His hand moves, not to grab or pull, just to touch. Fingers tracing the inside of my wrist where my arm lies between us. A small thing. Too small for the size of the reaction it causes.
His thumb strokes once over my skin.
My eyes close.
“You all right?” he asks.
I open my eyes and look at him.
He is rumpled beyond repair. Hair wrecked, mouth swollen, jaw faintly shadowed already because apparently even his face is determined to make things complicated. There is a red mark on his shoulder where I bit him. A scratch down his chest where I clearly lost some restraint and did not file the correct paperwork first.
I should probably apologise.
I do not want to.
“Yes,” I say. “Are you?”
His mouth curves. “I may never be normal again.”
The smile fades from his face slowly, not because something is wrong, but because the warmth underneath it becomes more obvious without the joke sitting on top.
“I’m all right,” he says. “Very all right.”
The words are not grand.
Not a declaration.
Still, they settle somewhere I have not given them permission to sit.
“Great,” I say.
That is apparently the best I can do.
He accepts it as if it is enough.
That might be the first mistake.
Or the second.
Or possibly we are well past counting.
My body is warm and loose in ways I am not used to. My mind is floating somewhere behind it, trying half-heartedly to organise what just happened into categories that make sense.
Sex.
Bad decision.
Good sex.
Very good sex.
Work complication.
Personal complication.
Man leaving after one more night shift.
None of those categories help.
