Page 2 of How To Woo A Warrior Orc

“Do you miss speaking Orcish?” comes out instead.

Ga’Rek goes silent, and I’m a coward, because I can’t even bring myself to look at him.

Finally, I wipe the one spot I’ve missed on the window, the glass squeaking under my ministrations. The willow broom I keep beside the door out of pure witch tradition seems to glare at me in reproach for my rude question.

Even Velvet seems to side-eye me from where she stands, grazing on some of the potted impatiens that flank my shop. It’s time to switch them out to something more appropriate for fall. The roses are clearly beyond my control, but the annuals? The annuals I can at least make festive.

“Orcish isn’t just something spoken,” Ga’Rek finally answers.

A blush heats my cheeks. “I, I didn’t mean to pry, please don’t feel like you have to answer?—”

“Language doesn’t cease to exist just because it isn’t spoken. It lives inside our hearts and minds. And how could I miss itwhen I just spoke it to you?” A laugh follows the question, and though there’s not a shred of cruelty or fun-making in it, my cheeks get even hotter.

Stammering an apology, I open the front door and practically jog inside. Black and white checkered tiles run together as I race towards the kitchen in the back, needing to splash water on my cheeks and get myself right before Ga’Rek and I start our work together.

I should be used to the huge orc by now, should be used to the way he seems to know exactly where to move around me in the kitchen. It’s a specific dance of companions, when you know how to predict where they will be at any given moment, how to determine where their tasks will take them.

It should have taken us much, much longer to reach this point of comfort with each other than the few meager weeks that have passed.

The thought makes me feel wildly uncomfortable, and then it gets so much worse, because it’s immediately followed by a very obvious realization.

This huge warrior orc who’s made himself at home here in my most sacred space, my kitchen… I am extremely attracted to him.

And there’s nothing friendly or companionable about it.

I swallow hard, squeezing my eyes shut as the bell over the door jingles, announcing he’s followed me inside The Pixie’s Perch.

The question is now: what am I going to do about it?

CHAPTER TWO

GA’REK

Islipped.

Using Orcish has clearly frightened Piper, who all but sprinted away from me. She’s as flighty as the pixies she’s named her shop after, and as shy and sweet as her deer familiar.

I take my time strolling to the back of her café, enjoying, as always, the scent of the place. Cinnamon and lavender, sugar and butter, the unmistakable earthy smell of yeast dough rising.

The sun-drenched Pixie’s Perch, with its quaint mismatched furniture, is a far cry from the darkly glamorous world of the Underhill. No, the brass and glass candle pendants that hang from the ceiling and glow softly aren’t the cold-lit diamond chandeliers the Dark Queen of the Unseelie prefers, and I am glad for it.

I close my eyes, stopping before I enter the kitchen, and soak up the warmth of the morning sun streaming in earnest through the glass windows and onto my back. I would have gotten hereearlier, as I normally do, but Piper chewed her lip yesterday afternoon and told me she needed “alone time” with the yeast doughs this morning.

I assumed she meant alone time for herself, period, but from the way she’s now chanting over the bowls of colorful cloth-covered dough, perhaps she did mean alone time with the rising dough.

Kitchen witchery, it turns out, is a strange and convoluted magic.

The pink doorframe that leads to the back kitchen creaks as I lean against it.

She doesn’t look up from her work, now humming something under her breath as she pulls a ball of sticky dough out.

“I could go down to Willow’s Apothecary and see if she has anything in her greenhouse to add to the front porch for, uh, autumn, if you’d like.” I’m fishing for words, for a solution to her distress.

Despite me comforting her only a few days ago in her friend Wren’s small living room, promising her she did not have to handle the fall festival and the duchess’s visit to Wild Oak Woods, Piper has shunned all attempts to lighten her load.

It’s frustrating and endearing all at once.

The petite woman is clearly not used to asking for or receiving help of any kind, and I can’t help but marvel at the weight she bears on those slim shoulders.

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