I could collar her, if it was what she wanted. Put a leash on her throat and shackle her ankles and treat her as my toy for the whole five days, but it was such a narrow scope of the realm of sex she'd come to me for and barely touched the tip of the pile of things I wanted to do to her.

That thought struck me hard, and I stiffened. I wanted this woman. I wanted to go off script, make my own plans for her that served my own interests. She was a bit more mouthy than I was used to for a woman so eager to submit. Not a brat who wanted a fight with her master, and not a woman looking to cast me as a lusty abuser. She was a woman who craved release, physical and mental, to be taken beyond the brink of her own control and brought to immense pleasure.

Orc bait. Perhaps Astraeya was right and I did need to be careful. Mating came on by instinct and genetics and emotions for orcs, and was a permanent shift. An orc mating a human was rare, but not unheard of. I'd thought myself incapable of mating a client because work was work for me, even when it was sex. I was performing, meeting a checklist on someone else's behalf.

But Sunny…

Small fingertips cupped my jaw, and my eyes slid to hers.

Sunny was luring me towards uncharted territory in my work, her own desires so similar to mine that I was considering our time together for my own benefit. How much pleasure would it take for me to mate the delicious human? How many little conversations and surprised moments of humor?

Sunny was work. She'd come to be fucked within an inch of her sanity. And a mate would unravel my life, my job at MSA. It was certainly not what she'd paid for and would be a massive violation of the trust she placed in me on behalf of MSA.

"You're more—"

I reached a hand up and wrapped my hand around her wrist, not removing her touch but interrupting the gesture. "If there's anything I should adjust, feel free to ask. This is your time."

Sunny's lips were parted, her eyes growing wide for a moment. I wanted to take her throat in my grip and draw that mouth to mine, lick her whimpers onto my tongue and twist her in my lap till my cock was buried deep and my stav swelled until it couldn't move. Which was not how our evening was meant to go. Sunny was not my lover or my mate, she was my client.

Those full brown eyes winced and she turned away, and I dropped my hands from her to prevent myself from yanking her focus back to me. Sunny was dangerous—she made me want to erase every line between us. Cutting through the ease of the moment was clumsy, but necessary.