His eyes flicked to my hand, then back to my face. “Look closer,” he said.
I leaned in, narrowing my focus, tracking the ink instead of the shape of him. It wasn’t just lines. Not just design. Tiny letters were worked into the curve, almost lost in the sweep of black and shadow.
My name.
My breath caught. “You—” I stopped, recalibrating, because this wasn’t something Novak did by accident. Nothing about him was accidental. “What the hell?”
A beat.
“You’re it for me,” he said, growly and possessive, then he glanced at me. “I would have put your name on my chest for symbolism, but there’s too much darkness in my heart.”
I went still. I had no idea how to even start unpicking that.
He stared back at the ceiling. Conversation over, as far as he was concerned. His body had already locked down again.
My cell vibrated, a sharp, intrusive buzz breaking the moment—an alarm telling me the download was done.
He didn’t answer straight away. “I can’t breathe,” he said finally, low, as if it cost him something to admit it.
I went still. “What?”
“I can’t control the kiss,” he added, his gaze focused somewhere above us, not on me. “Your mouth on mine—tooclose. Too much. I lose… the control I need. I can’t lose control with you because I could hurt you.”
Well fuck. Novak didn’t lose control. Not ever.
I moved fast, straddling him and pinning him to the bed, my half-hard cock already pushing back to life, and traced my name on his arm. “I don’t understand you—or this, or us, or hell, me—but my name there says you won’t hurt me.”
He went very still under me, gaze tracking my face.
“I hope not,” he admitted. “You’ve been part of my pattern since the first time I saw you. I don’t know why.”
I frowned. “Your ‘pattern’?”
“Instinct. Recognition.” His fingers flexed against the sheets, then stilled again. “You entered my life, and I felt things I’d never felt before. I account for you. I adjust for you. I protect you.”
“Protect me?”
“Yes.” His gaze sharpened, and my chest hurt. “It’s how I am.” He lifted a hand, then stopped short of touching me, as if even that needed control. “You’re everything.” His jaw flexed. “I don’t understand it, but I don’t need to. It’s there.”
“And who else do you do this with? Doc?”
“No one,” he said. “Just you.”
My alarm sounded again, and with a sigh, I rolled off Novak and headed into the bathroom, not at all surprised when he followed me and climbed into the shower alongside me as soon as the water was warm enough. With any other lover, I’d have joked about saving water, and there’d be blowjobs, but Novak washed me from head to toe and then waited as I did the same to him. After all, I owed him that. Then, dressed, we met back downstairs, and it was all business from then on.
Novak begging and writhing under me, losing control at my touch, had completely blown my mind.
No kissing.
The silent shower afterward.
Strangest hookup of my life.
EIGHTEEN
Novak
I made coffee,then grabbed the stash of chocolate cookies I’d packed in my go-bag. It wasn’t his favorite donuts, but it was the closest I could get when we were in the middle of nowhere. Caleb was already at the comms station, screens lit up, fingers moving, pulling data apart as if it might give him answers if he pushed hard enough. His hair was still damp from the shower, darkened at the ends, curling slightly at his neck, and there was a line between his brows that hadn’t been there earlier.
