Page 1 of My Orc (Secret) Boss

Chapter One

Memnon

I staredup at the staircase.

The stupid fucking staircase.

“Thirteen more steps. You can do this,” I whispered.

Ihadto do this. For one thing, my apartment—and pain meds—were at the top of that staircase. If I ever wanted to eat or sleep, I needed to climb.

But let’s be honest; once I got to the top, I’d likely talk myself into coming back down again—which was easier, yeah, but caused different muscles to hurt like hell. Going up and down these stairs so many times, working the destroyed muscles in my right thigh, had my t-shirt soaked through with sweat, my hair plastered to the back of my neck, and my long-since-healed gunshot wound aching like someone had buried hot coals under my skin.

Stupid stairs. Stupid physical therapy.

At least here, on the staircase of the building I owned, at one o’clock in the morning, there was no chance of embarrassing myself.

If my leg gave out, or I just had to sit down for a minute—or ten—no one would see. My brother couldn’t nag me, my therapist couldn’t oh-so-innocently bend my leg himself, despite me telling him I didn’t like being touched.

I was alone with my pain.

The way it should be.

Just as I reached for the banister, steeling myself for the difficulty to come, the light over the lower landing switched on. I froze, my eyes flicking first up the stairs, then to the doors.

Simbel was asleep upstairs, although I guessed it would only be a matter of time before he found a new bed with his Mate. Orcs’ senses—including our hearing—were much more attuned than humans expected them to be, and I could hear my twin brother’s gentle snores from here.

Which meant he hadn’t flipped on the overhead light. Besides, even if hedidwake and stick his head out of our apartment, the light on our landing was on, giving me enough illumination not to bash myself into the wall down here.

If Simbel wasn’t to blame, and the outer door—the one leading to the alley behind the building—was still locked, then that only left…

The back door toThe Garden Shopclicked unlocked, then opened slowly. I pressed my back against the wall, my knuckles white around the banister, and hoped she wouldn’t see me.

No luck.

“Memnon?” her voice was husky, confused. “Is that you?”

My lips tugged into their habitual scowl.

What was she still doing at the shop? I purposefully exercised in the dead of night to be certain shewasn’tgoing to be here. Because whenever she was around, my stupid senses, and my stupidKteer, couldn’t focus on anything else.

Maya Locklear was my downstairs tenant. Of course, she didn’t knowIowned the building now—after years of paying New York City rents, I wanted something to call my own—and it wasn’t like she lived here.The Garden Shopwas her place; a cozy, welcoming store that was part florist, part gardening supply depot. She always smelled vaguely of soil and sunshine and made me want to growl in frustration.

“Memnon?” she asked again, squinting across the landing. “I don’t have my contacts in, so that’d better be you!”

Huh.

Now that I quit being pissed off about the interruption, I took the time to really see her. Thehershe was now, rather than the way she usually looked.

Maya was dressed in a pair of soft shorts that barely covered her ass, and a racer-back tank in a smooth blue that showed off her strong shoulders and an intriguingly delicate vine tattoo along her collarbone. I wanted to study it, but I kept getting distracted by her thick black hair, which was flowing freely around her shoulders, instead of pulled into its usual braid.

She looked…like a woman who’d just woken from sleep.

And was chewing on her lower lip because she’d heard a noise outside and was worried.

I exhaled.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s me. Sorry if I was making noise. Just…climbing the stairs.”

---