"I'd like to see it sometime," she says.
She means it. I can read the difference between courtesy and intention, and this is intention.
"When you're back on your feet," I say. "I'll take you."
She holds my gaze for a moment and I hold it back and the room is quiet except for the low sound of the fire in the grate and the distant crack of Jace's axe carrying through the walls.
I step back. Her finger drops from my chest. The absence of contact registers in the specific spot she was touching, a small warmth where the pressure was. Fading.
"You need to rest today," I say. "I'll bring breakfast before I head out."
"I'd rather get up."
"You have a sprained ankle."
"I can hop." She tilts her head. I can see amusement in her expression. A challenge dressed up as a joke, and underneath both of those is the real thing: a woman who does not accept being managed, even when it’s the best for her.
"I'll be fine."
"You'll stay in the bed."
Her expression shifts. Running the calculation of whether to push or defer. "You're not my doctor."
"No." I hold her gaze. "I'm the person who found you in the snow with your head bleeding."
She goes quiet for a moment.
"I'll bring breakfast," I say. "You'll eat it here."
"Reid."
"Maya."
She opens her mouth and I know from the set of her jaw and the light in her eyes exactly what's coming. The push, the refusal, the warm stubbornness that keeps surfacing.
I move before she finishes the first word.
My hand closes around her chin. Two fingers and my thumb, firm, tilting her face up toward mine. Not hard.
She goes still.
Completely, immediately still, the argument stopped mid-syllable, her lips parted around the word she didn't finish. Hereyes lock on mine and they are very wide and very green in the morning light and I am close enough to see the ring of grey at the edges of the iris and the slight dilation at the center that is not a fear response. I know fear responses. This is not one.
I hold her there.
Her face warm under my fingers, the line of her jaw fitting the shape of my hand, and I can feel her pulse through the skin beneath her ear, fast and getting faster.
"I'll bring you breakfast," I say. Even. Unhurried. Certain. "You'll eat it."
I let that land. Then, quieter:
"And you will stay in this bed."
I hold her gaze one more second. Long enough to feel the rhythm at her throat quicken under my thumb. Long enough to know she feels it too.
Then I let go.
8
