential husband.
But it probably wasn’t going to be this guy sitting across from me.
