I have to reassure myself that I am not turned on that he can pick up my scent. I’m not. Really.
His gaze holds on me. “I should go, Ma. Tell the rest I said hi.”
I look away and stare hard at the speckled concrete walls while he ends the call and pockets his phone.
When I finally glance up again, I wish I’d kept my eyes on the ground.
Even with the vent blowing cool air past me, heat creeps up my cheeks at the visible evidence of arousal starting to bulge in his pant leg. MR did say something about not being in the same room together, even if no one would consider the stairwell a room.
On one hand, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one having unwarranted physical reactions. On the other hand, I don’t know what it says about Khent that the scent of my hair conditioner is getting him hard.
Khent rolls his neck and grumbles a little, angling himself away so his erection is much less visible from me. I’m simultaneously disappointed and impressed with the quality of pants he owns.
“I don’t need to tell you about company policy for personal calls,” I say, a line of defense to conceal how curious my eavesdropping had made me, half to say anything at all. I cringe at how callous I sound.
Khent raises a brow at me over his shoulder, like I have any business telling him off when he knows I’ve been searching porn at work.
I press my lips together a moment and add, “But I won’t say anything if you don’t tell anyone I’m hiding from my boss either.”
For a moment, his face is unreadable. A sliver of a smile breaks through between his tusks. Then a near silent laugh gives his massive shoulders a little shake. A silent earthquake in its own right.
I realize then that I’ve been clutching the railing. Less like I’m trying to not fall over the edge, more like it's the only thing between us and if my puny human arms were stronger, I could rip my way through them. Fucking hormones. Or pheromones. I don’t know.
I sink down onto the step, trying to make myself hold the railing bars looser. I lean my temple against them and the cool touch of the metal on my skin cuts through the heat.
“So, uh, kinda soon to tell your mom about us. You haven’t even asked me to dinner yet,” I chide teasingly, and his face flushes a slightly darker green.
“I’m. Uh. Not great at lying to my mom,” he admits, running a hand through his dark hair, ruining the neat combed lines he had.
“Not even over the phone?”
“Believe me, I got in more trouble trying to hide the rules I broke as a kid, than actually breaking them,” Khent shakes his head, though he looks fond. He smiles a little like he’s remembering something.
I’m not charmed by his mama’s boy-ness, I’m just pressing my face a little too hard into the railing bars.
I force my eyes to the ground in front of me, and mumble, “Maybe you’ve got poker tells.”
“Probably.”
A silence falls over the two of us. This might be the first real conversation we’ve had in this whole ordeal. It’s nice. It’s normal.
In the last few days, I feel like I forgot how to be normal.
I fidget with a loose thread on my pants a moment, unwilling to get up and just leave. I want to keep talking to him. It’s nice not to have to be the only one suffering through this, even if we have to stay several yards apart.
“So, tell me about bonding. I don’t really have a reference point for it,” I say, instead of telling him he’s wrong about thinking humans wouldn’t think it important. I’m sure it’s important.
Khent shrugs. “It’s just the foundation of Orc society. That’s all.”
I swallow. “Oh, that’s all?”
I had felt a little bad about eavesdropping, but something about his tone made guilt sink down in my stomach. Not only had I stumbled into accidentally kickstarting the whole mating ritual thing, but apparently I’d stepped on some important cultural norms.
Why couldn’t the pamphlet have gone into a little more detail on that? Surely the many sets of tusks an Orc goes through in life could have taken a back seat to this.
“It really isn’t possible to step on another human’s toes and be pronounced married from it,” I say after a little while, my unease probably a little too clear in my voice. “Though to be fair, if it was a thing for us, we’d probably all wear steel-toed shoes.”
He gives a laugh so small it’s barely more than a breath. “To be fair, humans don’t usually draw first blood from an Orc barehanded. At least, not that I’ve heard of.”