"This is inappropriate," I manage, but my voice has gone breathy and uncertain.
"Is it?" He tilts his head, studying me with that same intense focus he'd used in my bakery. "Because you're not moving away."
"I'm trying to have a professional conversation?—"
"There's nothing professional about the way you're looking at me right now, little baker."
The nickname should annoy me. It absolutely should. Instead, it does something warm and liquid to my insides that I absolutely refuse to acknowledge.
"You're imagining things."
"Am I?" His free hand lifts, and I see with frozen fascination as he brushes his thumb across my cheekbone, collecting a smudge of flour I didn't know was there. "You smell like sugar and stress. You've been working yourself too hard, taking on too much, refusing help because you think accepting it makes you weak."
"I don't think that?—"
"You do." His thumb traces a slow path along my jaw, and I forget how to breathe. "You think if you show any vulnerability, the whole thing will collapse. So you work alone and you fight alone and you pretend that you don't need anyone."
"I don't need?—"
"I know. You don't need a bodyguard or a protector or someone to defend your territory. But maybe you want it anyway."
The accuracy of the observation steals my breath. Because he's right. I've spent so long insisting on my independence, on my capability, on my ability to handle everything myself, that I forgot what it feels like to have someone actually offer to share the weight.
And Lanek isn't offering out of pity or obligation. He's offering because he sees value in what I do, because he respects the work, because in his straightforward, literal Orc way, he's decided that I'm worth protecting.
"This is a bad idea," I whisper, but I don't move away.
"Probably," he agrees. "But you're still not leaving."
"You're blocking the exit."
"My arm isn't touching you. You could leave whenever you want." His thumb brushes across my lower lip, and I feel the touch all the way down to my toes. "So why aren't you?"
Because standing here in this narrow alley with a massive Orc caging me against rough brick while the afternoon sun bakes the air around us feels more solid and real than anything has in months. Because the careful control I've maintained is cracking under the weight of his attention. Because I'm tired of fighting everything alone, and he's offering something I didn't know I wanted.
"Let me help," he says again, quieter this time. "Not because you need it. Because I want to."
I should say no. I should duck under his arm and march back to my bakery and maintain the professional boundaries that will keep this situation from spiraling into complete chaos.
Instead, I hear myself say, "How?"
His smile is slow and devastating. "However you'll let me, little baker."
CHAPTER 6
LANEK
The moment she says it,how, I know I've won something crucial, even if I don't fully understand what. Her blue eyes are wide and uncertain, her breathing shallow, and the powdered sugar still dusting her cheek catches the afternoon light filtering into the alley. She smells like vanilla and butter and something sharper underneath, something that might be fear or anticipation or both.
I want to answer her. I want to lean down and show her exactly how I plan to help, starting with kissing that stubborn mouth until she stops thinking in careful, controlled strategies and just feels. But the second I shift my weight forward, her entire body goes rigid.
Then she ducks under my arm and bolts.
I don't chase her. That would be exactly the wrong move. Instead, I stay where I am, watching her sprint across the alley in her flour-dusted vintage dress, fumbling with her keys before disappearing through her back door. The deadbolt slides home with a definitive click that echoes in the narrow space.
I exhale slowly, rolling my shoulders to release the tension coiling through my muscles. My hand still tingles where I touched her face, where I felt the rapid flutter of her pulseunder impossibly soft skin. She's terrified. Not of me, exactly, but of what I represent, of losing control, of admitting she wants something she can't neatly categorize and manage.
In Orc culture, this would be simple. She's responding to my presence, challenging my strength, testing my resolve. The courtship would proceed with clear, direct steps, proving my ability to provide, to protect, to claim. But Quinn isn't Orc. She's human, and clearly I've been going about this entirely wrong if I've scared her into literally running away.
