Page 10 of Susie's Orc

He stands and crosses the room to fish it out of his pocket. Speaking too quietly for me to hear what he’s saying, he hangs up after a minute or so.

When he turns back around, he looks even more apologetic than before. “I have to go.”

Oof. If I felt rejected before, I’m entirely dejected now.

Still… this wasn’t a date. It was just casual, just a hookup. Just me propositioning him, really, not asking for dinner and flowers or anything like that, so I hide whatever I’m feeling under a smile and grab the blanket off the couch next to me. Standing, I wrap it around my shoulders, fully aware of how ridiculous I must look, and wait for him to say something else.

“I’m really sorry,” he tells me, and although he looks it, I can’t help but feel disappointed and self-conscious and stupid.

Was I that bad? Did I do something that turned him off so much he’s in such a hurry to get out of here?

Or maybe he pulled the classic move of getting a friend to call him after a certain amount of time had passed, so he had a viable excuse to leave his crazy coworker’s apartment.

“That was my boss,” he explains. “We’re at the end of the quarter, and apparently something I was working on today didn’t pull through right on the end-of-quarter reports. Can’t imagine why. Wasn’t like I was completely distracted and useless for the last hour of the day.”

He laughs a little self-deprecatingly, and I want to believe him, I really do, but doubt crawls up my throat in a chokehold.

Still smiling, though it feels horribly forced, I nod. “Alright. Um, sorry you have to go.”

A look crosses his face that I can’t quite decipher. Something tight and pained and maybe… regretful? Whether it’s regret that he has to go, or regret he ever came here at all, though, I don’t know.

“I am, too.” He stands there for a moment more, still looking conflicted, before he shakes his head and gives me a small smile that seems almost as fake as mine. “Well… I guess I better be going.”

“Sure, uh, have a good weekend. Hope they don’t keep you too late.”

“You, too. The weekend part.”

It’s like an out-of-body experience, how intensely awkward this moment is. I don’t know what else to say, how to process this or wrap my mind around what the hell just happened.

The moment passes, though, and Jonah turns and heads for the front door.

He opens it, half-turns back to face me, and offers one last regretful smile. “Bye, Susie.”

“Bye.”

The door closes after him, and I drop the damn smile. The blanket, too, suddenly too rough against my skin. I feel… wrong. Discordant. Like a broken bell chiming tones that set my teeth on edge.

The worst kind of whiplash makes my head spin, and I don’t know which way is up.

How the hell is it possible to feel that much pleasure and then that much discomfort in the span of five minutes?

What on earth just happened?

Not knowing what else to do, I head to my bathroom to clean up. In the mirror, my hair is a bird’s nest and my makeup is smudged under my eyes. Great. So in addition to being awkward as hell, I look like a lunatic, too. Perfect.

All cleaned up, I head into my bedroom and flop down backward on the bed, letting the waves of humiliation and shame and regret wash over me.

So much for my brief foray into promiscuity, and so much for taking a leap and seducing the orc I’ve been crushing on for two years.

The second part of that regret stings infinitely worse than the first. I roll over, pull a blanket over me and reach for the remote, ready to watch reruns of some comfort TV show until it stops stinging so much.

Or until I just die from shame. Whichever comes first.

Even as I do, my muscles still ache, my pussy still throbs, and if I inhale deeply enough, I imagine I can still smell Jonah’s woods and sunshine scent on my skin.

Chapter 5

Jonah

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