The orgasm crashed through me like a wave—no, like a storm, like something violent and beautiful that wiped everything else away. I cried out his name, his real name, and felt him follow me over the edge seconds later. His whole body tensed, shuddering, and the sound he made when he came was almost wounded.
My name on his lips.
“Maya, fuck, Maya!”
It felt wonderful. Impossible. Perfect.
The desk had definitely not been designed for this.
Some important part of it—a leg, maybe, or the center support—was making an ominous creaking sound that suggested we'd compromised its structural integrity. The stethoscope was somewhere on the floor, probably tangled with the reading glasses I still couldn't believe he'd owned this whole time. My sundress had ended up across the room, draped over a chair like it was taking a nap.
We were sprawled in the wreckage. Him half on top of me, both of us breathing like we'd run marathons, the air thick with sex and sweat and the faint scent of his cologne.
I started laughing.
Couldn't help it. The whole thing was absurd—the folder of nothing, the clinical questions, the way he'd maintained that neutral voice while doing things that had nothing to do with medicine. My brilliant, dangerous, ridiculous man had staged an entire fake doctor's appointment because I'd whispered a fantasy in the dark, and it had been simultaneously the hottest and most ridiculous experience of my life.
Kostya's chest rumbled beneath my cheek. He was laughing too, that low sound I'd become addicted to, the one he hadn't known he could make until I'd stumbled into his life.
"Your technique was highly irregular, Doctor," I managed between giggles. "I'm not sure this treatment is FDA approved."
"Mmm." He shifted, pulling me closer, one arm banded around my waist like he was afraid I might try to escape. As if. "Complaints can be filed with administration."
"I'll be filing a glowing review, actually." I lifted my head enough to see his face—soft around the edges now, all the sharp lines of the enforcer blurred by satisfaction. "Five stars. Would recommend to anyone with . . ." I paused, grinning. "What was it? Fluid accumulation?"
He laughed outright at that. The sound echoed in the quiet office, warm and full and so unlike the man he'd been when wemet. That man had growled more than he'd spoken. Had looked at me like I was a problem to be solved rather than a person to be known.
This man—the one beneath me, sprawled on a desk that might never be the same, wearing a button-down shirt that was now thoroughly wrinkled—this man looked at me like I was everything.
"The diagnosis was accurate," he said. "The treatment was effective."
"Very effective." I pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. "Though I do have some feedback on your bedside manner."
"Oh?"
"Too much teasing. Unprofessional delays. I was ready to file a complaint about three times."
His hand found my hair, tangled in the strands that had come loose during the . . . examination. "The teasing is part of the protocol."
"According to whom?"
"According to me." He tugged gently, tilting my head back so he could see my face. "And you loved it."
I had. God help me, I absolutely had. Every moment of desperate hovering, every denial, every time he'd brought me to the edge and held me there—it had all been exactly what I'd wanted without knowing how to ask for it.
"Guilty as charged," I admitted.
He kissed my forehead. Gentle. The kind of tender gesture that made my chest ache, coming from a man whose hands were capable of such violence. That was the thing about Kostya—he contained multitudes.
"Same time next week?" he asked. "I believe you need a follow-up appointment."
The offer hung in the air between us. Not just about the roleplay—though yes, definitely about the roleplay, because I was already thinking about variations, about other scenarios, about all the ways we could play this game—but about everything else too. The future. The life we were building. The strangeness and the sweetness of finding home in the arms of someone who should have been all wrong but was somehow exactly right.
I kissed him instead of answering.
Slow this time. Not the desperate hunger of before, but something softer. Deeper. The kind of kiss that said yes without words, that promised tomorrows and next weeks and all the appointments we'd make up excuses for.
When I pulled back, his eyes were warm. Happy in a way that transformed his whole face.
