Page 17 of Alien Orc's Prize

It was nearly an off-hand comment, he said it so easily. As if procuring new, beautiful, made-to-fit clothing was nothing at all. And maybe it was nothing at all to him. He was literal royalty, after all.

But it was something to me. A great big something. And it meant a hell of a whole lot.

“Thank you,” I whispered, my throat feeling thick.

He looked startled by my gratitude. Then he suddenly frowned, leaning forward. After a long inhale through his nose, he closed his eyes and roughly jerked his head a few times, as if trying to dislodge water from his ear. His eyes opened. Their heated darkness went right to my face.

“You smell good right now.”

“What do you mean, rightnow?” I gasped. I couldn’t tell whether I should be offended by his continuing comments on my various human odours, or if I should be glad that he currently approved.

Ridiculously, I was leaning towards the latter. An undeniable spiral of pure pleasure wound through my belly at his blunt, spare praise.

“Your scent keeps changing,” he said, almost sounding a little exasperated that he had to explain. “And it keeps making me want to do things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“When you were in pain from the pins in the hall, and your scent hit me, I wanted to kill somebody. Not you,” he clarified with grunting quickness when my horror no doubt registered on my face. “It was very… nice when your scent returned to something sweeter. Calmer.” His dark eyes regarded me steadily. “If you could attempt to keep your smells on a somewhat more even keel going forward, that would be better.”

“I don’t know how to do that!” I stammered. “I didn’t even know my scent changed with my mood!” I gathered the gold dress around myself as if it were some sort of shield. “If you’re the one so bothered by it, maybe you should wear nose plugs or something!”

“You’re doing it again,” he said. He put my clothing down and came closer. He stared down at me in a way I would have found quite menacing if he hadn’t just spent fifteen minutes on his knees pulling pins from my dress out of an absurd concern about blood loss.

“I can’t help it!” I cried.

“It’s making me rather antsy.”

“Go stand further away from me, then!”

“I don’t want to.”

Oh. My. God.

Had I married the most idiotically stubborn man alive?

Is this because he’s an orc? Or a prince? Or a male?

Or all three?

Whatever it was, he was glaring down at me like he expected me to solve a problem I hadn’t known, until this moment, even existed. It was like he was asking me to never blink again simply because watching the eyelashes flutter was a bother to him.

“Well, like I just said, I truly can’t help it. I wasn’t even aware of this issue until you brought it up!”

He looked at me as if I were stupid. Or maybe that I thoughthewas stupid, and that I was lying to him.

“You were not aware,” he said slowly, clearly, “that every minute shift in your temperament creates an olfactory display as inescapably obvious as waving a colourful flag above your head?”

“Of course not!”

He stared blankly at me for a beat before muttering, “Let us hope, then, that our children do not inherit your terrible sense of smell.”

Hurt and embarrassment seized my chest. Maybe if we’d been married a while, and we knew how to joke around with each other, he could have gotten away with a comment like that.

But we weren’t there yet. And his words stung more than I wanted to admit.

“Blast. What is it now?” His dark eyes flashed, and he gripped my chin between his fingers and his thumb. “It’s changed again. It’s making me feel… very agitated… with the need to fix whatever is causing it.”

“You’re causing it!” I cried before I could stop and think better of it.

---