Flavor burst over my tongue. It was wine. Not nearly as good as the ones back home, but not completely unpalatable.
“What did you do today?”
I grunted, my mind whirring with thoughts of the wine, of her, of what it meant that in a city of over half a million humans, she washeresitting beside me.
My father would not approve. My mother would not approve. This is not the sort of woman I was sent here to bring home.
“I had two ass-crack of dawn training sessions. One is this amateur triathlete who wants to compete in a full this spring and needs some endurance work. The other is a dude trying to lose the dad-bod now that his youngest is off to college and he’s ready to start dating again ten years after his divorce.”
I grunted. And my lack of communication skills pissed me off. Saturday I hadn’t wanted to bother having a conversation with this female, but now that I did, words were escaping me. Grunts and monosyllabic replies were fine for a brute like Ozar, but I was intelligent and educated, and I wanted to show this female that I actually had a brain.
She ignored my barbarian response and continued to talk. “This afternoon was a seventy-six-year-old woman rehabbing from her hip replacement last month and the Silver and Strong Club. I absolutely love them. Five to seven men and women ages eighty and up who are looking to stay active. The one guy reminds me of my grandfather. Props his cane up against the weight bench and does leg presses like he’s trying out for the Ravens or something.”
I grunted. Again. Like a complete idiot. Then she fell silent, just sitting beside me, sipping her wine, and staring ahead with a faint smile on her lips.
What had she been saying? Something about elderly humans. Escallates Johnson, the team’s owner, had assigned some of us tasks and mine was supposed to be assisting elderly humans. Moriaga would freeze over before that happened. I wasn’t playing the stupid humiliating game so I was hardly going to do this extra task. Besides I had no idea what assisting old humans involved. Although if it was watching them use gym equipment to ensure they didn’t drop a dumbbell on theirheads, then that wouldn’t be too bad. And it might actually be interesting. Should I ask this female about how I could assist her in ensuring elderly humans didn’t kill themselves with physical activity? Was it something we could do together?
For some odd reason, the prospect was…interesting. For the past few months nothing had been interesting. I was so horribly bored and lonely. None of the other orcs were close to the social station of someone I’d lower myself to speak with back home. So far my few attempts to attract a suitable human female so I could get out of this city and take her home had failed. I now understood why historically orcs just grabbed a female and hauled her through the portal. Lurking around this tedious place and spending days or weeks wooing a mate like Ozar was doing? What insanity.
I glanced over at the shrew. Her ebony hair curls were tied up high on her head and spilling down around her ears and neck. She had a nice bone structure. Strong. Angular. But strangely soft. Her body had been the same, both hard and soft at the same time. My hand axe was already remembering how well it liked her body and hoping for a repeat occasion. I ignored it to focus on a very foreign struggle taking place inside me.
I desperately wanted to talk to this human female. There was no crossing the lines that kept me from socializing with the other orcs, but my status wouldn’t be affected by speaking with the shrew. No one would ever know. And I could not continue to exist with the boredom until I found my bride—a situation which was taking a whole lot longer than I’d ever expected it to.
Opening my mouth,finallysome words came out. “Ozar made the other orcs go onto the ice with their knife-shoes to practice.” And I couldn’t help the disdain in my voice. “He promised them a human pastry item.”
“I do a lot of things for pastry.”
Her smile teased, bringing all sorts of lurid thoughts to mind. I wondered briefly if the restaurant had a pastry I could quickly buy for her.
“I put on the knife-blade shoes, but did not practice. I watched them and then went back to the locker room to read more about a human female called Emma Watson in a magazine Ugwyll had.”
“She’s pretty hot,” the shrew admitted. “Are you going to propose to her? Got the ring ready to go?”
I scowled into my wine. “She is not suitable to marry me, although she is attractive.”
The shrew made a strangled noise that was clearly a poor attempt to hold back a laugh. “You’ve got some pretty high stands there, stud. Might need to lower them a bit if you plan on dating, let alone marrying.”
“I will not settle for an inferior bride. The female I wed will bear my orclets, will birth the next leader of our kingdom. My standards cannot be lowered.” My kingdom demanded it. My parents demanded it.
Duty. Responsibility.
She rolled her eyes. “Okaaaay. Good luck then, buddy.”
“What doyouseek in a husband?” I asked, a very unwelcome tightness in my chest as I waited for her response.
“Well…” She bit her lip and stared thoughtfully down into her glass of wine. “Someone who is physically active, although they don’t have to live in a gym. Not someone whose entire life revolves around their looks or their leg-day numbers or anything, but is able to hike, kayak, run a 5K—although I don’t care how fast he gets it done. A dad bod is okay as long as he’s active.”
I had no idea what a dad bod was, but got the impression this was a major departure from what the shrew had expected from her ideal male in the not-so-distant past.
“He’s got to be smart and confident. Not Einstein or anything. And by confident, I mean it’s okay if he’s a bit of a goof. Actually, an occasional goof-ball can be fun. A guy with a good sense of humor. Supportive. Not necessarily in a financial sense, although we’d have a hard road ahead if he was as poor as me. I mean…someone who understands what I’m facing as far as conflicting emotions between the life I’ve chosen and how I feel stalled out—as if all my friends have advanced in their careers where I’m at the same place I was at twenty-two.”
I grunted, absolutely confused about all of this. It felt somehow big that she was unloading her hopes and dreams on me, a virtual stranger. Maybe it wasbecauseI was a stranger and she felt safe in the anonymity of it all. Either way, I was once more thrown off my axis. I’d expected her to reply with something like “good-looking with a big hand axe” and instead I was hearing a rambling list that made me realize the shrew didn’t truly knowwhatshe wanted in a husband.
That made two of us. If I hadn’t been given specific instructions from my father, then I would be floundering as well.
She let out a breathy laugh and glanced over at me, her dark eyes sparkling with self-deprecating humor. “I’ve had a habit of falling for the wrong guy in the past. Super hot bad boys who can’t commit, who care about themselves more than they care about me. Guys who look amazing on the surface, but underneath have zero to offer in terms of depth and partnership.”
That…thatstung. It more than stung. Her words tore through what I thought had been impenetrable armor and lanced through my chest. I was a prince, the heir to a large and wealthy orc kingdom. I was good-looking. I was intelligent. On the surface I was amazing.
