Page 40 of Tusks And Conditions

His laugh is a low rumble that vibrates against my sternum as he drops his head and presses his mouth to my collarbone. "You are the exact correct answer to a problem I did not know I was solving."

Close enough.

His mouth moves lower. Each kiss lands deliberate and unhurried, charting a path across skin that has never been touched with this kind of focused attention. My fingers dig into the sheets. His hand spans my entire ribcage, thumb brushing the underside of my breast, and he pauses there. He looks up at me from under heavy brows. Asking.

"Yes."

He exhales and his mouth follows his hand and the gold light is everywhere, saturating the dim bedroom, turning the beige walls into something luminous and alive. My back arches off the bed and his free arm hooks under me, pulling me closer.

"Stay with me," he murmurs against my skin.

"I'm here."

"Stay with me."

Not a demand. A plea from a man who has spent his entire life in rooms he expected to leave. I pull his face up to mine and kiss him with everything I have, graceless and fierce, and his groan reverberates through my teeth.

His hands find the waistband of my slacks. He pauses again.

"Sabine."

"If you ask permission one more time I am going to start a spreadsheet tracking the delays."

The sound he makes is half laugh, half growl. He strips the fabric down with one smooth pull and his mouth follows, pressing hot and open against my hip, my thigh, the inside of my knee. Worshipping every inch like it is scripture in a religion he just discovered.

We don't leave the apartment for two days.

Saturday morning. Jagger is wedged into my kitchen, cracking eggs into a bowl with one hand while the other holds open a fantasy novel propped against the toaster. The book's spine is cracked in forty places. The cover features a bare-chested elf riding what appears to be a giant salamander.

"You're burning the butter."

"I am not." He doesn't look up from the page. The butter is absolutely burning.

I reach around him to move the pan off the burner. My arm spans roughly one-third of his torso. He shifts to give me access and his free hand drops to the small of my back, resting there like it has always belonged in that exact spot, and continues reading.

The eggs turn out fine. Better than fine. He seasons them with something from a small leather pouch in his gear bag, a dark red powder that smells like smoked paprika crossed with campfire.

"Orcish red salt," he says when I raise an eyebrow. "From the Thornback Mountains. My aunt sent a case last winter."

"Your aunt sends you care packages?"

"Every solstice." He slides a plate in front of me.

"She also sends socks. Very thick. She worries about my circulation in the city."

I eat the eggs. They are spectacular. The unsigned annulment papers sit on the counter six inches from my elbow. Neither of us looks at them.

Saturday afternoon. Rain hammers the windows he repaired. The Snarbo is curled in a tight, multi-eyed ball on the armchair, snoring in a pitch that rattles the glass figurines on my bookshelf. Jagger relaxes on the floor because the couch is too small for him, his back against the sofa, legs stretched across the living room like fallen timber. I sit behind him on the couch with my laptop, finishing a forensic audit for a client who imports enchanted kitchenware.

His head tilts back against my knee. I type with one hand and run the other through his hair without thinking about it. Coarse. Thick. Warm.

"Orcs don't purr."

"I am not purring. That is a war hum. It indicates contentment after a successful territorial claim."

"So a purr."

"A war hum."