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Between my nearly dying of hunger earlier and the shock at the sight of him, a lack of pants to match his bare torso would have likely sent me right over the edge into babbling delirium. I gulped, realizing that the pants weren’t even helping that much. Their finger-twitchingly soft-looking fabric was stretched to the absolute limit over his thick thighs – thighs that promised to be as muscled as the chest and arms on full display.
I’d never been the type to pray. But I found myself praying in that moment. Praying that someone would drop something on the floor so that mister buff-as-fuck over there would have to bend over to pick it up.
No! Bad Maggie! You are a goddamned professional! You’re supposed to be meeting your new neighbours, not ogling them!
Right.
I took a deep breath, turning my gaze back behind the bar. I had worked too hard, sacrificed too much, to get distracted now. I had a business to build from the ground up – no easy feat. That was my priority. It had to be.
Maybe I need a drink to get my head on straight...
I surveyed the shelf upon shelf of alcohol before me. There were human drinks – large glass bottles of bubbling cider; scotch and whiskey made in the cold, ocean-battered highlands of Terratribe 1; wines made with all manner of fruit from the more temperate Terratribe 2. There were drinks from other alien worlds, too. The Exdrok liqueur I’d seen the waitress grab. Milky white XrkXrk whittlebone brandy. Hadorian moon wine. Fermented Etruvian honey ale so thick it was traditionally consumed with a spoon.
I went with a human meal, so I’ll choose an Orc-Orokish drink.
I scanned the bottles, leaning my elbows further forward on the bar. I gasped, flinching back when a deep, rumbling voice cut through the sounds of the pub and spoke from beside me. I whipped my head to the right, only to find that the giant, randomly shirtless orc was behind the bar, just a pace to the right of where I sat. He sidestepped until he was standing directly before me, the narrow board of the bar top the only thing between us.
I sucked in a breath, dragging my gaze up his carved torso to his face. The bar’s surface hit him right above the waist of his pants, so from here, he looked like he could be naked for all I knew. I tried not to focus on that fact as my gaze found his face. But his face was just as distracting, if not more so.
I’d thought he was super attractive from across the pub. But staring at him like this, seeing his face more clearly, I could tell that he wasbeautiful. His thick neck led up into a jaw so hard it would have seemed stony if not for the lopsided smile that greeted me there. Straight white teeth glinted between the two larger tusks that pierced upward out of his mouth. The tips of his tusks hit just below the cheeks bunching with his smile. His nose was high-bridged with a slightly crooked bump on one side that made me wonder if it had once been broken. Dark, heavy, yet elegant brows rested over shimmering eyes a few shades deeper green than his skin. Those eyes reminded me of Terratribe 1 moss, the velvety green carpet-like plant that showed up during New Toronto’s very short (and therefore very beloved) summer season.
His gaze narrowed slightly, a brow raising inquisitively, and I realized I’d completely forgotten he’d just spoken to me.
“Sorry!” I chirped awkwardly, sitting up straighter. “What was that?”
“Something to drink?” he asked, his smile widening as he cocked his head, that green gaze trailing over my rapidly heating face.
I cleared my throat, willing my awkwardness and embarrassment to subside. I was a grown-ass woman. A business owner. A professional. I had no reason to feel so freaking self-conscious right now. Even if this guy’s gaze left a path of heat across my cheeks and down my neck.
“Whatever you recommend. Something Orc-Orokish, if you please. I ordered the turkey dish if that helps.”
“Aye. I know what you ordered,” he said with a slight nod. He spun around to face the shelves of alcohol, the movement shockingly smooth and graceful for a brute his size.
My eyes practically bugged out of my head at the glorious expanse of smooth muscle that was his back. I curled my hands into fists on my lap, trying not to rue the fact that I had never touched an orc before and therefore couldn’t use any past experience to try to imagine what his skin would feel like under my fingertips.
The orc grasped a dark brown bottle and turned back to me.
For a brief moment, I thought he was going to raise the bottle to his mouth and pop the bottlecap off with one of his tusks. Bizarrely, I almost wanted him to. Wanted to see what that sharp, long tooth would do to the metal of the bottle’s lid.
But that would be absolutely absurd, considering this was a restaurant with a professional staff.
Instead of using his teeth, he popped the bottle cap off with the tip of his huge thumb, as easily as if he were flipping an Old-Earth coin. The bottle cap exploded into the air, and his free hand shot upward, catching it and making it disappear into his hammer-like fist. He dropped the bottle cap under the bar somewhere, then started pouring what looked to be ale into a glass. Like the bread, it was tinted a very deep red.
“There you are. Have a sip of that,” he said, flashing that lopsided grin my way once more.
Thank goodness he was handing me a drink because that smile had made my throat go suddenly dry and tight.
“Thanks,” I choked out before taking a sip. The orc watched me carefully, the smile belying the intensity of his gaze as he waited for my reaction.
“Good,” I said, nodding, before taking another sip. Like the bread, it had a slight mineral edge to the flavour that was not at all unpleasant.
I expected him to nod in return and walk off, but he didn’t. He grasped a rag from his back pocket and began polishing the counter, the tendons of his forearm jumping, veins running over the muscles that tensed with his practised movements.
“So,” I began after another sip, forcing my gaze up to his face again. “What’s the name of this place? I wasn’t sure if I got it right.The Middle’s Guardian?”
His green eyes locked onto mine as he continued to scrub at the shining bar.
“That’s right,” he said.
