Epilogue
Eden
Six months later.
The cursor blinks at the end of a sentence I've written and rewritten a dozen times.
I delete it and start again.
She looked at him—this orc who was supposed to be a monster, who cooked her breakfast and cleaned her wounds and stood between her and every threat the world threw at them—and she knew.
She was finally his.
I sit back and read it again.
That's it. That's the one.
I type two more words.
THE END.
The cursor blinks after them, but there isn't more. This one is finished.
My first book since Atlanta. Since everything.
I want to scream. I want to call someone. I want to run outside and tackle Diesel into the dirt and make him read every page while I watch his face.
Instead, I just sit here, grinning at my laptop.
Marlene's going to lose her mind. My agent wasn't thrilled when I told her I was moving two hours outside Atlanta to live with an orc mechanic in a cottage that didn't have reliable WiFi.
But after I sent her the first three chapters, she changed her tune.
"Whatever he's doing," she said, "don't let him stop. "
Through the kitchen window, I see Diesel working on the truck that's been "almost finished" for three months now.
Tank top clinging to his back because it's August and the Georgia heat is brutal, and also because he knows exactly what it does to me.
Sweat tracks down his back, catches the light—and so do the scars.
Two of them, still pink and raised on his shoulder and side—six months old and mine.
Healing faster than the graze on my shoulder, because of course they are.
Orcs. His shoulders flex as he reaches for something under the hood, and I catch the hitch in the movement, the way he compensates without thinking.
He doesn't complain about it, never has. But I see it every time.
I'm wearing his shirt, the gray one. I stopped pretending I was going to give it back around month two.
Since I moved in, he's been on a mission.
Built-in bookshelves in the living room so I'd stop stacking paperbacks on the floor.
New shutters on the bedroom window because I mentioned once—once—that the morning light woke me up too early.
Last week he cleared the brush in the backyard, said I could plant a garden if I wanted.
I haven't told him I have no idea how to garden. I'll figure it out. Or I'll kill everything and he'll pretend not to notice.
The news called it a deal gone wrong. Dirty cop, drugs, debts—the kind of story that writes itself. Nova made sure my name stayed out of it.
The guilt over pulling the trigger never came, and I stopped waiting around month three.
***
The screen door bangs, pulling me back.
I hear heavy footsteps across the porch, then the kitchen. The smell of him hits me before I turn around—sweat and sawdust and skin.
He fills the doorway—too big for the frame, too big for the room, too big for this whole damn cottage.
His tank top is stretched across his chest, grease on his forearms, a dark smear across his jaw. He's looking at me the way he does when he's been thinking instead of working.
"You've been at that thing all day."
His voice is rough, low and worn.
"I know." I spin the laptop so he can see the screen. "Done."
He crosses the kitchen and stops behind my chair. The heat of him reaches me before his hands find my shoulders.
"You sure you don't mind that I'm dedicating it to Carver instead of you?"
His hands slide down over my collarbone, down my arms, then back up to settle on my hips.
"I don't need my name in a book." His voice is low against my ear. "I've got you in my bed."
I laugh—I can't help it. "Smooth."
"I try."
He spins my chair around to face him. Then he's lifting me—right arm doing most of the work, his left shoulder still not quite what it was—and dropping into the chair with me in his lap. The wood groans under our combined weight.
His hands settle on my waist, warm through the thin fabric of his shirt, and I feel the solid press of his thighs under mine.
"Tell me."
I shift in his lap and get comfortable—or as comfortable as I can with his hands on me and his eyes on my face.
"It's a thriller," I say. "About a woman in hiding. Locked away in a safe house with a grumpy, broken orc."
His thumb traces a circle on my hip and he doesn't interrupt. He never does.
"Everyone warned her about him. Said he was dangerous. Said he'd hurt her." I touch his jaw, the scar there. "They were wrong."
"Were they."
"He cooked her breakfast. Cleaned her wounds. Stood between her and every threat." My fingers trace up to his tusk. "He was supposed to be a monster. Turned out he was just an orc who forgot he was allowed to be loved."
His hands tighten on my waist.
"I didn't think I'd ever write again. After Atlanta, after everything—I thought that part of me was dead. Cut out and gone."
He waits, his thumb still tracing those maddening circles.
"But then there was you. And the cottage. And the nightmares, and the cooking, and all of it." I look at the laptop, at the glowing screen and THE END. "The words came back."
"Good words?"
"The best words." I turn back to him. "It's us. Names changed, details different, but it's us. Two broken people who figured out how to be whole together."
His expression shifts, jaw working. No words come, but I don't need them.
He drops his forehead to my shoulder, breath warm against my neck, arms tight around me.
"Proud of you."
I press my lips to his hair and breathe him in.
"I know."
I turn in his lap until I'm facing him properly, knees bracketing his hips. My hands find his face—the tusks I've learned to kiss around—and my fingers drift to his shoulder, to the scar.
"I found my words."
His hands slide up my back, under the cotton.
"Yeah."
"I found my home." My voice catches on the last word, and I have to swallow before the rest comes. "I found you."
His eyes go dark. Hungry.
"You found me."
I kiss him.
Not soft. Not careful. We're past soft. We're past careful. We've been past it since he crashed through my door and took two bullets and tore a man apart with his bare hands to keep me safe.
Six months of nightmares and healing. Learning the shape of him in the dark. The sound of him breathing beside me. The way his hand finds mine even in sleep.
His hands fist in the shirt and he hauls me closer. The chair creaks. I don't care if it breaks. I'll buy him a new one. I'll buy him ten.
His mouth opens under mine and his tusks scrape my lip.
I pull back just enough to breathe. His eyes haven't left mine, his chest heaving, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise.
"I'm going to need you to take me to bed now."
His grin spreads slow. Wicked.
"Yes ma'am."
"Wait—" I laugh against his mouth. "Aren't we meeting Helen and Maya at Greene's for dinner?"
"Still are." He stands in one motion—taking me with him, his hands under my thighs, my legs wrapped around his waist. A grunt escapes him. The ribs still talk to him when he lifts. "Got one more job to finish first."
The laptop glows in the empty kitchen behind us. The cursor blinks after the words I typed this morning:
THE END.
But that's just the book.
That's just the story of how we started—the running, the hiding, the cottage, the falling. The breaking and the healing. The moment I pulled the trigger and set us both free.
That story is finished.
This one—mornings and dishes and fights about nothing and the nightmares coming less often and his shirt on my body and his hands tracing my scars—
This one is just beginning.
He carries me down the hall. Kicks open the bedroom door. Lays me down on the bed we share, and then he's over me—three hundred pounds of orc blocking out the light, his hands braced on either side of my head.
He doesn't move, just looks at me.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." His voice is rough. "Just looking."
"At what?"
"You. Here. In our bed." His thumb traces my jaw. "Still can't believe you stayed."
"Diesel."
"I know." He drops his forehead to mine. "I know you stayed. I know you're not leaving. I just—" He exhales. "Sometimes I need to look."
I pull him down to me—all of him. His weight settles over me.
"Stop thinking," I tell him.
"Can't."
"Try."
I kiss him. Slow this time. Deep. His hand slides into my hair, tilts my head back, and I let him take over, let him set the pace.
His mouth moves to my jaw, my throat, the spot behind my ear, and I arch into him.
"Missed you today," he says against my skin. "Kept thinking about you in here. Writing. Wearing my shirt."
"You saw me through the window."
"Not the same." His teeth graze my collarbone. "Couldn't touch."
His hands find the hem of the shirt—his shirt—and drag it up slowly, knuckles brushing my ribs, my stomach, the underside of my breasts. I lift my arms and let him pull it over my head.
He sits back and looks at me.
"Diesel."
His hands spread across my stomach, warm and huge. "Let me look."
I let him.
He dips his head and finds the scar on my shoulder with his mouth. He kisses it soft, then careful, then not so careful.
I drag his tank top up and he leans back just long enough to pull it off. And then it's skin on skin, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his hips settling between my thighs.
"Eden." My name in his mouth, rough and low.
"I'm here."
"I know." He rocks against me and I gasp. "Just like hearing you say it."
We've done this before. Plenty of times in the last six months.
Maybe it'll stop surprising me eventually.
His hand slides between us. Finds me.
There it is.