The reaction is visceral. Every single Orc turns to stare at me with expressions ranging from shock to concern to barely suppressed amusement, and Garak actually laughs, a short, barking sound that he quickly tries to disguise as a cough when Thrall's head snaps toward him with predatory focus.
Thrall's amber eyes lock onto mine, and there's something dangerous and assessing in his gaze that makes my pulse spike uncomfortably because I've just volunteered to literally tie myself to a man who radiates violence and controlled aggression like other people radiate body heat, and I'm suddenly very aware of exactly how small I am compared to him, how easily he could snap me in half without even trying.
"You're serious," he says, and it's not a question so much as a statement of disbelief, like he's waiting for me to laugh andadmit this is some kind of elaborate prank designed to humiliate him in front of his employees.
"Completely serious," I confirm, walking toward the pile of soft fabric ties I brought specifically for this exercise, the ones designed to be secure enough for the activity but easy to remove in case of emergency. I grab one and march directly up to Thrall's position in the group, forcing myself to maintain eye contact and project confidence I absolutely don't feel. "Someone has to demonstrate proper technique, and clearly your executives are too intimidated by you to volunteer. So congratulations, you get me. Try not to break anything important."
I drop into a crouch next to his left leg, the one closest to me, and immediately realize I've made a catastrophic error in judgment because his thigh is genuinely the size of my entire torso, thick with muscle and radiating heat through the dark denim of his jeans like he's running several degrees hotter than baseline human temperature. I wrap the fabric tie around my right ankle first, my fingers fumbling slightly with the buckle mechanism because my hands are shaking and I'm trying very hard not to think about the fact that I'm kneeling next to a man who could crush my skull with one hand and barely notice the effort.
"You need to lower your leg," I say without looking up, focusing all my attention on the tie and definitely not on the way his presence feels presses down on the air around me. "I can't reach high enough to secure this properly unless you cooperate."
There's a pause, long enough that I think he might actually refuse just to make this more difficult, and then he shifts his weight and bends his knee slightly, bringing his ankle down to a height I can actually work with. I loop the fabric around his ankle, and my knuckles brush against his skin where his jeans have ridden up slightly, and the contact sends an electricjolt straight up my arm that I absolutely refuse to acknowledge because this is a professional team-building exercise and I am not going to let my traitorous nervous system turn it into something it's not.
His leg is enormous. I know this objectively because I have eyes and basic spatial reasoning skills, but having it tied directly to mine drives the reality home in a way that makes my brain short-circuit momentarily because the circumference of his calf is genuinely larger than my thigh and his leg against mine feels like I've chained myself to a tree trunk that happens to be warm and alive and capable of movement.
I finish securing the tie and straighten up, immediately regretting every life choice that led me to this exact moment because standing this close to Thrall means I have to tilt my head back at an almost ninety-degree angle just to see his face, and the sheer scale difference makes me feel like I'm trying to have a conversation with a building that decided to grow legs and develop opinions about corporate team dynamics.
"Ready?" I ask, proud of how steady my voice sounds despite the fact that my heart is doing something complicated and arrhythmic behind my ribs.
"No," Thrall says bluntly, looking down at me as if communicating he thinks this is the stupidest thing he's ever been forced to participate in and he's including the time his investors made him do a motivational fire walk. "This is a waste of time. You're half my size. The second we try to move, you're going to fall, I'm going to catch you, and we're going to accomplish absolutely nothing except proving that gravity exists and humans are fragile."
"Then don't let me fall," I snap back, annoyed despite myself because his complete lack of faith in my coordination is frankly insulting and I ran a half-marathon last year without tripping once. "The entire point of this exercise is synchronizedmovement and communication. You call the pace, I match it, we move together. It's not complicated unless you make it complicated."
His eyebrow raises slightly, a skeptical arch that suggests he has significant doubts about my assessment but he's willing to humor me long enough to watch me fail spectacularly.
"Fine," he says, and without any warning whatsoever, he takes a step forward.
It's not even a particularly fast step by his standards, just a normal walking pace for someone with legs approximately the length of my body, but the fabric tie yanks my ankle forward with enough force that I genuinely don't have time to react before my center of gravity shifts and the ground rushes up to meet me with the kind of inevitability usually reserved for natural disasters and tax deadlines.
I don't hit the ground.
Two massive hands wrap around my waist, fingers spanning from my ribs to my hips with room to spare, and suddenly I'm airborne, lifted completely off the grass with the same casual ease someone might use to pick up a briefcase or a small household pet. Thrall hauls me upright and holds me suspended in mid-air for a breathless moment, and I'm suddenly, viscerally aware of exactly how strong he is because he's not straining or struggling or even breathing hard, just holding my body weight at arm's length like I'm made of foam and empty air.
The heat of his hands burns through my blazer and blouse, and I can feel the individual pressure points of each finger against my skin, the way his thumbs rest just below my ribcage and his other fingers curl around my sides with a possessive firmness that makes something low in my stomach clench involuntarily. He smells like ozone and black pepper and expensive leather, sharp and electric and overwhelmingly male, and my brain completely flatlines because this is too muchsensory input happening simultaneously and I don't have the processing power to handle all of it at once.
"See? Told you this was pointless."
He's still holding me. Still has me suspended in the air with my feet dangling uselessly above the grass and my face level with his collarbones, I see the pale scars crossing his throat and the way his pulse beats steadily beneath his green skin. The air between us feels thick and heavy, charged with something I don't have a name for and absolutely cannot afford to examine too closely because I am working and he is a client and this entire situation is careening toward a professional disaster of epic proportions.
"Put me down," I manage, and my voice comes out breathless and strange, missing all the crisp authority I've spent the entire morning carefully projecting.
His eyes drop to mine, amber and predatory and far too knowing, and his mouth curves into something that's not quite a smile but definitely isn't neutral.
"Say please," he says.
CHAPTER 4
THRALL
The moment I set her down, I take three deliberate steps backward and focus on a fixed point somewhere above the treeline, a technique I developed in boardrooms when someone presents data so catastrophically wrong it triggers genuine homicidal ideation. It works in boardrooms. It does not work here, because the problem isn't a badly formatted spreadsheet. The problem is that Romee Lin weighs approximately nothing and fits against my palms like she was architecturally designed to rest there, and my hands still remember the exact shape of her.
My Orc instincts are not subtle things. They don't whisper politely from the back of my mind or present themselves as passing suggestions I can file away for later consideration. They are loud, blunt, and completely indifferent to context, which means standing on a sunlit lawn surrounded by my own executives, I am fighting the very specific urge to put her back where she was and keep her there. She smells like bergamot and something green and sharp, a clean citrus bite that cuts straight through the ozone of my own scent the moment I get close to her, and the fact that I can still detect faint traces of iton my palms is both biologically fascinating and professionally catastrophic.
"Alright," I announce, to no one in particular, already untying the fabric connecting my ankle to hers without looking at her face because looking at her face is currently inadvisable. "I need to work. Brogan, you're doing this activity."
"I don't want to do this activity," Brogan says. He's my head of product development and has the spatial awareness of a very large rock.
"Irrelevant. Do it anyway."
