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I move behind him and carefully lift his hair away from the stitches.

Up close, they’re even worse than I thought. The thread is too thick, and the spacing is erratic. There’s dried blood crusted near the edges that he didn’t fully clean away, and the skin around the wound carries a faint heat that suggests his body’s working harder than it should be to manage it.

Ilya stiffens as my fingers brush near the area. “Relax.”

“Don’t tell me to relax.”

“I’ll tell you whatever I want.”

I start with the antiseptic wipe, working around the stitches, cleaning away dried blood. He flinches once when I get too close to a tender spot, his whole spine going rigid, and I pause immediately.

“I’m sorry, love.”

He half-turns his head, eyes finding mine over his shoulder. “Did you just say sorry?”

“I did.” I return to my work, gentler now, my free hand coming up to brace against the side of his head to keep him steady.

“You are being careful,” he says, and there’s something strange in his voice.

“Should I not be?”

He doesn’t answer. I finish cleaning around the stitches, then use the gauze to pat the area dry. The whole process takes longer than it needs to because I’m being more meticulous than necessary.

When I’m done, I let my hand linger in his hair. He starts to turn back around, but I catch his shoulder gently and stop him.

Then I lean down and press my lips to the top of his head, right near the cleaned wound, not quite on the stitches themselves but close enough to make the gesture unmistakable.

“Shh,” I murmur against his hair.

He goes completely still. For one heartbeat, two, three, he doesn’t breathe, doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything but exist in the space where my mouth touched him with something that wasn’t the usual filthy hunger I show him.

Then something in him melts. The tension drains out of his shoulders like water through open fingers. His spine curves, losing that rigid defensive line. His head tips forward, and when I pull back to look at him, his eyes are half-lidded.

He puts the lollipop back in his mouth and sucks on it, his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance like he’s processing something too large for the room we’re in.

When the candy is finally gone, he pulls the stick free and stares at it for a moment, then at me.

“Why did you do that?” he asks.

“Do what?”

“Kiss my head.”

“Because you needed it.”

His brows draw together. “I didn’t need anything.”

“You did, my prince.”

I reach into my other pocket and pull out a candy bar. Chocolate. The kind with caramel inside, because I noticed once, in passing, that he eats them when he’s stressed and thinks no one is watching.

I hold it out to him. “Here.”

“What?”

“Hold this.” I push it into his hand. “And then eat it.”

He looks down at the candy bar like I’ve handed him a live grenade. “Why?”