history, huh?

He brings them to her waist as if she needs the reminder, when really, when isn’t she thinking of his hands on her? Of his coarse-heeled palms kneading her breasts then roving lower, spreading her thighs apart and holding them to the mattress to eat her with ease? Two fingers pressing on her tongue then into her cunt, slick enough that the saliva is more for play than for added lubrication—

Samira shudders. If the strategic placement of his black undershirt obscuring his lap is anything to go by, she bets if she were to ask him to plead his case right here, right now, he would.

They don’t have the time, though, so she settles with, “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Spared this time, Abbot.”

He hums. She can practically feel it in her chest, as acutely as she can feel the mindless fractal patterns he’s begun tracing over her iliac crests with his thumbs. “Lucky me.” Then, far from subtle: “Any, uh, plans for after your shift?”

She knows what he’s actually asking. It’s still new, this thing between them, but she’s already begun spending more time at his place than at her own. Even before his injury, she’d planned on keeping him company tonight, an extra buffer against the fireworks; so now, with the sound of gunfire fresh on his mind—

“Mmm, I don’t think I’ll be going to my apartment.”

“No?” Samira has never heard so much thinly-veiled hope in a single syllable.

“Nope. Thing is,” she reaches past him to take his tactical zip in hand, folding it into a neat square she’ll place in his locker as he scrubs up, “I have this patient I’m going to need to keep an eye on. I don’t usually make house calls, but he’s special. Reckless, sure, and a bit of a cowboy, but special nonetheless. A real heart of gold. Anyway, I’m going to want to check on him. Make sure I let him know that his instinct to put himself in danger to ensure someone else’s safety is noble but—” her gaze tracks up from the bloody sleeves to his eyes, all traces of previous teasing gone, “but that I hope it isn’t rooted in the belief that he’s expendable, because he isn’t. Not to anyone here. Not to me.”

Besotted. It’s the only word that comes close to describing the look on Jack’s face. Like he’d give her the world if she just asked, and maybe even before then, too. He swallows thickly. “He sounds like a piece of work,” he manages, his throat tight.

“Oh, he is,” she agrees with a quirk of her lips. “It doesn’t feel like work with him, though.”

“Yeah?” he whispers. Urges her closer, hands somehow more reverent than before; she didn’t know that was even possible. “What does it feel like?”

She noses at Jack’s hair: sweat, and the remnant of his curl cream that she’s taken to using herself, and a faint tang of heated metal under the antiseptic of their surroundings. Years ago, if she’d been asked to describe the scents of home, she never would have imagined the blend to be her answer. But it is now, and she lets herself sink into it for a moment longer before the fray pulls both of them back in.