He kisses me.
His mouth covers mine and his free hand fists in the back of my hair. I grab the collar of his cut and pull him down to me, kissing him back, tasting smoke and salt and the desperate heat of a man who doesn't know how to stay but can't make himself go.
The kiss turns savage. My teeth catch his bottom lip and he growls, a vibration that rolls through him into me, through my palms, down through my ribs where it settles low and hot. His tusks drag across my chin, the gold caps smooth and warm, and I tip my head back and let them track down my jaw to the side of my throat. The scrape of tusk pulls a sound out of me I don't recognize, and his grip tightens at the small of my back, hauling me up onto my toes.
I lock the stockroom door without breaking the kiss. He grips my thighs and lifts me, I wrap my legs around his waist, and the shelving rattles against the wall when my back hits it. Abox slides off the top shelf and lands somewhere behind us and neither of us care.
His mouth drags from mine to the hinge of my jaw, down the side of my neck, and his tusks scrape the tendon where my pulse hammers. My head falls back against the shelf.
"I'm still angry at you," I say to the ceiling.
His teeth graze my throat. "I know."
The bulb swings on its chain above us, throwing shadows that rock across the walls. The stockroom smells like bourbon, cardboard and Rex,his fingers dig into my thighs, and minetwistin his hair, neither of us is okay and neither of us is stopping.
Chapter 6
Rex
My mouth finds the hollow of Holly's throat and the cologne hits me like a fist.
Tyler's cologne, still on her skin. The same chemical-sweet stench I caught two nights ago when she walked into the Anchor laughing at her phone, flushed from the wind, her neck carrying a scent that didn't belong to me. It sits in the dip below her ear, faint but present, and the fated mate bond rips through my chest with a fury that rattles the shelving before I do.
I press my mouth to the exact spot. My lips drag across her pulse, open and hot, and I breathe out against her skin until my scent sinks into the place his occupied. Holly's fingers fist in my hair and pull, anchoring herself. Her back arches off the shelf behind her and a case of bourbon shifts on the rack, glass clinking against glass.
"Holly—"
I growl her name into her throat and the sound rolls through the metal shelving and comes back to me through her ribs. My hands span her waist, thumbs pressing into the dip above herhipbones, and I drag my face down the column of her neck. Scent-marking. The orc instinct I've kept leashed for months snaps its chain and floods my bloodstream: cover her. Every inch. Replace every trace of another male with the scent that says she's claimed.
She's not claimed. I haven't bitten her. Haven't said the word out loud. But my body doesn't care about the distinctions my brain keeps drawing, and right now my body is running the show.
Holly grabs the collar of my cut and hauls me down to her mouth. Her mouth tastes like bourbon and fury. Her teeth catch my bottom lip and drag, and the pain shoots straight to the base of my spine. I lift her by the backs of her thighs, her legs lock around my waist, and the shelf behind her groans against the wall. A box of cocktail napkins slides off the top and bursts open on the concrete floor.
Neither of us looks down.
Her nails rake down my neck, under the collar of my shirt, scoring lines I'll feel for days. This isn't how we used to do it. This isn't how the last six months went. Fast fucks in the dark, her apartment or mine, done before midnight and gone before dawn. This is different. Her hands shake in my hair and mine shake against her zipper and neither of us hides it. She pulls my shirt over my head, I yank it free and toss it somewhere behind me, and when her palms flatten against my bare chest her touch burns through every nerve I've got.
I can't slow down. The routine I used to run through with her like a checklist—none of it exists right now. My mouth drags from her throat to the curve of her shoulder, across the collarbone wherehiscologne sits strongest. My teeth, tongue and breath replacing it inch by inch. She gasps when my tusksscrape the skin above her breast, the caps catching on her bra strap, and the sound shoots through me like a live wire.
My shoulders knock a shelf and something glass rocks behind me. I don't turn around. Holly's hands are at my belt, yanking the leather through the buckle, and I'm working her jeans down her hips with one hand while the other holds her against me. The stockroom is twelve by ten and I take up most of it. My elbow clips a box of straws when I shift to get her jeans past her knees, it tumbles off the shelf and scatters across the concrete.
She kicks the denim free. I lift her again and her thighs lock around me and we go down, my knees hitting the concrete hard enough to send a jolt up my spine, her back against the base of the shelving unit, bottles rattling above us. The cold floor bites through my jeans. My shoulders press into the shelf behind me, there's nowhere to go, no room to manoeuvre, her body pinned between mine and the steel rack and I can feel every inch of her against every inch of me.
"Now." Her voice scrapes the walls.
She reaches between us and wraps her fingers around my cock and I breathe through my teeth because the pressure of her hand threatens to end me before I'm inside her. She guides me in and I press forward, working into her in slow shallow thrusts, giving her time to take me. Her breath catches on every push, her fingers digging into my shoulders, her body adjusting around the size of me. By the time I'm all the way inside her she's panting against my neck and the sound alone almost gets me. Her head tips back against the shelf and a bottle topples behind her, rolling off the edge and shattering on the concrete somewhere to our left
I fuck her on the stockroom floor with my knees grinding into concrete, her back against cold steel and the bare bulb swingingabove us every time my shoulder catches the shelf. Not the way I've been fucking her for months but the thing I've been holding back the whole time, the raw feral drive that growlsminewith every thrust. My face stays buried in her neck, my mouth open against her pulse, breathing my scent into her skin over and over until there's nothing left of Tyler, nothing left of anyone who isn't me. Her nails dig into my shoulders and her teeth find the muscle above my collarbone, biting down hard enough that the pain blooms white behind my eyes.
My teeth ache. The spot where her neck slopes into her shoulder sits right against my mouth and every orc instinct I have screams to bite down. My jaw locks. The muscles in my face shake from the effort of keeping my mouth shut, of not sinking my teeth into her and ending every argument about what we are to each other. I drag my mouth away and the sound I make against her throat isn't a word in any language.
Holly's hips roll up to meet mine, her pussy clenching around my cock every time I drive into her, and neither of us is pretending this is casual anymore. Her hand fists in my hair and pulls my face up to hers and she kisses me with her teeth and her anger and the six months of bullshit I've put her through, and I take every bit of it because I deserve it.
She comes with her whole body locked around mine, her pussy gripping my cock in long rolling waves, her face buried in my neck, my name breaking apart in her mouth. The orgasm drags me under before I'm ready. My hips stutter and I come so hard my vision whites out, my cock pulsing inside her, the fated mate bond screaming through my blood in a frequency that rattles my bones. I press my mouth to her neck and breathe her in, pulling her scent so deep into my lungs it replaces the air. My teeth find the claiming point again and press, not hard enough to breakskin but close, so close the restraint burns through every muscle in my jaw.
The aftershocks roll through us both.We're on the stockroom floor, surrounded by scattered napkins and broken glass and a bourbon box that cracked open when it hit the concrete. The bare bulb swings on its chain above us, shadows rocking across the walls. I cover her, all of her—shoulders, chest, hips—and I can feel her heartbeat hammering against my ribs through the space between us.
For thirty seconds, everything goes quiet. Holly's face presses into my chest. My arms circle her back. My tusk caps rest against her shoulder, cool against her flushed skin.
