Page 88 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“Yes.”

“You want permission to look at my foot?”

His eyes didn’t leave mine as he knelt before me. “I want permission to touch it.”

That went through me in a way no medical crisis justified.

For half a second, the room shifted. Not physically. Sensory. The air held salt from the sea beyond the sealed windows, antiseptic from Sava’s bag, Ian’s skin, something darker under it, forest and smoke and heat. His thumb, if he touched me, would be careful. I knew that before it happened.

I knew it.

The certainty scared me.

“Fine,” I said, too carelessly. “It’s a foot, not state secrets.”

Sava’s eyes flicked up. She knew exactly what I was doing.

Ian didn’t smile. He turned his attention to my ankle and lifted my foot with both hands as if it mattered, one hand on my ankle, the other gently holding the back of my calf. His palms were rough. Warm. Large enough that my foot looked smaller than I appreciated.

He examined the cut with a focus that should have been absurd for a scrape. My body didn’t find it absurd though. My body found it quieting, which was much worse.

“The gravel did this,” he said.

“Technically Henry did this. The gravel was an accomplice.”

His thumb moved lightly along the uninjured skin near my heel, steadying me while he looked at the cut.

Heat moved up my leg and I looked at the ceiling.

Sava cleared her throat in a way that didn’t sound medical and Ian’s hands stopped.

He knew.

Excellent. Wonderful. If the room would like to form a committee about my circulation, we could invite Ronan and make it legally binding.

“It needs cleaning,” Ian said.

Sava came over with antiseptic, and Ian released my foot at once. She cleaned the cut while I pretended not to care that Ian had moved back two feet and looked ready to put his own hands through a wall.

“Is this the part where we all pretend my foot has plot significance?” I asked.

Sava wrapped a small bandage around it. “No. This is the part where I remind you that humans can get infections from ordinary wounds too, since apparently you are collecting every category.”

“Always overachieving.”

Ian’s gaze remained on my leg. Not in a lustful way. In a guilty one.

“Stop,” I said.

His eyes lifted. “Stop what?”

“Looking at every bruise like you personally invented gravity.”

His face went still.

Sava stood and gathered the wrappers from the bandage. “I will check the hall.”

That was a lie, there was nothing medical in the hall and we all knew it. She left anyway. The door closed and for the first time since waking in the suite, Ian and I were alone. Not fully alone. The guards stood outside. Sava could come back. Ronan probably had ears in the walls or some Alpha subscription service for emotional discomfort.