The darkness crashes over us, so complete and sudden that I actually gasp. One second I am staring into Faugh's amber eyes, still floating in the hazy aftermath of the most intense sex of my entire life, and the next I cannot see my own hand in front of my face.
"Do not move," Faugh says immediately, his deep voice cutting through the darkness with absolute authority. His massive hands are still on my waist, steadying me on the counter, and I feel rather than see him scan the pitch-black kitchen. "The storm has taken out the power grid. Stay exactly where you are while I locate the emergency supplies."
"Emergency supplies?" I repeat, my voice coming out embarrassingly breathy and small. "Faugh, I don't have emergency supplies. I have half a bag of coffee beans and a tube of expired sunscreen under the sink."
He makes a low sound in his chest that might be exasperation or amusement, and then his hands carefully lift me down from the counter. My legs are absolute jelly, and I wobble dangerously on my feet. Without hesitation, Faugh scoops me up like I weigh nothing at all, cradling me against his bare chest.
"I prepared emergency kits for both the kitchen and the bathroom three days after moving in," he says, his tone suggesting this should have been obvious. "Your preparedness standards were unacceptable."
Of course he did. Of course my terrifyingly organized Orc roommate has a fully stocked disaster kit hidden somewhere in my chaotic apartment. I should probably be annoyed by his systematic takeover of my living space, but instead I just feel a warm, fluttery sensation that I refuse to examine too closely right now.
He carries me through the apartment with perfect confidence despite the absolute darkness, navigating around furniture I hardly remember the placement of, and deposits me gently onto the living room couch. The leather is cool against my overheated skin, and I suddenly remember that I am completely naked and covered in evidence of what we just did.
"Stay," Faugh commands, his deep voice resonating through the shadowed living room with the kind of authority that makes my already-weakened knees feel even more unsteady. It is not a request, it never is with him, but there is something almost tender underneath the firmness, a quiet reassurance wrapped in that single word. I watch as he moves away from the couch with careful, measured steps, his enormous frame navigating the darkness of the apartment with the practiced ease of someone who has memorized every inch of this space. His footfalls are nearly silent despite his size, a testament to the careful control he maintains over his own body. I pull the throw blanket tighter around myself, suddenly hyperaware of my nakedness and the vulnerability of being left alone in the dark, and I listen to the storm continuing its relentless assault against the windows as I wait for him to return.
I pull one of the throw blankets over myself, wrapping it around my shoulders, and listen to the storm raging outside. Thethunder is constant now, rolling crashes that shake the windows in their frames, and I can hear rain hammering against the glass with vicious intensity. The wind screams through the narrow gaps between buildings, creating an eerie whistling sound that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Faugh returns a few minutes later, and warm, flickering light gradually blooms in the darkness. He has lit several thick emergency candles and is methodically placing them around the living room in what I am certain is a carefully calculated pattern to maximize illumination and minimize fire hazard.
The candlelight transforms him into something mythical and ancient. Shadows dance across the hard planes of his chest and the thick muscle of his arms, highlighting the slate-green of his skin and making his tusks gleam. He has pulled on a pair of dark sleep pants that hang low on his narrow hips, and my mouth goes dry at the defined V of muscle that disappears beneath the waistband.
He catches me staring and one corner of his mouth twitches upward in the smallest hint of a smile. "You require clothing as well," he states, and disappears into my bedroom before I can respond.
He returns with one of his own massive henley shirts and a pair of my sleep shorts. The shirt will absolutely swallow me whole, but I take it gratefully, touched by the thoughtfulness of the gesture. I pull the soft fabric over my head, and it falls nearly to my knees, the sleeves extending well past my fingertips. It smells like him, like expensive cedarwood soap and something deeper and more primal that makes my stomach flip.
Faugh settles onto the floor in front of the couch, his back against the base, and pulls my legs gently across his lap. His hands begin kneading the muscles of my calves with firm, expert pressure, working out the tension, and I have to bite back a moan at how good it feels.
"The storm will likely continue for several hours," he says calmly, his thumbs digging into the arch of my foot. "The power grid in this neighborhood is poorly maintained. I estimate a minimum of four hours before electricity is restored, possibly longer."
"So we're just stuck here in the dark," I murmur, watching the candlelight flicker across his features. The vulnerability of the moment settles over me like a second blanket, warm and heavy. We just had sex. Mind-blowing, life-altering, absolutely filthy sex, and now we are sitting in candlelight while a storm rages outside, and I have no idea what happens next.
"Stuck is an inaccurate term," Faugh corrects, switching to my other foot. "We are safely secured inside a structurally sound building with adequate supplies and no external threats. This is the optimal scenario during a severe weather event."
I huff out a laugh despite the nervous flutter , a sound that comes out a little higher-pitched than I intended. "You're really committed to this whole calm and prepared thing, aren't you?" I say, shaking my head with a wry smile. "Like, most people would be freaking out about the power being out for hours, but you're over here doing a full infrastructure assessment and treating this like it's all part of some master plan."
His hands still on my ankle, and when he looks up at me, there is something raw and unguarded in his expression that steals my breath. "Chaos has consequences, Chantel. I learned that lesson thoroughly before I left my clan."
He has never talked about his past before, never mentioned anything beyond vague references to his previous work as a bouncer. I stay very quiet, afraid that if I push too hard he will retreat back behind his formal, controlled exterior.
Faugh resumes the massage, but his gaze has gone distant, focused on something I cannot see. "Orc clans value strength and aggression above all other traits. Violence is currency. Chaosis celebrated as proof of vitality." His jaw tightens, the muscle jumping beneath his skin. "I was raised to destroy, to dominate through force, to take what I wanted and crush anyone who stood in my path."
My heart clenches at the carefully neutral tone he is using, the way he is delivering these horrible facts like he is reading from an instruction manual. I reach down and cover one of his massive hands with my much smaller one, threading our fingers together.
"But you didn't want that life," I say softly, my voice barely audible in the quiet intimacy of the moment. My thumb traces gentle circles against the back of his hand, a small gesture of solidarity, a quiet acknowledgment that I understand, at least in part, the fundamental wrongness of what he is describing. The contrast between who he was forced to be and who he has chosen to become feels impossibly vast, impossibly important.
"I despised it," he admits, and the quiet vehemence in his voice makes me shiver. "The disorder. The constant conflict. The waste of destroying things that could have been built or improved. I craved structure, peace, the satisfaction of creating order from chaos." He looks down at our joined hands, his thumb stroking slowly across my knuckles. "My clan saw this as weakness. As a fundamental flaw in my nature that needed to be beaten out of me."
I squeeze his hand tighter, my fingers pressing into the warm, solid muscle of his palm as anger flares hot and fierce . The sheer injustice of it, the thought of anyone, his own family no less, trying to hurt him, to break him, to force him into a mold he was never meant to fit, makes my blood simmer. It's a protective, almost primal surge of feeling that surprises me with its intensity. He is enormous, undeniably powerful, capable of extraordinary things, and yet they had tried to diminish him, to sand away the parts of himself that made him different, thatmade himbetter. The unfairness of it sits heavy , and I hold his hand like I can somehow transfer some of my own resolve into him, like I can convince him through touch alone that he was right to refuse, right to leave, right to become the person he actually wanted to be.
"I endured it for years," Faugh continues. "I participated in the raids, the battles, the pointless destruction, because I believed I had no choice. But the breaking point came when my father ordered me to burn down a human settlement as a show of strength." His eyes meet mine, and the pain in them makes my throat tight. "There were children inside the buildings, Chantel. Families. People who had done nothing except exist in a location my father found strategically inconvenient."
I already knew the answer before he spoke it aloud, knew it in the same way I know the exact shade of green in his eyes, the precise timbre of his voice when he's tired, the invisible weight he carries like stones in his pockets. Still, I needed to hear him say it, needed that confirmation to settle something restless in me. So when he nods, slow and deliberate, I feel the truth of it reverberate through the space between us like a tuning fork struck in a quiet room.
"You refused," I whisper, the words barely audible. My voice comes out smaller than I intended, fragile with something that might be awe or might be heartbreak, I cannot quite tell which. The image of him at that impossible crossroads, enormous and powerful and utterly alone, facing down his own father's cruelty with nothing but his conscience and his conviction, makes my eyes burn. He had chosen the harder path, the lonelier one. He had chosenhimself, and chosenright, even when it cost him everything.
"I refused," he confirms. "And then I left in the night with nothing but the clothes I wore and the gold I had been saving. I have not spoken to my clan in six years."
The gold. The shockingly large amount of gold he used to pay six months rent in advance, solid and heavy and far too much for any normal person to just carry around in a briefcase.
