His mouth finds mine.
Not gentle. Not careful. Not the tentative, almost-reverent kiss against the trellis. This is the kiss of someone who just ran through glass for you. Who is done, completely and permanently done, pretending that order matters more than this.
My hand loops through the ruins of his shirt and pulls. The cotton surrenders without a fight, tearing away from his body in a sound that zips through the dark hallway. His skin is hot under my palms. Furnace hot. The tattoos pulse faster under my fingers, responding to touch, and a low rumble builds in him that I feel in my teeth.
"Bedroom," I manage against his mouth.
He picks me up. Both hands under my thighs, lifting me off the ground like I weigh exactly nothing, and I wrap my legs around his waist because gravity has stopped being relevant. My back leaves the wall. The hallway tilts. He carries me through the doorway I point at, ducking his head to clear the frame, and we spill into my bedroom.
My bedroom is a disaster. Clothes on every surface. Three half-finished terrariums on the dresser. A stack of botanical journals sliding off the nightstand. Potting soil ground into the rug. The sheets are a tangled nest of mismatched patterns because I never learned to make a bed and never wanted to.
Flynn looks at the chaos.
Flynn does not care about the chaos.
He puts me down on the unmade bed and follows me onto it, and the frame groans under the combined weight of one full-grown Orc and whatever reckless magic is pulling us together. My hands find the cuts on his shoulder. He hisses through his teeth. I pull a sliver of glass free. Then another. His forehead drops against mine, eyes closed, breathing ragged.
"This is going to get blood on your sheets."
"My sheets are already covered in potting soil."
A breath of laughter against my mouth. "Disgusting."
"You love it."
His hands slide into my wild hair, tilting my head back, and his mouth drags down my throat. His tusks graze the soft skin below my ear, not breaking it, just present, a reminder of exactly what he is. The sound I make is not dignified. The sound I make belongs in the magical ravine, or the deep woods, or anywhere that isn't a suburban bedroom with a novelty cactus lamp on the nightstand.
The floral overalls have too many buckles. His thick fingers fumble with the first clasp, then the second, and a frustrated growl vibrates against my collarbone.
"Who designed these?"
"They're vintage."
"They're a siege fortification."
I reach down and pop the third buckle myself. The straps fall. His breath catches. The growl shifts into something lower, something reverent, and his hands slow down. Gentle now. Impossibly gentle for hands that caught a falling tree. That shattered a glass wall. That grip edging shears like holy weapons.
We are dirt and glass and blood and adrenaline and I pull him closer, closer, into the mess of my sheets and my life and everything he spent years building walls against. His weight settles over me, heavy and warm and real, and the glowing tattoos cast green light across the ceiling like we're underwater, like we've sunk to the bottom of something vast and quiet where HOA citations and lawn ordinances and tyrannical Elves cannot reach.
The bed frame protests.
We don't stop.
Dawn comesthrough the crooked blinds in gold stripes. I'm sprawled across Flynn, my cheek pressed to the space between two glowing tattoos. His arm is heavy around my shoulders. The cuts on his deltoid have already started to close, Orcish healing knitting the skin in slow green threads. My bedroom looks like a garden center exploded inside a laundromat. Clothes everywhere. Soil everywhere. A terrarium has tipped over on the dresser, spilling moss across a stack of Flynn's neatly folded cargo shorts that he apparently retrieved from his house at some point during the night and then immediately abandoned on the floor.
His heartbeat thuds under my ear. Slow. Steady. The heartbeat of someone deeply, catastrophically at peace.
My phone buzzes.
Then buzzes again.
Then buzzes nine more times in rapid succession.
Flynn's arm tightens around me. "Ignore it."
"It's judging day."
His eyes snap open. Gold. Alert. Every ounce of peace vacuumed out of his expression in a single breath. He sits up so fast I tumble sideways into the pillow nest, and he's already on his feet, scanning the room for his shorts, finding them, pulling them on with military efficiency.
