"No," I snap back.
His expression doesn't change. Still calm. Still patient. Still infuriatingly present in my space. "Then no," he says simply, as if that settles the matter entirely.
We stare at each other through the security window, neither backing down. Up close like this, I can see details I missed during our first encounter. The silver rings threaded through his tusks catch the overhead light. A thin scar cuts through his left eyebrow. His eyes aren't pure black like I originally thought—they're a very dark brown, warm like coffee beans, with flecks of amber near the iris.
He's also covered in significantly more flour than I realized. It's everywhere. In his hair, his eyebrows, dusted across the bridge of his broad nose. Some distant, traitorous part of my brain notes that he doesn't look threatening right now. He looks like a very large, very patient man who just got caught in a snowstorm.
"You started this entire situation," I say finally, hearing how childish it sounds even as the words leave my mouth. Apparently we've both regressed to playground-level conflict resolution.
"I apologized," he counters, still maddeningly calm.
"With meat!" I practically screech, my voice climbing an octave higher. "You apologized by leaving dead animal parts like some kind of deranged carnivorous suitor!"
"Good meat," he corrects, as if the quality of the offering somehow makes it acceptable. "Prime cuts. Expensive."
"That's not the point!" I throw my hands up in exasperation, sending a fresh cloud of flour particles into the air between us."The point is that normal people apologize with words, Lanek. Words! Maybe flowers if they're feeling fancy. Not with slabs of raw protein that attract flies and horrify my customers!"
His mouth twitches. Actually twitches, like he's fighting back a smile, and the sight of it sends a fresh surge of indignation through my system. "You think this is funny?"
"A little," he admits, and the honesty of it catches me completely off-guard. "You're very small and very angry. It's objectively amusing."
"I will end you," I inform him with as much dignity as I can muster while wielding a wooden spoon like a weapon. "I will bake you into a pie. A very large, very vindictive pie."
He considers this for a moment, his dark eyes sweeping over me with what might be amusement. "I'm too big for a pie," he points out reasonably, as if we're having a perfectly normal discussion about logistics rather than me threatening culinary homicide.
"Then a series of pies," I counter without missing a beat, warming to the theme now. "Multiple pies. An entire bakery case of Lanek pies. I'll label them individually. Lanek Shoulder Pie. Lanek Bicep Tartlet. Lanek Smug Face Mini Quiche."
His eyebrows rise slightly, and I swear I see the corner of his mouth twitch again. "That's disturbing, Quinn," he says, though his tone suggests he's more entertained than concerned about being converted into baked goods.
"You're disturbing! Your entire existence is disturbing! You and your bone saw and your meat gifts and your—your massive arms that can apparently reach through windows like some kind of horror movie monster!"
He's definitely smiling now. Not a smirk, not a grin, but an actual, genuine smile that transforms his entire face from intimidating to something dangerously close to handsome. "My arms are normal-sized for an Orc."
"Well I'm not an Orc, so from my perspective they're terrifying!"
"Are you actually terrified?"
The question makes me pause, because the honest answer is no. Annoyed? Absolutely. Furious? Beyond measure. But terrified? I'm standing here threatening to bake him into pastry while he's got his arm through my window, and the dominant emotion racing through my system is indignation mixed with something I absolutely refuse to examine too closely.
"That's irrelevant," I say instead, though my voice comes out slightly breathless, which I absolutely hate because it undermines the authority I'm trying to project.
"Is it?" He tilts his head slightly, and powder sugar drifts down from his hair like the world's most ridiculous snowfall. He doesn't seem to notice or care.
"Yes. The relevant point is that you're trespassing. This is my bakery, and that," I gesture sharply at his still-visible arm, "is a clear violation of personal and professional boundaries."
"Through a window you left open," he counters, his tone maddeningly reasonable, as if this is a perfectly logical point to make. As if the state of my window somehow negates the fact that he's currently halfway through it like some kind of impossibly broad-shouldered burglar.
"To vent heat, not to invite neighboring butchers to stick their appendages into my workspace!"
The smile widens into something that definitely counts as a grin now, and I realize approximately three seconds too late how that sentence sounded. Heat floods my face, as his eyes track the change, that grin settling into something knowing.
"Don't," I warn, my voice sharp enough to cut through the absurdity of this entire situation.
"I didn't say anything," he replies, and the picture of innocence in his tone is so utterly unconvincing that it makes my teeth grind together.
"You were thinking it," I snap back, because I can see it in his eyes, in the way that knowing grin is spreading wider, transforming his entire expression into something unbearably smug.
"Thinking what, exactly?" he asks, his voice dropping into a lower register that somehow makes the question sound far more dangerous than it has any right to be.
