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He looked down at my hand for a long moment. Then he sat back down, and the frame of that bed took his weight. But he didn’t once stop watching that door.

“Officer Briggs.” I said it after turning to look at him, and my voice came out in a tone I didn’t know I still had.

“This is my patient. You have walked into a treatment room without knocking, during an admission assessment, in direct breach of protocol, and you are distressing him.”

“I was only checking on…” I was quick to cut him off.

“I have spent the last hour getting this man comfortable enough to let me put my hands on him, and you have undone the whole of it in less than a minute.” I didn’t stop there. “I don’t want to write this up. But I will not have my assessments interrupted again, so I need you to leave, please.”

He looked at me for a moment longer than he needed to, and there was nothing pleasant in his face at all.

“Fine,” he agreed after a short laugh, one that was devoid of all humor and more like the sound of disbelief. “Won’t bother checking on you again.”

Halle-fucking-lujah, I thought, barely refraining from rolling my eyes. And seconds later, the door shut, and I stood there with my heart trying to beat its way through my ribs.

I released a sigh and turned back around, not knowing what to expect. Although I wasn’t surprised to find him still looking at that door.

Not at me.

At the door.

Or should I say, at the space in front of it where another man had stood and looked at me. And whatever was happening behind those gorgeous blue eyes of his, it was not anything I wanted a name for… not when it looked like murder. But then the second I realized I was still willingly touching his shoulder, I took my hand away, and it was enough to bring him back into the room with me.

“Well played, little nurse,” he praised, and I was surprised it was the first thing to come out of his mouth. And honestly, I didn’t have a response to that, or at least not one that wouldn’t have made me seem grateful for it.

I picked my clipboard up off the floor, fully intent on continuing to fill it in, when he stopped me.

“New rule,” he said and then he reached out and took my hand off the clipboard. Just took it, the way you take something that already belongs to you. Then he turned it over in his own hand and ran his thumb slowly back and forth across my knuckles while he waited for me to look at him.

“You will stay away from that man.” He said it without any heat at all, still watching his own thumb move across my knuckles, and that was somehow worse than if he had shouted it.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” I scoffed, and my response came out of me before I had a chance to think about holding it back. And I knew my mistake the second his thumb stopped. The way that everything in him went still.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” There was nothing pleasant left in his voice at all, and I looked up and found him watching me in a way that made me want to take it back.

“It means that I am not here to make friends, that’s all. I’m not looking to get to know anybody in this building. Least of all him,” I said and I didn’t know if this assured him or not, but he stared at me a beat longer before nodding once. As if this was enough for him.

I looked down at my paperwork and decided to fill in the blanks myself, as I was more than ready to get out of there. So, I took a step back and told him,

“I’m finished.”

I tried not to look at him when I said this, but he made it impossible when he suddenly stood and stepped away from the bed. And before I could put enough space between us, his hand was at the back of my neck, and he brought me in closer. My breath left me on a startled gasp as he stopped with his mouth about an inch away from mine and stayed there.

I didn’t move.

I couldn’t.

I would love to be able to say that I pulled away but it would be a lie. Instead, I stood in a treatment room with a killer’s hand on my neck and my face tipped up to his. I felt his breath go across my mouth, and every single part of me waited.

Waited for him to kiss me.

Waited for it to finally happen and I hated myself for wanting it.

But it never came.

What came in its place was another threat, and foolishly it landed somewhere in me that had no business being there and it wasn’t the fear I should have felt.

Not when he promised,