Faugh goes completely still, his enormous frame frozen in place like a stone statue carved from living muscle and barely restrained violence. His hand remains pressed flat against the door above my head, trapping me in the narrow space between his body and the only exit.
"No," he agrees softly. "I am not your husband. But I could be."
The words land between us with something irreversible, something that rewrites the entire architecture of this moment, and the air leaves my lungs in a sudden, gasping rush that leaves me lightheaded and trembling. My fingers curl against his chest, bunching the fabric of his henley in an involuntary grip, and I can feel his heartbeat beneath my palm—steady, measured, controlled in a way that contrasts sharply with the hammering chaos of my own pulse.
"What?" The word comes out as barely more than a whisper, strangled and confused and desperately needing clarification, because surely I have misheard him, surely the electricity crackling between us has scrambled my ability to process language. My hazel eyes search his face, looking for some sign that this is a joke, some indication that he is testing me or that I have somehow misunderstood what he is proposing. But there is nothing in his expression except absolute, unwavering sincerity, the same steadfast certainty he brings to everything else in his meticulous, ordered life.
"I could be," he repeats, and his free hand comes up to cup the side of my face with a gentleness that contradicts the predatory intensity burning in his gaze. "I want to be. I have wanted it since the moment I watched you nearly stab yourself with a paintbrush because you could not find your phone charger. I want you as my mate, Chantel. Not as a temporary distraction. Not as some human rebellion against my clan's expectations. I want you permanently, possessively, in every way that matters according to my people's traditions and your human laws and any other ridiculous bureaucratic paperwork this city requires."
My brain short-circuits entirely, every rational thought scattering like startled birds as his words, his intention, hiscertainty, crashes over me in waves. The air between us feels thick and electric, charged with something primal that makes my pulse thunder in my ears. I open my mouth, close it again, open it once more, but nothing coherent emerges. Just his name, breathless and trembling on my lips, stretched out like a question I am not entirely sure how to ask.
"Faugh—"
"You think the gold was meant for someone else," he continues, his thumb stroking along my cheekbone with devastating tenderness. "You think I am still bound to some Orc bride I have never met, some female chosen by elders who do not know me and do not care what I want. But the dowry belongs to me, Chantel. It is mine to give to the mate I choose, and I chose you the moment you opened this door covered in paint and panic and told me the apartment came with unlimited hot water and a strict no-murder-in-the-living-room policy."
"That's not, I didn't—" I struggle to form coherent sentences while his massive body radiates heat and his scent wraps around me. "You can't just decide that without asking?—"
"I am asking now." His eyes lock onto mine with an intensity that makes my knees weak. "Say yes, and I will never let you doubt again. Say yes, and I will make certain every person in this city knows exactly who you belong to. Say yes, and I will show you precisely what it means to be claimed by an Orc who has been holding himself back for far too long."
My mouth opens, closes, then opens again as I grapple with the sheer audacity of what he's proposing. "Here? Now?" I manage, my voice climbing into that breathy, panicked register that always betrays me when I'm overwhelmed. "You're asking me to, what, exactly? Move in permanently? Marry you? Become some kind of claimed mate situation that definitely has legal and emotional implications I haven't even begun to process?" I can feel the words tumbling out faster and faster, my handsgesturing wildly, paint-stained fingers cutting through the air between us. "Because that's a lot, Faugh. That's alotto just spring on someone in the middle of a rainstorm while you're standing there all intense and intimidating and, and smelling like cedarwood soap, which frankly feels like cheating in an argument."
"Be mine." The simplicity of it, the raw honesty bleeding through every syllable, breaks something open inside my chest. "Completely. Permanently. In every way that matters."
I should probably think about this. I should take the space I was just demanding, walk out into the storm, process the emotional whiplash of the last ten minutes like a rational adult. I should do literally anything other than what I actually do, which is grab the front of his perfectly pressed henley with both hands and yank him down toward me with all my strength, which moves him approximately zero inches because he weighs as much as a compact car.
But he understands the gesture. His eyes flash amber, and then his mouth crashes onto mine with a hunger that obliterates every remaining scrap of my sanity.
The kiss is nothing like the gentle, tentative exploration we shared in the kitchen days ago. This is raw and claiming and utterly consuming, his tusks grazing my lips as he devours me with single-minded intensity, one massive hand tangling in my hair while the other spans the entire width of my lower back, pressing me flush against the solid wall of his chest. I make a sound somewhere between a whimper and a moan, my fingers twisting desperately in the fabric of his shirt, and he responds with a deep, rumbling growl that I feel all the way down to my toes.
"Yes," I gasp against his mouth when he finally pulls back enough to let me breathe. "Yes, you terrifying, wonderful, obsessively organized Orc, yes to all of it, yes to?—"
I don't get to finish the sentence because he scoops me up like I weigh nothing, one arm under my knees and the other supporting my back, and I yelp in surprise as the world tilts sideways. My hands fly up to grip his shoulders for balance, my fingers digging into muscles that feel like warm granite wrapped in skin.
"Faugh! What are you?—"
"Taking you to bed," he states with absolute, unshakeable certainty, already striding down the narrow hallway toward his immaculate bedroom. "I have been patient. I have been restrained. I have folded your laundry and cooked your meals and pretended I did not want to drag you into my bed every single night since I moved into this apartment. I am done being patient."
Heat floods through me in a sudden, molten wave, overwhelming and all-consuming, setting every nerve ending in my body on fire. The rational part of my brain, the tiny, increasingly insignificant part that's still capable of forming coherent thoughts, suddenly remembers the existence of doors and locks and the general concept of privacy.
"The door—" I gasp out between kisses, my words tumbling out in that frantic, breathy rush that always happens when I'm flustered or overwhelmed or, apparently, being thoroughly kissed by a seven-foot-tall Orc who smells like expensive cedarwood and intention. "We should probably, I mean, shouldn't we?—"
"Locked." He kicks his bedroom door open with one foot, ducking slightly to carry me through without knocking my head against the frame, and then he's laying me down on his perfectly made bed with a gentleness that contradicts the feral intensity radiating from every line of his body.
I barely have time to register the feel of his high-thread-count sheets against my back before he's covering me with hislarge frame, his weight supported on his forearms so he doesn't crush me, his hips settling between my thighs in a way that makes me acutely aware of exactly how much he wants this. Wants me.
"You are so small," he murmurs, his voice rough and wondering as one hand spans my entire ribcage, his thumb brushing just beneath my breast through the thin fabric of my paint-stained tank top. "So soft. So perfect. Mine."
The possessiveness in that last word sends a fresh wave of heat straight to my core. "Yours," I agree breathlessly, arching up into his touch. "But you're wearing way too many clothes for someone who just carried me to bed with the intention of?—"
He silences me with another devastating kiss, his tongue sliding against mine as his hand moves to the hem of my tank top and slowly, deliberately drags it up and over my head. The cool air hits my overheated skin, and then his mouth is trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down my throat, across my collarbone, lower and lower until?—
"Faugh!" My back arches off the bed as his mouth closes over my breast through the thin lace of my bra, his tusk grazing the sensitive skin in a way that should probably hurt but instead sends sparks of pleasure shooting through my nervous system.
"Say it again," he demands roughly, his fingers making quick work of the clasp at my back with surprising dexterity for someone with massive hands. "Say my name. I want to hear you say it when I make you fall apart."
"Faugh," I gasp as he pulls the lace away and replaces it with the hot, wet heat of his mouth, his tongue circling my nipple with devastating precision. "Oh god, Faugh, please?—"
"Please what?" He lifts his head just enough to look at me, his eyes burning with predatory satisfaction as he takes in my flushed face and heaving chest. "Tell me what you need, little mate. Tell me what you want."
