Page 55

"You came back," she says again, quieter.

"Judanna called." My throat closes around the words. "Told me I was a coward."

"You are." No hesitation. Her chin comes up. "You left. You didn't ask me a single question. You made up your mind that I betrayed you and you walked out with your tools and your pride, and you left me here with a beam I couldn't lift."

Every word lands. I take them. I earned them. An Orc who leaves his mate to fight a load-bearing beam alone deserves worse than words, and she's being generous.

"You're right." The admission costs me something and I pay it anyway. "About all of it. I did the coward's math. I ran the numbers and the numbers said protect yourself, walk away first, before she can walk away from you. So I called it betrayal, because betrayal is a thing you survive. Loving somebody who might leave, that lands like standing under a beam with the redirect rigged wrong. Waiting for it to come down."

Her scrape of a scowl wavers. "And now?"

"The footage." I make myself say it. "The camera. Us. My privacy, the one line I told you I couldn't cross, splashed across a gossip site for clicks. And I assumed." My hands curl at my sides. "I assumed the worst thing about you, because it hurt less than the alternative."

"Which is?"

"That I love you." The words scrape out of me, unfamiliar, enormous. "And that terrifies me worse than any camera ever could."

She stops breathing. I close the distance.

Three strides, and she has to tip her head all the way back to hold my eyes. I lift my hand, slow, giving her every chance to step away, and cradle her scraped cheek in my palm. She turns into it. Her lashes flutter shut.

"I fired Patsy," she whispers against my skin. "I burned it all down. For you. None of it mattered, the channel, the sponsors. You."

"I understand that now." I bring my brow down to rest against hers. "I understand it now."

She grabs a fistful of my shirt and pulls, and whatever restraint I brought with me detonates.

I take her mouth. She tastes like salt and coffee and three weeks of missing her, and she makes a sound into me that lands somewhere along my spine. My arm wraps her waist and lifts, and her legs come around me on instinct, and I carry her three steps and set her against the one finished wall in this whole raw skeleton of a house.

"Off," she gasps, dragging at my shirt. "Now."

I strip it over my head. Her hands map me instantly, over the scars, over the ridges of muscle, nails raking down my ribs until a shudder rolls through me. I catch both her wrists in one hand and pin them above her head, and she arches into me with a broken little cry.

"Slow," I growl against her throat. "You've been out here doing everything the hard way for weeks. Let me do this part."

I open her flannel one button at a time. My hands are too big for the work and I do it anyway. I bare her inch by inch, mouth following, collarbone, sternum, the soft curve beneath. She writhes against the wall, my name coming apart on her tongue.

"Oggan. Please."

I drop to my knees. I peel her jeans down her legs and lift each foot free of them, and then I hook her thigh over my shoulder and put my mouth on her, and the noise she makes echoes off the bare studs like a hymn.

I take my time. Three weeks I spent turning this exact taste over in my head, and rushing it now is out of the question. I work her slow and deep, tongue and lips, until her fingers claw into my hair and her hips buck against my mouth. I hold her open with my thumbs. Her thighs start to tremble against my ears, the climb building in her, and I drag her right to the razor edge and hold her there until she sobs my name.

Then I let her fall.

She shatters against my mouth, shaking, my grip the only thing holding her upright. I ride it out with her, gentling, until her leg goes slack over my shoulder and her spine melts down the wall.

I rise. I strip out of the rest of my clothes, and she stares up the whole height of me, pupils blown black, and reaches with both hands.

"All of you," she breathes. "Every inch. Now."

I lift her again, her back braced to the wall, and line us up, and sink into her slow enough to draw out every second of it. She's tight and hot and gasping, stretching around me, and I stop halfway to let her adjust, my brow dropping to her shoulder.

"Breathe," I rasp.

She breathes. She rolls her hips. She takes the rest of me with a moan that snaps my last thread of control.

I move. Deep and steady, then harder, her nails scoring my back, the studs knocking behind her with every thrust. She meets me stroke for stroke. She says my name like a prayer and a dare, over and over, and I answer with my teeth at her throat and her name in my mouth.