Dr. Besharov will see you at 9 PM. Please be prompt. Dress code: sundress. Nothing else.
Nothing else. Two words that had made me go hot and then cold and then hot again, standing in our bedroom at seven in the morning with cat hair on my scrubs and a note that suggested my boyfriend—no, myfiancé—had been paying a lot more attention than I'd realized.
Now here I was. 8:58 PM. Sundress—white with tiny blue flowers, one I'd bought months ago and never worn because it felt too pretty for my disaster of a life. Nothing underneath. The fabric whispered against my bare skin every time I shifted weight, reminding me of my vulnerability with every breath.
My medical brain was having a field day.
Kostya has zero clinical training,it informed me helpfully.The man couldn't find a spleen with a map and a flashlight. He pronounces "tachycardia" like it's a pasta dish. Remember when he asked if the appendix was near the knee?
I remembered. I'd laughed so hard I'd snorted coffee through my nose.
But here's the thing about fantasies: they don't care about credentials.
My body didn't give a single damn that the man behind this door couldn't tell a stethoscope from a blood pressure cuff. It was already responding to the idea of it—the clinical detachment, the power dynamic, the surrender of control to someone who would take care of everything while I just . . . existed. Let myself be examined. Let myself be seen.
God. I was already wet and he hadn't even touched me.
The sundress felt too thin. Too revealing, despite covering more than plenty of outfits I'd worn in public. Maybe because I knew what was underneath it. Or rather, what wasn't.
I pressed my thighs together. Didn't helpat all.
Just knock, I told myself. It's Kostya. He's seen you ugly cry over a documentary about penguins. He's braided your hair while you were too tired to lift your arms. He's held you through nightmares about operating rooms and patients you couldn't save. This is nothing.
Except it wasn't nothing. It was trusting him with the weird, shameful corners of my brain that I'd kept hidden from everyone, including myself.
I knocked.
The sound was too loud in the quiet hallway. My heart hammered against my ribs. One beat. Two.
"Enter."
His voice came through the door and I almost didn't recognize it.
Not Kostya's voice. Not the gravelly rumble I'd grown addicted to, the one that called me little bird and kitten and sometimes justminein a tone that made my knees weak. This was different. Formal. Clinical.
The voice of a man playing a role he intended to play thoroughly.
I turned the handle.
The door swung open, and everything I thought I knew about this room—about this man—rearranged itself into something new.
He was waiting.
And Dr. Besharov, apparently, was ready to see me.
The office had been transformed.
Kostya's usual chaos—the stacks of paperwork, the weapons cleaning supplies, the half-empty coffee cups that accumulated despite my nagging—had vanished. The desk was cleared except for three items: a manila folder that I assumed was my "chart," a stethoscope that looked genuinely medical-grade, and a pair of reading glasses I had never once seen him wear.
Where had he even gotten a stethoscope? I had one at the clinic, but this wasn't mine. This was different. New. Like he'd actually gone out and purchased medical equipment specifically for this.
My chest did something complicated.
Then I looked at him, and complicated became catastrophic.
Kostya sat behind the desk in a white button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms in that way that made women in grocery stores walk into displays. The tattoos at his collar peeked out just enough to remind me who I was dealing with. No tie—that would've been too much, probably—but the top button wasundone, and the reading glasses were perched on his nose with an authority that had no business being that attractive.
He looked like a distinguished physician. If distinguished physicians were built like tanks, covered in criminal tattoos, and capable of killing men with their bare hands.
