Page 48 of The Orc’s Comfort

“That was a lot,” I say finally.

“She cares,” Rhazgar says. “She wanted you to know what you’re choosing.” After a moment, he says, “She raised the question of children.”

“She did.”

“I should have asked you first.”

“There’s an order to things,” I say. “You knew that.”

The corner of his mouth shifts. Not quite a smile. Close.

“I’ve thought about it,” I say. “Not the abstract someday version. I’ve thought about what it would mean with you, in this life.” I look out at the dark mountains. “I’m not scared of it, though I don’t know exactly what it looks like. But I’m not scared.”

He exhales slowly. “Nor am I.” A pause. “I would welcome it. When the time is right. If you would.”

“I would,” I say.

He reaches across and squeezes my hand in my lap. We drive the rest of the way like that, quiet and steady and certain.

After a while he says, without preamble, “There is one more thing I want you to understand before tonight.”

I wait.

“WarmHearth full bonding includes a claiming mark.” His thumb moves across my knuckles. “Sustained pressure at the pulse point. Visible. Intentional. It tells everyone who sees it what you are to me.” A pause. “I won’t place it without asking. But I wanted you to know that it exists. So nothing surprises you.”

I think about that. About being visibly, undeniably claimed. It feels right in a soul-deep way.

“Yes,” I say simply, because knowing him for only a few weeks has done absolutely nothing to blunt the depth of it.

When he pulls into our building’s lot, he doesn’t immediately get out. “I set something up,” he says. “In the condo. This afternoon.”

“Confident tonight would go well?”

His expression gentles. “Prepared for the possibility,” he says. “There’s a difference.”

There isn’t, really. But I let him have it.

“Then take me upstairs,” I say.

Chapter Twenty-One

Rhazgar

For six months, I watched Julia Whitaker from a careful distance. I have documented the way she moves through a room, the quiet intensity of her attention when something interests her, the sound she makes when she’s surprised. I’ve carried all of it in my hands like something breakable.

She is not breakable.

The elevator doors close and I have her against the wall before I've made a decision to move.

She gasps against my mouth and opens for me immediately, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer as though she has wanted this every bit as much as I have. My tusks frame her face as I angle my head, and she tilts to meet me. She has learned how to do this, how to fit herself to the geometry of my mouth, and something about that undoes me a little.

Her tongue slides against mine. A sound escapes me that I do not plan.

“Your condo,” she breathes when we break apart.

“Thirty seconds,” I tell her, and I’m already carrying her, her feet nowhere near the floor. Her ankle bears nothing. Her ribs bear nothing. I have her.

The elevator dings.