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Chapter 12
The soft pressure of his thumb was driving her crazy. Around them, the Black Sheep Beanery buzzed with its normal hustle and bustle of patrons gossiping in clusters and jockeying for space. She recognized the lab coat-wearing orc at the table across from theirs from her previous visits, laughing with a human woman in scrubs not unlike those she wore at the farm, and somewhere behind them a harpy cackled. Rourke had taken her hand in his when her voice had hitched, telling him of the final days spent with her aunt in the hospital; enfolding it in his giant palm in the center of the small table as tears spilled over her lashes, recounting the funeral and the days that had followed. He’d not released her as the conversation shifted, and the gentle, velvet pressure of his thumb circling on the inside of her wrist was driving her to dizzy distraction.
“I have a sweet tooth,” he’d announced when she first slid into the chair across from him, tucked into a corner of the always-busy shop. “I wasn’t sure what you might like, so help yourself to both.” A chocolate croissant dusted with powdered sugar sat on one of two plates in the center of the table, and on the other Violet recognized one of the caramel pecan twists he’d ordered several weeks earlier. “The coffee order just came up a minute ago, so it should still be hot.”
Her cup was plugged with a steam keeper, a stack of napkins sat between the plates with both a knife and fork.A details-oriented perfectionist.It was enough to make her swoon. “Word on the street is you’re going to turn into one of these twists.” Their situation was ridiculous, Violet considered as he clucked his tongue. She knew how the heft of his heavy sac felt in her hands, knew how much pull he enjoyed on his hot testicles before his muscles would tighten; knew the spot on his cockhead where he was most sensitive, knew how tight her hands needed to be to make him low deeply. She knew what his orgasm felt like, the pulse of his blood as he came, the way he turned boneless for a moment after . . . it was ludicrous to know so many intimate details about the most private parts of him, and to still have known so little abouthim.Time to change all that.
“You said your grandmother was human?”
“Mhm, she was from town and my grandfather grew up on the settlement. It’s pertinent to keep in mind that this is in the backwoods of the backwater middle of nowhere. They had over three hundred acres of farmland, my parents built their house on one end of it and my cousins lived on the other end. I would read books about kids that would just go out and play without having to muck out stalls and collect in the chicken coops and I assumed it was make-believe.”
The image of him as a child with tiny nubs for horns and soft, lamb-like ears made her stomach somersault as she laughed. “I didn’t realize minotaurs lived in groups like that, like orcs?” She tried to envision the patrons of the farm all going back to the same little neighborhood, and thought that much testosterone in one place was a recipe for disaster.
“They normally don’t. This was a very isolated community, human towns all over. Goddess knows why other species stayed put in areas like that, but if they did, they usually stuck together.” His voice held its usual matter-of-factness, but he hesitated for a moment before continuing. “It’s not always safe to be surrounded by humans that way, that’s why you see things like cervitaur herds and wolf packs.”
He’d been married for nearly five years, had started his own company, owned a home in Cambric Creek. He was a proper adult, a thought that left her shifting against the seat of her chair. She drove a car that had belonged to her aunt, the same generic orange juice was still in her refrigerator, and had to save her tip money to even be able to come to this pricey little gourmet roaster.He is so out of your league, this night is going to end with him shaking your hand so he can enjoy the weekly hand job with a clear conscience. . . but he’d still not released her hand, still stroked the inside of her wrist like she were a kitten in his palm, and the unexpected tenderness from him—always so stern, so in control—had french braided her lungs together, leaving her heart to thump pitifully from within the tangle.
“I’m an only child, so was my mom, so I didn’t grow up with a lot of family around. My mom wants me to move back home, to be closer and I know it’s because she’s lonely, she doesn’treallywant me to give up doing something I love . . . but I don’t have a career, this is just a job, so I feel guilty. I’m a millennial, being anxious and guilty is my birthright, I guess, right? But Idolove it here.” Her mother, unsurprisingly, had conspired with Mrs. Tinsely, and she’d found herself sitting across from Carson Tinsely in a small cafe a week after the funeral. The conversation with her junior high crush had been stilted and strange, completely unlike the time spent with the big minotaur. “I love learning about the different cultures and the food . . . it’s amazing that so many different species can come together here, it makes me want to exploreeverything!”
“It’s not always roses and sunshine,” he’d cautioned with another one of those deep chuckles, a vibrating rumble she wanted to feel against her skin. “Some people don’t wear pants. Now, I’m willing to admit that I’ve lived around humans my whole life, and I understand the way majority culture tends to bleed into everything, but covering your ass in public should be the basic entry point for society, in my opinion. So . . . there’s that. But it’s a nice place. It can be trying, having neighbors celebrating random holidays that involve screaming at the moon on a Tuesday, but for the most part everyone tries to get along.”
The sky outside was a wash of pink and gold, the sun a brilliant orange orb, slowly sinking to crimson. More than an hour had passed, she realized, yet there had been no awkward pauses or silences; no strained laughter or stilted conversation.
“Look, I don’t know how inappropriate this is or not, but I’m a bit past the point of caring.”
She jumped at the sudden bark of his deep voice and he paused, releasing her hand to drag a big hand over his face. “I meant to ask you after I got the ring out, that was the whole point in doing it. I-I don’t like not having the answers I require, and you are just . . . a very intriguing question mark. I missed you, you know. When you were gone.”
Her heart folded in on itself, the notion that he had been thinking of her the same way she thought of him, trying to fill in the blanks in his head. “I missed you too.”
“Well . . . I’m free and clear now, and I’d like to get to know you better.” A bit of that authoritative thunderclap had returned and she straightened in her seat, pressing her thighs together at the hint of demand as he continued. “I don’t want to make things awkward, and I don’t want to jeopardize anything for you at work. If you want me to pause my appointments for the time being, I will.” She shook her head, the ability to speak suddenly deserting her, and the corners of his wide mouth lifted slightly. “I’d like to get to know you, outside of the farm, and I hope my feelings aren’t one-sided.” A flash of white teeth as she continued to flounder mutely, her head bobbing in a nod before shaking again, unsure which sentiment with which she was agreeing. “But I don’t think they are. Would you like to have dinner with me this weekend, Violet?”
The sound of her name in his deep voice turned her into a puddle. She had no doubt that if she said no, he’d never mention it again, that she’d likely never see him again at all. She might have gone on pining forever, building castles of dreams in the sky that she would never act on . . . but she had always been a sucker for authority. She’d been certain that he could ask anything of her in that commanding voice and she’d be helpless to say yes, just as she was certain his sheets would be cool against her back and his weight a comforting heaviness at her side.Rourke.
“I’d love that.”
