I grin. Can't help it. "See something you like, kitten?"
"Shut up and help me move this shelf." There's less bite in it than before, and her ears burn red at the tips. I'll take it.
We brace the shelf with supply crates and towels until the worst of the flooding stops. By the time we finish, my jeans drip puddles onto the linoleum and Jess shivers in soaked scrubs, her teeth chattering, her arms wrapped around herself.
The generator sputters. The lights in the trauma bay dim to half-power.
I dig through my bag in the break room and pull out the dry shirt I packed, a worn black henley, soft from years of washing, the fabric carrying my scent from days of living out of a saddlebag. I hold it out to her.
She hesitates. Looks at the shirt. Looks at me, shirtless and dripping in the doorway.
"Take it. You're freezing."
She peels her soaked scrub top over her head and drops it on the floor. Black sports bra, wet skin, the tattoo curling along herribs. I keep my gaze locked on the wall behind her, jaw tight, because if I let it drop I'm going to do something stupid. She watches me not looking. Takes the henley from my grip and pulls it over her head, and the corner of her mouth lifts because she knows exactly what she's doing to me. The hem drops past her hips, the sleeves swallow her hands, the collar sits loose enough to show the line of her collarbone. My shirt on her skin. My scent soaking into her hair, wrapping around her like a second pair of arms.
A possessiveness I've never felt before rakes through me, claws and heat and hunger. Every orc instinct I own lights up at once—territorial, primal, hungry in a way that has nothing to do with flesh and everything to do with the bone-deep need to mark and claim and keep. She smells like me, and the combination rewires my brain in a way I couldn't explain if I tried.
The generator dies and the lights go with it, darkness swallowing the clinic in a single breath.
In the silence, with the storm screaming outside and me soaked into her skin, Jess smells like mine.
Chapter 5
Jess
The silence wakes me.
Not a sound, not a voice, not the radio—the absence of everything. The hurricane's roar cut through my dreams for hours, a relentless shredding howl that rattled the walls and turned the clinic into a tin can in a blender. Now the air sits heavy and still, pressing against my eardrums like a held breath.
I roll off the cot and plant my boots on the linoleum. The generator coughs back to life somewhere in the guts of the building, and amber emergency lights flicker on, casting the break room in a dim glow.
The eye of the storm. The calm between the walls of wind, the pocket of dead air that buys us an hour, maybe two, before the back half swings through and tries to finish what the front half started. I learned about hurricane eyes in a meteorology brief at Camp Leatherneck, sandwiched between an IED refresher and a lesson on heat-stroke triage. Funny, the things that stick.
I check my watch. Six-twelve AM. The patients need vitals. The spinal case needs his IV swapped, the woman with the brokenarm needs another round of pain management, and the teenager should have fluids by now.
Finn's cot sits empty. Sheets rumpled, pillow dented with the impression of his head, his leather cut draped over the foot rail. I stare at the dent for two seconds longer than I should.
The supply closet door stands open at the end of the hall, and I duck inside to check what we have left. Three IV bags. Two rolls of surgical tape. The saline reserves hold, but the morphine supply runs thin enough to make my stomach clench. I'm counting ampules when his shadow fills the doorway.
"Patients are stable." Finn leans against the frame, arms crossed, filling the opening the way he fills every space he enters. "Checked their vitals ten minutes ago. Dean's pressure is holding. Linda's sleeping, and their kid Mike drank two bottles of water and asked when he could go home. The Bradleys are doing okay."
The Bradleys. He knows their names. When they came through the door last night, I triaged injuries—spinal, compound fracture, walking wounded. Three problems to solve as fast as possible, three bodies to stabilize before the pain got ahead of me. I didn't stop to ask who they were.
But Finn did.
I line up the ampules on the shelf and keep counting. "You checked vitals?"
"I watched how you did it last night. I paid attention."
My fingers hesitate on the last ampule. Of course he did. He's been paying attention for months, noticing things about me I didn't realize I let show. I keep trying to chalk it up to charm, the warmth he turns on for everyone, but the excuse stopped fitting weeks ago.
"How's Dean's pain?" I keep my voice clinical. "Scale of one to ten, what did he say?"
"Didn't ask a number. But he's grinding his teeth in his sleep and his hands keep fisting the sheets." Finn pauses. "That's bad, isn't it."
It's bad. I count the morphine ampules one more time, hoping the number changes. It doesn't. Four left. Dean needs a dose every four hours to keep ahead of the spinal pain, and we're at least twelve hours from medevac routes reopening. The math doesn't work. I can manage his pain or I can keep a reserve for emergencies, but I can't do both.
"I can cut his dose in half and supplement with the ibuprofen," I say, more to myself than to Finn. "It won't hold him, but it's—"
