Page 58 of Claim

I dabbed carefully at a cut. He flinched, sucking in a breath.

“Sorry,” I whispered, instinctively easing the pressure, gentling my touch as if I could undo any of it.

“S’okay.” He blinked up at me. “You always were a bit… Tricky.”

For a heartbeat, my mouth betrayed me and I gave him the smallest hint of a smile, my chest tightening with relief. But I quickly schooled my face back into neutrality and kept working, focusing on the task of cleaning him because it was safer than looking at him. And as I did, he slipped his hand from the table and dangled his arm to his side. His shoulder brushed my leg. Light. Tentative. As if he wasn’t certain he was allowed the contact. Then, before I could process what he was doing, he skimmed my ankle with his fingers. Barely anything, really. A ghost of a touch. More reflex than intention. Could be passed off as an accident.

Though it was anything but.

Proven when he drifted his fingertips higher, edging beneath the hem of my trousers and found the strip of warm skin above my sock. There, he stilled. As though that tiny feel of skin under his fingers, human and real, was enough to anchor him. And he leant forward a fraction, breathing in—breathing me in—the exhale following quietly broken.

My eyes burnt.

I swallowed and glanced at the window. The guards weren’t watching. Then I checked the camera. It was dark, dead, or badly angled. So I let us have this moment. Stayed there a little longer, letting him touch me if it meant keeping him from believing there wasn’t anything for him beyond these walls. And I let myself have this moment, too. His rough fingers stroking my ankle, the smallest contact cutting straight through me, to make me stutter. Because I needed it. So fucking badly.

Fuck.

I was so in love with him it hurt.

So completely, irrevocably in love with him—there was no escaping that truth. And if this moment of selfish recklessness cost me the case… so be it.

But a noise from outside had me realising the cost of that. So I stepped back. Away from his touch. From his warmth. And he brought his hand back up to the table, glancing up at me with those puppy-dog eyes that had made me his from day one. I smiled. The smallest, almost imperceptible rise of my lips to let him know I was right there with him. Then I handed him the cloth to return to my seat, placing the table firmly between us again.

Barrier restored.

Because if I wanted his touch again, I had to fight as if I’d never had it.

“Before we go any further,” I laced my fingers together on the tabletop, “I need to be clear about something.”

Razor shifted in the chair, careful of his ribs. “Go on.”

“This is a legal conference. Anything you tell me here is privileged. I’m here in a professional capacity. And nothing I do next happens unless you consent to it.”

He cocked his head. “Bit late for consent between us, eh?”

“Consent for me to act for you.” I held his gaze. “And it matters.”

He looked away then, as if deciding whether to put his throat back under a blade.

I leant forwards to catch his eye again. “Do you want me to act for you? As your counsel.”

The silence stretched, thick and heavy.

Then he turned back to me, and in a voice stripped of bravado, stripped of everything but truth, he said, “I want you in any way you come for me, Tricky.”

I inhaled sharply. Looked down. Those eyes were just as penetrating even with the swelling. So I held onto what would get us back outside these walls where I would come for him willingly.

“Then we proceed.” I opened the file. “When I came here today, my intention was to confirm your instructions, go through the charge as it currently stands, and assess whether there was any realistic scope to revisit bail.”

I paused.

Looked at him.

The swelling around his eye. The split lip. The way his shoulders held too high, every muscle braced as if still expecting the next blow.

“Then you walked in like that.” I gestured to him. “Whatever’s happened to you in the last forty-eight hours wasn’t part of the plan. So we deal with that first.”

“How? You gonna pop down and ask them nicely to keep their hands off me?” He tilted his head. “No offence, Tricky, but that might paint a bigger target on my back.”