Chapter 2

Karnak

I triedto keep my mind carefully blank as I pulled myself toward the breakers in even strokes. Out here, with water filling my ears and salt in my eyes, my senses were muffled, duller. It was a blessing.

If only I could dull my thoughts.

And my Kteer.

Last night's conversation with Jess had been the longest I'd allowed myself, even with my instincts warring with what I knew of politeness, and the whole damn mess screaming at me to get inside and leave her be.

Jess—people like her—her entire world…wasn't for me.

I stroked hard, relishing the burn of tired muscles. I'd pushed myself harder on today's swim, going farther into the open ocean just to drown out the memories of her.

One day something larger than you will drag you into the depths.

I looked forward to it.

I was a hunter, a warrior. I couldn't go back where I belonged, and I damn well didn't belong here. But Eastshore was…someplace I could be. Be unharried, be unbothered.

Be alone.

Every day, sometimes twice, I struck out for the beach. There were limited public beach access points on Eastshore Isle—which might be why the town wasn't overrun with tourists—but my favorite was the strip in front of the public library. I could swim out and back, or sometimes around the island, coming ashore at the fishing pier or the marina, pitting myself against the elements.

I'd yet to meet a creature bigger than me, much to my irritation.

When I reached the breakers, I pressed my ankles together and thrust my arms above my head, riding one of the waves toward the beach. It was a brief moment of flying, normally an exhilarating way to end a workout.

Today it just pissed me off.

Today everything pissed me off.

Swimming with a hard-on was damned difficult. Shot the drag coefficient all to hell, as Cairo would say.

I took a few deep breaths as I stood, scanning the beach to make certain I wasn't going to scare any small children or grannies. More than once a kid had taken a look at me—green, tusked, scowling—rising from the water and started screaming about monsters.

Yep, that's me, kid.

A monster.

I shook my head vigorously, sending saltwater spraying from my too-shaggy hair. Time for another trim, but I hated the yoga positions and mirror-fu required to cut the hair on the back of my own head, so I'd likely put it off until it hung in my face.

Then I began to run.

The rhythm of my bare feet slapping against the cracked asphalt was normally soothing. Today, it just made me antsy. By the gods, I hated feeling like this!

How else do you expect to feel, after standing so close to Jess?

I'd been able to see into those beautiful blue eyes and hear the way her voice had hitched when she'd explained about the pussy. The cat, shit. My fingers had itched to cup those gorgeous curves of hers, made all the more obvious by the way she'd badly cinched her robe around her.

And her scent…

By all the gods, her scent.

My Mate's scent had been damning me since she'd moved in next door, but last night, she'd smelled of arousal. Of need, of want, of perfection.

I wanted to sink into that scent, lap it up. I needed it, the way I needed breathing or eating or hunting.

But I'd lived in her world long enough to know humans didn't claim their Mates; they wooed and begged and wooed some more. Sometimes they went home disappointed.

Well, I didn't know how to woo, and I didn't belong in her world, and I couldn't stand disappointment.

So I'd kept my distance.

Until last night.

"Fuck," I muttered under my breath. I was screwed.

You're going to find the cat, aren't you?

Yes, of course I was.

Finding her Muffin would make her smile, and why did that sound so deliciously naughty?

I turned left on Pufferfish Point, nodding slightly to the teenage boy who worked at the seafood hut and always gave me a cheerful wave, then right on my street, Seahorse, which stretched along the backside of the island.

My front porch overlooked the saltmarsh, which had a hell of a view in the evenings as the sun set. I guess Jess's did as well.

Jess. Jess. Jess.

I'd spent four years trying to get my fated Mate's scent out of my mind, and last night I'd…

"Fuck."

Last night had been worse than the day she'd come over to thank me for cutting up her tree. I'd dragged one of the logs inside and had been trying to come up with what to do with it, when thoughts of her made it impossible to concentrate.

So I'd done what I'd done for years and whipped out my cock, stroking it while I thought of her curves.

Jess knocking on the door at that moment had been like something out of a nightmare. Or a really cheap porno.

Today, by the time I reached my house, I was breathing heavily and had managed to control my lust. I stopped at Mrs. McGee's house to drag in her trashcans from the street, and check on the bats in the bat-house I'd installed under her eaves after she'd complained about the mosquitos last summer.

Time for a shower.

I had a perfectly good shower inside, but there was something about bathing in the fresh air, looking up and seeing sky above you while standing naked under a spray…

Made me feel like I was back where I belonged.

So I was padding around the yard toward the shower I'd built from an outdoor spigot and three walls of rot-resistant cedar when the smell of chemicals and hot water hit me.

Then the smell of Jess hit me.

She was in the hot tub.

One hand was gripping a wine glass perched on the edge of the tub, and she was staring right at me, big blue eyes wide with surprise.

I froze. Her shoulders were bare and I knew she wasn't wearing clothes in there.

She never does.

Jess's lips parted on a groan I probably wasn't meant to hear, but of course I did. She released her hold on the wine glass to sink deeper into the water, and the goblet wobbled slightly before toppling over the edge of the tub.

"Shit," she muttered.

I was already stepping forward to catch the thing—as if I could get there in time—when it bounced, spilling the remainder of her wine and rolling away.

My skittish little neighbor drank from plastic wine glasses?

The realization made me want to smile.

I restrained myself from the gesture.

I know my tusks make people uncomfortable, and current indications aside, I don't actually like to make people uncomfortable.

Besides, Jess was covered up to her chin in the water from the hot tub, and if I stepped forward a few feet, I could probably see everything.

It was difficult to resist the urge.

"Karnak," she squeaked. "How—how was your swim?"

I blinked. She wasn't yelling at me to go away?

"Good," I managed. "Necessary." Invigorating.

Her expression had eased somewhat, thank the gods, and now her gaze traveled speculatively across my torso. I wanted to straighten my shoulders, puff out my chest like a young male's desperate posturing.

"You swim in the ocean, or the sound?"

"Both." The salt water had long since dried on my skin, making it itch, but I wasn't going to duck into my shower—wasn't going to leave her—until she made it clear she wanted that. Just like last night, she'd have to be the one to make the decision. "Today was the ocean."

Her arms shifted beneath the water, and I guessed she'd crossed her arms in front of that glorious chest of hers. "Don't you worry, swimming alone?"

I frowned. "Worry about what?"

A twitch which might've been a shrug. "Whatever is swimming out there. Sharks. Giant octopuses? Wait, is it octopi? Octopussies?"

Actually, I knew this one. "Octopuses, octopi and octopodes are all correct. But no." I scratch at the dried salt on my chest even as I turn slightly and lift one leg, showing her the scar that ran up the back of my calf. "Sharks haven't been a problem so far. Not for me."

I'd expected her gasp. I thought it would be followed by a scream or a demand to leave her alone. I didn't expect her to lurch forward in the hot tub, throw her arms over the edge closest to me, and press her breasts against the side, her big blue eyes locked on my leg.

"Is that a shark bite?" she hissed, dragging her gaze back up to mine. "You were bitten by a shark, Karnak?"

My name on her tongue—even if it wasn't my true name—caused my cock to twitch under my trunks, but I sent a fierce message to my Kteer to behave, and managed a nonchalant shrug. "It was a small one." I pointed to the scar. "See? Five-inch tooth spread. He was a fool to tangle with something larger than he was."

Her auburn brows were furrowed, and she looked…angry? "If a small shark can bite you, Karnak, a bigger one can. If one of the great whites that live out there in the depths get desperate, he could pull you down and make you lunch!"

It was one of the reasons I pushed myself, tempting fate and damning the consequences. I didn't belong here. Maybe one day a bigger shark would prove that.

And so I shrugged. "Then I die."

She slapped the edge of the tub, and water sloshed over the side at her sudden movement. "That's horrible. You're horrible! I can't believe you go out there every day and just—what? Wait to be eaten? I knew you were swimming, but I thought it was exercise—"

"It is exercise."

Jess's lips pressed together and she glared at me for a moment. Then she shook her head and looked away. "You go out there every day and you don't even tell someone where you are," she muttered. "You could go missing and I'd be the only one who'd guess what happened."

"If it happens, then I'm sorry to have put you in that spot."

The sound Jess made was half exasperated, half angry as she rolled her eyes. "Who cares about the spot, you idiot! If you get eaten by giant octopodes, you'd be dead! We'd miss you!"

I shook my head, my claws against my itchy skin, considering Cairo and Tanis. "No one would really—"

"I would miss you!"

Had she jumped out of that tub and kicked me in the chest, she wouldn't have stolen my breath any faster.

My claws pressed against my breastbone, no longer scratching, now trying to dig beneath my skin, trying to ensure I was still breathing, still living.

She'd…miss me? If I was gone?

No. No, this was like the missing feline.

Jess cared for the cat—Muffin—because it was her friend.

What did that make me?

"I'm not your pet," I managed to snarl, and immediately hated myself when surprise, then hurt, flickered across her expression.

"Of course you're not. You're my—you're my friend."

Friend?

Pet?

I'm a fucking orc. I'd be her pet monster. Humans don't want to be friends with orcs.

As my claws pierced my skin I winced, thankful for the distraction of the pain. I needed to get away from here, away from her.

But her scent made it impossible. Thanks to my stupid Kteer I knew I'd stand here and claw out my own chest at the chance to hear her call me ‘friend' again.

"Karnak…"

A chance to hear her say my name again.

Stupid biology. Stupid instincts. Stupid Kteer.

So I shook my head. "Jess. You are a kind person—a kind human. I am glad you chose to move next door to me." So, so glad. So fucking glad. "But I've lived in your world long enough to understand it. Humans…aren't friends with orcs."

"Well, that's bullshit," she snapped, and shifted again.

It was doubtful that she had realized her ass had floated upward and atop the water in the tub. I could see her shoulders, the curve of her butt, her heels as they poked from the water.

"Bullshit," I repeated in a whisper, having completely forgotten whatever it was that we were talking about. I was trying not to stare at her ass, but the glimpse I'd gotten of those two pale slippery globes…

My cock wasn't listening to my internal warnings of eternal shame and was doing its best to stand up and wave hello.

I dropped my hand to rest against the waistline of my swimming trunks, wondering if that would help hide my hard-on.

She was talking, wasn't she? Jess was talking and I should be listening, not worrying about her ass or my cock.

Oh, hell.

"Karnak, there's no rules that say humans and orcs can't be friends!" When she got agitated, Jess's lips tugged into a cute little frown. I needed to focus on that. "That's the whole damn point of friendship!"

She released the edge of the hot tub with one hand and began to wave it around, presumably to make a point, but the movement shoved the rest of her body back under the water, and I could suddenly concentrate.

"Friendship doesn't care what color you are, or what background you are. The whole point of choosing a family is that it's a choice! Like me choosing Muffin and Pickles."

I struggled to follow her reasoning. "Because they are black cats, and less desirable." Like me.

But she scoffed. "Because I love them, you idiot. Surely you have friends, people you love?"

"I…" I'd left what remained of my family back in my world. When our band volunteered to be the emissaries to the human's world, we'd said our goodbyes, knowing we could never return through the veil which my people had long ago conjured to keep us hidden. I suppose the rest of the males in our band were friends. Two of them lived on this island, after all. "Perhaps."

Her expression softened. "I know about you and Cairo and Tanis and the others. The whole world knows about you. They're your family now, I guess?"

The whole world knows? She was right. Ten years ago, our arrival—and the subsequent realization that humans weren't the only intelligent race on this planet—had caused an uproar. Once we'd learned English and could watch re-runs of news programs, we'd come to realize how self-centered the humans really were.

I scowled and shook my head once, hard enough for a few droplets of water to shake free. "I came to Eastshore to…"

"To be alone. That's what you said yesterday." She stacked her fists on the edge of the tub and propped her chin on top, eyes pitying. "But no one should be alone, Karnak. That's what friends are for, to make sure we're not alone. To worry about us when we do stupid shit like tempt sharks."

That tight feeling was back in my chest. She would worry about me?

"I like being alone," I rasp.

"Do you? Honestly?" One of her brows rose. "Because I don't believe you. I think everyone wants to belong somewhere."

Where in the four hells had this conversation come from? I didn't want to stand here and have to think about my past, or my friends, or whatever she was insisting I think about. She was floating there, all naked and concerned, smelling of Jess, and backing away was the hardest thing I think I'd ever done.

But after the first faltering step, it became easier.

"Karnak—"

"People like me don't belong anywhere, Jess," I managed, before I turned and—like a coward—stumbled into my house.

I would shower inside this evening.

This evening, and every evening after, if it meant avoiding my Mate's well-meaning gaze and the comfort she didn't even realize she was offering.

The comfort I couldn't have.

Stupid Kteer. Stupid fucking biology.

I hadn't chosen this.

Had I?