Page 226 of Sexting His Assistant

I come to the side of the bed. “What is wrong?”

She looks at the window instead of at me. “Every time I close my eyes, I see the apartment.”

I hate that answer.

I sit on the edge of the bed, leaving space between us. “You are safe here.”

Nina says, “I know.”

But knowing is not the same as feeling.

I understand that too.

She rubs her hand over her face carefully, avoiding the bruised place. “I’m tired, but I can’t get my body to believe it’s allowed to sleep.”

I look at her. At the tension in her shoulders. At the way her fingers keep gripping and releasing the blanket. At the exhausted stubbornness in her face.

I ask, “Do you trust me?”

She looks at me then. For a long second, she does not answer.

Then she says, “Yes.”

I move closer and touch her cheek with the back of my fingers. “Lie back.”

Her eyes flicker. “Luka.”

I say, “I’m going to help you relax.”

Nina says, “That sounds suspicious.”

I say, “It should.”

For the first time all night, her mouth curves faintly.

She lies back against the pillows, watching me with wary curiosity as I draw the blanket down to her knees. She is wearing the soft sleep shorts my mother sent and an oversized shirt that slips off one shoulder. The sight should be innocent. It is not, because she is Nina, because I have tasted her before, because even injured and exhausted she looks at me as if she knows exactly what my restraint is costing.

I pause. “If your head hurts more, you tell me.”

Nina says, “Okay.”

“If you feel dizzy, nauseous, or strange, you tell me immediately.”

Nina says, “Yes, Doctor Kazan.”

I say, “Don’t make me regret this.”

Nina whispers, “I think that’s usually my line.”

I slide my hand over her knee and up the outside of her thigh, slow enough that she can stop me, firm enough that her breath changes before I reach the hem of her shorts. Her body responds even when the rest of her is tired, and I watch the tension in her face shift into something warmer, something more present.

I lower myself between her legs carefully, mindful of my shoulder and her head, and kiss the inside of her knee.

Nina’s fingers curl in the sheet.

I kiss higher, along the soft skin of her thigh, taking my time because I’m not doing this to rush her toward anything. I want to quiet her mind. I want to give her body something better to hold than the memory of a dark apartment and a door left open. I want her to feel my mouth and my hands and this bed, this room, this house, until sleep begins to seem possible again.

Nina says, “Luka.”