Page 71 of Sexting His Assistant

He watches me. “I said no,” he says.

“It means open your mouth.”

The instant I say it, we both go still. My fingers freeze around the bread.

Luka’s gaze drops to my mouth. Then returns to my eyes.

Something in the room changes, and I feel it dance across my skin.

I should make a joke. I should stand. I should do anything other than sit on his bed holding a piece of bread near his mouth while remembering how many times today his mouth has ruined my ability to think like a normal person.

Instead, I lift the bread slightly.

A challenge. Or surrender.

I don’t know anymore.

Luka leans forward. He takes a bite. His eyes stay on mine the entire time.

My stomach flips, slow and deep.

He chews, swallows, then says, “Cherry jam.”

“I told you.”

“You’re smug.”

“I earned it.”

His mouth curves, barely. “You often think that.”

“I’m often right.”

He looks tired suddenly. Not weak. Never that. But the pain has worn at the edges of his control, and for the first time, I see what is beneath it without him turning it into a weapon.

Exhaustion.

Loneliness, maybe.

Or maybe I’m projecting because the room is too quiet and his bed is too warm and I’m sitting too close to a man I should have been running from hours ago.

There is still a faint smear of blood near his collarbone.

This time, I do reach for it.

I tell myself I’m only being helpful. That it’s just blood. That I have already had his blood all over my hands tonight and there’s nothing especially intimate about wiping away what the doctor missed.

My fingertips touch his skin.

Luka goes completely still. So do I.

The blood wipes away beneath my thumb, leaving clean, warm skin behind. His chest rises once, slowly. His good hand closes around my wrist, but he doesn’t pull me away.

He only holds me there.

My fingers rest against him. His pulse beats beneath my touch.

He’s not as calm as he looks.