Page 39 of Tusks And Conditions

"I mean it. I will find you. I tracked a crime lord through six shell companies. You would take me half an afternoon."

"I know."

CHAPTER 15

SABINE

His thumbs trace the lines of my jaw like he is memorizing the geometry. Mapping coordinates. The gold light from his runes paints my skin warm and strange, and his hands are shaking.

Jagger Ironjaw's hands are shaking.

"Tell me to stop, at any point. Any second. I stop."

"I don't want you to stop."

He lowers his head, slow, giving me every opportunity to pull back, and presses his mouth to my forehead. Just my forehead. His lips are rough and warm and they stay there for three full seconds while his thumbs keep sweeping those arcs along my jaw.

Then my temple. The bridge of my nose. The corner of my mouth, just barely, a graze that sends electric current down my spine.

"You're stalling," I whisper against his lips.

"I am savoring."

His mouth finds mine. Not like the fake kiss for the inspector, sharp and performative and electric. This is slow. Devastatingly slow. He kisses me like I am a clause in a contract he needs to read three times to fully understand, and his hands slide down my neck and span my shoulders and the size of his palms against my frame makes the air leave my lungs in a rush.

I grip his shirt. Pull. He follows where I lead, stepping into the hallway, ducking the doorframe by habit. My back finds the bedroom door and his arm shoots over my head, palm flat against the wood, holding his weight so none of it touches me until I want it to.

"Open the door."

I twist the handle. We stumble through. The bed is made with military precision because I made it this morning and I remade it after he left because the routine was the only thing keeping me from calling him, and now his weight is pressing me down into those perfectly tucked sheets and I could not care less about the creases.

He pulls back to look at me. His silver tusk-piercings catch the lamplight. The gold runes pulse up his arms, across his collarbones, disappearing under his shirt. I reach for the hem.

"Off."

He sits back on his knees and pulls it over his head in one motion. The tattoos cover him. Every line of muscle, every ridge of scar tissue, traced and overlaid with gleaming script in a language I cannot read. They pulse brighter where I touch. My fingers find a long, raised scar across his ribs and the runes around it flare like a warning.

"What does this one say?"

"Endurance."

I trace it end to end. His stomach contracts under my fingertips, muscles jumping.

"And this one?" My hand moves to his shoulder. A circular pattern, dense with layered symbols.

"Protection of what is claimed."

"Romantic."

"Orcish is a practical language." He catches my wrist and presses his mouth to the inside of it, right over the pulse point, and his breath raises every hair on my arm. His tusks graze the thin skin. Gentle. So impossibly, absurdly gentle for a mouth that could snap bone.

He unbuttons my blouse one button at a time. His fingers are too large for the task, built for axe handles and throat-grips, and he handles each tiny button with the same precise patience he used on the window frame. When the fabric falls open he goes still.

"What?"

"You are—" He stops. Swallows. The gold light flares to his fingertips. "I have nothing in Orcish or Common that is sufficient."

"Try math. I respond well to math."