Page 30 of Loved By the Orc

He was getting closer and closer, shoving his face into mine. His breath smelled like death—I mean that. It smelled like something rotten and decayed and unspeakably foul. It made my stomach turn with revulsion.

“Disgust tastes nice too!” he snarled at me and then he was opening his mouth to take a bite of my shoulder.

As the points of his teeth grazed my arm, I yanked back and felt my right hand come free. Instinctively, I shoved it into his face to push him away. As I made contact with his gray skin, the dull golden-red glow that was emanating from my fingers abruptly brightened to a blinding radiance.

“Ahh!”Mr. Price’s flat black eyes narrowed in pain and he seemed to want to get away from me, but he couldn’t. It was like my hand was a powerful magnet and his face was made of iron.

Iron,I thought randomly.But my hand is glowing gold…

No sooner had the thought entered my head than something strange began to happen—(yes, even stranger than my glowing hand trapping my ex-boss who was also a Sin Sucker monster in place.)

Mr. Price began to change. His gray skin began to glow and then turn shiny and golden. At the same time, the part that had become gold—which was basically the whole left side of his face—seemed to freeze in place.

“Noooo!” he howled but already the bottom part of his jaw was going gold as well. “Nnnnnn!” His tongue was gold—I could see it. He raised his right arm and slashed at me.

I gasped and jerked my hand off his face, twisting away instinctively. I felt the tips of his claws graze my shoulder, slashing easily through the silk fabric of my work blouse and scratching my skin.

Unfortunately, when I stopped touching him, the engoldening effect—or whatever you want to call it—seemed to start reversing itself.

“Wha di’ ya do ta me?” he howled, his tongue still half-frozen butbeginning to “thaw” and turn back to the grayish-black color it had been before. “Wha di’ yado?”

He was fumbling with the golden side of his head—it really did look like a golden statue. And it must have been as heavy as gold too, because his neck couldn’t support it and he was slumped over to one side.

While he was distracted with his new affliction, I desperately tried to free my other wrist and my ankles. But now that I was tryingconsciouslyto make my magic work, I found that it wouldn’t anymore. The glow had faded and my fingers had turned back to regular digits again. No matter how much I yanked and tugged at the other three zip-ties, they didn’t melt and nothing else happened either.

“I’ll kill you!” the Mr. Price monster screamed at me. His tongue was completely unfrozen now and the left side of his head was rapidly going from gold to gray too. “I’ll kill you, you little slut!”

He lunged at me and I twisted away so violently the chair toppled over.

“Oof!” I gasped as I made contact with the hard floor under the shiny sheet of plastic. I was on my left side with only my right arm free. Frantically I tried to unfasten the zip-tie on my left wrist, but I couldn’t even reach it.

It was then that I heard a pounding on the door.

Thud…thud…thud!

“Harmony?Harmony!”a deep, familiar voice was shouting.

It was Tark! Relief flooded me. I had no idea how the big Orc had found me but I was so,soglad that he had.

“In here!” I wheezed—the breath had been knocked out of me by the fall. “In…here!”

But Tark wasn’t inside yet and Mr. Price had nearly returned to normal now.

“Is that your ‘true love’—perhaps even your Heartmate?” he asked, leering down at me. “Is he the one who likes you ‘just the way you are’?”

“Yes, he is!” I spat at him, as furious as I was frightened.

“Then he must truly love you! Think how tasty his pain will be when he comes in and finds youdead!”

He lunged for me again and wrapped long, taloned fingers around my throat. But just then with a massiveTHUD!the door crashed open and Tark was there.

14

HARMONY

The big Orc was bare-chested and his golden eyes were wild. In his hands was a massive war ax—almost as tall as he was himself—with a blade as big as his torso.

Only someone as huge as Tark could have wielded such a weapon and let me tell you, he came in swinging.

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