"Kissing, touching, whatever. So I know where to start."
I consider lying. Inflating my experience into something less humiliating. But Ella Rujkowski didn't survive nursing clinicals by bullshitting her assessments, so I tell the truth.
"I've been kissed. Four times, by three different people. Two of them were terrible. One was at a party, and I think he was trying to reach my tonsils. The third was nice, but we were interrupted by my brother threatening to disembowel him."
Bernard closes his eyes briefly. "Of course he did."
"I've never been touched. Below the neck, I mean. Or above the knee. I've never—" I stop. Regroup. "I haven't done anything, Bernard. That's the whole point."
He doesn't flinch. He doesn't look pitying, surprised, or excited. He just nods, like I've told him my blood type. Like he’s the triage nurse and this is information he needs to do his job well.
"Can I touch you?" he asks.
"That's why we're here."
"I know. But I'm asking."
Something shifts in my veins. "Yes."
He moves closer, eliminating the gap between us. His right hand comes up, and I brace for—I don't know what. Something aggressive, maybe. Something that matches his reputation.
Instead, his fingertips brush my jaw.
Just that. The pads of his fingers, tracing the line of my jaw from my chin to the soft spot below my ear. His touch is so light I almost can't feel it, and yet my entire body responds, a wave of heat that starts where his skin meets mine and spreads downward.
"Breathe," he says quietly.
I realize I've stopped. I inhale, and he smiles—a small, private thing—and his fingers trail down. Along the side of my neck. Over the ridge of my collarbone, left to right, slow and deliberate, following the bone like he's memorizing its shape.
"Clavicle," I whisper, because apparently my brain defaults to anatomy when it's short-circuiting.
"Good girl. What's it connected to?"
Fuck me, my nipples are hard at the sound of Bernard Houser calling me a good girl.
"The…" His thumb traces the hollow of my throat, and I lose the word. "The scapula. And the sternum."
"Mm-hm." His fingers drift along my collarbone to my shoulder, where the neckline of my hoodie stops him. He doesn't push past it. He just traces the edge, fingertips following the fabric line, and I realize he's mapping the boundary between clothed and not-clothed without crossing it.
"You're staying on top of the clothes," I say.
"For now. Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because you've only been kissed, Ella. We're not going from that to naked today."
This is so reasonable it irritates me. I want to argue—I'm an adult, I can handle it—but I also recognize the logic. Start with the basics. Build competency before advancing. It's how I learned to start an IV, and it's probably how I should learn this.
"Fine. Can I touch you, too?"
"Anywhere you want."
"Where do men like to be touched?"
He laughs, a real one, surprised out of him. "I mean, the obvious answer is our dicks."
"I'm aware."
