The orc washuge.Not simply tall, but thick with the kind of muscle that didn’t spring from vanity. Even his wrists looked bulky, as if his bones were denser, more robust than her own.
His skin was a luminous green — perhaps even slightly bluein the harsh light of the cabin — and his hair was a thick tangle of inky black waves. It draped over his corded neck to rest on the shoulders of a well-loved black leather jacket. His brows were heavy, his lips wickedly shaped, and his nose a narrow, arched blade between dark eyes lined with outrageously long lashes.
In a word, he was beautiful.
He was alsogrowling.
The vampire clumsily pulled one side of his large headphones away from his ear. “I… What?”
Goosebumps broke out over her skin as the orc glowered down at the gobsmacked vampire. One heavily muscled arm was stretched up, a gloved palm braced against the overhead bin, as he leaned down to hiss from between prominent upper and lower fangs, “I said,get up.”
The vampire stared, open mouthed, for a moment before the command registered.
“Oh, shit, yeah—sorry, I didn’t—here you go!” Unbuckling his seatbelt, he awkwardly levered himself up and around the hulking orc, who barely moved an inch to allow him by.
Atria watched the exchange with wide eyes. They only got wider when the orc grunted and made to squeeze under the overhead compartment to take the middle seat.
His face was hard, every line fixed in a cold expression that hid what only an empath would know — that he wasburningwith the kind of rage that would have made any being with a brain stem cower.
Atria wanted to do that, but when he stooped to shuffle between the seats, their eyes met and she found herself simplyunableto look away. Her mind went fuzzy. Her heartbeat slowed. Fight or flight instincts knotted up into a snarled mass that left her simply frozen as the predator advanced on her, his beautiful features pulled tight with barely leashed aggression.
His nostrils flared. The skin around his eyes and mouth went suddenly tight even as his eyelids lowered to an unsettling half-mast.
He braced one huge, black gloved hand on the headrest of the seat in front of her as he slowly lowered his bulk into the middle seat. The entire row creaked under his weight when he settled onto the thin, vinyl-covered cushion.
She held her breath when his lashes lowered slowly, covering those dark eyes, before they lifted again — revealing pupils that were so expanded, they left only the thinnest sliver of his iris visible.
For a moment, the world was narrowed to just him.
She was hyper-aware of his breaths, how they were so deep his massive shoulders brushed hers with every inhale and exhale. She felt the slightest shift in that blazing emotional landscape he kept locked under the icy expression; how the rage began to recede in favor of a primal sort of satisfaction mixed with a perplexing amount of disgust and anxiety.
The plane and its occupants vanished. There was only him, terrifying and all-consuming, as he stared at her like he couldn’t decide whether he was hungry enough to eat her.
The spell, such as it was, broke when the vampire fumbled to get back into his seat.
The orc’s head swiveled so fast, she thought she heard his neck crack. She couldn’t see his expression, but whatever it was must have been a sight to behold, because the vampire somehow managed to getpaleras he flopped into his seat. His headphones fell haphazardly around his neck as he shrank into the armrest farthest away from their row companion.
They shared a wide-eyed look over the orc’s shoulder for all of a heartbeat before a deep, rumbling growl built in his chest — a sound loud enough that it could be heard clearly over the plane’s engines and the whirring air vents all around them.
The orc spread his legs as he leaned toward the vampire, one thick forearm on the comparatively tiny armrest between them. Atria sucked in a breath when his thigh pressed shamelessly against hers, connecting them from hip to knee even when she shifted away.
“Hey,” he rumbled, moving so she could no longer see the vampire, “I want you to listen real close to what I’m about to tell you, vamp.” There was a beat, presumably wherein the vampire nodded, before he continued in that low, tightly controlled voice, “You’re gonna keep your eyes straight ahead, you hear me? Better yet, as soon as that seatbelt light turns off, you should go find yourself a nice empty seat in another row — or else this trip is gonna get real uncomfortable for the both of us. Understand?”
Oh gods, please don’t leave me alone with him.
Atria must have made a small, involuntary sound of alarm because the orc’s head snapped in her direction again. She hastily looked away, pretending to be occupied with making sure her seatbelt was secure as the plane began to taxi down the runway.
Don’t talk to me. Please don’t talk to me—
“You good?”
She pulled on the hems of her sleeves until they covered her suddenly sweaty hands. “Yep,” she answered without looking at him. “Not good on planes is all.”
A not so small part of her hoped that he would take that as an early warning that she might get motion sickness and pick a different row to occupy, but it didn’t work. In fact, the orc seemed to take that as an invitation to movecloser.His bicep quickly joined his thigh in invading her space.
She tried to squeeze herself into the corner where her seat met the plastic wall, but there was only so much space. The orc seemed content to take up most of it. He leaned back into his seat and braced both forearms on the armrests, his eyes fixed on some distant point over the heads of the other passengers as the plane picked up speed and began to tilt its nose upward.
Anxiety spiked in the cabin, spicing the air alongside a healthy dose of excitement from those few who relished the weightless feeling of take-off, as well as the burst of magic that enhanced the engines.
