“Get your bleedin’ car out of my spot, or I’m having it towed,” she heard a heavy brogue call down in response.There must be apartments over the businesses.“One...two…”
The tall orc didn’t wait for three, taking off in a sprint, his own laughter echoing between the deserted buildings.
When she rounded the same corner, she saw him again. Unlike the orcs she knew from home and the ones she met last night, with their long hair and symbolic braids, the sides of this orc’s head were shaved, leaving his jet-black hair to flop over to one side, not quite brushing his broad shoulder.
She admired the width of his back, tapering to a narrow waist and ending in those endlessly long legs. She was tall for an elf, and always tended to gravitate to guys who could make her feel dainty. She would come up to the middle of this tall drink of water’s chest, a perfect kissing height if she were interested in kissing any of the orcs she met.It’s not that kind of trip...this is to cross stuff off the bucket list, nothing more.
He’d slowed to a walk at that point, glancing over his shoulder when he heard her approach. She watched him turn back, only to do a double-take, whipping around with a bright smile, stepping to the side of the pavement, allowing her to pass. He wasn’t as bulky as the orcs at the poolside party the night before, but his face, from the quick glance she got as she jogged past beaming, was angular and handsome.
“The wine of friendship is succor and light, an oath which brightens the darkest of night.”
She tossed the beginning of the Elvish sonnet over her shoulder, grinning when the handsome orc’s laughter rang out behind her.
“Beautyandbrains?! Be still my heart!”
Ris slowed as she approached the corner, giving him an opportunity to catch up, but when she turned, he was gone. She was standing before the little bistro, she realized, where they’d eaten the previous evening. The handsome orc must have turned up the narrow alley she’d passed, on the edge of the restaurant’s light-strung terrace.Maybe he’ll be at the party tonight.There was curling script in the lower corner of the window she stood before, shimmering gold, advertising the champagne brunch she remembered seeing on the menu the previous evening, and she turned back in the direction of the resort to ready herself for the day.Perfect. They don’t want to get up early anyway.
♥♥♥
“So you just passed out?! That’s crazy! Good thing that guy was there, huh?”
Lurielle tightened her grip on the delicate stem of the champagne flute, tipping it back before answering. She didn’t know why she was lying. She’d slept in far too late, had woken with a headache, as she always did when she cried before bed, and now she was sitting across from Ris and Silva at brunch, lying about Khash as her head spun from the copious amount of champagne they’d consumed.
“The place last night does a champagne brunch; I saw it on their window,” Ris had announced once everyone had emerged from their rooms that morning. “Doesn’t that sound scrumptious? Every day should start with champagne!”
She had grunted her approval from where she sprawled on the sofa, feeling like a worn-out sock. Ris looked like a fitness model, by contrast, in her spandex leggings and strappy sports bra, her sleek, straight hair swinging from a high ponytail. Silva had straightened up as Ris spoke, her eyes widening as she nodded her agreement, disappearing back into her room, leaving Lurielle alone to contemplate the frizzy mess atop her head.
Her dreams had been sluggish and thick; a tide of dark, sweet syrup enveloping her and pulling her down as she tossed and turned. She’d woken several times throughout the night, gasping and tangled in her sweat-soaked sheets, the thick curl of his drawling voice still playing at her ear.
When she’d staggered to the kitchen at one point to refill her water glass, wrapped in the big towel she’d come home in, the balcony doors had been open. As she peered out, Lurielle had been able to see Ris, down in the lawn a short distance away, talking to a hulking green shape. Turning back to the kitchen, she’d unexpectedly locked eyes with Silva, slipping through the door soundlessly. Her practically perfect co-worker had looked as neat and put-together as she always did, and Lurielle didn’t have the presence of mind to question where she’d been coming from before stumbling back to bed, gripping the side of the borrowed towel tightly. She’d still been clinging to his towel that morning, holding it like a security blanket as bright sunlight filtered in through the window.
“Yeah, good thing,” she mumbled, pushing grilled peaches around her plate, her lie evidently accepted. She eyed herself in the mirrored mercury glass column across from their table, wondering if Silva’s high-end hair products had diminished the snarled bird’s nest effect her hair had assumed as she tossed and turned the night before. Silva had enthusiastically responded to her request for smoothing cream, bringing a salon’s worth of product into Lurielle’s room, giving her a step-by-step tutorial on the steps in which she ought to use them, before disappearing back to her own room to change her clothes for the third time.
The same jocular server from the previous evening had greeted them when they'd stepped through the door, watching with a sharp-edged smile as a heavily pierced tiefling seated them, quickly filling the blue cut-glass water goblets. When the tiefling girl left to put their order in, Ris had dropped back against the carved wooden chair back with a sigh.
“I’m not going to call last night a bust, but it definitely wasn’t a win. We need to do better today, ladies.”
Lurielle had kept her gaze trained to the table. The table linens were beautiful, appearing to be hand-embroidered and crisply pressed, a lovely contrast with the eclectic mix of tableware. The entire restaurant was done in soft colors with delicate detailing, flowers and branches and lace, giving the impression of some secret nook in an enchanted forest. She’d noticed Silva also kept her eyes lowered, seemingly engrossed with the pretty water goblet’s stems.
“What do you think we should do today?”
“I think,” Lurielle started carefully before Ris could suggest going hiking in their lingerie, “that we should hit the shops. There’s a really pretty necklace I want to look at in the place that does the hand-forged silver, and the soap shop was right next door. And Silva wanted to find some cider.”
Silva’s eyes had raised in surprise, a pleased smile on her face. Her little yellow scarf was expertly knotted around her neck in place of her pearls, a perfectly frayed denim jacket atop her periwinkle dress. It was the third outfit she’d changed into that morning after Ris had suggested brunch, and Lurielle wondered if her younger co-worker experienced such manic indecision over her clothes every time she left the house. She didn’t understand how Silva managed to look as polished and perfect as she ever did, despite having come back to the room in the middle of the night, and had been about to ask what she had gotten up to in her and Ris’s absence, but the question had been interrupted by the handsome, cocky-looking orc. The stainless steel ice bucket had seemed to smoke on the table as he placed it, and the girls fell silent in anticipation.
“So very nice to see you lovely ladies back again.”
His lightly accented voice had the same musical, sing-songy cadence that it had the night before, but something about his smile made Lurielle shiver as he turned away to expertly pop the cork on their champagne. He was short compared to Khash, slim and graceful, but there wereentirelytoo many teeth crowding his smile, and their glint seemed sinister in the bright light of day. When he slid the magnum into the bucket of ice after pouring their glasses, his smile twitching at the corner as if he were trying and failing to keep it in check, Ris’s eyebrows shot up. “Enjoy, ladies,” he’d trilled lightly, before turning away from their table to return to the bar, whistling a jaunty tune.
“Is it supposed to be that big?” Ris had hissed after he’d moved away, gesturing to the bottle. “The menu definitely said ‘a bottle of the house champagne,’ right? How are we supposed to drink a whole magnum?!” The tiefling had appeared at that moment, bearing their orders, the jewelry in her arched brows coming together in confusion as she eyed the oversized bottle of champagne. “Well, bottoms up, I guess. We can’t let it go to waste...good thing we can hold our liquor, right?”
Silva let out a high-pitched peal of laughter at Ris’s words, their glasses clinking together musically, and Lurielle watched as the slender orc’s head snapped up at the sound from across the room. His sharp smile gleamed like knives and she shivered again, tipping back her glass until the raspberry at the bottom reached her lips, thinking that there was definitely something unnerving about him.
Now though, the bottle was nearly empty, their conversation punctuated by too much laughter, and Lurielle sent a silent thank you across the room to the creepy orc for inadvertently messing up their order and making her whereabouts the previous evening a forgotten afterthought.
“I met a guy last night out on the lawn, after I came back from the pool,” Ris slurred, leaning into the table. “He invited us to come to a party tonight, I guess they do a big bonfire down by the cabins. I figured we could eat dinner together before we decide what we want to do?”
“What was his name?” Lurielle blurted, cramming the last peach in her mouth, something to soak up the alcohol sloshing within her. The image of Khash meandering around the resort grounds after he left her, accosting her friend in the moonlight was not one she wished to contemplate, but now that the seed had been planted, her alcohol-soaked mind could envision it perfectly. “Does he live here?”
