I can’t wait any longer. I throw back the duvet and climb out of bed. The stitches pull but the pain is nothing compared to what I’m used to.
I find him in his office, his fingers steepled against his bottom lip as he stares into space.
“You’re up,” he says, when I push open his door and lean against the frame. “Are you okay, do you need anything?”
“I’m fine, Akyl.” I hear the frustration in my voice and wince. He must hear it too because his left eyebrow arches perfectly, almost in challenge.
He stands and comes around his desk.
“Then what can I do for you?” he asks, moving towards me, looking all menacing and threatening and divine all at once.
“I think it’s hormones,” I offer as heat spreads over the back of my neck. “I uhm…”
His head tilts while he processes the information. I see the exact moment it all clicks into place for him and he takes a sharp inhale through his nose.
“I see.” His hands come up and stroke the tops of my arms. “You know we can’t do anything, what if your stitches tear…”
Grateful that he understands without me having to embarrass myself any further, I tip my head back and look at him.
“You won’t come anywhere near me,” I say after a beat.
“Ah.” He nods, as though everything is now making sense to him. “That’s because it’s getting more and more difficult to be around you without doing something that you might not be ready for. Physically,” he adds, “and mentally.”
“Urgh,” I say, shrugging from his grip and pacing to his desk. “I am ready, Akyl. So ready to live the rest of my life with you.” I heave a sigh and push my hands through my hair.
He's looking at me like I've said something he needs to translate first.
I probably look insane. Unbrushed hair, bare feet on his office floor, five days out of surgery and apparently desperate enough to march in here and announce I'm ready to live the rest of my life with him as though that's a normal thing to say to a man who has kissed me exactly once.
"Katriona." His voice is careful in the way it gets when he's managing something that isn't purely logistical.
"Don't." I hold up a hand. "Don't use that voice on me."
"What voice?"
"The one where you're deciding which version of the truth I can handle." I turn to face him properly. He's leaning against the front of his desk now, arms crossed, watching me with those dark eyes that give nothing away and somehow still say everything. "I'm not fragile."
"I know you're not fragile."
"Then stop treating me like I might shatter if you say the wrong thing."
He's quiet for a moment. "What would you like me to say?"
This is the problem with him. He asks the right questions at completely the wrong moments and then just waits for me to answer them. I fold my arms because it gives my hands something to do, and I look at him, and try to organize the interior mess of the last five days into something coherent.
"I want to know what we're doing," I say. "I know I came to this arrangement for specific reasons and so did you and I know what the contract says. But I want to know whatwe'redoing, Akyl. Because I've been in this house for a week and you've been in every room I'm in and you haven't touched me since the hospital and I can't tell if that's because you're being careful or because you've decided I'm not what you wanted after all and I'd rather you just told me."
He holds my gaze for a long, steady moment.
"Come here," he says.
"I'm not going to just come to you on command like—"
"Katriona. Come here."
I go. I hate that I go, and I go anyway, because my body has apparently made a separate decision from my mouth and they're not currently consulting each other. I stop two feet in front of him and look up at him with what I hope is not the expression of a woman who is entirely undone by how good he smells.
He uncrosses his arms and puts both hands on my face, tilting it up, and just looks at me. This is another thing he does that completely dismantles me. He looks at me like I'm something he's still figuring out how to hold correctly.
