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Leander froze, searching my face for the arrogance he expected but finding only the sweat beading on my forehead and the fine tremor in the hands holding him, the physical proof of my desperation.

He exhaled a long breath and leaned back on his elbows, abandoning the fight. His legs spread slightly as he relaxed, the movement shifting the heavy muscles of his core.

My gaze dropped to the waistband of his shorts sitting dangerously low on his hips, my eyes tracking the sharp V-line of muscle guiding me down to the trail of hair that vanished below the elastic.

I swallowed hard, forcing my stare back to the ruined ankle. Focus on the damage, not the man.

“Do it,” he said.

There was no turning back now. I popped the seal on the vial. The gel was shimmering under the harsh basement lights like liquid sapphire, and there was so little of it. Three milliliters. Twenty years of insurance, and it didn’t even fill my palm.

I squeezed it onto the angry swelling of his ankle. Leander flinched, a sharp inhale hissing through his teeth.

“It stings,” he said, his voice thick in the quiet room.

“It’s knitting the fibers back together, but it forces cellular regeneration at a rate the body isn’t designed to handle,” I explained.

I didn’t tell him the rest, that the gel rebuilt tissue without consulting the nervous system, that tonight would be bad and tomorrow would be worse in a different key, that none of this was mercy. He would find that out on his own, and by then it would be too late to be sensible about it.

I put my bare hands on him and rubbed the gel into the swollen skin, using my thumbs to work the compound deep into the damaged tissue. He burned fever-hot against my cool palms, a shocking contrast that traveled up my arms. The texture of him was rough. He didn’t have the soft, manicured skin of players from the Spire. He had the feet of someone who had run on concrete his whole life, someone who had bled for every step he took.

I massaged the injury, finding the rhythm. The gel began to foam, reacting with his body heat to create a slick friction between us.

Leander’s breath hitched. The air in the room shifted, becoming suffocating.

I was on my knees between his legs, my hands working over his skin. It felt too intimate, a violation of the boundaries we had set just hours ago. The last time we were this close, he was pinning me against a wall, dominating me. Now I was servicing him. I could smell him, that raw, iron scent of sweat and adrenaline mixed with the sterile tang of the medical gel. It was intoxicating.

“You’re scared shitless,” Leander whispered.

I kept my eyes locked on the injury, refusing to look up. “I’m focused.”

“No,” he said. “You’re terrified. The Golden Boy realized he isn’t invincible.”

He was wrong about the timeline. I had known I wasn’t invincible since before I could shave; invincibility was a broadcast product.

I pressed a thumb hard into a knot of tension near his heel, making him gasp. His back arched off the table, his thighs tightening against my ribs.

“Pain is information, right?” I looked up, finding our faces inches apart, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. “Here is the information, Leander. You run tomorrow. You ignore the pain. You stay on my hip and you score.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then we’re both out.”

I finished the application, my hands lingering a fraction of a second longer than necessary on his skin. Then I grabbed a roll of compression tape from the cart and wrapped the ankle tight, layer after layer. Binding him together. Binding him to me.

I stood up, my hands sticky with the gel and his sweat.

“Be at the dorm in an hour,” I told him. “If you’re late, I’m locking the door.”

I turned and walked out of the storage room, not waiting for a thank-you.

In the corridor I wiped the remaining gel onto my pants. It left a stain, a wide gray smear across State-issued fabric, and I discovered I didn’t care.

I had survived today.

Tomorrow would hurt.

CHAPTER 11