"Agreed."
"The security detail is invisible. No earpieces in my trauma bay."
"Already done."
"And you finish your physical therapy." I hold his gaze. "All of it. Every session. Non-negotiable."
The real smile — the one that makes him look younger and less armored, the one I've been watching emerge for weeks like a thing I'm not sure I get to keep.
"Agreed," he says.
I stand. Cross around the desk. Stop in front of him — close, our own version of close, the distance that stopped being safe somewhere around the beginning of all of this.
"I have one more condition," I say.
"Name it."
I reach up. Take his lapels in my hands. Pull him down to my mouth.
He comes without hesitation.
This is different from every other time.
Not desperate. We've done desperate, in kitchens and closets and borrowed bedrooms with deadlines pressing in from every direction. This is something else. Two people who survived something together came out the other side and are choosing, deliberately and with full information, to be here.
He kisses me like he has all the time in the world.
Like the war is over.
Because it is.
His hands find my waist — both of them, pulling me in — and I go, hands sliding up his chest and into his hair, and he makes a low sound against my mouth that I feel in my spine. He walks me backward until I hit the desk and stops, pulling back just far enough to look at me.
"Lock the door and close the shades," I say.
He goes.
He's back in five seconds.
He gets the stethoscope off first — lifts it from around my neck and sets it on the desk with a care that has no business being as charged as it is. His jacket follows. Then his hands find the hem of my scrub top and pull it over my head in one motion, the long-sleeve shirt underneath goes next, and then his hands are at the drawstring of my scrub pants, looking up at me while he works the knot loose — dark eyes, unhurried, the expression of a man who has decided he has all the time in the world and intends to use every second of it.
The pants hit the floor.
I'm standing in my office in nothing but underwear, and Luca Moretti is looking at me like I'm the answer to something he forgot he was asking.
He walks me backward.
Not to the desk. Past it.
All the way to the window — floor to ceiling, overlooking the East River. The city sprawls below, indifferent and alive, eighteen floors down.
He presses me against the glass. The cold shocks my bare skin. I gasp.
He swallows the sound with his mouth.
"Luca—" I look down. Tiny cars. Tiny people. Absolutely no idea. "Someone will see?—"
"No one can see." His mouth at my ear. His hands on my hips, turning me. "But you're going to feel every single person down there not watching."
