He leaned down, kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep.”
She took his wrist again. “Iwas,” she said, in a pouty voice.
He liked it, that whiny note. He could imagine doing things to her that would make her whine, not sleepily. Keeping her right on the edge for hours, keeping her—
“Oh,” she said, sitting up straighter, getting a sense of it now. Remembering where she was. “Oh, I see.”
“No,” he said, hating the look on her face. “No, you don’t.”
“I’ll go,” she said, getting her hands in the covers, starting to push them away. “Give me a second to—”
“It’s that I don’t sleep well,” he said, talking over her, too loud, too sharp. He tried to soften his voice when he spoke again. “I move around a lot. Or I get up, do stretches. Sometimes I have to—be up, to keep my mind off it. It’ll keep you up.”
She’d stopped trying to get up, at least. She looked at him straight in his eyes, a real doctor-about-to-be-in-your-business face if he ever saw one. “Do you want me to go?”
He shook his head. “But I—”
She slumped back against the bed, pulled the covers up again. Arranged the pillow.
Huffily.
“You do whatever.” Her eyes were already closed again.
“What…ever?” he repeated slowly, dumbly.
He had never seen this Layla. Selfish, dismissive. A little rude, actually.
He fucking loved it. He hoped he was somehow responsible for it.
She could stand to be more rude.
“I won’t wake up,” she said. “Not unless you nudge me hard. Or I guess unless you make the exact same noise my pager app makes.”
He snorted in disbelief. He couldn’t imagine anyone sleeping through his nights. Still, he lingered. Stayed quiet, stayed positioned over her. He wanted her to sell it to him, convince him.
He did not want her to go. He did not want it to be tomorrow yet.
“Griff.”
It was a good start to convincing.
He put a knee on the bed.
“I sleep like the dead,” she added, scooting over, making space for him, dragging the pillow she’d apparently claimed as her own with her. “In whatever apartment I’m in. Hotel rooms. On-call rooms at whatever hospital I’m working in. Lying down, sitting up. I cansleep.”
“You don’t have to brag.”
She laughed softly. How’d all of him get on the bed?
“Anyway, you’re a doctor. You know your sleep can be disrupted even if you don’t wake up.”
“Not mine,” she said, wriggling beneath the covers. She pushed herself back against him. Spooning, that’s what this was. Not that he’d ever done it.
His fucking leg hurt. Also, his dick was fully hard again.
And no telling what he’d feel like tomorrow.
Still, he closed his eyes.
