The Pitt

Jack had said the hardcover budget was flexible. That had been his first mistake. His second mistake was smiling when you took him seriously.

By the time you got back from the bookstore, the paper bag handles had stretched thin from the weight of your very reasonable, very necessary purchases. There were two hardcovers, three paperbacks, one special edition you had gasped over so dramatically that Jack had put it in the basket without checking the price, and one book you insisted was “for emotional support,” which had made him look at you with mild horror in the middle of the romance aisle.

“You have seven emotional-support books at home,” he had said.

You had clutched the paperback to your chest. “This one is specialized.”

Jack had looked at the cover, then back at you. “Specialized.”

You nodded. “Yes.”

“For?”

You had smiled sweetly. “You’ll find out if you behave.”

That had been his third mistake. He had behaved.

Mostly.

Now, Jack carried the bookstore bag upstairs like a man hauling evidence. You followed him into the bedroom and immediately kicked off your shoes. “I need to change first.”

Jack set the bag on the bed. “For book organization?”

“Obviously.”

His eyebrows lifted. “There’s a dress code?”

You reached for the hem of your sweater. “There is a mobility requirement.”

Jack looked at the bag. Then at you. “For paperbacks.”

You narrowed your eyes. “For systems, Jack.”

His mouth curved faintly. “Of course.”

He stayed near the foot of the bed while you crossed to the dresser, still in his jeans and soft black T-shirt, watch on his wrist. Covered. Composed. Very pleased with himself for a man trying not to look pleased.

You, on the other hand, were out of your bookstore clothes in less than a minute. Jeans first. Sweater next. Then you pulled one of Jack’s old shirts from the drawer and slipped it over your head. The cotton fell soft around you, hem brushing your thighs, nothing but underwear beneath it. Comfortable. Mobile. Bare-legged in the middle of your bedroom while he stood there fully dressed, watching you with the careful restraint of a man who knew better than to comment too quickly.

You turned around and found his eyes on you. Not crude. Not even obvious. Just enough. Your skin warmed. Jack looked at your legs. Then, at the books. Then back at your face. “That seems excessive.”

You tugged the hem of his shirt down with great dignity. “I have to be comfortable and mobile.”

His gaze dropped briefly again. “For organization.”

“Yes.”

Jack nodded slowly. “I see.”

You raised a brow. “Do you?”

His mouth barely moved. “I’m starting to.”

You pointed at him. “Do not make this weird.”

Jack’s eyes came back to yours, warm and dry. “I’m not the one reorganizing smut in my underwear.”

You lifted your chin. “I’m wearing a shirt.”

“My shirt,” Jack replied.

You grinned happily. “That’s because you have excellent attire for organization.”

Jack exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh. There it was again. That quiet, private look. The one he always tried to hide when he was too pleased with himself. It sat in the corners of his mouth, in the softened line of his eyes, in the way his attention stayed on you like your happiness was something he had managed to bring home in the bag with the books.

And maybe he had.

Maybe that was the dangerous part.

The books landed on your bed with soft, papery thuds, glossy covers, and crisp spines spilling across the comforter. The room still smelled faintly of rain from the window cracked open earlier, but now there was bookstore scent too: paper, ink, dust, new pages, the sharp sweetness of unread books waiting to become everyone’s problem.

You were radiant.

Jack was trying very hard not to look proud of that. He failed quietly. “This is a lot of books,” he said.

You pulled a paperback from the bag and set it carefully beside the others. “This is an appropriate number of books.”

Jack glanced at the pile. “For a library.”

You looked up at him. “Exactly.”

His mouth barely moved. You saw it anyway. “Don’t act like you’re not proud of yourself,” you said.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted. “For enabling you?”

“For supporting your wife’s intellectual and emotional development,” you corrected him.

His gaze dropped to the shirt again. His shirt. Your bare thighs. The red-tabbed books already waiting near the nightstand. Then his eyes came back to yours. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

You held up one of the new books. “This one has dragons.”

Jack nodded once. “Intellectual.”

You held up another. “This one has political intrigue.”

“Emotional development,” Jack replied.

You lifted the third. Jack looked at the cover. Then back at you. “That one has a shirtless man holding a sword.”

You hugged it to your chest. “Cultural enrichment.”

Jack’s mouth curved.

You looked down before your face could get too warm. “I need to reorganize.”

Jack exhaled through his nose. “Of course you do.”

“You can’t just add new books without creating space.”

“No?” he asked.

You gave him a look over your shoulder as you crossed to the bookshelf. “That is how chaos starts.”

Jack sat on the edge of the mattress, bracing one hand behind him. “Wouldn’t want that.”

“You mock me now,” you said, pulling three paperbacks from the lower shelf, “but when civilization collapses, you’ll be grateful someone in this house understands systems.”

Jack’s eyes followed you as you crouched near the shelf. You felt the attention. You were the one half-dressed, bare legs folded beneath you, hem of his shirt shifting every time you reached for another paperback. He was still dressed. Still covered. Still sitting there like control was something he could put on as easily as a black T-shirt and jeans. But his thumb had gone still against the comforter. That was the first sign.

You pretended not to notice.

Jack cleared his throat. “You’re going to save us with alphabetized smut?”

You glanced back at him. “Genre, then emotional damage level, then author.”

He stared at you. You smiled. Jack dragged a hand over his mouth. “I’m in too deep.”

You shrugged. “You married me.”

“I did,” Jack said with a soft smile.

“You had warning.”

He looked at the bed, at the new books, then at the old stack of red-tabbed paperbacks still sitting near your nightstand from earlier. His mouth twitched. “Not enough.”

You laughed, soft and pleased, and began moving books. Old ones came off the shelf first. Bent corners. Cracked spines. Covers soft from being opened too many times. Then the newer stack. Then the archive, because if the night had become an academic investigation into your red tabs, at least it deserved proper handling. Jack watched from the bed while you rearranged his entire understanding of your nightstand. You sat on the bed and sorted the books into piles across the comforter.

Unread. Read. Reread. Potential rereads. Emotionally dangerous.

Jack pointed at that pile. “That category concerns me.”

You nodded in agreement. “It should.”

He looked at the stack of red-tabbed books. “And those?”

You followed his gaze. The archive sat in a loose line near his thigh. The books you had already shown him. The pool house. The cabin. The bar bathroom. The supply closet. The bedroom. The hotel mirror. His chair.

 A timeline of ideas.

A timeline of trust.

Your chest warmed at the sight of them, ridiculous and intimate across the bedspread. A whole row of glossy covers and tiny red flags that had somehow become the story of you learning to ask for things and Jack learning, over and over, how to receive the asking. “Those stay together,” you said.

Jack’s eyes came back to your face. The teasing faded by a degree. “Yeah?”

You nodded, touching the nearest spine with two fingers. “They earned it.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then his gaze shifted. Not to the new pile. Not to the archive. To the book near your knee. You had almost forgotten it was there. Almost.

It was older than the ones from the bookstore. Older than the glossy new stack now spread across the comforter. The spine was creased white in three places. The corners were soft. The front cover bent slightly near the edge where your thumb had pressed it open too many times. A red tab stuck out near the middle. Small. Bright. Accusing.

Jack looked at it. Then at you. “That one didn’t come from the bookstore.”

Your hand paused on the book you were moving. “No.”

Jack’s gaze dropped back to the red tab. “You’ve read it before.”

“Yes.”

His attention stayed there, steady and too observant. “And it didn’t make the archive.”

The room went quieter. Not silent. The rain still tapped faintly against the window. The heater hummed. A paper bag shifted softly near the foot of the bed, where it had collapsed against Jack’s discarded shoe. But the air between you changed.

You looked down at the old paperback. “It didn’t fit the timeline.”

Jack did not answer right away. That was worse. He only looked at you, patient and warm and impossible to lie to. Then he said, softly, “Baby.”

One word. That was all it took.

Your shoulders dropped. “I know.”

His expression did not turn smug. That was how you knew he understood this was different. He glanced at the book again. “Try again.”

You sat back on your heels, the hem of his shirt slipping higher on your thighs. The old paperback rested beside your knee, untouched now, like it was waiting to see whether you would finally tell the truth about it. You were the exposed one. That should have made him the steady one. But Jack’s eyes were on the red tab now, and something about the page you had almost hidden seemed to reach beneath all that composure. Beneath the black shirt. Beneath the jeans. Beneath the calm, observant patience he wore so well. He had asked for the archive earlier, like a man prepared to conduct research.

Now he looked like he understood this was not research.

This was an offering.

You brushed your thumb over the comforter. “I almost took the tab out.”

Jack went still. Not tense. Still. The kind of still that meant he had heard the thing under the thing. “Why?”

You looked at the red tab. The paper near it had softened from your thumb. The edge curled slightly upward, bent from being opened and closed and opened again. “Because I knew if you saw it, you’d ask.”

Jack’s hand rested on the bed near your knee. Not touching the book. Not touching you. Just there. “And now?”

Your throat tightened. You hated that he always knew which question mattered.

Now.

After the books were spread over the bed. After the archive. After the chair, the pool house, the cabin, and the mirror. After he had listened to every explanation without making you feel foolish. After he had thanked you for trusting him with all of it. After he had taken you to the bookstore, like the red tabs were not something to be embarrassed by, but something to be funded.

Now.

You looked up at him. His face was calm, but not careless. There was a softness around his mouth, a focused quiet in his eyes. Jack, waiting. Jack, giving you room. Jack, making the choice yours before he ever reached for the page.

“Now I think I want you to,” you said.

Jack’s gaze held yours for a long second. Then it moved to the book. The red tab. Back to you.

His voice was quiet. “Can I read it?”

Your breath caught. Not because the question surprised you. Because it didn’t. Because of course, he asked. Because the first time, earlier that night, he had stolen a look at your book with the gleeful confidence of a husband who had decided marital clinical curiosity was a valid research method. He had been nosy and amused and half-smug about discovering the red tabs.

But this was not that.

This was the one you had almost hidden.

He knew the difference.

You nodded. Jack waited. Right. Words. “Yes,” you said. “You can read it.”

You picked up the paperback before you could change your mind. The cover bent naturally in your hand, familiar from rereads. The pages fell open almost on their own, not to the beginning, not to the last place you had stopped, but to the middle.

Page 212.

The paper was softer there. Worn at the corner. The red tab was slightly bent from your thumb.

Jack noticed that too. But he did not tease you for it. He only took the book when you offered it, his fingers careful against yours. His thumb slid beneath the red tab, holding the page open like it mattered. Like he understood, before he even read a word, that this one had cost you more than the others. “Thank you,” he said.

Your throat tightened. “For letting you read smut?”

His mouth curved faintly, but his eyes stayed soft. “For trusting me with the one you almost hid.”

The words landed low and warm in your chest. For a second, you could not make a joke.

Jack did not ask you to. He looked down at the page. And began to read.

Jack read the page once. Then again. The room did not change. Not really. The new books still sat scattered across the comforter in glossy, innocent piles. The bookstore bag still sagged near the foot of the bed, one handle twisted where Jack had carried it upstairs. Rain kept tapping lightly against the window, soft and patient. The lamp on your nightstand threw warm light over the bed, catching on the red tabs, the bent corners, the crisp spines, the old book open in Jack’s hands.

But Jack went very still. That changed everything. His thumb stayed beneath the red tab, holding page 212 open with a care that made your chest feel too tight. His eyes moved slowly over the paper. Not skimming. Not reading for plot. Reading like the page had shifted into something else entirely in his hands. Evidence. Invitation. Confession.

You sat on your heels near the middle of the bed, wearing his shirt and underwear, bare legs folded beneath you, surrounded by the archive you had already given him and the new books he had just funded with far too much dignity for a man who should have known better.

You were the one exposed. That was the obvious thing. Jack was still fully dressed. Held together in all the ways he knew how to hold himself together.

And still, somehow, he looked like the page was undoing him.

Not loudly. Jack did not do loud when something mattered. It was in the small things. His thumb stilling against the paper. His jaw shifted once. The slow breath he took through his nose did not quite let out evenly. The way his eyes paused halfway down the page, then returned to the top, like he needed to make sure he had understood it correctly.

You tried to keep organizing. That had been the plan. Move the new books into their rightful piles. Make room on the shelf. Slide the older ones back where they belonged. Do something with your hands so you did not have to sit there and watch Jack Abbot read the page you had almost hidden from your husband.

You picked up one of the new paperbacks. Set it down again. Shifted a hardcover half an inch to the left. Then immediately moved it back.  Jack’s eyes stayed on the page. You hated him a little for reading silently. You loved him more for it. There was no teasing. No immediate dry comment. No twenty-two-year-old-with-shadows complaint. No marital clinical curiosity. No smug little lift at the corner of his mouth. This was not the chair. Not the pool house. Not the cabin or the bar bathroom or the supply closet or the hotel mirror.

This was page 212.

And Jack knew it.

Finally, his eyes reached the bottom. He did not look up right away. Your fingers curled into the hem of his shirt, where it rested over your thigh. Jack noticed. His gaze flicked to your hand. Then back to the page.

His voice, when it came, was quiet. “This one isn’t about me taking care of you.”

The words landed low.

Your throat tightened. “No.”

Jack’s thumb shifted beneath the red tab. Not restless. Careful. Like he was holding the place for both of you. He looked down again, not reading now. Thinking. His brow barely drew together, just enough that you knew he had stopped seeing the fictional scene and started seeing the shape beneath it. Restraint had been easy for him to understand. Control, too. Praise. Waiting. Asking. Being seen. Worship. Those had all been things you had trusted him to give you.

This one was different.

Jack lifted his eyes. “It’s about you wanting to know what it feels like to take.”

Your breath caught. There it was. No judgment. No surprise.

Just Jack, finding the center of the thing faster than anyone had any right to.

You looked down at the comforter. The red tabs blurred at the edges of your vision. “I think so.”

Jack was quiet. You felt the weight of it. Not pressure. Never that. Just attention. The same kind he gave you when you asked for something clearly. The same kind he gave patients when they were scared enough that the truth had to be handled carefully.

His voice softened. “That’s why you almost took the tab out.”

You swallowed. “Yes.”

Jack set the book open on his thigh, page 212 facing up. He did not close it. He did not turn it over. He did not hide it for you. He left it visible. A little red-tabbed truth between his jeans and the comforter.

You picked at a loose thread near your knee. “It felt different.”

Jack’s hand rested on the bed beside the book. Open. Still. “How?”

You let out a small laugh that held little humor. “I don’t know.”

Jack’s gaze stayed on your face. Patient. Waiting.

You huffed softly. “I hate when you do that.”

His mouth barely moved. “Do what?”

“Wait like that,” you answered.

Jack shrugged a shoulder. “You usually tell me the truth when I wait.”

You glared at him. “That’s annoying.”

“I know,” Jack replied with a soft smile.

The warmth of the exchange loosened something in your chest. Only a little. Enough.

You looked back at the page. At the red tab. At the book you had read months ago and carried around in your head like a secret with a glossy cover. “It wasn’t just about sex,” you said.

Jack did not move.

“I mean, obviously it was about sex,” you added.

His mouth twitched faintly. There he was. Barely.

You breathed a little easier. “But not only that.” Your fingers smoothed over the hem of his shirt. “The other pages were about things I wanted you to do. Or things I wanted to ask for. Or things I wanted to feel.”

Jack’s eyes stayed steady on yours. “This one wasn’t like that.”

“No,” you said. “This one was…” You stopped. The word stuck somewhere behind your ribs.

Jack waited. The room seemed to gather closer around the silence. Rain against the window. The heater hummed low. The faint smell of bookstore paper still clinging to the new stack. The warm cotton of Jack’s shirt against your skin. His knee near yours, his body fully covered and still somehow more vulnerable than you had ever seen him with clothes on.

You looked at him. “You always know what I like.”

Jack’s expression softened. “You make that sound like a complaint.”

“It isn’t.”

“No?” he asked.

You shook your head. “No. I love that you know.”

His eyes changed. Small. Devastating.

You kept going before you could lose your nerve. “You know how to touch me. How to talk to me. How to make me ask for things. How to make me wait.” Your face warmed, but you did not look away. “You know when I’m about to get shy. You know when to push and when to stop. You know when I’m hiding.”

Jack’s hand shifted slightly against the comforter. You noticed because you were watching him now. Really watching him. “And I trust that,” you said. “I trust you with that.”

His voice came out lower. “I know.”

You smiled faintly. “I know you know.”

Jack’s mouth curved, but his eyes stayed serious. You looked back at the page again. “This one made me think about what it would feel like if I got to know.”

Jack’s thumb went still against the comforter. There. You saw it. Your pulse kicked. He did not speak. So you did. “I don’t mean know like…” You let out a shaky breath. “I know you, Jack. I know you. But I mean like that.”

His gaze did not leave your face. You pressed your fingers into the comforter. “I wanted to know what it would feel like to learn what makes you lose your breath. What makes you stop trying to look calm. What makes your hands tighten. What makes you say my name like you didn’t mean to.”

The room went very still. Jack’s eyes darkened. Not in the easy way. Not in the playful, teasing way he let you see when he wanted you to know he was affected. This was quieter. Deeper. The kind of reaction he could not turn into a joke fast enough.

Your own courage startled you. Maybe it was the shirt. Maybe it was the red tab. Maybe it was the fact that Jack was sitting in front of you, fully dressed and absolutely undone by the possibility of being known in return.

You looked at his mouth. Then back at his eyes. “I wanted to know what it felt like to tease you.”

Jack’s jaw shifted. One small movement. A crack in the stillness. You noticed.

His voice was rougher when he answered. “Yeah?”

You nodded. The word was easier now. “Yes.”

Jack looked down at page 212 again.

This time, when he read the lines, you knew he was not reading them for information. He understood. This was not about him taking control. This was not about him giving you an experience. This was about you wanting to create one. About you wanting to have his reactions under your hands. His restraint beneath your mouth. His patience tested by you, for you, because he had made wanting safe enough that you had started to wonder what else you could do with it.

Jack closed his eyes for one second. Just one. But you saw it. Your breath caught.

When he opened them again, his gaze came back to you slowly. “You were afraid to show me that.”

Your fingers tightened in the comforter. “Yes.”

“Because you thought I wouldn’t want it?”

“No.” The answer came fast. Too fast.

Jack’s brows lifted slightly.

You shook your head, embarrassed now for a different reason. “No. I knew you’d want it.”

His mouth curved faintly. There he was again. A little.

Your face warmed. “I mean, I hoped. I thought. I—”

“Baby.”

You stopped. Jack’s eyes were soft now, but the heat in them had not gone anywhere. “You knew.”

Your pulse jumped. The confidence in his voice should have annoyed you. It did not. It made your stomach flip. “Yes,” you admitted. “I knew.”

Jack leaned back slightly, one hand braced behind him now, the other still near the open book. He looked too calm again. Almost. Only almost. His breathing was different. You had learned that much already. You looked down at his hand on the comforter. Long fingers. Steady hands. Hands that had held you still, made you wait, praised you, touched you carefully, worshipped you in his office chair until you had understood what the book had only tried to describe.

Those hands were not touching you now. For some reason, that made the air feel hotter.

Jack followed your gaze. Then looked back at you. “This one is about you wanting control.”

Your throat went tight. “Maybe.”

His mouth softened. “Not maybe.”

You let out a quiet laugh, shaky at the edges. “Fine. Not maybe.”

Jack’s thumb moved once over the comforter. “You want to watch me.”

Your breath caught. “Yes.”

“You want to tease me.”

Your throat went tight. “Yes.”

Jack’s eyes stayed on yours. “You want to see what happens when I don’t get to touch first.”

The heat went through you so fast you almost looked away. Almost. Jack watched the answer cross your face before you said it. “Yes.”

The room held still around the word. Jack did not reach for you. That was what made your chest ache. He could have. Easily. He was close enough. You were kneeling beside him in his shirt, the hem high on your thighs, books scattered everywhere, page 212 open between you like a dare. But he did not move. He only looked at you like he understood the shape of the trust being asked of him now.

Not your trust this time.

His.

Slowly, Jack took the book from his thigh and set it on the bed beside him. He left it open.

Page 212 facing up.

The red tab bent slightly toward the lamp. That was the first real sign. Not his breathing. Not his stillness. The book. The care of it. The deliberate placement, like whatever happened next, required his full attention and both hands free, even though he had not yet been given permission to use them.

Your pulse stumbled. Jack turned back to you. His expression was calm.

His eyes were not. “Okay,” he said.

Your voice came out soft. “Okay?”

His hand came to rest palm-up on the comforter between you. Not reaching. Offering. “You showed me.”

Your throat tightened. “Yes.”

Jack’s fingers flexed once against the blanket. “And you want to try.”

You nodded. “Yes.”

He looked at you for a long second. Long enough that the room seemed to warm around the edges. Long enough that you felt the shift happen: the page moving from paper to possibility, the old fantasy stepping out of a book and into the dim gold light of your bedroom.

Then Jack’s mouth curved. Not smug. Not yet. Something slower. More dangerous because it was softer.

“Use me,” he said.

Your breath caught.

His eyes stayed on yours. “Tease me.”

The words went through you like a spark.

Jack’s hand remained open on the comforter. Waiting. “Take your time.”

Your pulse beat everywhere. He leaned back against the pillows, still fully dressed, still covered, still giving you the choice while the air between you went thick enough to touch.

His voice dropped. “See what happens.”

For one second, you could not move. Jack watched you absorb it. Every word. Every permission. Every inch of trust he had just handed you.

Then his mouth curved faintly. There. A little smug now.

A little Jack. “You wanted page two hundred and twelve, baby.”

His fingers relaxed against the comforter. “Come find out.”

For one second, you could not move. Jack’s words stayed in the room between you.

Use me. Tease me. Take your time. See what happens.

They settled over the bed with the scattered books and the warm lamplight and the rain tapping softly against the window. Page 212 stayed open beside him, red tab bent toward the light like it was watching too.

Jack leaned back against the pillows. Still dressed. Still covered. Still waiting. He looked almost calm.

Almost.

That made your pulse trip. You moved closer on your knees. Slowly. The mattress dipped beneath you. One of the new paperbacks shifted against your shin, and you nudged it aside without looking away from him.

Jack watched you come to him. He did not reach. That was the first thing you noticed. The second was how hard it was for him. Not because he said anything. He didn’t. Jack stayed quiet, eyes on your face, mouth relaxed enough to lie. But his hand flexed once against the comforter.

Only once.

You saw it.

His eyes flicked down to his hand, like he had caught himself too. Then back to you. Your courage warmed by a degree. You settled beside his thigh, close enough that the hem of his shirt brushed your skin, close enough that his knee nearly touched yours.

Jack’s gaze dropped to your mouth. You leaned in and kissed him. Softly at first. Familiar. Safe. His mouth met yours with a slow warmth that almost made you forget the rule before you had even started. Jack kissed like he had time. Like he had spent years learning patience and had decided to use all of it on you. His breath moved against your cheek, his mouth parting under yours, his body steady beneath the kiss.

Then his hand lifted. Habit. Instinct. A warm reach toward your waist.

You caught his wrist before he touched you. Not hard. Just enough.

Jack went still. His eyes opened.

For one suspended second, neither of you breathed.

His gaze dropped to your hand around his wrist. Your fingers looked smaller there, wrapped around him. He could have moved through your hold easily if he wanted to. He did not. He looked back at your face.

You swallowed. “Not yet.”

Jack’s expression shifted. Not surprised exactly. Recalculation. Like the words had just moved from idea to rule. Then his breath left him in a rough, quiet laugh.

“Fuck,” he murmured. “Okay.”

The sound went straight through you. He let you guide his hand back to the bed. Not limp. Not passive. Willing. That was worse. You placed his palm against the comforter beside his hip. His fingers spread over the blanket, tendons shifting under his skin. You looked at his other hand, still resting near his thigh, and then back at him. “Both.”

Jack’s eyes darkened. The corner of his mouth moved, barely. “Both?”

Your face warmed, but you held his gaze. “You said I could tease you.”

His jaw twitched. “I did.”

You leaned closer. “So let me.”

The room seemed to tighten around the words. Jack looked at you for one long second. Then he set his other hand down on the bed. Still. Given. Your breath caught at the sight of it. Jack noticed. His mouth curved faintly, but his voice was lower when he spoke. “There you go.”

You narrowed your eyes. “That sounded like praise.”

“It was.”

You shook your head. “You don’t get to guide.”

His mouth curved a little more. “No?”

“No.”

Jack’s fingers flexed once against the comforter. Then relaxed again. “Okay, baby.”

The obedience in it hit you harder than the pet name. You stared at his hands on the bed.

Jack Abbot’s hands.

Hands that had held you still in the pool house. Hands that had made you wait in front of the fireplace. Hands that had touched you carefully in his office chair like you were something he had been trusted to worship. Hands that had guided, steadied, praised, taken care.

And now they were staying where you put them. Because you asked. The knowledge moved through you slowly. Warm. Dangerous.

You bent and kissed him again. This time, you let yourself linger. Jack did not touch you. His mouth did. His breath did. His attention did. But his hands stayed flat on the comforter. You pulled back just enough to look at him. Still calm. Still mostly composed. You wanted to ruin that.

The thought should have embarrassed you.

It didn’t.

Not as much as you expected.

You kissed the corner of his mouth, then his jaw. His skin was warm beneath your lips, faintly rough with the shadow he doesn’t shave off. You felt the slight movement of his throat when he swallowed. There. You kissed there next. Jack’s breath caught. Small. Quick.

You paused.

His eyes stayed open, fixed on the ceiling for half a second before they lowered to you.

Your mouth curved against his skin. “Oh.”

His jaw shifted. “Don’t.”

You lifted your head. “Don’t what?”

His hands remained on the bed, but his fingers had curled slightly into the quilt. “Sound so pleased with yourself.”

You looked at his hands. Then back at his face. “I think I am pleased with myself.”

Jack let out a low breath that might have been a laugh if it had not sounded so strained. “Yeah,” he said. “I noticed.”

That made something bold unfurl in your chest. You returned to his neck, slower now. Learning. That was the point, wasn’t it? Not performing. Not proving. Learning him in a new way. You kissed beneath his jaw and felt his head tilt, almost unconsciously, giving you more space. More access. More of him. The gesture hit you harder than you expected. Jack, who usually made space for you with hands and instruction and quiet command, was making space for you with his own body now.

You kissed the newly exposed line of his throat. His hands twitched. Both of them. He caught himself before you said a word. You saw it. So did he. For one second, his jaw clenched, and the muscle there jumped beneath his skin.

“You’re doing that on purpose,” he said.

His voice was calm. Too calm. You kissed lower, to the place where his pulse was beating harder now. “Doing what?”

Jack’s breath moved out slowly. “Finding places.”

You smiled against him. “Isn’t that what you told me to do?”

His chest rose beneath your hand. “I told you to take your time.”

“You did.” Your fingers slid to the hem of his T-shirt. “And to tease you.”

Jack went very still when your nails brushed the line of his stomach through the fabric. You felt it before you saw it. The tightening. The way the muscles beneath your touch pulled firm. The way his breath paused in the middle and had to be restarted. You lifted your eyes. Jack was watching you now. Not the ceiling. Not the books.

You.

His hands were still on the bed, but they were no longer relaxed. His fingers had curled into the comforter, forearms tense, veins standing out beneath freckled skin. The sight of that, of his body obeying you even when it clearly wanted to do something else, made your pulse stumble. “You okay?” you asked softly.

Jack’s mouth curved. A little rough. A little wrecked. “I’m good.”

You believed him. You dragged your nails gently down again. This time, lower. Over the soft cotton. Down the center of his stomach. Jack’s abdomen tightened under your touch. His hips shifted. Not much. Enough. A small, helpless movement toward your hand before he caught himself and went still again.

The room changed. Your breath caught. Jack’s eyes narrowed slightly, like he knew exactly what you had noticed. You looked at him. Then at where your hand rested just above his waistband. Then back at him. “Oh,” you whispered again.

Jack closed his eyes for half a second. “Baby.” The word came out low. Not a warning. Not really. More like he had reached the edge of his own composure and found your name there.

You touched the waistband of his jeans with one finger. Just the edge. The denim was rough beneath your fingertip, warm from his body, and beneath it, impossible to miss now, was the hardness of him.

Your breath caught before you could stop it. Jack saw. His jaw clenched. For all his stillness, all his control, all his careful obedience with his hands pressed into the bed, his body had already answered you. The realization moved through you slowly.

He wanted you.

Not theoretically. Not gently. Not in the safe, familiar way you already knew. He wanted you so badly he was lying there trying to survive one finger at his waistband.

Your pulse kicked hard. “Jack.”

His eyes stayed on yours. “I know.”

You slipped one fingertip just beneath his waistband. Barely. Hardly anything.

Jack’s hips bucked.

Only a little. A sharp, involuntary shift up into your touch before he caught himself. Then he froze. So did you. For one breath, the room held perfectly still. Rain at the window. Books on the bed. Page 212 open beside him.

Your finger beneath his waistband.

Jack’s hands gripping the comforter like it was the only thing keeping him from reaching for you. His eyes found you. Yours were already on him. You had never seen him look exactly like that before.

Strained. Dark. Still in control because he had chosen to be, but only just.

You swallowed. “That was new.”

Jack exhaled through his nose. Rough. Almost amused. Almost not. “That was me trying to be good.”

The words went straight through you. You looked at his hands again. Still there. Still listening. Still not touching you.

Your chest warmed so sharply it almost hurt. “You are being good.”

Jack’s eyes flicked to yours. Something in his face shifted. The praise landed. You saw it. You actually saw it. His mouth parted slightly, then closed. His grip tightened once in the bedding. His stomach went tight beneath your hand. Oh. That did something to him too. Your courage flared hotter. You moved your fingertip again, slow along the inside edge of his waistband.

Jack’s head dropped back against the pillows.

His throat worked. His eyes stayed open this time, but only barely.

“You like that,” you said.

His laugh came out quiet and disbelieving. “You asking?”

“No.”

Jack’s gaze found yours. You held it. “I’m telling you.”

The air shifted. His hands flexed. “Yeah,” he said, voice rougher now. “I like that.”

You bent and kissed the center of his stomach, where the muscles were still tight beneath your mouth. Jack’s breath broke. Not enough to be dramatic. Enough to make you dizzy with it. You kissed him again, a little lower, over the cotton bunched where his shirt had ridden up from your hands. Your fingers pushed the fabric higher, slowly exposing warm skin inch by inch. Freckles. A faint line of old scar tissue near his ribs. The firm shift of muscle beneath your palm. You had seen him shirtless hundreds of times by now. In bed. After showers. In the pool house. Half-asleep in the morning, searching for coffee with the tragic seriousness of a man on a medical mission.

But seeing him like this was different. Because he was letting you look. Letting you take your time. Letting you be curious about him without turning that curiosity back on you. You pushed his shirt higher. Jack lifted his shoulders slightly to help.

Then stopped.

His eyes found yours. Waiting. You loved that he waited. You hated how much you loved it. “Take it off,” you said.

Jack’s expression changed. Just a little. But you caught it. The words moved through him the way his commands sometimes moved through you. His hands left the bed for the first time, but not toward you. Only to grip the back of his shirt and pull it over his head.

He did it slowly. Not because he had to. Because you were watching. The black cotton dragged up his stomach, over his chest, over his shoulders. His arms lifted. His biceps flexed. His forearms tightened, veins straining under the warm lamplight. Then the shirt was gone, tossed somewhere near the bookstore bag, and Jack was bare from the waist up, sitting beneath you with his hands returning to the comforter exactly where you had told them to stay.

Your breath caught. Jack saw. His mouth curved faintly. “There,” he said.

Your eyes narrowed. “You’re not allowed to sound smug.”

Jack exhaled a soft laugh. “I took my shirt off on command.”

“Jack.”

His smile deepened. “It’s new for me.”

A laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. The sound softened his face for half a second. Then your hand settled against his bare chest, and the softness changed into something else. You kissed him there. Once. Slow. His skin was warm under your mouth. His chest rose carefully, like he was trying not to breathe too hard and give you more evidence. You followed the line of his collarbone, nipped lightly where his shoulder met his neck, and felt his whole body answer.

A breath caught. A hand twitched. His jaw clenched. You learned. You kissed the spot again.

Jack’s eyes shut. “Fuck,” he said softly.

The word was quiet enough to disappear into the rain. It did not. It stayed in your chest. You kissed lower, mouth moving over the freckled skin of his chest, down the center, over his ribs. Every place got an answer if you paid attention. A hitch of breath near his collarbone. A tightening low in his stomach when your nails followed. A rough exhale when your teeth grazed gently beneath his jaw. His head tipping back when you kissed his throat, giving you more before he seemed to realize he had done it.

That was your favorite part.

Not the sounds.

Not even the way his body reacted, though God, that was something.

It was the offering.

The unconscious little yes of his body before his composure could catch up.

You returned to his neck because of it. Jack tilted his head again. More this time. The movement was slow, almost reluctant, but there. A deliberate surrender of space. Your lips parted against his skin. You kissed him there, right over the place his pulse was beating harder now, and let your nails trail down his bare stomach again.

Jack’s hips shifted under you. Another small movement. Another loss. You smiled against his throat. He felt it.

His voice came rougher. “Don’t start.”

You lifted your head. “I thought that was the point.”

His eyes were dark now. Not calm. Not even pretending very well. “You’re learning fast.”

Your heart kicked. You looked at his hands.

Still on the bed. Still tight. Still not touching. Then back to his face. “I have a good teacher.”

Jack’s expression softened and sharpened at the same time. “That right?”

You nodded. Then your fingers found his waistband again. This time, Jack’s breath caught before you even touched him.

Your smile came slower now. More certain. “Yes,” you said. “But I think I want to learn on my own for a little while.”

Jack stared at you. For one second, he looked like he might say something. Something controlled. Something Jack. Then your fingertip slipped under his waistband again, soft and maddening and barely there, and whatever words he had found disappeared.

His hips bucked into your touch. A little stronger this time. His hands gripped the comforter so hard the fabric pulled tight beneath his fingers. His jaw clenched. The veins in his forearms stood out. And you watched him. You watched him try to stay still. Try to listen. Try to let you have this.

Your whole body went warm with it. Jack’s eyes lifted to yours. Strained. Hungry. Proud, somehow. Wrecked already and still giving you exactly what he promised. You bent down and kissed his chest again. Softly. A reward. Then you whispered against his skin, “Good.”

Jack’s breath left him in a broken, disbelieving laugh. “Jesus Christ.”

You smiled.

And took your time.

Because he had told you to. Because he had offered it. Because every second you spent learning him seemed to pull another thread loose in Jack’s careful control. Jack was still propped against the pillows, bare from the waist up now, jeans still on, hands still on the quilt where you had put them. Mostly. His fingers had started curling into the blanket more than relaxing against it. His forearms were tense. The veins there stood out under freckled skin, and every time your mouth found a new place that made his breath catch, his grip tightened like he was anchoring himself to the bed.

It was mesmerizing.

Jack Abbot, who could keep his hands steady in the middle of chaos, was lying under you trying to survive being kissed slowly.

And you were doing that.

You.

The thought made you bold enough to lift your head from his chest. Jack’s eyes opened. They found yours immediately. Not because he hadn’t wanted to look. Because he had been trying not to look too affected.

He was failing.

You smiled before you could stop yourself.

His jaw shifted. “Don’t,” he said.

The word was rougher now. You sat back slightly on your heels, still beside him, still close enough that your bare thigh brushed the denim of his jeans. “Don’t what?”

Jack looked at you. Then at the place where your hand still rested near his waistband. Then back to your face. “Look like that.”

Your smile widened. “How am I looking?”

His hands flexed once on the bed. “Like you just learned something dangerous.”

Heat bloomed low in your stomach. You let your fingers drift once more over the line of his waistband, light enough to be maddening, slow enough to feel his body go tense beneath the attention. Jack’s breath caught. There. Again. You were not imagining it. You were learning him, newly. His eyes narrowed slightly, dark and strained, but he still did not reach for you. Still did not take over. Still did not pull you down and turn this into something he knew how to control. He had promised. He was keeping it.

The realization did something strange to your chest. Something warm. Something powerful. Something tender enough to hurt. You moved your hand away from his waistband.

Jack noticed immediately.

His stomach tightened, then released on a slow breath, like he was not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

You shifted in front of him. Not beside him now. In front of him. The mattress dipped beneath your knees as you settled between his legs, far enough back that he could see all of you, close enough that his body seemed to register every inch of distance as an insult. His gaze moved over you slowly: bare thighs, his shirt loose on your body, one shoulder already slipped low, the hem bunched high from the way you had been kneeling over him. You were still the one half-dressed. Still the one physically exposed. But Jack’s eyes had that look now, the one that made you feel like he was the one without cover. Because he could not touch. Because you had told him not yet. Because he was letting you decide.

Your fingers curled around the hem of his shirt. Jack went still. Not tense. Waiting. You felt his attention move over your hands, your thighs, your face. The rain tapped softly against the glass. The new books sat in neat little piles across the bed, abandoned completely now. Somewhere near your knee, one paperback cover bent slightly, and you would have cared if there had been any room left in your head for normal thought.

There wasn’t. There was Jack. Jack watching. Jack waiting. Jack breathing carefully because you had not told him what came next. You pulled the shirt higher. Slowly. His eyes followed the movement. Your pulse jumped at the sight of his expression. Not smug now. Not teasing.

Hungry.

Focused.

Almost stunned.

As if he had not quite understood, until this exact second, that you were going to let him see you too. Your courage wavered. Only a little. Enough.

Jack saw it immediately. His face softened. “You don’t have to.”

The words were quiet. No command. No pressure. Just an open door. You looked at him. His hands were still pressed to the quilt. His body was still tense from everything you had done to him. He wanted you. God, he wanted you. You could see it in every line of him. But he still gave you the out first. That was what made you keep going.

“I know.” Your voice sounded softer than you expected.

Jack’s thumb twitched against the blanket, like he wanted to reach for you and had to remind himself not to. You noticed. So did he.

Your mouth curved. “Hands stay there.”

His eyes darkened. The command moved through him. You saw it land. Jack’s fingers curled deeper into the quilt. “Yes, ma’am.”

A surprised laugh slipped out of you. “Don’t make me laugh. I’m trying to be seductive.”

His mouth curved faintly. “You’re doing fine.”

“Fine?”

His gaze moved over you again, slow enough to make your skin heat. “Better than fine.”

The words settled over you like a touch. You pulled the shirt higher. His shirt. His old PTMC shirt, the cotton soft from years of washing, smelling faintly like laundry and him. You lifted it over your head and let it fall onto the mattress beside you, soft and careless among the books and red tabs and evidence of every other brave thing you had ever learned to ask him for.

Jack went utterly still. For one second, he did not even breathe. You were in front of him now in nothing but your underwear. One hand moved behind you, bracing against the mattress. The position changed everything.

It opened you to him.

Made you feel the air against your skin, the warmth of the lamp, the weight of his eyes as if they were hands he was still not allowed to use. Jack’s gaze moved over you slowly. Not like he was taking. Like he was being given something and knew better than to rush it.

His throat worked. “Baby.”

One word. Low. Rough. Almost reverent. Your breath shook. His eyes came back to your face, checking. Always checking. Not with worry. With care. With the kind of attention that had made every red tab safe enough to become real.

You nodded once. “I’m good.”

Jack believed you. He did not ask again. You let that belief settle over you. Then your fingers slipped to the edge of your underwear.

Jack’s hands tightened in the blanket. Immediately. Your eyes dropped to them. So did his. His fingers relaxed by force, then curled again anyway.

You hooked your thumbs under the fabric and lifted your hips just enough to slide it down. Slowly. Jack’s breathing changed. The sound of it made your whole body feel warm. Not because you were performing for him. Not because you felt like you had to be perfect. Because Jack was watching you like there was nothing else in the world he wanted more than permission to touch you, and still, he did not move.

You drew the fabric down your thighs. Past your knees. Off. It landed beside his shirt. Another piece of evidence. Another layer gone. You settled back in front of him, bare now, one palm braced behind you on the mattress, your other hand resting lightly over your stomach while you gathered the courage you had started to find with every hitch of his breath.

Jack stared at you. He looked wrecked already. You had barely started. That thought should have made you shy. Instead, it made you breathe deeper.

You looked at him. “I want you to watch.”

Jack’s hands went utterly still. Not fisted now. Still. Like the words had struck something too deep for immediate reaction.

His voice came out lower. “I am.”

“No,” you said softly.

His eyes stayed on yours.

You let yourself smile. “I mean really watch.”

Jack took one slow breath. The kind he took when he was trying to stay composed. It did not work. Not fully. His eyes moved over you again, hotter now, unguarded in a way you had never quite seen. He looked at your face first. Then your hands. Then the way you leaned back, one palm braced into the mattress, body open to him because you had decided to be. Then back to your eyes, like he wanted to make sure you were still with him.

You were. More than with him. You were leading him. That realization made your hand steadier when it moved.

You touched yourself slowly, still watching Jack watch you. His whole body changed. Not dramatically. Worse. A slow tightening from the inside out. His shoulders pressed harder into the pillows. His stomach went taut. His hands gripped the quilt again, fingers pulling the fabric tight. His jaw clenched so hard you saw the muscle jump.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

The word was barely there. You felt it anyway. Your own breath shook. You liked this. Not just being watched. Watching him watch. Watching Jack try not to come apart from the sight of you wanting him and not asking him to do anything about it yet. The power of it went through you warm and bright. You moved again, a little less uncertain.

Jack’s eyes stayed on your face. Then dropped. Then snapped back up like he had remembered himself.

You smiled. “Eyes on me.”

The command surprised both of you. The air changed around it. Jack stared at you. Then his mouth curved slowly. Not smug. Wrecked. Proud. “Yes, ma’am.”

Your breath caught. The phrase should have been funny. It was not. Not with his voice like that. Not with his hands white-knuckled in the quilt. Not with his body hard and tense beneath jeans he was not allowed to ask you to remove yet.

You kept your eyes on him. And kept going. Jack watched your face now because you had told him to. His gaze did not drop, not even when his breath started catching in uneven pieces, not even when his hips shifted helplessly beneath the denim, not even when you heard the rough sound he swallowed before it could fully escape.

He listened.

God, he listened.

The trust of it hit you all over again. You were the exposed one. But Jack was the one letting himself be directed. You were the one bare in front of him. But Jack was the one gripping the comforter like surrender had teeth.

Your voice came out softer. “Do you like watching me like this?”

Jack nodded. One rough, immediate movement.

You kept your hand where it was. “Answer me.”

His breath broke. His eyes stayed on yours. “Yes, baby,” he said, voice low and wrecked. “I like watching you like this.”

Heat tore through you. Your body answered before you could decide what to do with the words. Jack saw that too. A broken sound left him. “Jesus.”

You kept your eyes on him. Kept your hand where it was. Kept the rule. Jack did not touch you. But the room felt full of him anyway. His gaze. His breathing. His restraint. His wanting.

You moved slowly at first, learning the shape of being watched. Your breath caught on the first real wave of feeling, and Jack’s entire body reacted to the sound. His stomach tightened. His hands gripped the comforter harder. His mouth parted on an inhale he did not quite finish. Your hips shifted against your hand. Small. Instinctive.

Jack saw. His eyes flared darker. The sight of his reaction made you do it again. This time, the movement was less careful. A little more honest. Your hand braced harder behind you, fingers pressing into the mattress as your body began to rock against your own touch.

Jack’s breath grew uneven. Not loud. Not theatrical. Worse. Controlled breathing, failing one piece at a time.

You watched him watch you, and something reckless stirred beneath your ribs. “Do you know what I think about,” you asked, voice softer now, “when I touch myself like this?”

Jack’s jaw clenched. His eyes stayed on yours. For a second, you thought he might answer. Then he shook his head once. Not because he did not want to know. Because he wanted it too badly.

Your hand moved again. Your breath broke.“You.”

Jack’s hands pulled the comforter tight beneath his fingers. The single word hit him like a touch. You saw it. Felt it. Loved it.

“You,” you said again, because you could, because he was there and listening and still not touching you even though every line of his body begged to. “Your hands.”

Your hips jerked against your hand as you said it, the memory of those hands moving through you so sharply your eyes nearly closed. Nearly. You kept them open.

Jack’s breath punched out of him. His fingers flexed against the bed.

You knew what he wanted. God, you knew. You kept going. “Your mouth.”

Jack’s head tipped back against the pillows for half a second. Only half. Then he forced himself to look at you again. His eyes were darker now. Less controlled. More honest.

Your movements grew less precise, less careful, your body chasing the memory as much as the feeling. Jack’s mouth at your throat. His hands on your waist. His voice near your ear. The way he could make you feel wanted like wanting was something sacred and filthy and safe all at once.

Your breath came faster. Jack heard every bit of it. He reacted to every bit of it. A shift of his hips. A tightening low in his stomach. A rough sound swallowed before it could become your name.

“How good you fuck me,” you whispered.

Jack broke. Not completely. Not yet. But enough. “Fuck—don’t.”

The words tore out of him rough and helpless, halfway between a warning and a plea.

You stopped moving for one second. Jack looked at you, breathing hard, hands still where you had put them, jaw tight enough to make the muscle jump. Your pulse thundered. “Don’t what?”

He stared at you. Gone enough that the question seemed to undo him twice. His laugh came out low. Wrecked. Then his eyes dropped briefly to your hand before dragging back up to your face. “Don’t stop.”

The words moved through you like fire. You did not. Your hand moved again, and this time your hips followed without restraint, rocking into the feeling while Jack watched like every movement cost him. Your breath turned uneven. Your moans slipped out softer at first, then less soft, each one making his grip tighten, his forearms strain, his body go harder and stiller beneath the effort of not reaching. “Jack,” you breathed.

His eyes lifted to yours immediately. “I’m here.”

The answer came fast. Grounding. Ruined. Still Jack. Your body clenched around the sound of it. You were close now. Closer than you expected to be from this alone. But it was not this alone. It was him. His eyes. His restraint. His wanting. The way he looked at you, like you had opened a door inside him and he did not know whether to pray or curse about what he found there. Your hand pressed harder into the bed behind you. Your hips rocked again. Jack’s name caught in your throat once. Then again.

He made a sound like it hurt. “Baby.”

You shook your head, not refusing him, just overwhelmed. Your eyes stayed on his because you had told him to keep his on you, and some part of you needed to be just as brave.

Jack’s hands stayed on the bed. Still. Gripping. Shaking now. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, voice wrecked. “Fuck, baby, you’re so beautiful.”

The praise hit differently now. Not guiding. Not taking over. Just truth spilling out of him because he had no other place to put it. That was what did it. The restraint. The want. The way he watched you, like he had never seen anything more beautiful and had never been asked to survive anything worse.

“Fuck—Jack—” Your body went tight, then shook apart, pleasure moving through you in hot, helpless waves. Your hand pressed hard into the mattress behind you. Your hips rocked once more, then stuttered as your breath broke open around his name.

Jack made a sound. Low. Broken. Like watching you finish without touching you had done actual damage to his ability to function.

Your hand slipped from your body to the bed beside you. For a moment, you could only breathe. The room came back in pieces. Rain. Lamp light. Books. The red tab. Jack’s breathing. When you opened your eyes, he was still exactly where you had left him. Hands on the mattress. Body tense. Completely undone. He stared at you like he had just watched something sacred and obscene and did not have a category for either.

Your mouth curved, exhausted and shy and pleased all at once. “You okay?”

Jack blinked. Once. Then his laugh came out rough and disbelieving. “No.”

Your smile widened. His eyes stayed on yours. “But keep going.”

The words stayed between you. Rough. Breathless. A little ruined.  You were still trying to breathe. Still bare in front of him. Still shaky from your own body, from his eyes, from the sound he had made when you came apart without his hands on you. For a moment, neither of you moved. Jack’s eyes stayed on your face. Not your body now. Your face. Like he was checking where you had landed. Your chest softened. You shifted closer on your knees, and his hands tightened immediately. He caught himself. You saw it. His mouth curved faintly, but there was strain in it now.

You leaned down slowly, one hand bracing on the mattress beside his hip. You stopped just above him, close enough that your hair brushed his chest, close enough that his breath warmed your mouth. “You did a good job watching me.”

His whole body went still. The praise landed. You felt it in the way his breath caught. Saw it in the flex of his hands against the quilt. The tightening in his stomach. The flicker of surprise across his face, like he had not expected the words to go through him the same way they had gone through you. Your smile softened. “Oh.”

Jack’s jaw shifted. “Don’t.”

You touched one finger to the center of his chest. “You like praise.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“I think I’m enjoying it the right amount.”

Jack’s laugh came out low and strained. “Professionally, I disagree.”

You kissed the corner of his mouth. Soft. Brief. Then you pulled back before he could deepen it. His head followed yours by half an inch before he caught himself and stopped. That tiny movement did something terrible to your confidence. Something wonderful.

“You did so good,” you murmured again.

Jack closed his eyes. Just for a second. “Baby.”

The word was rough now. Not a warning. Not a plea. Something in between. You kissed his jaw, then the side of his neck, feeling the place where his pulse jumped beneath your mouth. His hands stayed down. Barely. Your fingers drifted to his belt. Jack’s eyes opened. The room changed. Not because you rushed. Because you didn’t. Your fingertips found the buckle slowly, tracing the edge before you touched the metal. Jack’s stomach tightened beneath you. His breathing had gone careful again, which meant he was trying to act like he still had any reasonable amount of control.

You looked up at him. He looked back. Silent. Dark-eyed. Waiting. You smiled faintly. “Still no touching.”

His mouth barely moved. “I remember.”

The buckle came undone with a quiet metallic sound that seemed far too loud in the room. Jack’s hands gripped the quilt. You dragged the leather free one loop at a time. Slow. Deliberate. Every pull made the denim shift lower on his hips. Every soft scrape of leather through fabric made his jaw tighten a little more. You set the belt aside near the open book. Jack glanced at it. Then at you. Your fingers found the button of his jeans, and you undid it slowly. The zipper next. Jack inhaled through his nose. You heard it. You loved hearing it. The denim opened beneath your hands, and the hardness of him was suddenly closer, clearer, still covered but impossible to ignore.

Your mouth went dry. Jack saw. His voice came lower. “You okay?”

You looked up at him. This time, the question did not make you feel small. It made you feel held. Even now. Especially now. “I’m okay.”

Jack nodded once. Then you sat back enough to tug at his jeans. “Hips up.”

Jack froze. Only for half a second. Long enough for you to see the words land. Then he obeyed. His hips lifted from the mattress, controlled but not steady, and you pulled the denim down over his hips. The movement made his hands flex hard in the quilt. Made his chest rise. Made his jaw clench when your fingers brushed skin and fabric and restraint. You drew the jeans down his thighs. Slow because you could. Slow because he had told you to take your time. Slow because every inch of exposed skin felt like another piece of him being given back to you. You continued pulling the jeans down and off, setting them over the edge of the bed near his shirt.

You paused as you looked at him. The heat softened. Just a little. Enough for the room to change shape. Jack noticed immediately. His eyes sharpened. “What?”

You looked down at his prosthetic. Then back at him. Your hand rested lightly near his knee. “Can I?”

He knew what you meant. Of course he did. The question settled between you differently than the others. Quieter. Older. More intimate than teasing. Jack’s throat worked once. “Yeah,” he said softly. “You can.”

Your chest tightened. You moved carefully. Not because you were afraid of doing it wrong. You knew the sequence, you’d done it a few times. You had seen him do it a hundred times. After showers. Before bed. In the early mornings when he sat on the edge of the mattress, half-awake and stubbornly pretending he did not need coffee more than oxygen. But knowing did not make it casual. This part of him always deserved care. The fastenings first. Then the socket. The practiced adjustments, the familiar mechanics, the quiet trust of Jack lying still while you handled something he usually handled himself. He watched your face the whole time. Not your hands. Your face. Like there was something there he needed to see.

When it came free, you set the prosthetic beside the bed exactly where he liked it. Within reach. Stable. Ready for him when he needed it again. Then you turned back to him. Jack was staring at you. His face had changed. The heat was still there. God, it was there. But something else sat under it now, softer and more dangerous because it mattered. “What?” you whispered.

He shook his head once. “Nothing.”

You looked at him. “That wasn’t nothing.”

Your throat tightened. You leaned down before he could say anything else and kissed his thigh. Softly. Just once.

Jack shook. Not a little breath this time. Not a controlled inhale. His whole body gave one rough, helpless tremor beneath your mouth.

 You lifted your head. His eyes were closed. His hands were still in the quilt. White-knuckled. “Jack.”

His throat worked. “I’m good.”

His voice was rough enough to make your chest ache. “That just—” He stopped. Jaw flexing.

You kissed him there again. Slower.

His breath broke. “Yeah,” he said, barely audible. “That.”

Warmth moved through you. Tender and hot at once. You pressed one more kiss to his thigh, and his eyes fluttered closed. Now he was down to his underwear. Now you were not the only one exposed. Jack seemed to realize that at the same time you did. His eyes opened. You looked at him. He looked at you. The room went quiet again. Not soft this time. Waiting.

You let your hand rest over his hip. “Still good?”

His mouth curved faintly. “You asking because you care or because you like hearing me answer?”

You tilted your head. “Yes.”

A rough laugh left him. “There she is.”

You smiled, then hooked your fingers under the waistband of his underwear. Jack’s smile vanished. His hands twisted hard in the comforter. You moved slowly. Down over his hips. Down his thighs. Off. The final layer joined the rest of his clothes.

For a moment, you only looked at him. Not because you had never seen him naked before. You had. You knew him. You loved him. You had known his body in morning light and hotel rooms and after long shifts when both of you were too tired for anything except slow hands and quiet mouths. But this was different. Because he was letting you look without turning the attention back on you. Because he was still not touching you. Because everything about him was open now: his body, his restraint, the wanting he had stopped trying to hide.

Jack’s gaze stayed on yours. He looked wrecked. He looked beautiful. He looked like he trusted you. You bent and kissed the line of his stomach. His breath caught.

You smiled against his skin. “You’re doing good now too.”

Jack’s laugh came out broken. “Glad to hear it.”

You kissed lower. His laugh stopped. The shift was immediate. His body went taut beneath you. His hands tightened. His hips lifted slightly, then pressed back down into the mattress like he had to make himself stay where he was. You looked up at him. “Hands.”

“They’re down.”

“Barely.”

His mouth parted on a rough breath. “Still counts.”

You smiled. Then you gave him your mouth. Jack’s whole body went rigid. For one second, all the careful breathing stopped. Then his head dropped back against the pillows, and a sound tore out of him. Low. Rough. Entirely uncontrolled. It moved through you like heat. You took your time. Because he had told you to. Because this was Page 212. Because he had watched you, and now you wanted to watch him try to survive you.

You learned quickly. What made his hands grip the blanket. What made his stomach tighten. What made his breath break into pieces. What made his hips shift before he caught himself. What made him say your name like it had been pulled out of him against his will. You gave him enough to make him shake.

Then pulled away. Jack froze. His eyes opened slowly. Dark. Disbelieving. You kissed his hip. Then his thigh. Then the line of his stomach, where his muscles were still tight from trying not to move. His voice came out rough. “You’re teasing me.”

You looked up at him. “Yes.”

His laugh was wrecked. Completely. “Right.” His head fell back again. “Page two hundred and twelve.”

You smiled against his skin.  Jack looked back down at you. His eyes were ruined. You let your hand move lightly over his hip. His breath caught. Your smile widened. “You’re doing a very good job.”

His eyes closed. “Fuck.”

The praise landed again. You were starting to love that. So you gave him more. Your mouth returned to him, slow and careful and maddening enough that his fingers fisted in the comforter until the fabric pulled tight. Jack tried to stay still. You could feel it in every line of him, the effort of holding back while your mouth learned him the same way your hands had learned him earlier. He got quiet first. That was the warning. Not silent. Quiet. Breathing too hard. Jaw clenched. Eyes half-closed when you looked up, like keeping them open had become its own separate kind of work. Then his hips shifted. A little. Then more. You felt the change in him before he said anything. The way his body went tight beneath you. The way his breathing caught and stayed caught. The way his hands gripped the quilt so hard his forearms strained. Jack’s hand lifted from the bed. Only a few inches. Instinct. Need. A reach toward you before thought could catch up with wanting.

Then he froze. You froze, too. His hand hovered there, suspended between you, fingers slightly curled like he could already feel your skin under his palm. For one breath, neither of you moved. Then Jack dropped his hand back onto the bed hard enough to make the quilt shift.  “Fuck.” The word tore out of him rough and frustrated and so completely unguarded that heat rushed through you all over again. His eyes were squeezed shut. His jaw was clenched. His chest rose hard, every line of him tense with the effort of staying where you had put him.

You lifted your head. “Jack.”

His eyes opened. Dark. Wrecked. Still listening. “I know,” he said, voice strained. “I know.”

Your mouth parted softly.

He dragged in a breath through his nose, then let it out like it hurt. “I’m trying.”

The honesty of it made your chest go warm. You shifted closer, kissing the inside of his thigh once, soft enough to make him tremble. “I know,” you whispered. “You’re doing good.”

Jack’s laugh broke out of him, low and helpless. “Baby.”

You smiled against his skin. Then you pulled away again. His entire body reacted. A sharp breath. A helpless shift. A hand that twitched against the quilt and then stayed down because he was trying so hard. You watched him. You watched Jack Abbot, your husband, the man who had taught you how safe wanting could be, lie there, undone and obedient and furious with restraint because you had asked him to let you have this. The sight nearly broke you. You bent back to him. Jack’s eyes opened again. You took him back into your mouth.

This time, Jack swore. Not softly. His hands twisted in the blanket. His shoulders pressed back into the pillows. His breath came in rough pieces as you built him up again, slower than before, then faster, then slow again when his body started going too tight beneath you. You felt every warning. Every near-loss. Every little break in his control.

And every time he got close, you pulled away. Once. Twice. By the third time, Jack made a sound that was almost your name and almost something worse. His eyes opened, and there was nothing calm left in them. “You’re killing me.”

You kissed the inside of his thigh again. “No.”

You looked up. His chest rose hard. “I’m learning you.”

Jack went still. The words hit him somewhere deeper than the teasing. You saw it happen. The way his face changed. The way his breath caught for a reason that was not only physical. The way his hands loosened for one second in the comforter, then tightened again. Your throat warmed. Then you lowered your mouth again. This time, he was already close. Too close. You felt it in the way his whole body locked beneath you, in the rough catch of breath, in the helpless lift of his hips before he forced them back down. His hands stayed on the bed, shaking now, gripping the blanket like restraint had become the last language he had left. “Baby,” he breathed.

You did not stop. Not yet. His breath broke. “Fuck.”

His head fell back against the pillows. “I’m—”

You pulled away. For good. Jack froze. Completely. For one impossible second, the room went silent except for the rain and the harsh sound of his breathing. Then his eyes opened. Slowly. Dark. Stunned. Almost offended. You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand and smiled. A little breathless. A little ruined yourself. A lot proud.

Jack stared at you. His hand lifted again. Just barely. Then dropped back to the bed. Hard. “Fuck.”

This time, it sounded like surrender. You crawled up his body slowly, over the ruined line of him, over his tight stomach, over his chest still rising too hard. Jack watched you come closer like he did not trust himself to blink. You stopped with your mouth just above his. His hands were still on the bed. Still shaking. Still not touching you. You brushed your lips over his. Barely. “You don’t get to come yet.”

Jack’s laugh came out broken. Disbelieving. Desperate. “Okay.”

You kissed him again. A little deeper this time. Then pulled back. His eyes stayed on yours. Gone. Proud. Wrecked. “You’re a menace,” he said.

Your smile softened. “You told me to tease you.”

His throat worked. “I did.”

“You told me to see what happens.”

Jack’s mouth curved faintly, but the expression looked like it cost him. “And?”

You settled carefully over his hips, close enough to feel his body tense beneath yours. You leaned down until your mouth brushed his ear. “Now I want to see what happens when you finally get to touch me.”

Jack went still beneath you. Completely still. For one breath, the whole room held there. The rain at the window. The warm lamp. The scattered books. The red tab. The two of you on the bed with every piece of page 212 spread open between you like a dare that had turned into something much more dangerous than fiction. Jack’s hands tightened in the comforter. He did not move them. Not yet. That was what ruined you a little. He was bare beneath you now, undone by your mouth, your hands, your waiting, your no, your not yet. His breathing was rough. His jaw was tight. His eyes were dark enough that looking at him felt like stepping too close to an open flame. And still, he waited. He waited because you had not told him he could stop.

You kissed him. Slow. Deep. Your hands slid over his chest, and his body answered under your palms. Heat. Muscle. Freckled skin. The hard, uneven beat of his heart beneath your hand. Jack kissed you back like he was starving and disciplined enough to hate it. His mouth opened under yours, rough and warm, and for one second, you almost let him pull you into the rhythm he knew. The one where he took care of you. The one where his hands found your waist and his voice found the exact words that made you soft for him. But his hands stayed on the bed. Because you told them to. Because he was still letting you have this.

You pulled back just enough to look at him. His eyes opened slowly. You felt the exact moment he realized where you were going. His breath caught. You lifted yourself above him. Jack’s whole body went taut. His hands fisted harder, but he still did not touch. You watched his face as you slowly sank down onto him. The effect was immediate. His head dropped back against the pillows. His eyes squeezed shut. His mouth opened around a sound that did not quite become your name. His hands jerked against the mattress. Stopped. Stayed. “Fuck,” he breathed.

The word was broken. Your own breath shattered in your chest. For a moment, neither of you moved. You couldn’t. He was everywhere. The feeling of him beneath you, inside you, holding himself still by force alone. The heat of his body. The hard rise and fall of his chest. The restraint trembling under your hands. You looked down at him. Jack looked utterly ruined. Ruined in the quiet, devastating way of a man who had been made to wait too long and then given exactly what he needed.

Your palms pressed to his chest. “You okay?”

His laugh came out rough as he closed his eyes. “No.”

Your eyes widened slightly.

Jack opened his eyes. The heat in them nearly took you apart. “I’m good,” he said, voice wrecked. “But no.”

A breathless laugh slipped out of you. That made his mouth curve. A little. Barely.

Then you moved. Just once. Slow. Testing. Jack’s hands dragged against the bed but stayed there. His whole body answered the movement, hips shifting beneath yours before he forced himself still again. “You’re still not touching me,” you whispered.

His jaw flexed. “You haven’t said I can.”

Your chest tightened. There it was. That was the thing that made your throat ache even now. Even with your body tight and hot around him. Even with his breathing wrecked and his eyes dark and his control fraying so badly you could see every loose thread. He still waited. Your hands slid from his chest to his wrists. Jack went very still. You lifted one hand from the mattress. Then the other. His fingers were tense in yours. Warm. Shaking.

You brought his hands to your waist. “Now.”

His eyes locked on yours. “Now?”

You nodded, breath catching. “Touch me.”

Jack surged up. The movement stole the air from your lungs. One second, he was beneath you, hands waiting where you had placed them. The next, he was sitting up into you, both arms around your body, mouth crashing into yours with a sound so raw it made you shake. His hands spread over your back, your waist, your hips, everywhere at once like he had been denied oxygen and found it in your skin. He held you like touching you was relief. Like he had been waiting there for hours. Like permission had struck him harder than any command.

You let him. You let him have the first desperate press of his mouth. The rough slide of his hands over your back. The way his fingers dug into your hips, not taking control exactly, just holding on with everything he had not been allowed to use before. Jack kissed your jaw. Your throat. Your shoulder. His breathing was hot against your skin. “Baby,” he rasped.

You curled one hand into the back of his hair. His body shuddered beneath yours. “Jack.”

His mouth found yours again. Messy now. Less controlled. You let him kiss you until you felt his rhythm start to shift under you, until the part of him that always wanted to take care of you began to rise on instinct, hands tightening, body trying to guide. Not selfish. Never that. Just Jack. Trying to give. Trying to make it good. Trying to turn his own undoing into something useful. Your hand moved to his shoulder. You pushed gently.  Jack stopped immediately. His eyes opened.

You held his gaze. “Lie back.”

The words moved through him. You saw them land. For one second, his arms tightened around you as if the idea of letting go again might actually hurt. Then his grip loosened. Slowly.

His jaw flexed. “Okay.”

He lowered himself back against the pillows. Not because he wanted distance. Because you asked for it. Because page 212 had teeth now, and Jack had given you permission to bite. You followed him down just enough to keep him inside you, your hands on his chest, your knees bracketing his hips. His hands returned to your waist this time, allowed now, but careful. Waiting for what you wanted them to be. That was somehow worse than no touching. The restraint still lived in him. Only now it was under your hands too. You started to move. Slow at first. Too slow for him. You knew because Jack’s eyes closed for half a second, because his hands tightened at your waist, because his breath caught and came back rougher. You leaned forward, palms braced against his chest. “You can touch me,” you whispered. “But I’m still leading.”

Jack’s eyes opened. Dark. Gone. “Yeah.” The word was barely there. Then his mouth curved faintly, wrecked and proud. “Yeah, you are.”

Heat moved through you at the sound of it. You moved again. This time, you let yourself search. Not for what would make him react. You already knew too much about that now. For what felt good for you. The realization made your breath catch. Jack felt it immediately. His hands tightened at your waist. Not pulling. Not directing. Holding. You shifted your hips. Once. Then again. The first angle was good. The second was better. The third stole a sound from you so sudden you almost lost your balance.

Jack’s eyes snapped to your face. “There?”

You swallowed, unable to find words. He felt your answer in the way your body clenched, in the way your hands pressed harder against his chest, in the way your hips tried to chase the same place again before your mind had finished catching up. His grip changed immediately. Not taking over. Holding you there. Helping you keep it. “Use it,” he said, voice wrecked. “Use me.”

The words went through you like fire. There it was again. The whole page. The whole point. Not him doing it for you. Not him taking back the rhythm. Jack beneath you, hands on your waist, holding you steady while you took what you wanted from him and watched what it did to both of you. You moved again. Found it. Stayed there. Your breath broke. Jack’s did too. His hands flexed over your hips, rough now but still following you. Every movement dragged a sound out of him. Every time you shifted over that perfect angle, he felt it. You knew he did. His whole body went taut beneath yours, his jaw clenched, his eyes fixed on your face like he was trying to survive every answer you gave him. You started to lose the rhythm when the pleasure built too quickly. Jack felt that too. His hand slid up your back, steadying you. Not guiding. Grounding.

“You’ve got it,” he whispered.

Your eyes fluttered. “Jack.”

“I know.” His voice cracked around it. “I know, baby.”

You kept moving. Slow. Then less slow. Your hips found the rhythm your body wanted, and Jack let you have it. He held your waist when you needed balance. He slid one hand over your thigh when your leg trembled. He watched you like the whole point of his body was to be something you could take from and come back to. You were close again. Already. It should have embarrassed you. It did not. Not with Jack looking at you like that. Not with his hands finally on you after all that waiting. Not with the memory of his voice breaking under your mouth still warm in the room. Jack’s breathing changed beneath you. You felt it. The warning. The tightening. The way his body began to strain under yours, his control already worn thin from everything you had denied him before. His hand gripped your hip. “Baby.”

Your eyes found his. He looked almost pained. “Close?”

He let out a rough laugh. “Yeah.”

You slowed. Just enough. Jack’s head dropped back. “Fuck.”

You leaned down, chest brushing his, mouth near his jaw. “Not yet.”

His hands tightened on you. For one second, you felt the reflex in him. The urge to pull you closer. To move. To take. Then he stopped himself. A broken breath left him. “Okay.”

The obedience in it nearly undid you. You kissed his jaw. Soft. Proud. “Good.”

Jack’s eyes closed. His whole body clenched beneath you. “Oh, that’s not fair.”

You smiled against his skin. “You told me to tease you.”

“I regret nothing.” His voice was rough. Barely steady. “Also everything.”

A laugh broke out of you, helpless and breathless. The laugh turned into a moan when your hips shifted again and found the angle harder. Jack’s hands tightened at your waist. His eyes opened. “There.”

You nodded, breathless. “There.”

He held you through it. Letting you use the rhythm. Letting you set the pace. Letting his own restraint shake apart under you while still keeping you exactly where you needed to be. Your movements grew less controlled. More honest. Your body chasing the pleasure now, chasing him, chasing the way his hands finally felt on your skin after being denied for so long. Jack watched your face. He did not look away. Not once. Even when his own breath started breaking. Even when his hips began to move under you in tiny, desperate shifts he could not fully stop. Even when his mouth parted around words he had not found yet.

You gripped his chest. “Eyes on me.”

His gaze snapped fully to yours. Immediate. Listening. Still. Always.

Your pulse kicked hard. “Tell me,” you whispered.

Jack’s brow drew together, strained and ruined. “Tell you what?”

You slowed again. Just enough to make his breath catch sharply. His hands gripped your hips. “Don’t.” The word came rough. Then he caught himself. His eyes closed for half a second. “Fuck.” He opened them again, wrecked. “Don’t stop.”

Your mouth curved. “Then tell me.”

Jack stared at you. For one second, he looked like he could not decide whether to curse or kiss you. Then his voice dropped, breaking at the edges. “You’re driving me crazy.”

Heat bloomed through you. Your hips moved again.

Jack groaned. “You’ve been driving me crazy since you showed me that damn page.”

You moved faster. His hands slid up your sides, then back to your hips, holding on like he was trying not to lose the last pieces of himself. “You made me watch you,” he said, voice rough and breathless now. “Made me wait. Made me—fuck—made me want you so bad I couldn’t think.”

Your breath broke. “Jack.”

His eyes stayed locked on yours. “You have no idea what you look like right now.”

You nearly faltered.

His hands held you steady. “Beautiful,” he said. “So fucking beautiful.”

Your body answered the words immediately. Jack felt it. His eyes darkened further. “Yeah,” he breathed. “There. Take it.”

You did. You took the rhythm. Took the angle. Took the feel of his hands and his voice and his body under yours, the way he had offered himself and then let you make something of him. Pleasure built fast now. Bright and hot and impossible to slow down. Jack was close too. You could feel it in every line of him. His breathing was wrecked. His hands were shaking on your hips. His body moved beneath yours now, unable to stay fully still, meeting you in small, desperate movements that made your own pleasure sharpen.

“Baby,” he said. Your name followed, rough and broken.

You leaned down until your mouth brushed his. “Wait for me.”

His whole body went tight. A sound left him. Almost a laugh. Almost pain. “Trying.”

“I know.” Your lips brushed his again. “You’re doing good.”

Jack swore. The word broke out of him, low and helpless. Your body clenched around the sound. His hands gripped you harder. Not enough to take over. Enough to tell you he was there. Enough to tell you he was barely holding on. You moved once more, and the angle hit perfectly. Your breath caught and stayed caught.

Jack saw it. His eyes did not leave yours. “There,” he said, voice wrecked. “There, baby. Stay there.”

You did. You stayed with it. Rode it. Used it. Used him. Used the way his body held you, the way his voice broke, the way his eyes stayed open because you had told him to look.

The pressure built and built until your arms shook against his chest. “Jack.”

“I’m here.” His voice cracked. “I’m right here.”

That was what tipped you over. The words. His hands. His restraint finally breaking into need under you. Your body went tight above him, pleasure rolling through you hard enough that your eyes almost closed. Almost. You kept them open. You watched him watch you fall apart. Jack’s face changed. The last of his control went with it. “Oh fuck,” he breathed.

Your hands clenched against his chest. His hips moved up into you, rougher now, not taking over but gone enough that the rhythm became both of yours. “I’m gonna come.” His voice broke. “Oh god, baby, I’m gonna come.”

You nodded, still shaking. “Yes.”

The sound of him losing it pulled another wave through you. He was trying to keep his eyes on yours. Trying to stay with you. Trying to be good even while he came apart. “You’re doing so good,” he breathed, voice ruined. “So good. Fuck, baby, you’re doing so good.”

Then you felt it. The exact second Jack let go. His body locked beneath yours. His breath caught. His hands gripped your hips like he needed somewhere to put the force of it, and then the restraint that had held him together all night finally snapped loose. His hands tightened at your hips. “Oh—fu-fuck.”

He came apart under you. Not controlled. Not composed. Jack. Shaking. Breathing your name. Face open in a way you had never seen, as if every piece of him had risen to the surface at once and trusted you enough to stay there. The sight made your chest ache.

You collapsed forward against him before your arms could give out. Jack caught you immediately. This time, he was allowed. His arms closed around you hard, pulling you down against his chest as the last of the pleasure moved through both of you in shaking, uneven waves.

For a while, there was only breathing. Yours. His. The rain. The books. Page 212, open beside him on the bed, smug and ruined and absolutely never going back to being just a page in a book again. Jack’s hand moved slowly up your back. Then down. Then up again. His chest rose beneath your cheek, still too fast. You could feel his heart pounding. You stayed there until your body started to remember gravity. Then, with a soft, exhausted sound, you rolled off him and collapsed onto the bed beside him. Not gracefully. Not even close. One arm fell over your face. Your hair spilled across his pillow. The sheets were twisted low around your hips, and your chest rose and fell like you had just survived a natural disaster with excellent lighting. Beside you, Jack was somehow worse. Flat on his back. Hair wrecked. Chest shining faintly with sweat. One arm bent over his head. Mouth parted. Eyes fixed on the ceiling like he was waiting for language to return from wherever it had gone. The book was open near his hip. Face-down now. Spine bent. One red tab crumpled slightly from having been handled with less academic care than usual.

You were going to complain about that eventually. Probably.

When your lungs worked again. For now, neither of you said anything. Then Jack laughed. Not loudly. Not even fully.

 Just one dazed, disbelieving breath of sound. “That was incredible.”

“My pillow.”

“You call this a pillow?”

“It is a pillow.”

“It has the structural integrity of a tortilla.”

The shower shut off. A few moments later Robby appeared in the doorway with a towel slung around his neck, damp hair sticking up in every direction. He looked exhausted. Beautiful. And entirely too pleased with himself.

“You have strong feelings about my pillow.”

“Robby.”

“It works.”

“It is flat.”

“It supports my head.”

“It is literally folded in half permanently.”

He shrugged.

“It knows my neck.”

You stared at him. He stared back. Then he smiled. That tiny smile he only gave you. The one that made arguing significantly more difficult. Unfortunately for him, not impossible.

Two days later a new pillow appeared on his bed. One that actually resembled a pillow. He walked into his bedroom after work, stopped short, and immediately knew who was responsible.

“No.”

You looked up from the book in your lap.

“No what?”

“No.”

“Excellent communication skills.”

“I’m not using that.”

“You haven’t even touched it.”

“I know what it is.”

“You know it’s a pillow.”

“I know it’s replacing my pillow.”

“Your pillow belongs in a museum.”

“My pillow is fine.”

“You have chronic neck pain.”

“I work in an emergency department.”

“You sleep on drywall.”

Robby pointed at you.

“You are not winning this.”

You smiled sweetly.

“You say that now.”

Three weeks later you arrived at his apartment after work and found him changing the sheets. The old pillow was nowhere in sight. Instead, the replacement sat squarely in the center of the bed.

You raised an eyebrow. Robby froze. You smiled. His eyes narrowed.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Whatever you’re about to do.”

“Looks like somebody likes his pillow.”

“I tolerate it.”

“You love it.”

“I tolerate it aggressively.”

You laughed so hard you nearly fell over. Robby grabbed your waist before you could. His hands settled on your hips. His forehead dropped against yours. And though he was pretending to be annoyed, you caught the faintest hint of a smile. A smile that grew when you whispered,

“Told you.”

“You’re unbearable.”

“And yet.”

“And yet.”

His hands squeezed your hips.

“You keep showing up.”

The pillow stayed. Neither of you mentioned it again. Except for the fact that several months later when Robby spent the night at your apartment, he showed up carrying it. Like it was completely normal. Like you wouldn’t notice. Like you wouldn’t immediately burst out laughing. You loved him so much.

******

The Hand Cream

You noticed Robby’s hands long before he did. Not because he was oblivious. Because he simply did not care. There was a difference.

The man spent twelve hours a day washing, sanitizing, gloving, scrubbing, and repeating the process until most normal people’s skin would have surrendered entirely. By the end of a shift his knuckles were dry enough to crack, the skin along the backs of his hands rough and irritated from constant exposure to sanitizer.

When you first brought it up, he looked down at his hands. Then looked back up at you.

“They’re hands.”

“That’s your medical opinion?”

“They function.”

You stared. He stared back. Then took another bite of takeout. Conversation apparently over. You waited. You knew better than to push.

Robby was a lot like a stray cat someone had accidentally put through medical school. Move too quickly and he’d bolt. So instead you filed the information away. And waited.

The opportunity came two weeks later. You were sprawled across his couch with your legs draped over his lap while he finished charting. His laptop balanced precariously on one knee. Reading glasses perched on his nose. One hand moving across the keyboard. The other absentmindedly resting against your calf.

You watched him rub his thumb over one knuckle. Then wince. Just slightly. Barely noticeable. But noticeable. You reached over and grabbed his hand.

“What?”

You turned it over. The skin around his knuckles had split. Tiny angry cracks. Red. Tender. Painful.

You looked up. Robby immediately looked guilty. Which told you everything.

“You knew.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s bleeding.”

“It happens.”

“Robby.”

He sighed. The sigh of a man who knew he was losing.

“It’s winter.”

“You work indoors.”

“The sanitizer.”

“There it is.”

His shoulders slumped. You smiled.

“Aha.”

“I don’t like that face.”

“You should.”

“I really don’t.”

The next day you showed up carrying a small paper bag. Robby saw it and immediately looked suspicious. Which honestly should have offended you.

“What’s that?”

“A gift.”

“No.”

You laughed.

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I know it’s trouble.”

You sat beside him and pulled out a bottle of hand cream. The look he gave you could only be described as betrayed.

“Absolutely not.”

You nearly choked.

“Absolutely not?”

“No.”

“It’s moisturizer.”

“It’s lotion.”

“Correct.”

“I don’t use lotion.”

“You should.”

“I’m not starting now.”

You held up the bottle. Robby looked at it like it contained live explosives. Then looked at you. Then back at the bottle.

“No.”

You set it on his coffee table.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

His eyes narrowed.

“You aren’t arguing.”

“You already know my position.”

“You have a position on lotion.”

“I have a position on your hands splitting open.”

“They’re fine.”

You leaned forward and kissed one cracked knuckle. Robby froze. Completely froze. Every muscle in his body locking up. You kissed another. Then another. The tension in his expression melted almost immediately.

“You fight dirty.”

You smiled.

“I know.”

The lotion remained untouched on the coffee table for nearly a week. Or so he claimed. Then one night you arrived at his apartment after a late shift. Robby was asleep on the couch. Television still on. Reading glasses crooked. Blanket half fallen onto the floor. And beside him sat the bottle.

Cap off. You smiled. Carefully lifted one of his hands. The skin already looked better. Not perfect. Better.

The stubborn man had clearly been using it. Regularly. Probably in secret. Because heaven forbid anyone know he participated in self-preservation.

You were still smiling when Robby’s eyes cracked open. His voice rough with sleep.

“What are you doing?”

“Holding your hand.”

“Why?”

“Checking something.”

His eyes dropped to where you were examining his knuckles. Then immediately away. Like he’d been caught. You bit back a laugh.

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“You’ve been using it.”

“No.”

“Robby.”

A pause. Then another.

“A little.”

Your grin widened.

“A little?”

“It was there.”

“It was there.”

“My hands hurt.”

The admission came so quietly you almost missed it. Your smile softened instantly. Because that was really the thing about Robby. He wasn’t stubborn because he thought he was invincible. He was stubborn because somewhere along the way he’d convinced himself discomfort wasn’t worth mentioning. That taking care of himself wasn’t important enough to bother with.

You squeezed his hand. The one that already felt softer. Healthier. Warmer. And watched his eyes drift closed again. Half asleep. Half gone. Still holding your hand. Still letting you hold his. And before he fully drifted off, you heard him mumble something into the couch cushion.

“What was that?”

One eye opened. A look of resignation crossing his face.

“The lotion works.”

You laughed so hard he groaned. And pulled you down onto the couch beside him. As if that would somehow stop you from being unbearably pleased with yourself.

******

The Water Bottle

The problem with dating Robby was that he was simultaneously one of the smartest people you had ever met and one of the dumbest when it came to his own body. Not patients. Never patients. Robby could spot dehydration, exhaustion, stress, and burnout in another human being from twenty feet away.

Himself? Hopeless.

You discovered this one Tuesday afternoon when you stopped by the emergency department during a slower stretch and found him standing at the physician station with a coffee in one hand and another coffee sitting beside him. You stared. Then stared harder. Robby noticed. Immediately regretted noticing.

“What.”

You pointed.

“Is that your second coffee?”

“No.”

You looked at the coffee. Then looked back at him. Then looked at the coffee again.

“It’s not my second coffee.”

“Okay.”

“It’s my third.”

You closed your eyes. Behind you, you heard somebody choke. Probably Collins. Maybe Javadi. Definitely somebody enjoying this entirely too much.

When you opened your eyes again, Robby was watching you cautiously. Like a man observing an approaching storm.

“How much water have you had today?”

“No.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is an answer.”

“It isn’t.”

“It answered the question.”

“It absolutely did not.”

Robby sighed. Long. Suffering. Dramatic. The sigh of a man burdened by unreasonable expectations.

“You are exhausting.”

“You’ve had three coffees.”

“They’re small.”

“They’re not.”

“They feel small.”

You pointed at him.

“That sentence alone should disqualify you from making medical decisions.”

The residents immediately disappeared. Cowards. All of them. Leaving Robby to fend for himself. Which was exactly where you wanted him.

That evening, you arrived at his apartment carrying a box. Robby saw it. Groaned. Actually groaned.

“What now?”

“Present.”

“No.”

You laughed.

“Why are you like this?”

“Because every time you say that, my life changes.”

“That’s dramatic.”

“The pillow.”

“Improved your life.”

“The lotion.”

“Improved your life.”

“The fancy tea.”

“You sleep better.”

His expression darkened. Which was confirmation. You shoved the box into his chest. He opened it reluctantly. Then frowned.

“A water bottle?”

“It keeps drinks cold.”

“I have cups.”

“You have forgotten cups.”

“I know where my cups are.”

“You left one in your car for six days.”

Robby looked offended.

“You don’t know that.”

“I found it.”

“…”

“It had become sentient.”

His head dropped back against the couch. You laughed so hard you nearly cried. For several weeks the bottle became a recurring battle. Every morning you filled it. Every evening you checked it. Every evening Robby claimed he had been drinking water. Every evening the evidence suggested otherwise.

One night you held the bottle up. Still nearly full.

“Explain.”

“I was busy.”

“You forgot.”

“I didn’t forget.”

“You forgot.”

“I remembered it existed.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It counts.”

“No.”

“It should.”

“No.”

He pointed toward the kitchen.

“You want dinner?”

“Nice try.”

“It usually works.”

You narrowed your eyes. The bastard smiled. Because it usually did work. Months passed. The arguments continued. The bottle became a permanent fixture. On his desk. In his car. At the hospital. By his bed. Everywhere.

Until eventually you stopped mentioning it. Not because you gave up. Because you noticed something. One particularly awful night you got called in unexpectedly. The emergency department was overflowing. Everyone looked tired. Everyone looked stressed. And in the middle of the chaos sat Robby.

Hair a mess. Sleeves rolled up. Charting furiously. You approached quietly. Planning to steal a kiss. Maybe convince him to take a break. Instead you stopped.

Because without even looking up from his computer, Robby reached for something. Unscrewed a lid. And took a long drink. Water. Not coffee. Not energy drinks.

Water.

You smiled. He looked up immediately. Caught. The bottle halfway to his mouth. Your eyes met. Robby froze. Then visibly realized what had happened.

“Oh don’t.”

You couldn’t help it. The grin spread anyway.

“Don’t what?”

“I know that look.”

“What look?”

“The look.”

“The one where I’m right?”

“The incredibly annoying one.”

You laughed. Robby pointed the water bottle at you. Threateningly. Or at least as threateningly as someone could point a giant insulated floral-colored water bottle you had specifically chosen because it annoyed him.

“You are impossible.”

“And hydrated.”

He groaned. Actually groaned. Then took another drink. Just to spite you. Which unfortunately only proved your point. And later that night, after the shift finally ended and the department quieted down, you found him sitting alone at the station. Exhausted. Spent. Running on fumes.

His water bottle beside him. Nearly empty. You slid into the chair next to him. His shoulder immediately bumped yours.

“You okay?”

Robby nodded. Then reached for your hand beneath the desk. Holding it tightly. The way he did when he was tired enough to stop pretending he didn’t need things. You squeezed back. His thumb brushed over your knuckles. Slowly. Thoughtfully. Then he glanced at the bottle. And muttered something so quietly you almost missed it.

“What?”

His eyes closed briefly. Like he hated himself for what came next.

“I think I get fewer headaches.”

You stared. Robby stared at the desk. Clearly hoping death might arrive before this conversation continued. Your heart nearly burst. Because there it was.

The thing underneath all the arguing. The thing underneath all the teasing. Trust.

Not in the bottle. Not in the water. In you. And as much as Robby would complain about every change you brought into his life, he kept accepting them for one simple reason. You had never once tried to change who he was.

You just wanted him around long enough to enjoy being him. His fingers tightened around yours.

“You don’t get to be smug.”

Too late. You were already smiling.

******

The Heating Pad

You discovered Robby’s back pain entirely by accident. Not because he told you. Of course he didn’t tell you. Robby could be actively falling apart and still insist he was “fine.” No, you discovered it because one Saturday morning you woke up in his apartment before he did.

Which was rare. The man was usually awake before sunrise, operating on some bizarre internal clock developed through decades of emergency medicine and poor life choices.

But this morning he was still asleep. Face buried in his pillow. One arm thrown across your waist. Breathing slow and even. You smiled. Then you felt it.

The way he shifted in his sleep. The tiny grimace that crossed his face. The way his hand instinctively moved toward his lower back. Even unconscious. Even asleep. Something hurt.

You filed that information away immediately. And waited. Because experience had taught you that confronting Robby directly was rarely effective. You needed evidence. Unfortunately for him, evidence arrived that very afternoon.

You were both grocery shopping. A perfectly normal activity. Until Robby bent down to grab something from a lower shelf. Then froze. Only for a second. Most people would have missed it. You didn’t. His jaw tightened. One hand immediately pressed against his lower back.

Then he straightened. And pretended nothing happened. You stared. Robby stared at the cereal boxes. Neither of you spoke.

“How long?”

His eyes closed.

“How long what?”

“The back pain.”

“I don’t have back pain.”

You laughed. Actually laughed. A nearby shopper looked alarmed. Reasonable.

“You literally just winced.”

“No I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I absolutely did not.”

“You touched your back.”

“I was stretching.”

“You made a face.”

“I have a face.”

“Oh my God.”

Robby immediately started pushing the cart away. Coward. You caught up beside him.

“Robby.”

“It’s fine.”

“There it is.”

“What?”

“The phrase.”

“What phrase?”

“The one that means something is absolutely not fine.”

He sighed. Then kept walking. Which was all the confirmation you needed.

Three days later a package arrived at his apartment. Robby called you immediately.

“No.”

You grinned.

“What?”

“I know this was you.”

“What was me?”

“The heating pad.”

“Oh.”

“The heating pad.”

“You got it.”

“You bought me a heating pad.”

You leaned back on your couch. Completely unrepentant.

“I did.”

“I’m not eighty.”

“No.”

“I’m not using a heating pad.”

“Okay.”

His silence immediately told you he’d expected more resistance. Interesting. Very interesting.

“So that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“You aren’t arguing?”

“Nope.”

Another pause.

“Why not?”

You smiled. Because now he was curious.

“Use it.”

“I’m not going to.”

“Then don’t.”

The call ended. You gave it forty-eight hours. The heating pad survived twenty-six.

You arrived at his apartment after work and let yourself in. The television was on.nThe lamp beside the couch glowed softly.nThe apartment was quiet.nSuspiciously quiet.nThen you rounded the corner.nAnd nearly burst out laughing.

There sat Robby. Fast asleep.nHead tilted back. Reading glasses halfway down his nose.nHeating pad stretched across his lower back.nThe remote dangling loosely from one hand.

You actually had to bite your lip. Because if he woke up and caught you laughing, he’d never forgive you. You carefully sat beside him. Trying not to wake him.

Unfortunately, Robby possessed the survival instincts of a feral animal. His eyes opened immediately.nThen narrowed.

“Oh no.”

You smiled.

“Oh yes.”

“No.”

“You’re using it.”

He glanced down. Realized exactly what he looked like. And immediately looked annoyed.

“It’s temporary.”

“Mhm.”

“My back hurt.”

“Mhm.”

“I was trying it.”

“Mhm.”

His eyes narrowed further.

“You are insufferable.”

You leaned over and kissed his cheek.

“The word you’re looking for is right.”

“It is not.”

“It absolutely is.”

The heating pad remained. Of course it did. Just like the pillow. Just like the lotion. Just like every other thing he’d initially rejected with great enthusiasm.

Soon it became part of the routine. Something he would never admit. But something you noticed anyway. Especially after difficult shifts. The bad ones. The ones that left him exhausted. The ones where he came home carrying too much.

One particularly brutal night you found him standing in the kitchen staring blankly at the counter. Still wearing his scrubs. Still wearing his badge. Barely moving. Your heart squeezed immediately.

“You okay?”

Robby nodded. Too quickly. Which meant no. You crossed the room. Wrapped your arms around his waist. Rested your cheek against his chest. For a moment neither of you spoke. Then you felt him exhale. The kind of exhale that came from somewhere deep. The kind people only gave when they felt safe. Your hands rubbed gently along his back.

“You don’t have to talk.”

Another breath. Another moment.

“It was rough.”

You nodded.

“I know.”

Neither of you moved. Neither of you needed to. A few minutes later you disappeared into the living room. Returned carrying something. Robby immediately rolled his eyes.

“No.”

You laughed.

“Come sit down.”

“I don’t need—”

“Robby.”

That did it. The tone. The one he secretly liked. The one that meant someone was taking care of him whether he wanted it or not. Grumbling under his breath, he sat.

You plugged in the heating pad. Draped it carefully across his back. Then settled beside him. Your hand finding his automatically. For several minutes neither of you spoke. The apartment quiet around you. The television forgotten. The day slowly draining away. Eventually Robby’s shoulders relaxed. Then relaxed again. The tension easing little by little. Until his head finally tipped sideways onto your shoulder.

You smiled softly. Because there it was. The real victory. Not getting him to use the heating pad. Not proving yourself right. Not winning.nIt was watching someone who spent his life carrying everyone else finally allow a little of the weight to be carried for him.

Even if it came wrapped in fabric and plugged into a wall. And after another few minutes of silence, you felt his fingers tighten around yours.

“Thank you.”

The words were so quiet you almost missed them. But they were there. And somehow that tiny whisper meant more than every argument that had come before it.

******

The Hand Massage

The first time Robby let you massage his hands, it happened entirely by accident. At least that was what he would claim later. You knew better. Because by then you had learned something important about Robby. If he truly didn’t want something, it didn’t happen. There was no convincing him.

No sweet-talking him. No negotiating. The man possessed the stubbornness of a mountain. Which meant every little allowance he gave you was exactly that. An allowance. A choice. A quiet act of trust.

The evening started innocently enough. Chinese takeout. A movie neither of you were actually watching. Robby stretched out across your couch while you sat tucked against his side beneath a blanket.

Domestic in a way that still occasionally caught both of you off guard. The honeymoon phase had long since settled into something deeper. Something steadier. The kind of love that lived in grocery lists and spare toothbrushes and knowing exactly how someone took their coffee.

You were halfway through stealing dumplings from his plate when you noticed him flexing one hand. Then the other. Slowly. Repeatedly. The movement immediately caught your attention.

“What are you doing?”

His eyes remained on the television.

“Nothing.”

“You are absolutely doing something.”

A sigh.

“My hands hurt.”

The admission came casually. Like it wasn’t important. Like it wasn’t worth mentioning. Which meant it probably had been bothering him for days. You sat up slightly.

“Let me see.”

“They’re fine.”

“Robby.”

“They’re attached.”

“Robby.”

“They function.”

You held out your hand. The universal signal. After a moment of dramatic suffering, he finally surrendered one of his hands.

You turned it over carefully. The skin looked much better these days. The lotion had helped. The cracks were mostly gone. But the muscles looked tight. Tired. Overworked.

Which made sense. Thousands of procedures. Thousands of charts. Thousands of tiny repetitive movements. Year after year after year.

Without a word, you placed his hand in your lap. Then started pressing your thumbs gently into his palm. Robby immediately looked up. Suspicious.

“What are you doing?”

“Massaging your hand.”

“No.”

You smiled.

“There it is.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even given it a chance.”

“I don’t need a hand massage.”

“You literally just said your hands hurt.”

“They’re tired.”

“Exactly.”

“They’ll recover.”

“Or.”

“No.”

“Or.”

“No.”

You continued anyway. Because by now you knew the difference between a real no and a Robby no. A Robby no was usually followed by him staying exactly where he was.

Which was precisely what happened. You worked quietly. Pressing into the muscles of his palm. Working your thumb along the base of his fingers. Massaging the tension you could actually feel sitting there.

At first he watched suspiciously. Then cautiously. Then not at all. Because somewhere around minute three, his shoulders started relaxing. Minute five, his head tipped back against the couch. Minute seven, his eyes closed.

You bit the inside of your cheek. Trying very hard not to smile. The man looked downright offended by relaxation. Which only made it funnier. When you switched to the other hand, he didn’t even argue. Just automatically handed it over. Eyes still closed. Trusting you. Your chest tightened. Because this felt different.

Smaller than some of the other things. But somehow more intimate. There was no joke. No teasing. No distraction. Just your hands holding his. Taking care of him. For no reason other than wanting to.

Eventually you felt his fingers twitch. Then relax again. His voice came quietly. Eyes still closed.

“That feels nice.”

You froze. Robby’s eyes immediately opened. Realization hitting him instantly. The mistake. The confession. The evidence. His expression shifted to horror. Yours shifted to delight.

“Oh my God.”

“Don’t.”

“You admitted it.”

“Don’t.”

“You admitted it felt nice.”

“It slipped out.”

You laughed so hard tears formed. Robby groaned. Then grabbed your wrist. Pulling you across the couch and into his lap. Mostly to stop your laughing. Possibly to punish you. Definitely to kiss you.

His mouth found yours immediately. You smiled against his lips. Which only made him grumble.

“I mean it.”

“You mean what?”

“You are never bringing this up again.”

You kissed him once.

“Okay.”

His eyes narrowed.

“You are lying.”

You kissed him again.

“Probably.”

He sighed. Then wrapped both arms around your waist. Pulling you closer. Holding you there. The movie forgotten entirely. The takeout growing cold. Neither of you caring.

After a while his chin settled on your shoulder. Your fingers absentmindedly threading through his hair. The apartment quiet around you. And just before drifting toward sleep, Robby’s voice appeared again. Soft enough that you almost didn’t hear it.

“You know.”

“Hm?”

His arms tightened slightly.

“My hands really did feel better.”

You smiled into his shoulder. Because there it was again. Not surrender. Not defeat.

Trust.

The kind that only appeared when the lights were low and the world was quiet. The kind that said I know you’ll be gentle with the parts of me that hurt. And for Robby, that might have been the most intimate thing of all.

******

The Bath

The bath conversation started exactly how you expected it would. In fact, it started with Robby standing in your bathroom doorway looking genuinely concerned about your life choices.

You were buried beneath a mountain of bubbles. A book rested in your hands. A candle flickered on the counter. Soft music drifted through the apartment. The entire scene looked like the physical embodiment of relaxation. Robby looked at it like he’d discovered a cult meeting.

“What are you doing?”

You looked up from your book.

“Taking a bath.”

“I can see that.”

“Then why did you ask?”

He crossed his arms.

“You’ve been in there for forty-five minutes.”

You blinked.

“Have you been timing me?”

“No.”

“Robby.”

A pause.

“Maybe.”

You laughed. The man looked genuinely baffled. Like he could not comprehend voluntarily sitting in water for an extended period of time.

“Don’t you get bored?”

“No.”

“How?”

You held up your book.

“I’m reading.”

“You could read on the couch.”

“I could.”

“You could read in bed.”

“I could.”

“You could read literally anywhere else.”

You smiled.

“I like baths.”

Robby shook his head. Still unconvinced.

“You sit in hot water.”

“Yes.”

“For fun.”

“Yes.”

His expression suggested he was witnessing civilization collapse in real time. You laughed so hard you nearly dropped your book.

For the next several weeks, the subject became recurring entertainment. Every time you took a bath, Robby had questions. Questions that somehow always sounded accusatory.

“You’re taking another one?”

“Yes.”

“You took one three days ago.”

“Correct.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to.”

“You already took one.”

“It’s not a vaccine.”

The look on his face nearly killed you.

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I genuinely don’t.”

Then came the worst shift of the month. The kind that seemed determined to squeeze every ounce of energy from a person. You knew it had been bad the moment Robby walked through your front door.

His shoulders sagged. His eyes looked tired. Not sleepy. Tired. The deeper kind. The kind that settled into your bones. He barely made it through saying hello before collapsing onto your couch. You sat beside him immediately. One hand brushing through his hair.

“Rough?”

He nodded. You waited. He didn’t elaborate. You didn’t ask. After a few minutes you stood. Robby glanced up.

“Where are you going?”

“Bathroom.”

“Okay.”

A few minutes later he heard running water. Then more running water. Then suspicious silence. A few moments later he appeared in the doorway. And immediately frowned.

“What are you doing?”

You smiled. The bathtub behind you was full. Steam curled through the room.

“You know exactly what I’m doing.”

“No.”

“Yes you do.”

“No.”

“Robby.”

His eyes narrowed. Then widened. Then narrowed again. Absolutely horrified.

“No.”

You laughed.

“Oh come on.”

“No.”

“It’ll help.”

“No.”

“You’ve had a terrible day.”

“I don’t need a bath.”

“You’ve never tried one.”

“I know enough.”

“You really don’t.”

He pointed dramatically at the tub.

“People sit where they wash.”

You stared. Then laughed so hard you had to lean against the counter. Robby looked deeply offended.

“That’s a valid concern.”

“It absolutely is not.”

“It is.”

“It isn’t.”

“It could be.”

You couldn’t breathe. The man was impossible. Eventually he retreated. Victorious. Or so he thought.

The next week brought another difficult shift. And another. And another. Until one evening you found him sitting at your kitchen table rubbing both hands over his face. Exhausted. Worn thin. Barely functioning.

You approached quietly. Placed a mug of tea beside him. Then kissed the top of his head.

“Bath.”

“No.”

“Bath.”

“No.”

“Bath.”

Robby sighed dramatically. Then looked up at you. Too tired to argue properly. Which was your opening.

“Twenty minutes.”

“No.”

“Ten.”

“No.”

“Five.”

His eyes closed. You could practically see the internal battle happening.

“Five.”

You immediately pointed.

“Aha.”

His eyes opened. Realization hit. Too late. The agreement had been made. The trap had closed.

“You’re the worst.”

“You love me.”

“I question it regularly.”

You kissed his forehead.

“You absolutely do not.”

Twenty minutes later you found him in the bathroom. Still in the bathtub. Still soaking. Still alive despite his earlier concerns. You leaned against the doorway quietly. Watching. Robby’s head rested against the edge. Eyes closed. Shoulders relaxed.

The tension that usually lived between them noticeably reduced. For once he looked peaceful. Not physician peaceful. Not pretending peaceful. Actually peaceful. You smiled softly.

“Five minutes?”

His eyes opened. Then immediately narrowed.

“You said you weren’t keeping track.”

“You’ve been in there twenty minutes.”

A pause.

“The water’s still warm.”

You nearly burst into laughter.

“There it is.”

“There what is?”

“The excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse.”

“It absolutely is.”

Robby looked away. And for a moment he actually looked embarrassed. Which was somehow adorable. You crossed the room. Knelt beside the tub. Brushed damp hair away from his forehead.

His eyes softened immediately. The way they always did with you.

“You okay?”

For a moment he simply looked at you. The exhaustion. The affection. The trust.nEverything sitting quietly in his expression. Then he nodded.

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“I kind of get it.”

Your smile grew.

“Kind of?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

You laughed. Robby reached out immediately. Water dripping from his hand.nCatching your wrist before you could pull away.nThen bringing your knuckles to his lips. A quiet kiss.nThe kind people only gave when they felt completely safe. And as ridiculous as it was, as much as you’d tease him forever about becoming a bath person, that wasn’t the moment that stuck with you.

It was the fact that for the first time since you’d met him, Robby wasn’t trying to recover from a hard day by simply enduring it. He was actually allowing himself comfort. Allowing himself rest. Allowing himself care. Even if he’d complain about it tomorrow. Even if he’d deny enjoying it. Even if he’d swear the entire thing was a one-time occurrence. Because the next week, when you arrived at his apartment unexpectedly and found a brand-new bottle of bath soak sitting beside his bathtub…

Well. That was evidence enough.

*******

The Night Routine

The realization hit Robby on a random Thursday night. Which was fitting. Because most of the important things in life seemed to happen to him when he wasn’t paying attention. The two of you had been together long enough now that routines existed. Not consciously. Not intentionally. They had simply formed. Like roots growing underground. And somewhere along the way, you had apparently infiltrated every single one of his.

The discovery happened after a particularly long shift. Nothing catastrophic. Nothing dramatic. Just twelve straight hours of emergency medicine. Twelve hours of people needing things from him. Twelve hours of making decisions. Twelve hours of carrying responsibility. The kind of day that left him feeling stretched thin.

Robby walked into his apartment. Dropped his keys into the bowl by the door. Kicked off his shoes. Then immediately froze. Because without thinking, he’d started doing things. One after another.

His hand reached for the water bottle sitting beside the sink. He finished half of it before even realizing what he was doing. Then he refilled it. Set it beside the coffee maker for the morning.

Robby stared at it. Suspicious. Then walked into the bedroom. Changed clothes. Reached for the heating pad. Plugged it in. Placed it on the couch.

Automatic. Again.

His eyes narrowed. Something was happening here. Something concerning. Something deeply suspicious.

Twenty minutes later you arrived carrying takeout. The moment you opened the door, you found him sitting on the couch staring into space. Heating pad across his back. Water bottle beside him. Looking like a man experiencing an existential crisis. You immediately started laughing.

“What?”

Robby pointed at himself.

“I have concerns.”

“Oh no.”

“I think you’ve done something to me.”

You dropped onto the couch beside him.

“This should be good.”

He pointed toward the kitchen.

“I refilled the water bottle.”

“Wonderful.”

“I didn’t even think about it.”

“Oh no.”

“The heating pad was already plugged in before I realized I grabbed it.”

You covered your mouth. Trying and failing to hide your smile. Robby looked genuinely disturbed.

“This isn’t funny.”

“It absolutely is.”

“You’ve altered my behavior.”

You laughed. Hard. The kind that made tears form. The kind that made Robby look even more offended.

“I am serious.”

“You sound like you’ve been brainwashed.”

“I have.”

“You bought lotion voluntarily last week.”

His expression immediately darkened.

“Don’t.”

“You did.”

“I was out.”

“You bought more.”

“I needed more.”

You collapsed against his shoulder. Absolutely losing the battle.

“This is incredible.”

Robby groaned. Then pointed at you. As if pointing somehow strengthened his argument.

“You are not taking this seriously.”

“Because it’s ridiculous.”

“It isn’t ridiculous.”

“It kind of is.”

His eyes narrowed. Then he crossed his arms. The posture immediately reminded you of a stubborn toddler. Which unfortunately made you laugh even harder. Robby looked personally betrayed.

“I used bath salts.”

You stopped. Then looked at him.

“What?”

His expression suggested he’d just confessed to a felony.

“I used bath salts.”

Your jaw dropped.

“You bought bath salts.”

A pause.

“They were on sale.”

You lost it. The laughter echoed through the apartment. Robby closed his eyes. Clearly regretting every decision that had led him here.

Eventually you managed to compose yourself enough to wipe tears from your eyes. Then you leaned over. Rested your chin on his shoulder. And smiled.

“You know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think you like being taken care of.”

The words settled between you. Robby didn’t answer immediately. The joking disappeared. The teasing faded. His eyes dropped toward his hands. You waited, watching him. Because sometimes the most important things with Robby happened in the silence.

“I think…”

He stopped. Started again.

“I think nobody ever really paid attention before.”

Your heart squeezed. Because there it was. The thing underneath all of it. The reason this mattered. The reason every pillow and heating pad and bottle of lotion had become something bigger.

You reached for his hand immediately. Threading your fingers through his. Robby squeezed back. Looking at your joined hands. Not at you. As if the honesty was easier that way.

“My exes used to tell me to slow down.”

You listened quietly.

“Friends have told me.”

Another pause.

“My family…what’s left of them…has told me.”

His thumb brushed across your knuckles.

“But you’re the first person who actually noticed when I didn’t.”

The emotion hit you unexpectedly. Because that was exactly it. You hadn’t set out to fix him. You couldn’t. Nobody could. Robby would always be Robby.

Stubborn. Self-sacrificing. Terrible at asking for help. Beautifully, frustratingly himself.

You just noticed things. The headaches. The exhaustion. The sore back. The cracked hands. The moments he needed someone. Even when he didn’t know how to say it.

You leaned forward and kissed his temple. Then rested your forehead against his.

“Well.”

His eyes finally met yours. So full of affection it nearly hurt.

“Well what?”

You smiled.

“I noticed.”

For a moment neither of you moved. The apartment quiet around you. The television forgotten. The food growing cold. Neither of you caring.

Then Robby looked around his living room. At the water bottle. The heating pad. The lotion on the side table. The throw blanket you’d bought because his old one felt like sandpaper. The tea in his cabinet. The better pillows. The bath salts. All the tiny pieces of you scattered throughout his life. And a slow smile appeared. A small one. Only for you.

“You know what the worst part is?”

“What?”

His fingers tightened around yours. That smile growing just a little.

“I can’t tell where my habits end and you begin anymore.”

Your heart absolutely melted.nAnd judging by the way Robby immediately pulled you into his lap before you could get emotional about it…

He knew exactly what he’d done.

******

The Payoff

The thing about taking care of Robby was that eventually it stopped feeling like taking care of him. It just became loving him. The routines no longer felt deliberate. They simply existed. A thousand tiny things woven into the fabric of your lives together.

The water bottle. The lotion. The heating pad. The tea. The baths. The better sleep habits. The pillows. The blankets.

All those little acts of care that had started as gentle nudges had somehow become part of the architecture of his life. And because of that, the moment that finally broke your heart happened on an entirely ordinary night. A terrible shift. But ordinary. The kind that left everyone exhausted. You had your own shift that day and didn’t get to see him until almost midnight.

By the time you unlocked the door to his apartment, the place was dark. Quiet. You frowned. Normally there would at least be a lamp on. The television. Something. Instead there was only silence. For a brief moment concern flared.

Then you stepped farther inside. And immediately stopped. Because there he was. Curled up on the couch. Asleep. The heating pad stretched across his lower back. The blanket you’d bought draped over his legs. The water bottle sitting on the coffee table. Half empty. Hand cream beside it. A mug of tea abandoned nearby.

The lamp casting a warm golden glow across the room. You stared. Your chest tightening unexpectedly. Because every single one of those things had once been an argument. Every single one. And now he reached for them without thinking. Not because you’d forced him. Because he’d learned they helped. Because somewhere along the way he’d decided he deserved comfort.

You stood there for a long moment just looking at him. At the man you loved. The man who spent every day pouring himself into everyone around him. The man who still occasionally forgot he was worthy of the same kindness he offered strangers.

Then quietly, you crossed the room. Robby woke almost immediately. Of course he did. Years in emergency medicine had turned him into the lightest sleeper on Earth.

His eyes opened. Found you. And instantly softened.

“There you are.”

The words came rough with sleep. Your heart melted immediately.

“Hi.”

He reached for you automatically. Still half asleep. Still waking up. Still wanting you close. You smiled and slipped onto the couch beside him.

The moment you did, his arm wrapped around your waist. Pulling you against his side. Like he’d been waiting for it. Like he’d been missing a piece.

You settled against his chest. Listening to the familiar rhythm of his heartbeat. His chin resting on top of your head. Neither of you speaking for several moments. Neither of you needing to. Finally you glanced around. At all the evidence surrounding him. Your smile grew. Robby immediately noticed.

“No.”

You laughed.

“Oh yes.”

“No.”

“You used all of them.”

His groan vibrated through his chest.

“I was tired.”

“You used every single thing.”

“It was a bad day.”

“Every single thing.”

Robby buried his face against your hair. Apparently hoping he could hide from this conversation. You found this adorable.

“I mean look at you.”

“Don’t.”

“You practically created a self-care checklist.”

“I hate that phrase.”

“You absolutely do not.”

His fingers pinched your side. You yelped. Then laughed. Then cuddled closer. The warmth between you settling into something comfortable.

After a while the teasing faded. The room growing quieter. You felt Robby’s hand sliding lazily up and down your back. The absent-minded touch of someone who loved having you near. Eventually his voice broke the silence.

“Today sucked.”

The honesty surprised you. Not because he never talked. Because he usually filtered things first. Protected people from the weight of them. Including you.

Tonight he sounded too tired for that. You turned slightly. Looking up at him. His eyes looked exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that lived deeper than sleep. You brushed your fingers along his jaw.

“What happened?”

Robby sighed. Then told you. Not everything. But enough. The difficult patient. The loss. The family. The impossible choices. The endless pressure.

You listened quietly. Your hand never leaving his face. Never interrupting. Never trying to fix it. Just listening.

When he finished, the room fell silent again. His forehead dropped against yours. Eyes closing. You could feel how tired he was. How worn down. How much he carried.

“I hate days like that.”

“I know.”

A pause. Then another.

“You know what was weird?”

“What?”

His eyes opened. Looking directly at you.

“I got home.”

You waited.

“And without even thinking about it…” A faint smile appeared. “I started doing all the stuff.”

You laughed softly.

“The stuff?”

“The stuff.”

“Very specific.”

“You know what I mean.”

You did. Of course you did. The little routines. The tiny acts of care. The things he’d once resisted. The things he’d once rolled his eyes at. The things he’d once insisted were unnecessary. His thumb brushed across your cheek.

Then his expression softened. Until there was nothing guarded left. Nothing hidden. Just Robby. Just the man you loved.

“You know what the worst part is?”

You smiled.

“I thought we already covered the worst part.”

“No.”

His hand cupped your face.

“I have a new one.”

“Oh?”

He studied you for a moment. Like he was trying to memorize something. Like he still couldn’t quite believe you were real. Then he smiled.

That rare smile. The one that belonged only to you.

“The worst part is now I miss you when you’re not there to nag me about it.”

You laughed. A genuine laugh. Bright and happy. Robby’s eyes immediately lit up at the sound. Like they always did.

“I do not nag.”

“You absolutely do.”

“I lovingly encourage.”

“You nag.”

“I encourage.”

“You nag.”

You leaned forward and kissed him. Ending the argument. The way you usually did. His hand slid into your hair immediately. Holding you there. Not demanding. Not urgent. Just wanting. Just savoring.

When you finally pulled back, he followed. Forehead against yours. Nose brushing yours. His eyes never leaving yours. And for a moment the entire world seemed to disappear.

No hospital. No stress. No responsibilities. Just this.

Just you. Just him.

Then his voice came quietly. So quietly you almost missed it.

“Nobody’s ever taken care of me before.”

The words hit harder than anything else he’d said all night. Because he wasn’t talking about the lotion. Or the pillow. Or the heating pad.

He was talking about being seen. About someone paying attention. About someone noticing when he was hurting before he had to say it out loud. Your throat tightened. You reached up. Brushed your hand through his hair.

“Well.”

His eyes closed briefly beneath your touch. The smallest smile appearing.

“Well what?”

You leaned forward. Kissed his forehead. Then his cheek. Then the corner of his mouth.

“I plan on doing it for a very long time.”

For a moment he simply looked at you. The emotion in his eyes almost overwhelming. Then he pulled you into his lap. Wrapped both arms around you. And held you there.

You knew Jack’s kitchen well enough to know he had run the dishwasher. That was the first problem. The second problem was that you also knew Jack well enough to know he had absolutely no intention of unloading it before he left for tactical training.

You found the clean dishes by accident.

You had been at his townhouse for almost an hour, tucked into the corner of his couch in one of his old T-shirts and the soft lounge shorts you kept in the bottom drawer of his dresser. Jack pretended not to notice they had taken up permanent residence there. You pretended to believe him.

The TV murmured low in the living room. Your phone was facedown beside you. Late afternoon light stretched warm across the hardwood, catching on the coffee table, the arm of the couch, the spot near the entry where Jack always kicked off his boots, even though he complained when you did the same thing.

He had told you to let yourself in.

He always did now.

That was dangerous information if you let yourself think about it too long, so mostly, you didn’t.

You used your key. You kicked off your shoes. You curled up in his house like it had started making room for you without either of you saying it out loud.

Then you wandered into the kitchen for water, saw the clean light glowing on the dishwasher, and sighed as if this were somehow your responsibility.

“Of course,” you muttered.

The dishwasher door opened with a soft hiss. Warm air rolled up, damp and clean, smelling faintly like detergent and steam. The heat brushed your bare legs. Jack had loaded the bowls in the wrong direction again, because apparently, a man could be trusted with a trauma bay, tactical medical support, and other people’s lives, but not proper dishwasher geometry.

You started unloading it anyway.

Not because you were trying to be domestic. Not because the green mug already in his cabinet made something soft move behind your ribs. Definitely not because this had started to feel like your kitchen too.

You were simply a helpful person.

A generous person.

A person who had taken her bra off the second she got comfortable because Jack was not home yet, and you had planned to do nothing more strenuous than drink water, watch terrible television, and bully him into ordering Thai food when he got back.

You put the plates away first. Then the bowls. Then the mugs. The green one went on the second shelf, where Jack always reached for it in the morning, even though he claimed he did not have a favorite.

You were stretching to slide a mug into place when the front door opened.

You did not look over right away. “You ran the dishwasher and abandoned it,” you called, rising onto your toes. “I’m choosing to believe that was a cry for help.”

Jack did not answer. That was your first clue. Your fingers paused on the cabinet handle. The house changed when Jack entered it. You never knew how to explain that without sounding ridiculous. It was not sound, exactly. Not silence. Not even presence.

It was pressure. A subtle rearranging of the air.

You lowered yourself back onto your heels and turned.

Jack stood just inside the kitchen entry.

And your entire brain stopped. Not paused. Stopped. You had seen him in scrubs. You had seen him in old T-shirts and jeans, and the gray sweatpants he pretended were not specifically engineered to ruin your life. You had seen him half-asleep at this very counter, hair flattened on one side, making coffee with the grim focus of a man performing surgery on a French press. You had even seen him at work when he got sharp and calm, voice low, hands steady, the whole room rearranging itself around him because Jack Abbot had decided panic was not useful.

But this—

This was different.

Camouflage tactical pants tucked into boots. A tan quarter-zip stretched across his chest and shoulders, darkened slightly at the collar from sweat. Camouflage sleeves pushed up enough to make his forearms a personal attack. Protective glasses shoved into his hair. A radio clipped at his shoulder. A duty belt low on his hips, heavy with equipment you did not know the names for, and suddenly wanted explained to you in unnecessary detail.

And the vest.

God help you, the vest.

It was not sleek. It was not pretty. It was bulky and practical and worn in, half-unfastened, like he had started taking it off and gotten distracted. A black patch across the front read POLICE in block letters.

It should not have done anything to you.

It did several things.

Several immediate, humiliating things.

Jack’s gaze moved from your face to the mug still in your hand.

His mouth twitched. Barely. “You okay?”

You opened your mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

“Yeah.” Your voice caught. “I—yeah.”

Jack’s eyebrows lifted. Not much. Enough.

Heat rushed up your neck.

You turned back to the cabinet too quickly and shoved the mug onto the shelf. The wrong shelf. The green mug sat neatly beside his stack of bowls. The kitchen went horribly quiet.

Jack looked at the mug. Then at you. “That’s the bowl cabinet.”

Your fingers were still on the cabinet door. “I know.”

“You put a mug in it.”

“It’s visiting.”

Jack’s mouth curved. Small. Slow. Awful.

You shut the cabinet like that would erase the evidence, and bent for a plate from the dishwasher. A plate was normal. A plate was safe. A plate had never come home from tactical training looking like it could ruin your life with one raised eyebrow and a vest buckle.

 Jack stepped farther into the kitchen. His boots sounded heavy on the tile.

You stared very hard at the plate. “Training was good?”

Jack hummed. “Mm-hm.”

“Good.” You croaked. 

“Long.”

“Right.” You nodded too quickly. “Yeah. Long is… training often is that.”

Jack went quiet. That was worse than if he had laughed. 

You lifted the plate toward the cabinet. Wrong cabinet. Again. You froze with your arm half-raised. 

Jack did not say anything. He did not have to.

You could feel him looking at the cabinet. Then at the plate. Then at you.

“Don’t,” you said.

“I didn’t.” Jack replied. 

You couldn’t look at him. “You were about to.” 

“No.”

Somehow, that was worse.

You lowered the plate slowly and opened the correct cabinet with all the dignity available to a person actively losing a fight with kitchen storage.

Jack leaned one shoulder against the doorway. Still in the gear. Still quiet. Still watching.

“You’re flustered.”

You laughed. It came out too high. “I am unloading the dishwasher.”

“Badly,” Jack murmured. 

You exhaled, “You’re welcome.”

His eyes dropped. Not crudely. Not obviously. Just enough. Bare legs. Soft lounge shorts. His T-shirt. Your bare feet on his kitchen tile. You, too comfortable in his house to have expected him like this.

When his gaze returned to your face, something had shifted. Still amused. Still warm.

But darker now. More certain. “Oh.”

Your stomach dropped. “No.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You said ‘oh.’”

“I did.” 

You pressed your lips together, “Don’t.”

He pushed off the doorway and took one slow step closer. You looked at the vest.

Mistake.

Jack noticed. His hand rested briefly against the front of it, fingers brushing one of the buckles like he had all the time in the world and knew exactly where your eyes were.

You looked away so fast that your shin almost caught the open dishwasher door.

Jack’s mouth curved. “Careful.”

You gripped the counter. “I’m fine.”

“Sure?”

“Yep.” Too fast.

He came closer. Not too close. Close enough. The kitchen smelled like detergent, steam, and him now. Work and heat and Jack.

You picked up another mug. Then forgot why you were holding it.

His gaze flicked to it. Then back to you. “Need help?”

“No.”

“You sure?” He asked. 

“Yes.” You answered quickly. 

Jack glanced at the mug in your hand, “You’ve been holding that for a while.”

You looked down. You were, in fact, still holding the mug. 

“Oh my God,” you muttered.

Jack’s smile deepened. Small. Unbearably pleased.

You shoved the mug into the correct cabinet this time and immediately wished you had not looked proud of yourself for completing a task toddlers could master.

Jack caught that too. “Good job.”

Your face went instantly hot. The words were mild. Too mild.

That was the problem.

He had said them like he was talking about the mug, but his voice had gone just low enough to make your pulse stumble.

You turned to him. “Don’t do that.”

His expression stayed innocent. Too innocent. “Do what?”

You glared, “You know.”

“I don’t.” Jack shrugged a shoulder. 

“You absolutely do.”

A beat passed.

His eyes dropped to the way your hand curled around the counter edge.

When he looked back up, his voice was quieter. “You like the gear.”

Your mouth went dry. “I—what?”

Jack’s eyes held yours. “You heard me.”

You shook your head, “I do not.”

He raised a brow, “No?”

“No.” Your eyes betrayed you, straight to the vest.

Jack saw. The smugness sharpened.

You shut your eyes. “Damn it.”

A low sound left him. Almost a laugh. Not quite. “That’s what I thought.”

You opened your eyes.

He was close now. Close enough that you could see the dust on his boots, the tired edge around his eyes, the way the tan quarter-zip pulled across his shoulders beneath the vest.

You swallowed.

Jack watched your throat move. Said nothing.

Which was, frankly, rude.

“You’re enjoying this,” you said.

“A little.” Too honest. Too calm.

Your stomach flipped. “You’re supposed to deny it.”

“No.” The single word landed low.

Your hand slipped on the counter.

Jack’s gaze dropped to it. Then back to your face. His smile softened into something darker.

More focused. “Oh, baby.”

Your entire body went warm. “Don’t call me that right now.”

His head tilted. “Why?”

“Because I’m already—” You stopped.

Jack waited. His eyes stayed on your face, patient and pleased and quiet enough to make the silence feel like a touch.

You cleared your throat. “Because I’m unloading the dishwasher.”

He looked at the open dishwasher. Then, at the single spoon still sitting in the rack. Then back at you. “Almost done.”

You hated him.

You wanted him so badly your knees felt unreliable.

Jack stepped closer. Your back met the counter. He did not touch you.

Not yet.

His gaze moved over your face, taking in the blush, the uneven breathing, the way you kept trying not to look at the vest and failing every time.

Then his hand lifted. Slow enough that you could have moved away. You didn’t. His fingers brushed the loose collar of your T-shirt where it rested against your shoulder.

Barely. Not enough. Too much.

His voice dropped, “You want me to take it off?”

Your eyes jumped to his. “The shirt?” 

His mouth curved. “The vest.”

Oh. Right. The vest.

You looked at it again, because apparently, you had learned nothing.

Jack watched you look. Watched your breath catch. Watched your fingers tighten against the counter.

When you dragged your eyes back to his, he looked unbearably smug. Your voice came out smaller than planned. “Maybe don’t.”

Jack went very still. The kitchen went quiet around you.

His thumb brushed once against your shoulder. “Maybe don’t.”

You nodded.  

He waited. Right. Words.

“Yes,” you said softly. “Maybe don’t.”

Jack smiled then. Slow. Private. Absolutely lethal.

“Hands on the counter.”

Your breath left you. “What?”

Jack’s eyes held yours. “You heard me.”

The words were quiet. That was the problem. Jack did not raise his voice. He did not have to. The command settled into the kitchen with the same calm certainty he carried into rooms where people were used to listening when he spoke.

Your hand tightened around the edge of the counter.

Jack saw. His gaze dropped to your fingers, then came back to your face.

“You good?”

You nodded, then caught yourself because his eyebrow moved. Barely. Still enough.

“I’m good.”

Jack believed you. That was worse. Better. Both.

His mouth curved faintly, not quite a smile, not quite mercy.

“Then, hands on the counter.”

The kitchen seemed to shrink around the sentence.

The open dishwasher breathed out the last of its heat beside you. The single spoon still sat in the rack, ridiculous and bright beneath the kitchen light. Somewhere in the living room, the television murmured to itself, low enough to be forgotten but not low enough to let the house feel empty.

You turned because he told you to. That was the first thing. The second was that Jack noticed the exact moment you realized you liked it. 

Your palms met the counter. Cool stone. Smooth beneath your hands. You spread your fingers over it and tried not to think about how exposed the gesture made you feel. Tried not to think about the soft lounge shorts riding high on your thighs, the oversized T-shirt slipping loose at your shoulder, the fact that your back was to him now, and you could no longer use his face to prepare yourself for what he might do next.

Behind you, Jack did not move.

The silence was deliberate.

You felt it travel down the line of your spine.

Your skin prickled. “Jack.”

His boots sounded once on the tile. Then again. Slow. Measured. Not stalking. Not rushing.

Just coming closer because he had decided to, and because you had put your hands where he told you to put them.

He stopped behind you, close enough that the heat of him reached you before his hands did.

The vest touched you first.

A brush of hard tactical fabric between your shoulder blades. Warm from his body underneath, rough at the edges, practical in a way that made it feel more obscene than anything designed to be sexy ever could.

Your fingers curled against the counter.

Jack’s mouth came near your ear. “I didn’t tell you to move.”

You had not moved. Not really. But your hands had lifted by a fraction, your fingers starting to curl like they wanted to reach back for him before you remembered yourself.

You flattened them again. The counter was cold. Your skin was not.

Jack’s hand settled at your waist. Warm. Steady. A single touch, and your whole body went too aware of itself. The old cotton of his shirt against your skin. The loose waistband of your shorts. The bare line of your shoulder where the collar had slipped. The cool air in the kitchen. The hard vest behind you.

His thumb moved once against your side. “Good.”

One word. No flourish. No smirk you could see.

Still, your breath went uneven.

Jack heard it.

His hand stayed where it was, not moving higher, not moving lower, like he had all the time in the world and no interest in giving you anywhere to hide. “You like that.”

Your eyes shut. “I don’t know what you mean.”

His mouth brushed the side of your neck. Barely there. “Liar.”

It should not have sounded affectionate. It did. A shiver moved through you before you could stop it. Jack’s palm flexed at your waist, grounding you without letting you pretend he had missed it.

The kitchen smelled like detergent, fading steam, and him.

Cold air still clung to his clothes from outside. Beneath that was sweat, dust, soap, and the faint metallic edge of gear and training equipment. It was not cologne. It was not polished. It was Jack after a long day doing something physical and dangerous enough that your body had apparently decided common sense was optional.

His other hand came to your opposite hip. Now he had you between him and the counter. Not trapped. Held.

There was a difference. Jack knew it. Worse, he knew you knew it too.

His mouth touched your shoulder, a slow kiss just below the place where your shirt had slipped. The touch was soft enough to make your knees go weak. His hands tightened at your hips before you could sway.

Jack’s thumbs moved in slow arcs beneath the hem of your shirt, finding skin. Your breath caught. The refrigerator hummed. The dishwasher clicked softly as it cooled. Jack’s vest shifted against your back when he leaned closer, and the sound of it—fabric, buckles, the faint scrape of equipment—went straight through you.

His fingers skimmed your stomach. Not high enough. Not low enough. Just enough to make you feel the shape of his restraint. 

You started to turn your head toward him.

 His hand left your waist and came to your jaw, two fingers beneath your chin, guiding your face forward again. “No.”

Your pulse jumped. The word was quiet. Simple. Devastating.

You faced forward again.

Jack’s thumb brushed once along your jaw before his hand dropped back to your side. “Stay there.”

You pressed your palms more firmly to the counter. “That’s bossy.”

His mouth hovered near your ear. “You like bossy.”

Your face burned. “I did not say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

A frustrated sound escaped you before you could swallow it down.

Jack stilled. Then, softly, “There.”

Your stomach flipped. “What?”

“That sound.” His lips touched the back of your shoulder. 

The hand beneath your shirt slid slowly up your stomach, then stopped at your ribs. Waiting. Teasing. Holding back exactly enough to make you feel the absence of everything he was not doing.

You went silent.

Jack’s mouth moved along your neck. Slow. Patient. Awful. Every touch felt measured. Not because he was hesitant, but because he had figured out that patience ruined you and was immediately putting that information to use.

His palm flattened over your stomach and drew you back against him. The vest pressed hard into your back. The duty belt brushed the back of your thigh. You felt him there, solid and warm and controlled, and your body gave one helpless little shift backward before your mind could stop it.

Jack’s grip tightened. Not a warning. A response. His breath changed against your neck. For the first time since he had walked through the door, the smug control slipped just enough for you to feel the man underneath it.

You caught it.

Your mouth curved despite yourself. “There he is.”

Jack went still. The air changed. His hand stayed flat over your stomach, but his thumb stopped moving. 

You had gotten him. Only a little. Only for a second. But enough.

His mouth came close to your ear. “Careful.”

Your smile widened, shaky but real. “With what?”

His hand slid to your hip and pulled you back into him again, slower this time.

Your smile disappeared. Every thought went with it.

“Thinking you’re in charge because I let you have one.”

You swallowed hard. “That was one?”

His mouth brushed your neck. “One.”

The word should not have undone you. It did. You were suddenly aware of your hands again, of how badly you wanted to take them off the counter. To reach back. To touch the vest. The straps. His belt. His hands. Anything. You wanted to turn around and get your mouth on his, wanted to make him stop sounding so calm when you could feel he was not.

Your fingers flexed.

Jack saw. “Hands.”

You flattened them. 

He kissed your shoulder. A reward. You hated how fast it worked. You loved how fast it worked.

Jack’s hand slipped beneath your shirt again, slower now, knuckles brushing bare skin on the way up. His touch stayed to the edges: waist, ribs, stomach, the underside of wanting without giving it a name. He was not rushing toward the places your body begged for. He was making you feel every inch before then.

You let your head tip to the side. More room. You did not say it.

Jack did not need you to. His mouth found the space you gave him. His lips were warm against your neck, then his teeth grazed just enough to make your breath catch, and your hands press flat again against the stone.

“That’s it,” he murmured.

The praise sank into you slowly like heat. You had been embarrassed before. Flustered. Mouthy because it was easier to be difficult than honest. But somewhere between the counter under your palms and his vest at your back, the fight in you had softened.

Not gone. Changed.

You were still aware of how ridiculous this should have been. The open dishwasher. The last spoon. The clean mug sitting in the bowl cabinet. His kitchen lit golden in the late afternoon while Jack stood behind you in tactical gear and touched you like he had all night and no intention of wasting a second.

But the embarrassment had started to dissolve into something heavier.

Relief, maybe. Relief at not having to hide how much you wanted him. Relief at being told exactly what to do by someone who would stop the moment you asked.

Relief at Jack’s quiet certainty, at the way he gave commands like promises and praise like reward. His hands slid down to the hem of your shirt. 

You tensed, not from fear. Anticipation moved through you so sharply that your breath caught in your throat.

Jack felt it. His mouth touched the back of your shoulder. “Still good?”

“Yes.”

He trusted it.

His thumbs hooked beneath the fabric. “Arms up.”

The command was simple. That made it worse. You had been told to keep your hands on the counter. Now he was telling you to move them. The shift itself felt intimate, as if he were changing the rules and trusting you to follow.

You lifted your hands slowly.

The counter disappeared from beneath your palms, leaving you briefly unanchored. Your arms rose above your head. The position pulled the shirt higher, exposing the line of your stomach, leaving you open to him in a way that made your face burn before he had even taken anything off.

Jack watched. You could feel him watching. His hands rested at your waist for one long second, as if he was taking in the fact that you were standing there because he had told you to.

The silence made your pulse beat harder.

Then he began to lift your shirt. Slowly. The cotton slid up your stomach. Over your ribs. Higher. He did not rush. Of course, he did not rush. Jack had learned that patience ruined you and had apparently decided to make it your problem.

You made a small, impatient sound before you could stop yourself.

The shirt stopped. You froze.

Jack’s mouth came near your ear. “Something you need?”

Your eyes closed. Terrible man. “No.”

His fingers held the shirt exactly where it was. Not up. Not down.

A strip of kitchen air cooled your skin. 

“No?”

Your pride made one final, useless attempt at survival. It failed immediately.

“Please.”

Jack’s breath changed. Only slightly. Enough.

His mouth touched your shoulder. “Please, what?”

The word sat on your tongue, embarrassing and simple, and exactly what he wanted.

“Take it off.”

A pause.

Then his lips curved against your skin. “That wasn’t so hard.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You’re still listening.” He lifted the shirt the rest of the way. 

The fabric dragged over your chest, your shoulders, your raised arms. For a second, it covered your face, warm cotton and the faint smell of him, and then it was gone, dropped somewhere behind you onto the kitchen floor.

The air touched your bare skin.

Jack went still. Completely. Your arms were still raised. Your breathing had gone uneven. The vest pressed warm and hard against your back. And Jack, who had been so smug, so pleased, so devastatingly in control, did not say anything. For one second. Two. 

The silence reached your pulse before his voice did. “You weren’t wearing anything under this.”

Your face went hot. “I was comfortable.”

His hand came back to your waist. Slow. Firm. “In my kitchen.”

“You weren’t home.”

His fingers tightened once. “I am now.”

The words landed low and heavy between you.

You started to lower your arms.

Jack caught the movement immediately. “Ah.”

You froze.

His mouth brushed your shoulder. “I didn’t say you could move.”

Your whole body went hot. Slowly, you lifted your arms back into place.

Jack’s hand slid over your waist, controlled, almost reverent, like he was taking a second to recover and refusing to let you see how badly he needed it.

Unfortunately for him, you knew him too well.

Your mouth curved despite the heat in your face. “Oh.”

His fingers paused.

You smiled, breathless. “Oh, baby.”

Jack’s grip tightened at your waist. “Careful.”

You turned your head slightly, just enough for your cheek to almost brush his. “Did you not know?”

His mouth hovered near your ear. His voice was low. Still controlled. Barely. “I know now.”

A shiver moved through you.

Jack felt it.

His mouth touched the side of your neck. “There you go.”

Your arms ached faintly from being raised, but you did not lower them.

He had not told you to.

Jack noticed.

You felt the exact moment he noticed: the way his hand stilled, the way his breath went rough, the way his body pressed closer behind yours until the vest brushed your bare back again.

He leaned in, mouth at your ear. “You’re waiting.”

Your eyes fluttered. “You didn’t tell me I could move.”

For a second, he was silent.

Then his hand spread over your stomach and pulled you gently back into him. “That’s my girl.”

The praise hit harder than you expected.

Your breath shook.

Jack’s mouth moved along your neck, slower now, rewarding every second you kept your arms lifted. His hand stayed at your waist, then drifted over your stomach, then back to your hip. Teasing. Learning. Not attempt to hide how much he liked the way you were listening.

Finally, his voice came low against your skin. “Hands down.”

You lowered them slowly. Relief moved through your shoulders. 

Before you could decide what to do with your hands, Jack spoke again.

“Behind your back.”

Your pulse jumped. The kitchen blurred softly at the edges. You turned your head a fraction.

Jack was waiting there over your shoulder, eyes dark and steady, giving you time because he always gave you time.

Your hands slid behind you. Slowly. Obediently.

His mouth curved. “There she is.”

The words were soft. Too soft for what they did to you. Your hands stayed behind your back, fingers curling around your opposite wrist, because you had no idea what else to do with them. The position pulled your shoulders back and left you open to him, skin still warm where his mouth had been and cooler now beneath the kitchen air.

Jack did not touch you right away. He looked. You felt the weight of it move over you. Down the side of your neck. Across your shoulders. Along the line of your spine where the vest had been brushing you. The kitchen felt too ordinary amid the silence: the open dishwasher, the clean spoon still abandoned on the rack, the soft ticking of cooling metal, the fading detergent steam caught beneath the sharper scent of him.

Then he stepped closer. The vest touched your back first. Hard fabric. Warm underneath. A scrape of tactical gear against bare skin that made your stomach pull tight.

Your breath caught.

Jack heard it. His hand moved behind you, slow enough that you could have stepped away, and closed around both of your wrists. Not tight. Not rough. Just firm. Certain.

Your eyes fluttered shut.

His thumb moved once over the inside of your wrist, and the carefulness of it almost made the whole thing worse. He held you like he meant it. Like he knew exactly what you were giving him and had no intention of taking it lightly.

“You good?” he asked against your shoulder.

Your answer came out quieter than you expected. “I’m good.”

His grip settled.

His free hand came to your waist, palm spreading warm against your skin. Then he drew you back by degrees, not pulling hard, not forcing, just guiding until your spine met the vest and your hips met the solid line of him behind you.

Your lips parted.

The air left the room.

Jack’s mouth touched the side of your neck. Barely.

You felt it everywhere.

He kissed you slowly, once beneath your ear, then again lower, where your pulse had become embarrassingly easy to find. His hand slipped from your waist to your stomach, flat and steady, holding you against him while his mouth learned what made your breath change.

You tried to swallow. It came out as a sound instead.

Jack’s grip around your wrists tightened. Not a warning. A response.

He liked that.

You knew because his breath shifted against your neck. Because the calm line of him behind you went a little less calm. Because his hand pressed you more firmly back into him, making sure you felt exactly what listening to him had done.

Your eyes opened. The kitchen cabinets blurred in front of you. The cabinet with the mugs. The bowl cabinet with the green mug still sitting in the wrong place because neither of you had bothered to fix it.

You should have found that funny.

You would have, if Jack’s mouth had not opened against your shoulder. If his teeth had not skimmed just enough to make your knees loosen. If his free hand had not slid to your hip and pulled you back again, slower this time, letting you feel him through all that gear, all that restraint.

“Jack.” His name came out thin.

He hummed against your skin. Not a question. Not yet. He knew what you wanted. That was the problem. He knew, and he was taking his time with the knowledge. His hand dragged slowly over your stomach, then back to your waist, then lower to the band of your shorts. He did not go beneath it yet. He only rested there, fingers spread, the heel of his hand warm against the place where your body had gone tight with waiting.

You pulled against his grip without meaning to. His hand around your wrists did not move. The reminder went through you like a spark.

You were not trapped.

You were held.

There was a difference, and Jack knew exactly how to make you feel it.

His mouth came to your ear. “Tell me.” 

Only two words. Soft. Rough at the edges.

You closed your eyes.

The old instinct rose—joke, dodge, say something difficult enough to make the wanting less obvious. But your shirt was on the floor. His vest was against your back. His hand was at your waistband. And you were tired of pretending you were not shaking.

“Touch me,” you whispered.

Jack went still for half a second. Then his mouth pressed to your shoulder. A reward. His hand slipped lower into the waistband of your shorts. Slowly. The first real touch made your whole body lock. Jack held you through it. One hand around your wrists, the other moving with maddening patience, his mouth warm at your neck, his breath uneven now.

He did not ask again.

He trusted the way you leaned into him. He trusted the way your head tipped back against his shoulder. He trusted the way your fingers curled helplessly in his grip instead of pulling away.

And because he trusted you, you gave him more.

A breath. A sound. His name, softer this time.

Jack moved as if he were learning you by touch and already knew he would remember every answer. Every shiver. Every little hitch of breath. Every helpless attempt to chase his hand when he slowed down.

“Easy,” he murmured.

Your body listened before your pride could object.

A low sound moved out of him, almost a laugh, pleased and dark and far too close to your ear. He liked that too. He liked it when you listened.

You could feel it in the way his grip tightened around your wrists. In the way his mouth became less patient at your neck. In the way his body leaned heavier into yours for one second before he reined himself back in.

“You’re doing so good.” The praise sank into you, warm and devastating.

Your head fell back against him. The ceiling light caught in your vision. Soft gold. Too bright. Too ordinary for this. His kitchen. His counter. The open dishwasher still breathing out the last of its heat.

Jack’s hand moved again. The world narrowed. The hard vest. The radio is brushing your shoulder. The duty belt against the back of your thigh. His mouth at your throat. His breathing is no longer even.

He brought you closer slowly. So slowly, you almost did not recognize what he was doing until your hands tightened in his hold and your legs started to tremble.

Your breath broke. “Please.”

The word slipped out raw.

Jack stopped kissing your neck. Everything in him seemed to listen. His hand did not stop.

Not yet.

“Please what?”

You made a sound that was not quite an answer.

 He slowed. Cruel. Controlled. Patient enough to ruin you.

Your forehead nearly dipped into the counter in front of you. “Jack.”

His mouth touched your shoulder. “That’s not an answer.”

Your face burned. Not shame. Something warmer. Something that made the wanting sharper because he was making you stand inside it and speak.

“Please don’t stop.”

His breath left him rough against your neck. There. That got to him. 

The knowledge made your knees weaker.

Jack gave you what you had asked for, and your whole body went soft and tight at once. Your wrists strained in his hold. His grip steadied you immediately, keeping you exactly where he wanted you while his mouth returned to your neck and his fingers worked over you in slow, tight circles.

You were close enough now that the room started to slip.

The tile beneath your feet. The cabinet in front of you. The hum of the refrigerator.

All of it blurred around him. His hand. His vest. His voice in your ear. “That’s it.”

You shook against him.

He felt it. 

He gave you more. 

Then, just as your body started to tip toward the edge, just as your breath caught and stayed caught, just as your fingers curled helplessly behind your back—

Jack stopped. Completely. 

For one impossible second, you could not process the absence. Then you made a sound so desperate it should have embarrassed you.

It didn’t.

You were too far gone for that.

Your body tried to follow his hand.

Jack’s arm came around your waist immediately, holding you still, holding you up, his mouth pressing to your shoulder in something almost tender. “Easy.”

You let out a broken breath. “Jack.”

“I’ve got you.” He murmured.

“You stopped.” 

His mouth curved against your skin. “I did.”

You pulled at your wrists, helpless now, frustrated enough that your eyes burned. “Why?”

His hand rested flat over your stomach. Still. Warm. Maddening.

His lips brushed the shell of your ear. “Because you begged so pretty.”

Heat rushed through you, full-body and humiliating. 

“And I want to hear you do it again.”

For a second, you could not answer. You could only stand there with your hands still held behind your back, Jack’s vest pressed against your bare skin, his arm firm around your waist, his breath warm at your ear. The kitchen felt too bright for what he had done to you. Too normal. Cabinets. Counter. Open dishwasher. The last spoon was still sitting in the rack like neither of you had any intention of finishing what you started.

You whispered his name.

Jack’s mouth touched your shoulder. “Turn around.”

Your pulse jumped.

His grip loosened around your wrists. For a second, you did not move. Not because you did not want to. Because the absence of his hold made you feel strangely weightless, like your body had forgotten what to do without his hand telling it where to stay.

Jack noticed. His fingers brushed once over the inside of your wrist before he let go completely.

“Slow.”

One word. You obeyed. You turned carefully, bare feet shifting against the cool tile, counter at your back now, open dishwasher to your side, Jack in front of you.

He looked almost unfairly composed for a man whose breathing had gone rough against your neck moments ago.

Almost.

His vest was still half-unfastened. The tan shirt beneath it clung to his shoulders. His hair was mussed from the protective glasses shoved into it. There was dust on his boots. A shadow along his jaw. His eyes moved over your face first, then lower, and the effort it took him to bring them back up made your stomach twist.

“There,” he said softly.

Your fingers found the edge of the counter behind you. “What?”

Jack stepped closer. His hands settled at your waist. “I wanted to see your face.”

The sentence should have been tender. It was. That made it worse. His thumbs moved once over your skin, slow and warm. He watched you take the touch. Watched your lips part, your shoulders lift, the way your body could not decide whether to lean into him or brace against the counter.

Then he bent slightly.

“Jack—”

His hands tightened at your waist. A warning. A promise.

Then he lifted you.

The counter was cold beneath you.

You gasped at the sudden shock of it, the stone pressing against the backs of your thighs, cool enough to make your whole body jolt. Jack stepped between your legs before you could close them, his gear brushing you, his hands still steady at your waist.

The house was quiet around you. Too quiet. The television in the living room had gone to some muted commercial you could not place. The refrigerator hummed. The dishwasher clicked again, cooling metal, soft and domestic and absurd.

Jack stood between your knees like he belonged there. Like he had always intended to put you there.

Your hands moved toward him before you thought better of it.

He caught your wrists. Fast.

Your breath stopped.

Jack looked down at your hands, then back at your face. “Not yet.”

You made a soft, frustrated sound.

His mouth curved. “Hands on the counter.”

You stared at him. “You just let me turn around.”

“And now I’m telling you where to put them.”

Heat crawled up your neck. “You’re very bossy.”

Jack guided your hands to the edge of the counter on either side of your hips.

His fingers pressed over yours until you gripped it. “Hold here.”

Your hands curled around the counter. The stone was cold under your palms.

Jack waited until he saw your fingers tighten. Then he let go. “Good.”

The word went through you with humiliating ease.

Jack saw that too. His gaze sharpened. “You’re going to be a problem now.”

You tried to breathe normally. “You already knew I was a problem.”

“I knew you were mouthy.” His hands slid to your knees. Slow. Firm. “This is different.”

Your heart kicked hard against your ribs as he eased your legs wider. Not rushed. Not rough. Just certain. Every inch of space he made felt deliberate.

Your fingers tightened around the edge of the counter. “You love my mouth,” you said.

Jack stopped. For half a second, the entire kitchen went still.

Then his eyes lifted to yours. Dark. Amused. Worse than amused. “Yes.”

The answer was immediate. Too immediate. Your pulse stumbled.

Jack’s thumbs moved once over the inside of your knees. “But right now,” he said, voice low, “I’m interested in what it does when I tell you to be quiet.”

Oh.

Your mouth parted. Nothing came out.

Jack’s expression warmed with satisfaction. “There she is.”

Your face burned. “That was mean.”

“No.” His hands moved higher on your thighs, slow enough to make your thoughts scatter. “That was honest.”

The kitchen air felt cool against your bare skin. Jack felt warm everywhere he touched you. The vest shifted when he leaned down, hard fabric brushing the inside of your leg before he caught himself and adjusted.

Still controlled. Still careful. Still somehow making every careful thing feel worse.

His fingers found the waistband of your shorts. You went still. Jack noticed. His gaze lifted to your face. “You good?”

Your throat worked. “I’m good.”

His thumbs slipped beneath the soft fabric. “Hands stay.”

Your fingers curled harder around the counter.

Jack drew your shorts down slowly. Not because they were difficult. Because he wanted you to feel every second of it, the fabric dragged over your hips, your thighs, catching briefly beneath you until he lifted you just enough to ease it free. The movement was smooth and effortless, one hand at your waist, one at your thigh, his body still between your knees, the vest brushing your skin whenever he leaned close.

You stared at the ceiling because looking at him felt impossible. That did not help. The ceiling was too ordinary. The kitchen light was too warm. The dishwasher was still open. Your shorts slid down your legs and fell somewhere near his boots.

Jack did not move for a moment. He just looked. 

The quiet of it made your pulse beat everywhere. “Jack.”

His hands settled back on your thighs. “I’m here.”

The answer came immediately. Grounding. Ruinous. His thumbs moved slowly over your skin, and he eased your knees apart again, reclaiming the space he had made before.

Your breath caught.

Jack’s mouth curved. “Still with me?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He lowered his head and kissed the inside of your knee.

Soft. Patient. A beginning.

Your head tipped back against the cabinet.

Jack’s voice came low against your skin. “You asked so nicely before.”

Your eyes fluttered shut. “I was desperate.”

“I know.” The smile was in his voice.

You hated that. You loved that.

His mouth moved higher. Still not enough. Your hands twitched on the counter.

Jack noticed without looking up. “Hands stay.”

Your grip tightened immediately.

The reward came as another kiss, slow and warm, higher than the last.

You let out a shaking breath. 

Jack looked up at you. Focused. The kind of focus that made rooms go quiet around him. “Then take it.”

The words emptied your lungs.

Jack lowered his mouth. 

The first touch made your whole body jerk. Your fingers clamped around the counter. The cold stone bit into your palms. Your shoulders hit the cabinet behind you with a soft thud, and Jack’s hands tightened on your thighs to keep you there, open and still and absolutely nowhere near in control. 

“Oh, my God.” The words broke out of you before you could stop them.

Jack paused. Barely.

You felt the shape of his smile against you. “Quiet.”

You inhaled sharply.  

Then he did it again. Slower this time. Like he wanted to feel the exact second you lost the fight with yourself. Your head tipped back against the cabinet. The kitchen light went soft and gold behind your closed eyes. Everything narrowed to Jack between your thighs, the rough brush of his vest against your leg, the pressure of his hands, the heat of his mouth, the way he seemed to listen with his entire body.

You tried to move.

Jack held you still. Not harsh. Firm enough. A reminder.

Your hands stayed on the counter. Barely.

His thumb stroked once over your thigh, approval without words, and the gentleness of it almost made you unravel faster than the rest. You made another sound. Smaller. More helpless.

Jack hummed low, pleased, and the vibration went through you like a spark.

Your eyes flew open.

He looked up. That was worse. His mouth was still close. His eyes were dark and steady, watching your face like he was reading every answer you gave him. “You like that?”

Your voice had vanished. You nodded.

Jack’s hands stilled.

 The silence pressed hot against your skin. Right. Words.

“Yes.”

His mouth curved. “Tell me.”

Your fingers dug into the counter. “I like that.”

He rewarded you immediately.

Your breath broke.

Jack’s hands slid beneath your thighs, adjusting you closer to the edge, and the movement made the counter colder, him warmer, the room smaller. You wanted to touch him so badly your hands ached around the stone. 

One hand slipped. Only an inch.

Jack lifted his head. “No.”

The word was quiet. Your hand froze.

He did not look angry. He looked pleased. Terribly pleased. “Where do your hands stay?”

Your face burned. “On the counter.”

His thumb stroked the inside of your thigh. “That’s right.”

He waited until your hand curled back around the edge.

Then his tongue found you again. A reward. A ruin. You were a mess within seconds. Not gracefully. Not prettily. Completely. Breath snagging. Thighs trembling. Shoulders pressed against the cabinet. Hands locked around the counter because Jack had told you to keep them there, and somehow that command had become the last solid thing in the room.

Jack took his time. Of course he did. He had learned that patience ruined you, and now he was proving it. Every time you thought you knew the rhythm, he changed it. Every time your body started to rise toward something, he softened. Every time you whispered his name, he gave you enough to make you do it again.

“Jack.”

His hands tightened. You heard his breath change. Felt it. He liked his name like that. You knew it now. 

You used it. “Jack, please.”

He lifted his mouth just enough to speak against your skin. “Please what?”

You let out a broken little laugh, almost angry with how badly you needed him. “You know.”

“I do.” His mouth brushed higher. Not enough. Not yet. “I want to hear you.”

Your head fell back. The cabinet was cool against your shoulder blades. Your own breathing sounded too loud in the small kitchen. “Please don’t stop.”

Jack’s hands flexed. There. He liked that. The knowledge made you ache.

 He gave you more. The room slipped sideways. The hum of the refrigerator disappeared. The TV disappeared. The open dishwasher, the cooling spoon, the late afternoon light across the tile — all of it blurred into sensation.

Jack’s mouth. Jack’s hands. Jack’s voice, when he murmured, “Good girl,” like praise, was another way to touch you.

Your hands started to loosen from the counter. You caught yourself.

Jack saw anyway. “That’s it,” he said, voice rougher now. “Hold on.”

You did. Your fingers curled around the edge until your knuckles ached. Your thighs trembled under his hands.

He brought you close slowly. Too slowly. You could feel it building, feel yourself tipping toward that bright, impossible edge he had denied you once already. Your breath came in pieces. Your body tried to move with him, tried to chase, tried to close around him.

Jack held you open. Held you still. Kept you there.

“Jack,” you whispered.

He lifted his eyes to yours. The sight almost ended you by itself. Still in gear. Still composed enough to look up like he knew exactly what he was doing to you. Not composed enough to hide the roughness in his breathing. 

“What do you need?” The question was quiet. Devastating.

You swallowed. The begging came easier this time. Too easy. “Please.”

His mouth touched your thigh. “Please what?”

Your cheeks burned.

You did not hide. Not this time. “Please let me.”

Jack went still. His eyes darkened. For one breath, all the smugness slipped, and what was left underneath was hunger so sharp it made your fingers tighten on the counter.

Then his mouth curved slowly. “There it is.”

He kissed your thigh. A reward. “Again.”

You shook your head once, breathless. “Jack.”

“Again.” His voice was rougher now. Less teasing. More affected.

And because you could hear what it did to him, because you could feel that he was not nearly as untouched as he pretended, you gave him the words.

“Please,” you whispered. “Please let me come.”

Jack’s eyes held yours. Then he lowered his mouth again. This time, he did not stop. Your whole body went tight. The counter edge cut into your palms. Your breath caught and stayed caught. Jack’s hands held you through the first shudder, then the next, one arm pressing over your hips to keep you exactly where he wanted you while the rest of you broke apart around him.

You heard yourself say his name. Once. Twice. Too soft to be a scream. Too ruined to be anything else.

Jack stayed with you through all of it. Not rushing. Not moving away. His mouth is softer now, his hands gentler, easing you down instead of dropping you.

Your body went heavy. Boneless. Your head fell back against the cabinet, and the kitchen came back in pieces.

The hum of the refrigerator. The detergent smell. The cool counter under your palms. The sound of Jack breathing. He kissed the inside of your knee. Then the lower part of your thigh.

Then he looked up at you. His hair was mussed. His mouth was wet. His vest was still on. And he looked unbearably pleased with himself. “You still good?”

You stared at him, chest rising and falling hard. “I think you know I’m not.”

His mouth curved. Warm. Smug.

So comepletely Jack, you almost laughed.

 “Yeah,” he said softly. “I do.”

He rose slowly, stepping back between your thighs.

His hands settled on the counter on either side of you, caging you in without touching you. He leaned close enough that the vest brushed your bare skin again, and you shivered even now.

Jack noticed. His smile deepened. 

You closed your eyes. “I hate the vest.”

“No, you don’t.”

Your laugh came out weak. “No,” you admitted. “I really don’t.”

Jack’s mouth brushed yours. Slow. Deep. A reward and a promise. When he pulled back, his eyes had gone dark again.

Your hands slid from the counter toward him. This time, he let you touch the vest.

For one second.

Only one.

Then his hand closed gently around your wrist. “Not yet.”

Your breath caught.

Jack’s thumb moved over your pulse. “I’m not done with you.”

The words landed low.

Your hand was still caught in his. Your fingers had barely touched the vest before he stopped you, and somehow that single second had made the wanting worse. Rough fabric beneath your palm. The hard line of the strap. Heat beneath it. Jack beneath all of it.

You stared at him.

Jack stared back. His thumb moved once over your pulse. Not soothing. Not really.

A reminder.

The kitchen still felt tilted around you. Your body was loose and shaking from what he had already done, your thighs still bracketed around him, the counter cold beneath you, the cabinet cool against your back. Everything smelled like detergent and sweat and Jack. The open dishwasher had stopped steaming now, but the clean scent lingered beneath the sharper edge of his gear.

Your voice came out thin. “You’re not?”

Jack’s mouth curved faintly. “No.”

Your fingers flexed in his hold.

He looked down at the movement. Then back at your face. “You want to touch me.”

It was not a question.

You swallowed. “Yes.”

His eyes darkened.

For a second, the smugness softened into something heavier. Hungrier. The kind of look that made you realize he had been holding himself together too. Not unaffected. Not even close. Just disciplined enough to make you think the ruin had been one-sided.

It had not.

The proof was in the tension along his jaw. The roughness of his breathing. The way his hand tightened around your wrist before easing again, like he had to remind himself not to rush just because he wanted to.

Jack leaned in. His vest brushed your bare skin.

Your breath caught.

He noticed. “Soon,” he said.

Your eyes fluttered. That one word felt like a promise and a punishment. “Jack.”

His mouth touched yours. Not a kiss. Almost. “Hands up.”

Your pulse kicked. “What?”

Jack’s gaze held yours. “Above your head.”

The kitchen seemed to go quieter.

You were still sitting on the counter, still trembling, still trying to recover from him, and now he wanted your hands where he could see them. Where you could not reach for him. Where he could take that final inch of control before giving anything back.

Your fingers curled once against his.

Then you lifted your hands.

Slowly.

Jack guided them the rest of the way, his palm firm around your wrists as he pinned them above your head against the cabinet.

The wood was cool behind your knuckles.

Jack’s body filled the space between your thighs. His gear brushed you everywhere. The hard vest. The duty belt. The heavy weight of him still mostly dressed while you were bare and breathless on his kitchen counter.

He looked at you like that did something to him. Like he had meant to keep the upper hand and had not accounted for the sight of you listening this well.

His mouth moved against your jaw. “Still good?”

You nodded once. “I’m good.”

His grip settled around your wrists. “Stay there.”

Your answer came out as a breath. “Okay.”

Jack kissed you then. Slow at first. Deep enough to make your hands flex above your head, your wrists pressing into his palm, your body shifting toward him before he had given you permission to move. His mouth tasted like heat and restraint and the ruin he had pulled out of you minutes ago.

Then the kiss changed. Something in him shifted. The edge of all that careful patience wore thin. His free hand slid down your side, over your hip, beneath your thigh, drawing you closer to the edge of the counter with one controlled pull. Your breath broke against his mouth. The counter dragged cool beneath you. His gear scraped softly, buckles and fabric and belt, the sound rough in the quiet kitchen.

Jack’s forehead touched yours. His breathing was no longer even. Not even close.

 “You sure?” The question was rougher now. Less composed.

 You looked at him. Really looked.

At the dark focus in his eyes, the strain in his jaw, the way he was still holding himself back because your answer mattered more than his urgency.

Your chest tightened. “Yes.”

His hand tightened around your wrists. “You want this?”

“Yes.”

Jack’s eyes closed for half a second. Like the answer hit him somewhere deep. When he opened them again, the smugness was gone. What remained was worse.

Need, disciplined down to a blade. “Say it.”

Your breath caught.

His mouth hovered over yours. “Tell me.”

You swallowed. The words felt different now. Less like begging. More like choosing.

“I want you to fuck me.”

Jack went still. The whole kitchen held its breath with him. Then he kissed you hard. Not careless. Never that. But harder than before, deeper, the last of his patience burning down to something urgent and raw. His hand stayed around your wrists, keeping them above your head while his other hand moved between you.

You heard the shift of his belt. 

The low rasp of a zipper.

Your whole body went tight.

Jack felt it immediately.

His mouth brushed your cheek. “I’ve got you.”

“I know.”

He pushed his pants and boxers down only as much as he needed. No more. The gear stayed. The vest stayed. The boots, the belt, the tan fabric pulled tight across his shoulders. He was still dressed like he had walked in from training and found you in his kitchen, and that fact made everything feel sharper. More desperate. Less polished.

Jack’s hand came back to your hip.

He looked at you. Waited.

Your wrists flexed above your head. “I’m good,” you whispered.

His gaze softened for one breath. Then he moved closer. He pushed into you slowly, stealing the air from your lungs. Your head fell back against the cabinet.

Jack stopped. Completely.

Every muscle in him seemed locked with the effort of it. “You okay?”

“Yes.” The answer came immediately. Breathless. Certain.

Jack’s mouth brushed the corner of yours. “Good.”

Then he moved. Slowly at first. Controlled even now. He gave you time to feel every inch of the change, the stretch of being held open to him, the pressure of his body against yours, the hard edge of his vest against your chest every time he leaned in to kiss you. You tried to move your hands down on instinct, needing to touch him, needing something to hold onto besides the cool cabinet and his command.

His grip tightened around your wrists. “Not yet.”

A sound left you. Frustrated. Needy.

Jack’s mouth found your neck. “I know.”

He moved again, deeper this time, harder, and the whole room tilted. Your legs tightened around him. His breathing broke. A real break. Low and rough against your throat.

You caught it even through the haze. “There,” you whispered.

Jack lifted his head enough to look at you. His eyes were dark. “What?”

Your lips parted around a shaky breath. “Right there, Jack. Please.”

He drove into you again, harder, and the words disappeared from both of you. The counter creaked softly beneath you. The cabinet knocked once against your wrists. The spoon in the dishwasher shifted with a tiny metallic sound that should have been funny and was not, because Jack was moving now like the control he had used to wreck you had finally turned on him. 

Still measured. Still focused. But rougher. More urgent. His mouth found yours again, catching the sounds you could not swallow. His hand kept your wrists pinned above your head. His other hand gripped your hip, dragging you closer, holding you exactly where he wanted you while the vest brushed and pressed and turned every thrust into another reminder of how this had started.

You were shaking again.

Already.

Jack felt it. His mouth curved against yours, a flash of smugness cutting through the roughness. “Already?”

You would have snapped at him if you could breathe. Instead, you made a broken sound and pulled against his grip.

He held you there.

“You did that on purpose,” you managed. 

“I did.” His voice was rough. Pleased. Not nearly as steady as he wanted it to be.

That made you smile despite yourself. “You’re not as calm as you think.”

Jack’s eyes lifted to yours. For a second, the room narrowed to that look.

Then his hand released your wrists. “Touch me.”

You did not need to be told twice. Your hands came down fast. One grabbed the edge of the vest. The other slid to the back of his neck, fingers pushing into his hair, finally, finally holding on to him the way your whole body had been begging to since he walked through the door.

Jack groaned.  A real sound. Low. Uncontrolled. The sound ruined you.

Your fingers tightened in his hair. “There he is.” 

Jack caught your mouth with his. The kiss turned messy. Hotter. Less careful around the edges. His hand slid beneath your thigh and hitched you higher on the counter, changing the angle until your nails dug into the back of his neck and your whole body jolted against him.

The gear scraped against your skin.

His vest. His belt. The rough line of fabric and equipment. The hard, practical pieces of him still on while his control came apart under your hands. He was still dominant. Still the one setting the pace. But now you could feel what it cost him. Every breath. Every rough sound against your mouth. Every time his rhythm faltered because your hands found another strap, another edge, another place where his body was warm beneath the gear.

“Jack.”

His forehead pressed to yours. “I’ve got you.” The words came rough. Almost broken.

“You keep saying that.”

His hand tightened on your hip. “Because I do.”

Your chest pulled tight. For one second, the heat went soft at the center. Then he moved again, and you lost the thought completely. The kitchen blurred. Your hands clutched at him, one fisted in the vest, one at his neck, holding him close as he drove you higher. The refrigerator hummed somewhere far away. The counter was cold beneath you. His mouth was hot against yours. His breathing filled your ears.

 His praise came low and rough, no longer polished, no longer smug in the same way. “That’s it.”

Your eyes closed.

“Good girl.”

Your fingers tightened.

“Just like that.”

Your body answered every word.

Jack knew it. He used it. He kept one hand at your hip and brought the other to your jaw, making you look at him when your head started to fall back.

“Stay with me.”

Your eyes opened.

He was close. You could see it now. In the tension around his mouth. In the way his breath caught every time you pulled him harder against you. In the way the rhythm turned rougher, less perfect, more honest.

“Jack,” you whispered.

His thumb brushed your cheek. “I know.”

“I’m—” You tried. 

“I know.” His mouth touched yours. “Let me feel it.”

The words tipped you over. Your whole body went tight around him, hands clutching at the vest, mouth open against his, his name breaking somewhere in your throat as the room disappeared in a rush of heat and sound and Jack holding you through it.

Jack’s forehead dropped to yours, his breath breaking hot against your mouth.

“Oh, fuck.”

Your hands tightened in the front of his vest. “Jack.”

His grip dug into your hip, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to tell you he was there with you, right there, as gone as you were.

“I’m gonna come,” he said, voice wrecked now. “Oh—fu-fuck.”

The sound of him losing control almost tipped you over again.

His mouth brushed yours, messy and barely there.

“God, you’re doing so good,” he breathed. “So good for me.”

You clung to him, his vest rough beneath your hands, his body tense and shaking against yours.

“Jack,” you whispered again.

That was what did it.

His eyes closed. His breath caught. His whole body went tight, and then he buried his face against your neck with a rough, broken sound.

“Fuck,” he whispered against your skin. “Good girl. Good—God, baby.”

His hand tightened once at your waist. Then loosened. His body stayed pressed to yours, still shaking in small aftershocks he could not quite hide. For a moment, there was no command. No teasing. No smugness. Just Jack breathing hard against your throat, vest rough beneath your hands, his body warm and heavy and finally, completely undone.

His mouth pressed to your skin. His body went still.

For a long moment, there was only breathing.

Yours. His.

The hum of the refrigerator returning slowly. The cooling dishwasher. The ordinary kitchen gathering itself around the wreckage of what had just happened on the counter.

Your hands stayed on him. One in his hair. One curled into the vest.

Neither of you moved. Then Jack laughed once. Soft. Rough. Disbelieving.

His forehead stayed against your shoulder. “You okay?”

Your laugh came out weak. “I think my soul left my body.”

His shoulders moved with a quiet laugh. The sound warmed your skin. “Still good?”

You nodded against him. “I’m good.”

His hand, no longer commanding, slid slowly up your back.

Gentle now. Careful.

The dominance loosening into care before you could fully come down from it.

He lifted his head and looked at you.

His face had softened. His hair was a mess. His mouth was warm and swollen from kissing you. The vest was still on, crooked now, one strap half-loose, the POLICE patch no longer centered.

You reached up and touched it with two fingers.

Jack looked down. Then back at you. His mouth curved. Smug again. Barely. “You still hate the vest?”

You stared at him. Then at the vest. Then back at him. “I need you to understand that I am currently too vulnerable to answer questions.”

Jack laughed, low and warm. His thumb brushed your cheek. “That bad?”

You let your head fall back against the cabinet. “Worse.”

His smile softened. “Come here.”

“You are already kind of in my personal space.” You exhaled a laugh. 

“Come here anyway.”

This time, there was no command in it. Just him. You leaned into him, and Jack gathered you carefully against the front of all that gear, one arm around your waist, one hand cradling the back of your head. The vest was still hard against your skin.

Somehow, in his arms, it felt softer.

He kissed your temple. Then your cheek. Then the corner of your mouth.

“You did so good,” he said quietly.

Your eyes closed. That praise hit differently now. Not sharp. Not dangerous. Warm.

You let out a slow breath against his neck. “Don’t be smug.”

Jack’s mouth brushed your hair. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

“A little.”

You laughed, boneless and breathless.

He held you tighter for a second, like the laugh mattered.

Behind you, the dishwasher clicked one last time.

Your eyes opened.

“The spoon,” you whispered.

Jack went still. Then he started laughing against your shoulder.

You felt it more than heard it. Deep. Quiet. Helpless.

You smiled into the side of his neck. “Your dishwasher is still open.”

“I know.”

“You’re breaking kitchen safety rules.”

Jack lifted his head enough to look at you.

His eyes were still dark, but softer now. “You want to finish unloading it?”

You looked down at yourself. Then at him. Then at the vest. “Absolutely not.”

His smile came slow. Warm. Entirely too pleased. “Good answer.”

You ended up in Jack’s bed after. 

Not right away. 

There was the shower first, warm water and his hands gentler than they had been in the kitchen. He washed the places where the counter had pressed into your skin. He kissed your shoulder under the spray. He wrapped you in a towel without making a joke about how unsteady your legs still were, which you appreciated enough not to mention how smug he looked about it.

Then one of his shirts.

Then water.

Then bed.

The room was dim by then, the late afternoon light gone blue at the edges of the blinds. You were curled against his side, cheek resting over his heart, one leg tangled with his beneath the sheet. Jack’s hand moved slowly over your back, up and down, steady enough that your breathing had started to match his without you meaning for it to.

He had been quiet for a while. Not distant quiet. Jack had different kinds of quiet. You knew them now.

This one was warm. Settled.

His fingers paused at the center of your back. “Hey.”

You lifted your head enough to look at him.

His face was softer than it had been in the kitchen. Hair damp. Jaw relaxed. No gear. No vest. No command in his voice now.

Just Jack.

“Hey,” you said.

His thumb moved once against your side. “You okay?”

You smiled faintly. “I’m good.”

He nodded. No hovering. No second-guessing. Just belief. Then his gaze dropped to where his hand rested against your back. For a second, you thought he might make a joke. Something about the vest. Something about the spoon. Something dry enough to pull you both back onto safer ground.

He didn’t.

His voice was low when he spoke. “Thank you.”

Your brow softened. “For what?”

Jack’s hand stilled. His eyes came back to yours. “For trusting me like that.”

The room went quiet around the words. Not empty. Full.

Your throat tightened before you could stop it.

Jack looked almost careful now, like the sentence had cost him more than any command he had given you downstairs. Like this was the part where he had less armor. No tactical vest. No smugness. No easy way to turn the weight of it into heat.

Just him, telling you he knew what you had handed him.

You shifted closer, your hand settling over his chest. “I do trust you.”

His jaw moved once. “I know.”

His fingers resumed their slow path over your back, but his voice stayed rougher than before. “I just don’t want to ever take it lightly.”

Oh.

That landed deeper than you expected.

You pressed your cheek back against his chest, listening to the steady beat beneath your ear.

“You don’t.”

Jack’s arm tightened around you.

Not much.

Enough.

You felt his mouth touch your hair. “Good.”

You closed your eyes.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

The house was quiet. The kitchen was downstairs with its open dishwasher and its abandoned spoon and the counter you were still not emotionally prepared to think about. The vest was somewhere else now. The boots. The belt. All the hard edges stripped away.

But Jack’s hand stayed warm on your back.

And when he kissed the top of your head again, it felt like the softest part of everything he had meant all along.

Jack turned to look at him. "You have to stop saying that. People are genuinely starting to believe it."

Robby smiled and said nothing, which was worse.

"What do you think Norris is gonna say?" Jack asked.

"Probably AI."

Other doctors two seats down snorted. Someone behind them laughed under their breath.

The hall lights dimmed. Director Trent Norris walked onto the stage, adjusted the microphone once, and started talking. Robby's guess turned out to be right. AI integration, optimized workflow, reducing diagnostic error. The usual speech was dressed up in a new language.

"Told you," Robby murmured.

Jack shook his head, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth despite himself.

"But that's not the only reason I asked everyone to gather this morning." Norris raised his arm toward the right side of the stage. "We're also here to welcome the new head of Trauma Surgery."

Genuine applause moved through the room. The trauma department had been losing attendings for months. The caseload was brutal, the hours worse, and the last two heads had both resigned within the year. A replacement this fast was either very good news or a very rushed decision.

"Another one?" Robby said under his breath. "How did they find someone that fast?"

Then a figure stepped out from the right side of the stage.

A woman. She walked toward Norris at an unhurried, even pace, and when she reached him the handshake was firm and immediate. No hesitation, no nerves. Just someone who had introduced herself to enough rooms full of strangers to stop thinking about it.

Jack saw her and went still.

He knew that posture. He knew the way she moved, the way her eyes swept the crowd without being obvious about it, the particular set of her shoulders that came from spending time in places where knowing a room was not optional.

He knew her.

*****

You had not slept enough. You'd flown in from Paris two days ago, gotten the confirmation call yesterday morning, and spent the hours between reminding yourself that you had walked into harder rooms than this one. A hospital auditorium was nothing. You'd introduced yourself to a tent full of combat medics in a war zone with someone else's blood still on your forearms. This was fine.

"Good morning, everyone." You kept your voice steady. "My name is Dr. Y/N, and I'll be your new head of Trauma Surgery. I'll keep this short because every second in a hospital costs something, and I'd rather earn your time than assume it."

A quiet ripple of laughter went through the room. The knot in your chest loosened slightly.

Then it came. That particular warmth on your right side, the irrational and very specific feeling of being watched by someone who already knew you. You had learned a long time ago to trust that feeling.

You glanced toward the right side of the audience.

Your breath caught.

Curly hair. Arms crossed over his chest. That expression, patient and unreadable, like he was waiting to see what you would do next.

"Oh, shit." It barely left your mouth but the microphone was still clipped to your lapel and the hall was quiet enough that several heads turned at once.

Robby had been watching. He noticed your gaze drift, followed the line of it to Jack beside him, looked back at you, then at Jack again.

"Do you two know each other?"

The corner of Jack's mouth lifted. "She used to yell at me. Back when I was in the army."

"What?"

Jack didn't elaborate. He was still watching you from across the room with that same unhurried attention, and there was something in his expression that was quiet and warm in a way that had no business being either of those things.

********

After the introduction wrapped, you stepped down from the stage and let Director Norris walk you through the hospital. Departments, key staff, the layout slowly building itself into something you could navigate from memory. The trauma bays were well equipped. The OR suites were clean. The staff nodded at you with the polite wariness of people who had seen new department heads come and go.

Then you reached the ER. 

"This is Dr. Robby, Chief of Emergency Medicine. He runs the day shift."

Robby offered his hand with a straightforward, easy warmth. "Good to meet you."

"You too," you said, and meant it.

"And next to him—"

"Dr. Jack Abbot." The name came out before Norris finished the sentence.

Jack smiled at that. Not wide, not showy. Just a small, quiet thing, like something that had been waiting.

"I work nights," he said, and offered his hand.

You shook it. "Great. Then I won't have to see you much."

His grip was steady and warm. It was just that his hands were exactly as you remembered them. Warm and certain, the kind of grip that had once pulled you back to focus in a field tent when everything around you was noise and blood and too much happening at once. The hand that had steadied your shoulder on your worst days without making a thing of it. You had not thought about his hands in a long time. You had tried fairly hard not to. You let go first.

Norris looked between the two of you with the careful expression of someone reassessing a decision. Robby had gone very still beside him.

"Are we going to have a problem here?" Norris asked.

"Not at all," Jack said. "We go way back. This is just how we are."

"You almost got us court-martialed," you said.

"That didn't happen."

"Because I stopped you."

Jack tilted his head slightly. "That is a very generous version of events."

You looked at him for a moment. He looked back, relaxed, patient, in absolutely no rush. He had always been like that. Completely unbothered in a way that used to make you want to throw things at him.

"Good to see you haven't changed, Dr. Abbot."

"Good to see you either, Doctor."

You turned to Norris. "Should we continue?"

"Yes, of course." Norris moved forward smoothly, the practiced ease of a man who had seen worse. "The attending lounge is just down the hall."

You followed without looking back.

Robby waited until your footsteps faded down the corridor. Then he turned to Jack with his arms crossing slowly over his chest.

"What was that?"

Jack was still looking at the hallway where you'd gone. There was something in his expression that Robby couldn't quite name, something settled and quiet, like a man looking at something familiar.

"That's just how we talk to each other," Jack said.

He let that sit for a second. "The two of you look like you're either one bad day away from strangling each other or one good day away from something HR would have a field day with. Which one is it, Jack?"

"We worked closely."

"She said you almost got court-martialed."

"She has a tendency to dramatize."

"Jack."

Jack looked over at him. Something moved behind his eyes, brief and unguarded, and then it was gone.

"She's good," he said. Quiet, like it wasn't up for debate. "Genuinely one of the best I've ever seen. Doesn't matter where you put her, field tent or operating room, she figures it out and she doesn't stop." He paused. "If she could survive a warzone she can handle this trauma department longer than anyone who's come before her." Another pause, shorter. "Don't tell her I said that."

Robby nodded slowly. He'd worked with Jack long enough to know that Jack Abbot did not hand out words like those easily or often. If he vouched for someone like that, without being asked, without any setup, it meant something.

"I believe you," Robby said.

Jack smiled, “You should.” He walked toward the exit, "Yeah," he said to no one. "This is definitely going to be fun."

*************

The ER was already moving by the time Jack pushed through the doors, bag still on his shoulder. Someone had taped a hand-drawn crown to the triage board. Dana was at the nurses station with the look of someone who had been waiting.

"The night shift saviour has arrived," she announced.

Jack pulled his bag off and dropped it behind the desk. "Dana."

"Hi." She leaned against the counter, arms folded, with the particular energy of someone sitting on information. "So. Why did I have to hear from Robby that you know the new trauma head?"

"News travels fast."

"So it's true." She smiled. "She's already made an impression, by the way. And she only started yesterday."

"She's already working?"

"She came in at seven in the morning on her first day and apparently the trauma department has not recovered."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean even Dr.Brandon Park went quiet around her."

Jack turned that over for a second. Then he smiled. "I would love to see that." He also got a text from Robby talking about you, ‘She’s good. Really good.’

Before Dana could respond, the doors swung open. Mateo and Ellis were already moving. “Dr. Abbot, we need you.” 

"Let's go," Jack said, and followed them into the trauma room.

The patient was a mess. Mid-forties, blunt abdominal trauma, pressure dropping steadily. Ellis rattled off vitals while Jack pulled on gloves, and it took about thirty seconds for everyone in the room to reach the same conclusion at roughly the same time.

The OR attending who had come down from upstairs stood at the foot of the bed with his hands at his sides and the expression of a man doing very fast math in his head.

"I can't take this alone," he said. He looked at Mateo. "Call Dr. Y/N."

Mateo was already reaching for the phone.

"She's not on nights," Jack said.

"She told us we could call her any time." The attending didn't look up from the patient. "Any time, twenty-four hours. Her words."

Mateo had the phone to his ear. A pause. Then, "Hello, Doctor? Yes. Yes, we have a situation." He put the phone down and looked at the room. "She'll be here. Keep him alive for ten minutes."

Jack raised his eyebrows.

Eight minutes and forty seconds later, you came through the door still pulling your hair back. You snapped on gloves, stepped up to the table, and assessed the patient in the span of about four seconds.

"That was fast," Jack said.

"I live nearby." You didn't look up. "It's convenient."

"Like the old days." The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. "You used to sprint to the tent like something was chasing you."

"Something was usually trying to kill us, so." You adjusted your angle, focused. "Similar energy. Except the floor isn't dirt and nothing is actively on fire."

You looked down at the patient. At the stabilization work already done, the lines placed, the pressure managed. You read it the way you read everything, quickly and completely, and you knew within about four seconds exactly whose hands had been here before yours.

You looked up at Jack. "Did you do the initial stabilization?"

"Yup."

You made a small sound in the back of your throat. Not a yes, not a no. Just acknowledgement.

"Silence means approval?" Jack asked.

"Don't get your hopes up, Dr. Abbot."

You reached for the retractor without asking where it was, your hand already open before Shen had fully registered the movement. He placed it in your palm and you repositioned without breaking your line of sight, two fingers pressing briefly along the patient's abdomen, reading something the rest of the room had apparently missed.

"He's got a bleeder behind the repair. Small. Nobody caught it." You didn't say it like an accusation. Just a fact, delivered to the room, already moving. "Shen, I need a second clamp. Don't hand it to me, just have it ready."

Shen had it ready before you finished the sentence.

Your hands moved with the kind of economy that only came from doing something so many times that thinking about it became a waste of energy. No wasted motion, no hesitation, no asking anyone to confirm what you already knew. You worked the way someone worked when they had learned their craft in places that did not allow for second guesses.

The monitor steadied.

Then climbed.

Shen exhaled through his nose, quiet enough that it barely counted as a sound.

You checked the monitor over your shoulder. "Vitals are stabilizing. Let's move him upstairs."

"Yes, Doctor."

The elevator doors opened and the patient was wheeled through. You pulled off your mask and gloves in the corridor, balling them up without breaking stride. Jack fell into step beside you, doing the same.

"You like it here so far?" he asked.

"I think so." You tossed your gloves in the bin by the door. "The trauma department needs work though."

"What kind of work?"

"The kind that comes with higher expectations." You hit the elevator button. "But that's fixable."

Jack put his hands in his pockets, watching you. The elevator opened and you stepped in, and he stayed where he was, and for a second before the doors closed you looked at each other with the particular ease of two people who had stood in much worse places together and survived them both.

Then the doors closed.

Shen appeared at Jack's shoulder from approximately nowhere.

"You know her?"

"Is it not obvious?"

Shen tilted his head. "The OR attendings are afraid of her." 

Jack looked over. "Really?"

"My friend up there texted me this morning." Shen pulled out his phone, scrolled briefly, and put it away. "Apparently she walked in on her first day, looked around the department, and said, and I am quoting directly here." He cleared his throat. "'This is a battlefield. You'd better gird your loins.'"

Jack pressed his lips together.

"She works fast too," Shen continued. "Like, very fast. My friend said they couldn't keep up with her."

"Yeah." Jack glanced toward the elevator. "She does that."

"How well did you two know each other?"

Jack was quiet for a moment, the kind of quiet that meant he was deciding how much of the answer to give.

"The first time I saw her," he said, "she looked like a scared rabbit." He remembered it clearly. The medic tent, the dust, the way you'd been standing in the middle with your hands clasped in front of you and your eyes doing that thing where you were absolutely not going to cry and absolutely holding it together by a thread. "Brand new. First deployment. Completely out of her depth."

Shen absorbed every word of it quietly, filing it away with the particular focus of someone who had just stumbled onto information that nobody else in the building had yet. Ellis didn't know. Mateo definitely didn't know. This was valuable. This was currency.

He was absolutely telling them later.

"And I was the one who told her to keep up." Jack said it simply, like it was just a fact. Like he hadn't thought about it in a while and wasn't thinking about it now.

But his eyes were still on the elevator.

*********

FLASHBACK 

The tent smelled like antiseptic and heat.

You had arranged the instruments three times already. Scalpels in order of size, retractors grouped by type, suture kits at the right hand side where you could reach them without looking. It was the same thing you did before every shift back home, the same small ritual that told your hands the work was about to start.

It helped. Usually.

You had no reason to be nervous. You were a doctor. Two years of ER, OR rotations, a handful of volunteer deployments before this one. You had seen bad things and kept working through them. You knew how to do this. 

"Nervous?"

You looked up. The man watching you from across the tent was older, late forties, with the kind of weathered calm that came from having done this in places like this for a long time. His name tag read Clark. Special Forces Medical Sergeant First Class. He'd know the ground.

"Is it that obvious?" you asked.

"It's nice that you arranged everything." He glanced at his watch. "It'll be a mess in about forty seconds."

You looked at the instruments. Then at him. "Oh."

He gave you a small, not unkind smile, and moved to the other side of the tent.

You had exactly enough time to register that you had no idea what you had signed up for before the tent flap snapped open and the world came in all at once.

Soldiers. Three of them, then two more behind, and the noise and heat and dust came with them and suddenly the tent that had felt too quiet felt very small. Someone was screaming. Someone else was telling him to stay still. There was blood on the canvas floor and the instruments you had arranged so carefully were already irrelevant.

You stood there for one full second.

"You new?"

The voice was low and unhurried, and it cut through the noise with the ease of something that had never once needed to raise itself to be heard. You turned.

Salt and pepper curly hair. Sharp eyes that had already assessed you and moved on. He was in uniform, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and he was already moving toward the nearest patient with the focused calm of someone who had done this so many times it had stopped requiring thought.

"Yes," you said.

"Golden hour." He was already turning back. "You know what that means?"

"Yes."

"Then you know we can't miss it. Every second is a second we don't get back. Try to keep up kid." He didn't wait to see if you nodded.

You followed.

The next forty minutes were the most disorienting of your life. He moved between patients with a speed and efficiency that had no wasted motion in it, calling things out in clipped, precise language, and you scrambled to keep up and mostly did and twice almost didn't. Your hands knew what to do. Your training was there. But the pace was different from anything you had practiced for, a different rhythm entirely, and you had to let go of how you normally worked and just move.

You almost fell behind. Then you decided you weren't going to.

You matched him. Not perfectly, not gracefully, but you matched him.

At some point, between one patient and the next, he glanced over at you. Just briefly.

Then the soldier in front of you grabbed the edge of the table and looked straight at you and said, "Please. Please save me." And something in his voice, the rawness of it, the complete absence of any pretense, made your hands stop for just a fraction of a second.

"Hey."

You looked up. Jack was across the table, watching you. Not impatiently. Just watching.

"Breathe," he said quietly.

The tent was loud around you and somehow his voice landed through all of it anyway.

"In and out. Numb your ears. Your work is right in front of you." He held your gaze for one more second. "You've trained for this. So work."

You breathed in. You breathed out.

Your hands moved.

Something settled in your chest, not calm exactly, but something close enough to function. You stopped hearing the screaming as screaming and started hearing it as information, as a body telling you what it needed. You stopped thinking about the heat and the dust and the fact that you were very far from any hospital you had ever worked in.

You just worked.

And somewhere in the middle of it, without quite noticing when it happened, you found the rhythm.

*********************

When it was over, the tent was quieter in the specific way that came after something loud. Some of the soldiers were stable. The medical team moved in the low, efficient way of people coming down from an adrenaline they were used to.

You saw the body bag near the entrance.

You didn't say anything. You just looked at it for a moment, and then you walked outside.

There was a strip of shadow on the far side of the tent where the canvas blocked the worst of the sun. You sat down against it, pulled your knees up, and wrapped your arms around them. The ground was dry and hard and you didn't care.

Your heart was still going. You could feel it in your throat, your wrists, behind your eyes. The kind of heartbeat that reminded you that your body had taken everything very seriously even when you had been trying to tell it to be quiet.

You pressed your forehead to your knees.

"It was stressful wasn’t it?"

You looked up.

He was standing a few feet away, not close enough to crowd, holding two cans of Coca-Cola. He held one out. He had shed his combat uniform jacket somewhere between the tent and here, down to a black shirt and camouflage pants, and somehow that made him look less like a soldier and more like just a person who had also had a very long day.

You took it without thinking, and the cold of it against your palm was almost startling.

"It was a hard first day," you said.

Jack sat down against the canvas beside you, not quite next to you, leaving a foot of space between you like a reasonable person. He opened his can. "At least you didn't faint. Most volunteers faint. First week, sometimes second."

You thought about that. About the fact that you had not fainted, that your hands had kept moving, that at some point in that tent you had stopped waiting to feel ready and just started working.

The Coca-Cola was warm. You drank it anyway.

"Seeing wounded soldiers is hard," he said. "It should be. If it stops being hard, that's when you worry." He looked out at the open ground beyond the tent line. "But if you can get through it, it becomes like tying your shoes. You don't think about it. You just do it."

You didn't say anything. You turned the can in your hands.

What he said settled somewhere in your chest and stayed there.

It became your anchor. You went back into that tent the next day, and the day after, and the thing that had felt like it might break you started to feel like something you knew how to carry. Your nerves didn't disappear exactly. They just stopped running the show.

And then you started paying attention to how he worked.

That was where the arguments began.

His methods were fast and effective and sometimes made you want to put your head through the canvas wall. He improvised in ways that your training told you were wrong and his results told you were not. You told him so, loudly, on multiple occasions. He listened to about thirty percent of what you said and did whatever he was going to do anyway, and the worst part was that it usually worked, which gave you nothing to stand on and everything to complain about.

It usually started small.

"You're not going to suture it that way," you said.

"I am, actually." Jack didn't look up.

"That closure is going to dehisce in forty-eight hours."

"It hasn't yet."

"It will."

"You've been saying that for two weeks."

"I'm building a case."

He made a sound that was almost a laugh. You bit the inside of your cheek and kept working.

Sometimes it was his improvising. He had a habit of reaching for whatever was available, which was impressive in a way you refused to acknowledge out loud and infuriating in every way you did. 

The arguments became a fixture. The other medics stopped flinching at them. The soldiers started timing them.

"Where did you even get that?" you asked once, watching his hands.

"Supply tent."

"That is not a medical instrument, Dr. Abbot."

"It's doing a medical job."

"There are correct ways to do things."

"And incorrect ways that work just as well."

You looked at him. He looked back, calm and faintly entertained, which was the most irritating combination of expressions a human face could produce. The patient's vitals climbed steadily on the monitor behind him.

"I hate you," you said pleasantly.

"No you don't."

You turned away before he could see that he was right.

The arguments became a fixture. The other medics stopped flinching. The soldiers built a betting system around them, which you only found out about when soldier Diaz accidentally let it slip and immediately regretted it.

"It's a pretty even split," he offered.

From across the tent, Jack said nothing. He didn't have to. You could see his mouth doing that thing.

"Don't," you said, pointing at him.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

He looked at you with that slow, unhurried attention he reserved for things he found privately funny. "Even split is a compliment," he said. "To both of us."

You held his gaze one second too long. Then you found something else to look at.

The older sergeant at the far end of the tent sighed into his coffee. "When are those two going to stop with the foreplay?"

Nobody had a good answer.

Diaz studied the wall.

Jack picked up his chart.

You snapped on a fresh pair of gloves and went back to work.

Working with Jack Abbot could be infuriating. But you couldn't help it. He was a damn good doctor.  After a surgery that had gone long and difficult and finally, mercifully, well, you stood beside Jack at the wash station. The water was lukewarm. You scrubbed in silence.

You were looking at him.

“You’re staring.”

You blinked.

“I’m not.”

Jack finally looked up from the sink, drying blood from his hands with slow, practiced movements. There was sweat curling the silver at his temples, sleeves shoved to his elbows.

He looked unfairly calm for someone who had just spent the last three hours somehow refusing to let a man die.

“You are,” he said. “Been doing it for a while too.”

You crossed your arms immediately, mostly because suddenly you needed something to do with them.

“I was observing.”

“Observing?” One eyebrow lifted.

“Professionally.”

“Mm.” The corner of his mouth moved. “So. You’re impressed.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Kid,” he said, drying his hands, “you looked at me like I’d just split the ocean.”

You bit the inside of your cheek hard enough to ground yourself.

Because the annoying part?

He wasn't completely wrong.

“Fine,” you muttered. “It was good.”

“Good.”

You exhaled sharply. “Very good.”

That amused look again.

You hated that look.

“I’ve only seen that technique in textbooks,” you admitted quietly. “Nobody actually does it.”

“I do.”

“Apparently.”

He crossed his arms then, studying you in a way that made you suddenly aware of the noise in the tent. The shouting outside. The distant clatter of metal trays.

And somehow none of it felt louder than the silence between you.

“Stick around,” he said. “You’ll see more of it.”

Before you could answer, he reached out and squeezed your shoulder once, absentmindedly warm and entirely too familiar for someone who technically wasn't anything to you. The touch lasted barely a second, but somehow your brain decided that was long enough to make it a problem. 

“Stay alive, kid.”

*******

Present Time

The ER had finally hit a quiet patch. Jack grabbed his jacket and slipped out through the side exit, just needing a few minutes of air that didn't smell like antiseptic and floor cleaner.

He was halfway through his first decent breath when he saw you.

You were heading toward the parking structure, badge still clipped to your lanyard, jacket folded over one arm. Off the clock, or close enough.

"Doctor!"

You stopped. There was a small flinch before you turned around, the kind you couldn't help when a voice you hadn't heard in years suddenly came out of nowhere and called your name like no time had passed at all. Like he was calling you across a field tent in the middle of warzone. 

You turned around.

He was already walking toward you. And that was the thing that caught you first, not his face, not the fact that he was here, but the way he moved. Easy. Forward. No scanning, no checking left and right the way he used to in the field, that constant low-level vigilance that every soldier carried like a second skin. He just walked toward you like the ground between you was the most uncomplicated thing in the world.

It looked good on him. You were not going to think about that.

"I never gave you a proper welcome," he said, stopping in front of you.

"The auditorium this morning wasn't enough?"

"That was a spectacle. Doesn't count." He tilted his head slightly. "How are you? After coming back from there."

The question landed somewhere quiet. You both knew what there meant and neither of you was going to say it out loud on a Pittsburgh sidewalk at the end of a shift.

You were silent for a moment. The memories had a way of sitting very close to the surface when you weren't expecting them.

"When I got home," you said quietly, "I questioned every life choice I've ever made."

Jack huffed a soft laugh through his nose and nodded once. "Yeah," he said. "That happens to all of us."

You looked back at him. "Comforting."

"It's true."

You shook your head lightly. "You always made war sound like some terrible group project."

"It was." He shrugged. "Just with more explosions."

A reluctant breath of laughter escaped you before you could stop it. His eyes caught it immediately.

There she is.

"You used to be a crybaby, you know," he said casually. "I lent you my shoulder more than once."

Your head snapped toward him. "I am not a crybaby."

"You cried when you tasted your first MRE."

"That was a gag reflex."

"You spit it out."

"It tasted like salted cardboard soaked in regret."

"And then you got lost trying to find the bathroom."

"The base was poorly labelled."

"I found you behind the generator."

"I was taking a shortcut."

"You were completely turned around and too proud to ask anyone for directions."

"I was acclimating."

"For forty minutes."

"Dr. Abbot."

"Behind the generator."

"I will walk away from this conversation right now."

Jack grinned. Still infuriating. Still way too pleased with himself.

"Be honest," he said.

You narrowed your eyes. "What?"

"You miss working with me."

You scoffed immediately. "In your dreams, Abbot."

"Ah." He pointed at you with entirely too much confidence. "That one."

"What one?"

"Denial."

You rolled your eyes so hard it almost hurt and crossed your arms tighter over your chest. He stepped a little closer, hands moving behind his back, that particular smugness settling comfortably into place like it had never left.

"But deep down," he said, "you like seeing me again."

You should have ignored that. You really should have. You had a perfectly good parking structure forty metres away and a perfectly good reason to be walking toward it.

Instead you tilted your head and stepped closer too. Close enough to make him pause.

"What if I do?" you asked quietly.

That caught him. Just for a second, just enough. Something shifted behind his eyes, a small recalibration he covered quickly but not quickly enough.

You shrugged one shoulder, voice dropping into something dangerously casual. "Maybe I saw your picture in the Pitt brochure." His eyebrows lifted slightly. "Maybe my subconscious made me choose this hospital." You leaned in just enough to feel the challenge land between you. "Or maybe I just missed arguing with someone who thinks hospital policy is optional."

For once, Jack Abbot looked genuinely speechless.

Only briefly.

You stepped back before he could say anything else. "See you around, Abbot." Then you turned and walked away. Did not look back. Would absolutely not look back.

Behind you, Jack stayed exactly where he was. Hands sliding into his pockets now, watching you go with the particular stillness of a man whose brain was doing something his face wasn't quite ready to show yet. A little confused. A little entertained. And, if he was being honest with himself, far more interested than he had planned to be when he stepped outside for fresh air twenty minutes ago.

He stayed there until you disappeared around the corner.