31. Xela
THIRTY-ONE
XELA
Dawn comes gray and cold.
I wake slowly, wrapped in warmth I don’t deserve. Tharos’s body curves around mine, his arms holding me against his chest, his breath stirring the hair at my temple. His heartbeat is steady and slow against my back—a rhythm I’ve been unconsciously matching in my sleep.
For a moment, I don’t move. Just breathe. Feel the impossible heat of him, the solid mass of muscle and scar that’s become familiar in ways I never expected. His skin is warmer than a human’s, that orc furnace metabolism that’s kept me from shivering through the night.
We found another hollow after leaving the first one. Smaller, cramped, barely enough room to sit upright. But the forest’s fear had spread everywhere, and Tharos said we needed to rest while we could. That we’d need our strength for what was coming.
I hadn’t argued. Hadn’t even protested when he’d pulled me against him and wrapped us both in his worn cloak. I’d just... let it happen. Let myself be held in a way I haven’t been held in years.
Now his arm is heavy across my waist. His breath is warm on my neck. And I should be planning—should be calculating routes and options and contingencies—but all I can think about is how right this feels. How dangerous that feeling is.
“You’re thinking too loud.” His voice is a rumble against my shoulder, rough with sleep. “I can feel it.”
“Through the earth?” I don’t turn. Not yet. I want to hold onto this moment just a little longer.
“Through your body. You’re tense. Wound tight as a crossbow.” His arm tightens around me, pulling me closer. “What’s bothering you?”
Everything. Nothing. The fact that I’m lying in a pit beneath a carnivorous forest wrapped around a man I was hired to kill, and the only thing I want is for this to never end.
I turn in his arms, face him in the gray half-light filtering through cracks in the roots above.
His face is softer in sleep—or near-sleep—those amber eyes heavy-lidded and warm.
The harsh lines of his jaw are still there, the tusks still worn uneven, but there’s a vulnerability I haven’t seen before. An openness.
“I’m thinking about how stupid this is.” The admission slips out unbidden.
“Which part?”
The air between us shifts. Charges. My chest is against his, my leg thrown over his hip, his hand at my neck. The thin layer of clothing between us feels like nothing at all.
Yesterday was desperation. The kiss in the first hollow was violence transformed—the need to feel alive after nearly dying, to grab onto anything real in a place that wants to swallow us both.
This is different.
This is choice.
I lean forward and press my lips to his. Soft. Questioning. So different from the hunger of before. He responds in kind, his mouth moving against mine with a gentleness that makes my chest ache.
My hands find his chest. The bark-scars are rough under my palms, ridged and textured in ways that shouldn’t feel good but do. I trace them with my fingertips, feeling the edges where normal skin gives way to the marks of his binding. He shivers.
“Does that hurt?” I pull back, suddenly uncertain.
“No.” His voice is thick. “It feels... I don’t know how to describe it. The scars don’t have normal sensation. They’re connected to the forest instead of to me. When you touch them—” He breaks off, jaw tightening.
“What?”
“It’s like you’re touching the heart of Briargrave. Like you’re reaching through me to stroke roots that have been growing for centuries.” His hand finds mine, presses it flat against the largest scar on his chest. “The forest feels you. Knows you. And it doesn’t hate you.”
“High praise from a murder forest.”
“You have no idea.”
I lean down, replace my palm with my mouth. Press my lips to the rough bark-like skin, feel him shudder beneath me. His hands grip my hips, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
“Xela—”
I drag my tongue along the edge of the scar, tasting sap and salt and something that might be earth. He makes a sound—not quite a groan, not quite a growl—that vibrates through his entire body.
“We don’t have time for this.” His voice is strained. “The Consortium—”
“I know.” I kiss another scar, then another. “But I wanted to do this at least once. Before everything falls apart.”
“Who says it’s going to fall apart?”
I lift my head, meet his eyes.
“Of the seventy that entered Briargrave, maybe forty remain—but the Consortium has reserves waiting at the boundary. A weapon that rattles the roots of your forest.” I trail my fingers down the center of his chest, feel his muscles contract. “The odds aren’t exactly in our favor.”
“They never have been.” His hand catches mine, stops its descent. “And yet we’re both still here.”
“For now.”
“For now is enough.” He sits up, bringing me with him, settling me across his lap. Our faces are level now, our breath mingling. “Every moment I’ve had with you has been borrowed time. I stopped expecting a future years ago. All I have is this. Right now. With you.”
“That’s the most depressing thing anyone’s ever said to me after a kiss.”
“I’m not good at pillow talk.”
“Clearly.”
His hands are on my waist, his thumbs tracing circles against my ribs. The touch is almost idle, but it sends heat pooling low in my belly. I want more. Want to finish what we started, to burn away the fear of what’s coming in the fire of what we’ve found.
But he’s right. We don’t have time.