Valdrek holds my gaze one second longer. My whole chest leans toward him, even though I’d mock another woman for that. Then he sits, and the chair creaks a warning under him. Whatever this is, it’s happening to both of us at maximum volume in absolute silence. The hearing resumes.
He testifies. I get down every word, which, considering the state I’m in, I deserve a fucking medal.
Q: Do you affirm your testimony will be truthful?
A: I do.
Q: You have been in the program fourteen months, the longest current residency. In your own words, describe those months.
A: I am still here.
Q: Have program staff treated you well?
A: Yes. They try hard.
Q: Does the length of your wait indicate a flaw in the program?
A: Some matches take time.
Q: Do you remain hopeful of a match?
There are four seconds of silence, and I look up from my keys. He’s watching me with his ears standing straight up.
A: Yes. It will happen.
Q: Anything further you wish to add?
A: No. Thank you.
Twenty-one words, total, including the oath. The redhead is going to lose her mind. He rises to leave. He doesn’t look at me again, but as he makes his way past the orc representatives, he bends to Dargan’s ear and says something. Dargan’s coffee cup stops halfway to his mouth and descends, slowly, back to its saucer. Dargan looks at me for a long moment with an expression I can only describe as delighted sympathy as Valdrek angles himself through the door and is gone.
The hum under my breastbone stays all afternoon.
That evening, I’m in my quarters, ignoring that the room is the size of a walk-in closet, and eating a granola bar over the sink while I lose an argument with myself.
I’m thirty-five years old, and I don’t get soaked over a stranger who said twenty-one words. There’s a rational explanation, probably glandular, possibly related to ferry exhaust. Tomorrow I’ll sit in the room and take the record like nothing happened.
That’s the argument. My body isn’t having any of it.
My nipples have been hard all afternoon. There’s a pulse between my legs that hasn’t let up since he came through that door, and every time I stop moving, I can feel how wet I still am. I keep catching myself with my thighs pressed together, squeezing, which does nothing except remind me how empty I am, which is not a thing I have ever once thought about before today.
It doesn’t help that I can still smell him. I’ve raised my wrist to my face twice to check if it’s me, and both times, there was nothing there.
It doesn’t stop the fantasies. It’s small ones first. What the braid would feel like wrapped around my fist. Whether he’d growl and if my nipples would respond if that growl was against my mouth. What those massive hands would look like undoing my buttons while I forget how to breathe.
Then bigger ones. His palms spanning my waist, getting picked up like I weigh nothing and set down exactly where he wants me. I know exactly where I want that to be.
The newest one has him on his knees, and I’ve already figured out where the tusks go, because I’ve just gotten to the part where he hooks my knee over his shoulder and tells me to hold still in that voice I felt through the floor. The tusks graze the inside of my thigh, and—
Someone knocks.
Shit. I straighten up, like the person can see me through the door. Diane barely waits three seconds before opening it, which I’d find rude if I were in any sort of frame of mind to think straight.
She comes in with the folder and the determined face of a woman who has important news.
“Ms. Delgado. There’s been a development.”
She sits on my desk chair, pulls a pamphlet from the folder, and slides it across the desk. It says UNDERSTANDING SCENT RECOGNITION.
