No big speech. No buildup. Three words that fall out of him, his face registering the shock of it half a second after his mouth moves—like his body committed before his brain caught up.
I stop breathing.
"You—" I can't finish the sentence. My pulse roars so loud I can barely hear my own voice over it.
"I love you." He says it again, slower, like he's testing the weight of it. His hands hang between his knees. He doesn't reach for me. "I've loved you for months, since before the storm. And I am not going to get tired of you."
"You don't know me." My voice cracks on the last word. "You've seen me stitch wounds and bark orders. That's not—you haven't seen what it's like at two AM when I can't stop shaking and I can't explain why and there's nothing you can do to fix it."
"I sat on a floor and talked about motorcycle chains for twenty minutes while you came back from wherever the blast took you." He holds my gaze. "I've seen war too, Kitten. The clan warsin the mountains—orcs don't fight clean. I know what it leaves behind." His voice drops. "I didn't run. I'm not going to."
The denial sits in my throat. Because he did sit on that floor. He crouched in front of me and he stayed, and he didn't touch me when every other man would have grabbed, he didn't ask me to explain, and he didn't look at me like I was broken. He looked at me like I was the only thing in the room that mattered.
"This is a terrible idea," I say.
"The worst." His mouth doesn't smile, but his eyes shift—fierce and open, cracking through the charm like a fist through drywall.
Suddenly, I throw myself at him and kiss him.
Not a soft first-time kiss. Not the champagne-blurred press of mouths in Sarah's garden weeks ago. I grab the front of his shirt with both fists and haul him down to me, and the sound he makes against my mouth—a sharp, bitten-off noise of surprise that dissolves into a groan—breaks eight months of denial in a single breath.
His hands find my waist. My ribcage. His fingers span so wide they nearly meet at my spine, and the size of him registers in my body before my brain catches up—how much of me he covers with his palms, how small my waist feels bracketed between his hands, how his chest against mine feels like standing behind cover in a firefight. Shielded and enclosed and consumed all at once. And safe.
We hit the cot together. His weight tips us over and the metal frame shrieks against the linoleum, the canvas sagging under him, I drag him down on top of me because the alternative is letting go and my fingers refuse to release his shirt.
"The patients," I gasp against his mouth. "Other wing. We have to be quiet."
"Then stop making that noise, Kitten." The growl vibrates against my collarbone and rolls down through my chest into the pit of my stomach.
I tug the henley over my head and his gaze tracks the fabric leaving my skin with an intensity that pins me flat. His hands settle on my bare ribs and his thumbs brush the underside of my bra, my back arches off the cot before I can stop it.
His mouth drags down my throat. Teeth and tongue and the rough edge of his broken tusk scraping against the tendon below my ear, the shiver that tears through me has nothing to do with cold. I press into it—into the jagged edge, into the imperfection, the part of him that he carries on his face for the world to see. He groans against my neck when I tilt my head to give him more room, and the sound rolls through his chest into mine, low and sub-vocal, a rumble no human throat produces.
His hips pin me to the canvas and I feel his cock, hard against my inner thigh, heat floods my core so fast my head swims. He's big. I knew that—hard not to, with the way his jeans fit—but knowing and feeling are two different things, and the reality of him pressing against me through layers of fabric sends my pulse hammering against my ribs.
"Jess—" His voice scrapes raw. His hands grip the cot frame above my head, and the metal groans under his fingers, bending inward at the rail. Not gripping me. Gripping the frame instead. His knuckles pale to a lighter green with the force, and the restraint of it—the proof of what he holds back, the strength he channels into dead metal instead of my skin—makes me wrap my legs around his waist and grind up against him.
Clothes disappear in fumbled tugs and bitten-off curses. My scrub pants catching on my boot, his belt buckle jamming, both of us too desperate and too clumsy for anything polished. This is months of pretending cracking apart at the seams.
When he pulls back, I see all of him—the green skin, the scars across his ribs, the dark trail of hair below his navel, the thick length of his cock freed from his jeans. My thighs clench. He catches me looking and the corner of his mouth lifts.
"See something you like?"
"Shut up and get back down here."
He drops over me and his mouth finds the hollow of my throat while his hand slides down my stomach, over my hip, between my thighs. His fingers part me, stroking through my slick heat, and the noise I make into his shoulder would embarrass me under any other circumstance on the planet.
"Fuck," he breathes against my neck. "You're soaking, Jess."
His finger slides inside me, and I grip his shoulders hard enough to leave crescents in his skin. He's careful—one finger first, working me open with slow, deliberate strokes that make my hips roll against his hand. A second finger, thicker, stretching me, and the pressure rides the line between too much and not enough until my body adjusts and the burn melts into a slick, aching need for more.
I dig my nails into his back. "Finn, I need you."
"Not yet, Kitten." He curls his fingers, pressing deep, and my spine bows off the cot. "You're not ready for me."
"I'll decide when I'm—"
He adds a third finger and my argument dies on a strangled moan. The stretch pulls tight and hot, his thumb circling my clitin steady pressure while his fingers work me open, I bury my face in his neck to muffle the sounds pouring out of me. His scent floods my lungs—leather, oil, the deep orc musk that sinks into my brain and shuts down every rational thought I own.
