Page 43 of Orcs Don’t Fake It

"You do that to me." My hands span her back, careful, so careful. "Every day for weeks. Now hush and let me have you."

Her breath shudders out. "Oggan..."

"Off." I tug the strap of her ruined overalls. "I want the real one. All of her."

"Bossy," she breathes, but her hands are already fumbling at the buckles, clumsy with want.

"Careful." I still her fingers with mine and undo the second strap myself, slow, deliberate, drawing the moment out until her breathing goes ragged. "We're not filming. We've got nothing but time and a fire that'll burn till dawn."

She helps me. Buttons, straps, the soaked cotton beneath, all of it peeled away between kisses that go deeper each time, until she kneels over my lap in the firelight wearing nothing but rain-damp skin and the flush the flames put there. I take her in like a man memorizing a blueprint he'll build from for the rest of his life.

"You're staring," she whispers.

"I'm claiming." I set my hands at her waist, and my thumbs nearly meet across the span of her belly, and I lift her like she weighs nothing and lay her down on the coat spread across warm stone. "There's a difference."

"Explain the difference," she breathes, all wide eyes and rising color, laid out in the firelight for me alone.

"Staring wants to keep the picture." I lower myself over her, caging her in, the fire hot along my back. "Claiming wants to keep the woman."

I follow her down.

I take my time. My mouth traces every place she's spent years hiding under wardrobe and clever angles, the soft curve of her, the dip of her hip, the delicate architecture of her ribs. Every gasp she gives me, I answer. Every time her fingers dig into my shoulders and pull, I slow further, until she writhes under me and says my name like a plea.

I move lower. I part her thighs with my hands, wide, and settle my mouth against the heat of her, and the sound she makes cracks through the whole quiet house. She fists a hand in my hair. I hold her hips down against the stone and take my time there too, patient and thorough, until she comes apart against my tongue, shaking, my name breaking in half on the way out of her.

"Oggan, please," she breathes when she can speak. "I need you. All of you."

She's still trembling when I drag my mouth back up the length of her, tasting salt and firelight, learning the places that make her gasp. The inside of her wrist. The hollow beneath her ear. The soft give of her belly where my hands nearly meet.

"Again," she pleads, wrecked and greedy.

"Greedy little human." I nip the crest of her hip, and her laugh dissolves into a moan. "I've got you all night. Let me take you apart properly first."

"You have me." I climb back up her body and settle between her thighs, both my hands framing her face, dwarfing it. "Look at me. No hiding. And no more hiding now, either."

Her eyes lock on mine. Wide open. Nothing between us.

I move into her slow, giving her every inch by degrees, and her mouth falls open and her spine arches off the coat. She's tight around me, trembling, and I hold still when I'm fully seated, letting her stretch to take me, letting the storm pound overhead while the two of us stay perfectly, unbearably still.

"Okay?" I manage. My arms shake with the effort of restraint.

"More than okay." Her hips lift against mine. "Move. Please, Oggan, move."

I do.

Slow at first, deep and complete, drawing sounds out of her I want to keep forever. The fire throws our joined shadow up the raw studs, enormous and small, green and gold, and I set a rhythm that builds like weather, patient and inevitable. She meets me every time. Her heels hook behind me. Her nails score my back, and I welcome the marks, proof, permanence, hers on me the way she's mine.

I brace one forearm above her head and take her deeper, and the small broken sounds she makes climb the raw studs and vanish into the roar of the weather. She's all heat and grip and honesty under me, no angle, no lens, no version of herself she thinks I want. Just this one. The real one. The only one I have ever been after.

"Look at what you do to me," I rasp. Her fingers find the tense cord of my forearm and hold on. "No camera in the world could catch this. Only you get it. Only ever you."

"That's it," I breathe against her temple. "Stay with me. Out loud, remember. No costume."

"There's no costume," she gasps. "There's just you. Just this. You, and this, and no lens between us. Oh..."

Her body starts to come apart under mine, and I gather her closer, one arm sweeping under her lower back to lift her into me, changing the angle until she cries out, until the sound tears free of her with nothing held back and nobody to hear it but me and the storm. She shatters around me, and I follow her over, my forehead dropping to the curve of her shoulder, my whole body shuddering as I spill into her with a groan that comes up from somewhere older than language.

The rain roars on. The fire burns low. We lie tangled on the warm stone, my coat beneath us and her small body draped over me, her heart galloping under my hand where it rests against her.