Page 3 of The Orc's Innocent Plaything

Aye. I needed to respond to his words, not my feelings. I swallowed.

“I…thank you.”

It seemed that’s what he’d been waiting for. With a nod, Vartok slid the blade behind him to his anvil and rested his arse against the heavy slab of metal as his lips curled upward.

Not his mocking grin.

His charming one.

The grin he’d never turned my way, not even in the beginning when I was a scared human in a strange world, clinging to my sister and whatever offers of friendship I could get.

Why now? He flirted with everyone he met, but neverme. What was he doing?

“I’ll fix it for ye, pretty little human, then use it to chip away at yer icy heart, eh?”

Ah. So he could mock me.

I told myself it was stupid to be disappointed. I set my chin and glared up at him.

“I do not have an icy heart!”

Except, mayhap he thinks you do, because this is how you respond?Well, it wasn’t as if I was going to startflirting, not like him.

“I am not like you, Vartok, throwing away your smileson people who?—”

My lips snapped together before I could finish the lie withpeople who do not want them.

His smile didn’t waver, but his brow inched upward again. “People who what, little beauty?”

Flirting again to fluster me? I scowled and planted my hands on my hips beneath my cloak.

“Do youhonestlythink me icy, you arsehole? I am a midwife, ahealer. How could I possibly be unfeeling yet care for those who come to me?” A horrible thought hit me, and I reared back with a gasp. “You think me a bad healer?”

He suddenly straightened, his palm open as if reaching for me…but then he froze.

“Nay, Myra, I think ye a brilliant healer and midwife. Ye care, and the clan is lucky to have ye.”

His words…

Hesoundedas if he meant them. My scowl eased to a confused frown.

I swallowed, hating the uncertainty in my stomach. I didn’tlikebeing uncertain, and that seemed to be the main way I felt around this male.Bah.

As I began to back away, my arms wrapped around my stomach without any prompt from me. Vartok made me feel small, helpless, confused… Or mayhap that was just my response to him.

“Myra, I am sorry—” he began, but I was already speaking.

“The knife was my mother’s. She was a midwife and ‘tis all I have to remember her.”

My heel reached the threshold and I could feel the sunshine behind me. But my attention was locked on his expression…and the way it softened.

“Aye,” he murmured, sinking back against his anvil, his hand reaching behind him for my blade. “Then I will fix it well, pretty little human.”

There it was again, that name. Half mocking, half…fond? Did he call the other women in the village such things?

Gulping down my confused response, and hating the way my heart had not stopped pounding fiercely in his presence, I gripped my cloak and whirled.

And ran away.

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