Page 49 of Every Little Thing She Orcs

He stares down at me. For a second, he doesn’t move at all.

Then he picks me up.

He lifts me right off my feet and holds me so tightly that I can’t breathe. The rumble starts up inside him, so loud and deep that I feel it in my teeth. He buries his face in my hair.

“You signed it,” he says into my neck.

“I signed it.”

“Before I could ask.”

“Your shirt gave you away. You own exactly one shirt with buttons.” I lean back and cup his face in both hands. “What were you going to say?”

He looks at me, his amber eyes glowing in the moonlight.

“Stay,” he says. “That’s all. Stay with me, little bird. Here. Always.”

“Yes,” I say. “Holt. Yes.”

He kisses me like he’s been waiting all day to do it, which I guess he has, and I wrap my legs around his waist and kiss him back until we’re both breathless.

When he finally lifts his head, his ears are flat back and he’s breathing like he just ran up all sixty-two steps of the fire tower. He sniffs my hair. Twice.

“You smell like mine,” he growls.

Oh. Oh my. I’ve read about this too, in the same books that taught me about knots. The chase. An orc and his woman, and the forest, and the moon.

I slide down out of his arms, slowly, and take a step back toward the trees.

His eyes follow me.

“Holt,” I say. “Do you want to chase me?”

He blinks at me. Then a slow, wicked grin spreads across his face, tusks and all.

“Yes,” he says. It comes out half growl. “God help me. Yes.”

I take another step back. My boots hit the edge of the moss. “And if I need you to stop?”

“You tell me to stop, and I stop. Every time.” His voice goes softer, just for a second. “Every time, Wren.”

“I know.” I grin at him. “Give me a head start, big guy.”

And I run.

The forest behind Holt’s cabin is silver and black under the moon. I know these trees. I’ve walked them all summer. I run along the deer path, past the big cedar and the mossy log, my blood pounding and my breath loud in my ears, a laugh bubbling up in my chest that I can’t stop.

Behind me, I hear him.

He’s not running. Not yet. He’s walking, slow and heavy, and every step makes the ground hum. Then a low, deep rumble rolls out through the trees and goes straight through me, all the way down to my core.

He’s letting me run. He’s tracking me by scent.

What am I doing? Running from a seven-foot orc in the dark, on purpose? Yes. Yes, I am. And it’s officially the hottest thing that has ever happened to me, and I once shared an elevator with a firefighter calendar model.

I duck around a big pine, breathing so hard I have to stop. I press my back against the bark and try to listen.

Nothing. The forest is completely silent.