"I want you inside me."
He pushes in slow. The stretch burns thick and full, different from the first time, my body still swollen and sensitive from his fingers, from his mouth, every nerve lit up and screaming. My hands fist beneath me and I breathe through it, and without sight, the sensation swallows me whole, nothing to anchor to except the weight of him above me and the relentless press of his cock sinking deeper until he bottoms out and we both stop breathing.
"Say it again," he whispers against my temple.
"I love you." I rock my hips against his and the drag of his cock inside me pulls a whimper from my throat. "I love you."
He moves. Deep, rolling thrusts that build slow and deliberate, nothing like the frantic pace on this same cot hours ago. His pelvis grinds against my clit on every stroke, and my nails carve into his back as the pressure builds from a different place, deeper, slower, fed by every whispered word between us. I hookmy ankles at the base of his spine and tilt my hips, changing the angle, and the sound that tears out of me gets swallowed by his mouth on mine.
"Right there?" His voice rough and low against my ear.
"Yes, yes, yes."
He fucks me deeper, his fingers digging into my hip hard enough to bruise, and I don't care. I arch into the pressure and want more. The rumble builds deep in his torso, layering under the sound of our breathing, resonating through his body into mine, between my thighs where his cock drags against every raw nerve.
His lips slide to my neck. The junction of my shoulder. His breath comes ragged against my pulse.
"I want to bite you." His voice, wrecked. "The claiming bite. It's permanent, Jess. It changes you. Binds us. I need you to understand what—"
Permanent. The word I've been dodging since I packed my truck and drove west. Everything good in my life has had an expiration date. Tours end. Units scatter. People leave, or I leave first. Permanent means no exit strategy.
But he gave his blood for Jax tonight without hesitating. He held my hand in the dark without asking for anything back. He saw every wall I built and waited on the other side.
"Do it."
"Jess, you need to think about—"
"I've been thinking for eight months." I grip the back of his neck and hold him against my throat. "About every reason to run. I'm done running.Claim me. Show me that you're here for the long run."
He bites me.
Sharp, bright pain lances through my shoulder, his teeth sinking into the junction of my neck, piercing skin. Then the pain floods into heat. It pours through my veins, spreading from the bite, racing through my bloodstream, filling me from the inside out.
The bond snaps into place.
His heartbeat hits me first, a second pulse layering beneath my own. Steady, strong, terrified, so full of love I can't breathe around it. Then the rest crashes in. His devotion, fierce and staggering and absolute. The depth of what he feels for me: not a surface emotion, not charm, not the easy warmth. Ancient, orc and permanent, rooted so deep it lives in his marrow.
He's there. Behind my ribs, woven into the rhythm of my own heart. Not separate, not borrowed, but mine.
His mouth softens on the mark.He inhales against the bite, a low, shattered sound rumbles through him, and I know my scent has changed, threaded with something new, something orc, something that marks me as claimed.His lips barely touch the bite, trembling, and his arms wrap around me so tight I feel his heart hammering. He's shaking. Not from exertion. From the weight of forever settling into his bones.
"Yours," I breathe.
"Always yours." He presses the words into the claiming mark. His hips roll deep and slow, and the bond amplifies everything, his cock hitting that spot inside me while his pleasure feeds into mine and mine reflects back, a feedback loop. I feel what he feels: the tight grip of my body around his cock, the clench of my inner walls, the wet heat of me pulling him deeper. He feelswhat I feel: the stretch, the fullness, the ache building behind my navel.
The orgasm builds different from the first time. A slow, relentless wave that crests and keeps cresting, fed by the bond, by his heartbeat syncing with mine, by the drag of his cock and the grind of his hips and the trembling in his arms. My pussy clenches around him in long, rolling spasms that I feel from both sides of the bond, his pleasure and mine bleeding together until I can't tell which orgasm belongs to who. His release follows, his cock pulsing deep inside me, a shuddering, full-body surrender that grinds into my memory and stays.
We lie tangled together, breathing hard, his face buried in my neck, his breath warm against the mark that throbs under his lips. My fingers trace idle lines down his spine. His pulse settles under my ribcage, a second rhythm I'll never lose.
The generator coughs back to life. Emergency lights flicker on, casting the break room in dim amber light. Clothes scattered across the floor. My scrub top hanging off the vending machine handle. His flannel balled under the cot. The bite on my neck visible in the light, a crescent of broken skin already settling into the raised edges of a permanent scar.
Finn lifts his head. His eyes track the mark on my throat, and his expression, raw and open and stripped of every defense, makes my breath catch.
"No taking it back now, Kitten."
I press my palm against his jaw.
"Good. I don't want to."
