Page 70 of Sexting His Assistant

The room stills.

For one second, I realize exactly how close I am to his bed.

.Close enough to see the dark shadow along his jaw. The faint exhaustion around his eyes. The tension in his mouth from pain he refuses to admit. Close enough to see the blood that remains in a thin streak near his collarbone, missed by the doctor’s cloth.

My hand itches to wipe it away. I don’t. Instead, I take the spoon from him.

His fingers brush mine. The contact is nothing.

My body, having learned absolutely nothing from the past twenty-four hours, treats it like a confession.

Luka doesn’t let go immediately. His gaze holds mine, dark and unreadable. Then his fingers open.

I sit carefully on the edge of the bed. The mattress dips slightly under my weight, and his eyes drop to the movement before rising again to my face.

“This is unnecessary,” he says.

“Most things involving you are.” I scoop broth onto the spoon and hold it out.

He stares at it.

I stare back. “You cannot possibly be too proud for soup,” I say.

“You would be surprised.”

“I wouldn’t.”

For a moment, I think he will refuse out of sheer stubbornness. Then he leans forward and takes the spoonful from me.

Something about the act is so intimate that my hand nearly trembles.

It’s ridiculous. I know that. I know it’s only broth, only a spoon, only a man injured enough that practicality has cornered him. But Luka does not accept care easily. He does not allow softness near him unless it has been cleared, measured, and stripped of danger first.

This has not been cleared. This is dangerous.

He knows it, too.

I can tell by the way he watches me between spoonfuls, silent and focused, as if every small motion of my hand is another piece of evidence he is filing away.

I feed him slowly. Neither of us speaks for a while.

The fire shifts in the grate. Somewhere beyond the room, distant footsteps move down the corridor and fade. The estate feels impossibly large around us, full of locked doors and armed men and secrets I’m not supposed to know.

Here, in the low light, the world narrows to the bowl in my hand and Luka’s mouth around the spoon.

I try not to look at his mouth.

Obviously, I fail.

His lips close over the spoon with quiet precision. No wasted movement. Nothing overt. Still, heat climbs up my neck because I have not forgotten the boardroom, and neither has he. It is there in the silence, breathing with us.

After a few minutes, I set the spoon down and reach for the bread.

“Jam?” I ask.

“No.”

I spread cherry jam on the bread.