“Your wounds need tending.” I keep my voice professional. “The ones on your chest. The stitches are holding, but the skin around them is still inflamed.”
“You don't have to.”
“I know.” I gesture at the bed. It's too small for him. We both know it's too small for him. “Sit down. Take off your shirt.”
He holds my gaze, something shifting behind his expression. Then he crosses to the bed, and the frame groans under his weight as he sinks onto the edge. His feet stay flat on the floor, his knees jutting up, his body folded into a space that can't possibly contain him.
He starts unfastening the ties of his shirt.
I've seen his chest before. Treated his wounds, stitched his skin, pressed my hands against his heart to feel its beating. But that was medical. Clinical. The touch of a healer doing her job.
This feels different.
The shirt falls away, and I see the full extent of him for the first time without the urgency of saving his life. Broad shoulders, heavily muscled. The bark-like texture of his skin, rough and strange and beautiful in a way I didn't expect. Scars layered over scars, pale lines crossing the bronze, each one telling a story I can't read. The wounds I stitched, still angry but healing, surrounded by mottled bruising.
And the heat. Even from across the room, I can feel the warmth of him, radiating like a banked fire.
He's looking at me looking at him. Something uncertain in his expression, something almost vulnerable. Like he's waiting for me to see something that will change my mind.
I cross the room. Dip my fingers into the oil.
The first touch makes him hiss.
His muscles jump under my hands, tension running through him like a current. His skin burns against my palms, rough and hot, and I feel the ridges of old scars beneath my fingertips.
“Too cold?”
“No.” His voice is strained. He doesn’t say anything more.
I spread the oil across his chest, working it into the damaged tissue around the stitches. He breathes in short, held pulls, each one controlled and deliberate. Under my hands, his heartbeat thuds too fast, too hard.
“You're tense.”
“Observant.”
“Kovren.” I pause, my hands flat against his chest, feeling the heat of him seep into my palms. “It’s just me. Relax.”
“I know.” He looks down at me. Those amber eyes, dark with something I'm only beginning to recognize.
“Then what?”
“I’m afraid I might hurt you.” His voice drops lower. “That I might want something I shouldn't want. That the beast isn't the only thing inside me that's been starving.”
I should step away. Should put distance between us, give him space to breathe.
I don't.
I shift behind him, spreading the oil across his back.
“You won't.”
“You don't know that.”
“I do.” He's looking at me now, really looking, turned enough that I can see his face in profile. “You’d never hurt me, Kovren. I know that.”
My hands still on his back.
The moment stretches. The oil is warm and slick between us, and his pulse drums against my fingertips, too fast, too hard.
