Chapter 4 #2
"Long time ago. Before we came to Nightfall Cove." I shrug. "Some asshole took a swing at Knox. I stepped between them. Fist caught the tusk at the root. Cracked half of it clean off."
"Knox must be grateful."
"He feels guilty. Still brings it up." I run my thumb along the break, feeling the ridge where the bone healed rough. "I don't regret it. I'd do it again. Every single time."
"Always the second," Jess says.
I turn my head. Every defense she's spent weeks rebuilding is gone. No anger, no suspicion, no heat. She knows what it feels like to give everything and have it treated like less.
"Except with you." The words leave my mouth before I can trap them. "With you I want to be first."
The back window explodes.
Glass and rain and the splintered end of a pine tree punch through the frame in a shriek of tearing wood, and freezing water hits us both like a wall.
Jess scrambles to her feet and her boots slide on the wet tile, her legs go out from under her, and I catch her before she hits the ground.
My arms lock around her waist, and for one second she's pressed flat against me, her heartbeat pounding against my chest so hard I feel each beat through my shirt.
One second of rain soaking through our clothes and her fingers gripping my forearms and every thought in my head narrowing to the places where she touches me.
Then she shoves off and turns toward the breach, and I'm right behind her.
I strip off my cut and fold it over the back of a chair.
The tree branch juts through the window frame at an angle, rain pouring in around it, and I grab the trunk with both hands and shove it back through the opening.
The wood scrapes and cracks against the frame, and the branch drops into the dark on the other side.
I yank my shirt over my head and press it against the gap, but the hole swallows the fabric and the rain keeps coming. Not enough. Not even close.
"Plywood," Jess shouts over the wind. "Supply closet, the first one of the left."
I'm back in ten seconds with a sheet under my arm and a fistful of nails between my teeth.
She holds the board flat against the breach, but the wind fights her for it, and I step in behind her to brace it over her head.
My arms cage her in, my chest an inch from her back, and the warmth of her body cuts through the freezing rain on my skin.
I drive the nails through with the heel of my palm, four corners, the wood splitting around the metal.
She doesn't move. Doesn't step out from under me.
Just holds the board steady and breathes.
She turns. Her eyes travel down, tracing the green skin, the scars across my ribs, the dark hair trailing below my navel, and her scent floods with heat.
It cuts through the adrenaline and the rain and the fear, unmistakable and raw, and she doesn't know I can smell it but I can. Every molecule of it.
She looks away. Fast.
I grin. Can't help it. "See something you like, kitten?"
"Shut up and help me move this shelf." There's less bite in it than before, and her ears burn red at the tips. I'll take it.
We brace the shelf with supply crates and towels until the worst of the flooding stops. By the time we finish, my jeans drip puddles onto the linoleum and Jess shivers in soaked scrubs, her teeth chattering, her arms wrapped around herself.
The generator sputters. The lights in the trauma bay dim to half-power.
I dig through my bag in the break room and pull out the dry shirt I packed, a worn black henley, soft from years of washing, the fabric carrying my scent from days of living out of a saddlebag. I hold it out to her.
She hesitates. Looks at the shirt. Looks at me, shirtless and dripping in the doorway.
"Take it. You're freezing."
She peels her soaked scrub top over her head and drops it on the floor.
Black sports bra, wet skin, the tattoo curling along her ribs.
I keep my gaze locked on the wall behind her, jaw tight, because if I let it drop I'm going to do something stupid.
She watches me not looking. Takes the henley from my grip and pulls it over her head, and the corner of her mouth lifts because she knows exactly what she's doing to me.
The hem drops past her hips, the sleeves swallow her hands, the collar sits loose enough to show the line of her collarbone.
My shirt on her skin. My scent soaking into her hair, wrapping around her like a second pair of arms.
A possessiveness I've never felt before rakes through me, claws and heat and hunger.
Every orc instinct I own lights up at once—territorial, primal, hungry in a way that has nothing to do with flesh and everything to do with the bone-deep need to mark and claim and keep.
She smells like me, and the combination rewires my brain in a way I couldn't explain if I tried.
The generator dies and the lights go with it, darkness swallowing the clinic in a single breath.
In the silence, with the storm screaming outside and me soaked into her skin, Jess smells like mine.