Page 42 of Orcs Don’t Fake It

"I say things with my hands, not my mouth." He tips his head toward the fire, the window he mended, the plastic anchored over the floor. "I've been telling you every day. Breakers off so you'd eat. Snacks by the laptop. A chimney that draws clean in a hundred-year storm." His eyes come back to mine, dark and certain. "You just kept looking for the words instead of reading the house."

My eyes sting. Everything he builds is a sentence. I've been standing inside a love letter for a month and calling it a job site.

The coat slides off my shoulder again. This time neither of us fixes it.

"I hid you," I say. "I hid us. On the air mattress, when Patsy texted, I panicked and I..."

"I know." His hand comes up, slow, giving me every second to pull away. His knuckle grazes my jaw, tilts my chin. "You hid because being seen has cost you your whole life. Every real thing you've got, somebody's tried to sell." His thumb drags along the line of my cheekbone. "So I'm going to ask you for one promise. That's all. One."

I can't breathe. "Anything."

"Quit hiding." His forehead lowers until it rests against mine, an enormous careful weight. "No hiding for a shot. None for a sponsor. None for the algorithm that's been eating you alive since I met you. When you're mine, you're mine out loud, or not at all."

Tears spill over, and I let them, unfiltered, unphotographed, sliding down a face nobody is recording but him.

"I promise," I breathe. "Out loud. All of it. I promise."

He makes a low sound, deep in his throat, a rumble I catch more through the stone than the air, and it vibrates through the small space between us and lands somewhere at the base of my spine.

"Then come here," he says.

"That's it? That's the whole speech? A month of pining and I get 'come here'?"

The scarred corner of his mouth lifts, the closest thing to a grin I've earned all night. "I told you. Hands, not mouth." His thumb strokes once along my jaw, slow enough to short every circuit I have left. "But if you want the words, human, here they are. I have never in my life wanted a thing the way I want you. And I've wanted a great many things."

The fire snaps. The rain roars. My heart tries to climb out of me.

I close the last inch myself.

The storm swallows the rest of the world whole, and there's nothing left in it but firelight and rain and the impossible warmth of a man who has never once believed my smile, finally getting the truth instead.

CHAPTER 24

OGGAN

She closes the distance, and I quit counting the buckets.

Her mouth finds mine, small and sure, and the taste of her undoes something I've held clamped down for weeks. I go slow. I have spent my whole life being told my strength is the only thing about me worth wanting, and I will show this woman the opposite if it takes all night. My hand cups the back of her skull, my whole palm nearly spanning it, and I tilt her the way I want her and drink her in.

She melts into me, small and warm and pliant. My coat slides off her shoulders and puddles on the hearthstone, and I gather her up off the cold floor and settle her across my thighs so the fire warms her back and I warm her front.

"Slow," I murmur against her jaw. "We've got all night and nowhere the water lets us go."

"I don't want slow." Her fingers curl into my flannel. "I've wanted this for weeks."

"I know." I drag my mouth down the line of her throat, and she arches, a gasp breaking out of her. "That's why we go slow. So you remember every second was real."

I strip the flannel over my head. The firelight paints her eyes gold as they move over me, over the scars, over all of it, and there's no camera in them, no calculation, just hunger and something softer underneath it that hammers at my pulse.

She reaches for me. I catch her wrist, gentle, and guide her open palm over the drum of my heart so she has proof of what she does to me. It slams against her hand.

"That's you," I tell her. "Every time you drop the costume. That."

Her breath catches. She spreads her fingers wide over the pound of my heart, learning it, and something in her eyes goes soft and greedy at once. She leans in and sets her mouth where her hand was, a kiss over the beat, and the small warm brand of it nearly unmakes my restraint on the spot.

I let her explore. She maps the ridges of old scars with her fingertips, asks a wordless question at each one, and I answer by going still and letting her, because no one has ever wanted the history of me before, only the strength that earned it.

"You're shaking," she murmurs against my collarbone.