With my vitals logged, blood sample drawn, and a final signature confirming I’d received their “care summary,” they rose to leave, informing me everything appeared stable and they would report back to Luminis with a clearance note and pending lab results.
Out in the living room, Marco stood with his back to the open glass doors like he was blocking a camera that didn’t exist. The security guard hovered near the foyer pretending he didn’t wantto melt into the floor. Ivy was giving the medical compliance liaison a smile sharp enough to slice paper, her tone low and lethal as she outlined the consequences of any leak. Kimi and Lucy were a matched pair on the sofa—alert, scanning, quiet, ready.
When the door shut behind them, we all exhaled.
“Excellent,” Ivy said, swiping away on her iPad. “If anyone at Luminis breathes the word ‘uterus,’ I’ll staple an NDA to their forehead.”
“Graphic,” Marco muttered.
“Effective,” she said.
Callum’s palm slid down my spine. “You good?”
I rolled my shoulders and let the tension shake off. “I’m… steady.”
“Scale? Doctor’s-hands edition,” he murmured.
“Six,” I admitted, heat flickering despite everything. His eyes went darker. Yesterday a six meant his hand between my thighs and my name against my throat. My body remembered before my brain did. Twenty-four hours was apparently our limit.
Lucy stood. “Do you want tea? A joke? A distraction? I can do a terrible British accent.”
“How about we give them privacy,” Marco cut in, surprising us all by reading the room for once. “I booked us a villa two down from here. We’ll go see if it’s ready for check-in. Then… we rally after?” He looked between me and Callum.
“Go,” Callum said, gratitude threaded through the word.
“Text if you need anything,” Ivy added, already corralling the troops.
Fifteen minutes later, the soft shuffle of normal filled the space. Ivy bickered with Marco. Kimi hooked Lucy’s overnight bag with two fingers. Thethud thudof wheels rolled over the hall runner.
“Two villas down,” Ivy called. “Go claim your rooms before I itemize you.”
A chorus ofyeah, yeah, bossdrifted back, and in a handful of small sounds—zippers, laughter, a door snick—their orbit shifted just far enough to give us space without ever feeling far.
The villa settled. Sea, air, quiet.
Callum turned me gently, backing me into the edge of the console table by the terrace doors. “Six?” he asked again, softer now.
I nodded. “Six and climbing.”
His mouth curved. “We can keep it gentle.”
“Or we can keep it us,” I countered, voice low. “Desperate. Greedy. Impatient.”
His jaw flexed. “Aye.” Then he kissed me like the worst was already behind us—slow, reverent, heat unfurling in warm, confident circles. His hands mapped my hips, my waist, the place beneath my ribs he always touched like it was his favorite prayer. I melted into him, the smell of antiseptic replaced by bergamot and him.
“Color?” he breathed against my mouth.
“Green,” I whispered. “Very, very green.”
We started using colors weeks ago, after the loss. We slowly re-introduced intimacy until we were both ready. It was a way for us to check in with each other, not as an escape hatch, but as a covenant. A shortcut through the haze. Green meant go, but not justgo—it means yes, now,I’m with you. Yellow meant slow down, check in, let’s breathe for a second. And red… well, we’d never used red.
We didn’t believe in safe words, not really. We believed in knowing each other down to the molecules. We believed in the storm and the calm that followed. But the color system gave us something sacred. A spell. A signal. A choice.
And I was choosing him. Always.
Callum smiled into the kiss, then gathered the hem of my T-shirt and eased it up, palms dragging heat along my sides. I shivered. He broke the kiss only long enough to strip it over my head and drop it on the floor next to the console, eyes staying on my face like any other view was a luxury, not a requirement.
He spun me gently so I faced the sun-warmed glass. I braced my palms on the door, the Aegean stretched wide beyond it like a sheet of hammered blue, our reflections blurring in the sunlight. The warmth from the glass kissed my bare chest, grounding me, centering me. And then Callum pressed in behind me, his chest flush to my back, his mouth at the crook of my neck, his knuckles skating low across my stomach until my breath hitched.
