“Sit.” The word sounded more like a demand than an instruction.
He stilled, his grin widening. “What am I? A dog?”
Flustered, I said, “You should lie down.”
Heat radiated off him in waves, and I tried to use the simple fact of his fever to steer my thoughts to what actually mattered. He wassick. He needed medicine and rest.
I needed to stop letting him distract me.
He was talking nonsense anyway.
I clenched my jaw, gathering every ounce of determination I had. I let go of his hip and planted both palms flat against his chest, shoving as hard as I dared.
His body collapsed onto the edge of the bed. He let out a quiet grunt, shoulders slumping forward.
I blinked, surprised with myself, but he still didn’t lie all the way down. He sat there, staring up at me with that faint, infuriatingly amused glint in his eye.
“You’re impossible,” I grumbled.
“No,” he said, voice so low I felt it in my stomach. “I’m sick. Remember?”
I stared, thrown by this sudden shift from his normal behavior, but I recovered quickly and shook my head. “That must be some fever.”
Without thinking about it at all, I dropped to my knees in front of him.
All amusement vanished from Roman’s face.
I didn’t quite know how to read the expression that replaced it, but his pupils dilated, and his breathing seemed to stop altogether.
I frowned up at him, confused. Then I turned my attention to what I’d knelt down to do and reached for his left boot. As I started to untie the laces, he made a strangled sound—like a stifled gasp—and my eyes snapped back up to his face.
His skin was redder than before.
“What?” I tugged at the boot.
“N-nothing,” he said quickly.
A strange heat curled low in my stomach at the look on his face.
I pulled off his first boot, then the second. When both were off, I sat back on my heels and shot him a pointed glare. “Now lay back.”
He didn’t move.
For a heartbeat, he sat there, big and stubborn and unbearably still. Fever-bright eyes held mine.
I folded my arms. “Now.”
Something shifted in his expression. It wasn’t quite surrender, more like reluctant amusement. With a low sigh, he finally reacted.
He lowered himself back until he was stretched out across the bed. Head resting on a pillow, he flung one forearm over his face like he needed to block out the light.
The tension bled out of my own body in a rush.
I sat beside the bed, trying to pretend my pulse wasn’t still racing. “Good.”
A soft, gravelly huff escaped him that might’ve been a laugh.
“Bossy,” he murmured.
