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It’s criminal, the way Zayne can still be so composed even while he has his fingers in you.
They press deeper, thumb bumping up against your clit in the process. You swallow a gasp.
“Any pain?” he asks, too quickly.
“No, just… sensitive.” You keep your eyes firmly fixed on the ceiling. “Is this really necessary?”
“Almost done,” Zayne replies.
“That’s not an answer, Dr. Li.”
Gloved fingers curl upward, as though in reprimand. A droplet of sweat trails down your back, a fingertip tracing your spine. You try so hard to keep your eyes on the ceiling, to resist the urge to reach up and adjust the thin paper hospital gown. Ties in the front. The knot is slipping. Gaping. Your legs in the stirrups, spread. There is absolutely nothing sexy about this, you tell yourself. He's just doing his job. If he knew the things that you were thinking, he would be freaked out. Disgusted. You need to calm down. His finger pushes deeper. You swallow a whimper.
“You're tense,” he comments. “Relax.”
If only he knew what he sounded like. Relax for me. That's a good girl. His fingers are so very long.
“Sorry,” you whisper.
His other hand comes to rest lightly on your thigh. Stroking gently. As though that would soothe you, instead of having the opposite effect.
You're so cruel, Dr. Li, you want to say. He has to know the effect he has. He has to be doing it on purpose. There's not a man on earth who has a face like that and can't possibly be aware of it. You’ve seen the reviews, the admiring comments on Akso Hospital's Moments page. Some try to mask it in a professional lens—about how they've read his research papers, how they're oh so in awe of his keynote speech at the latest medical conference. You've read the papers. You've watched the speech. How much you understood of it all was a different story entirely. The other comments, though, are more.. Overt. About how much they need him to fix their hearts. About the focus and precision characteristic of surgeons.
You’d asked him, once. A casual mention during a quick lunch—he'd had thirty minutes, you'd had twenty. Barely anything, really. But it meant something, didn't it, the commitment to see each other? To meet up? You've gotten popular, Zayne, you’d said. How lucky am I, out to lunch with Akso Hospital's very own celebrity!
He'd taken your phone from you, blinked as he scrolled through the pages and pages of—there's really no other word for them, thirsty comments. I'm glad the hospital is getting good publicity, was all he'd said.
Finally, after much too long, the universe, or maybe Zayne himself, deigns to take pity on you, and he slides his fingers out—slowly, so slowly. You think about Wanderers. About the pile of paperwork on your desk at work. About every single unsexy thing in the world.
Zayne clears his throat, removing his gloves with a snapping sound. His fingers, bare now, a shock of cold, wrap lightly around your ankle, helping you lift your legs from the stirrups.
“Are we done?” you ask. Tone aiming for casual, but you fall short. Or maybe he's just that good at seeing right through you.
He raises an eyebrow. “Somewhere else you’d rather be?”
“Jealous?” you taunt. Hoping that he’ll say yes. Say yes, Zayne. Tell me that you want me to stay. Tell me what you really think.
But as always, he is as inscrutable as ever. Not even the slightest exhaling through his nose, nor the corners of his lips turning up. He just continues on as though he hasn’t even heard you.
“Everything looks good,” says Zayne. “Your test results will be in within the week.”
He turns away, leaning toward his computer and giving you the chance to sit up and adjust the paper gown. You debate leaving it loose—sleeves artfully draped over your shoulders, tie gaping just enough over your chest—but you decide against it. At some point, you have to learn to cut your losses. He just isn’t into you like that. And that’s fine. You’re friends. And you respect his friendship. You’re fine with this. This is enough.
“Just your Evol exam left,” he says, eyes flicking over to meet yours. “Have you had any trouble with it recently? Any concerns?”
“Nope,” you say, swinging your legs back and forth over the edge of the bench. The picture of candor. “All good. You know me—resonating, taking down Wanderers, the works.”
Something like humor dances in his eyes. “Do the works include following your doctor’s orders?”
“Of course!” You gasp theatrically, a hand pressed to your chest in offense. “Dr. Li, you of all people should know that I am a model patient.”
“Our definition of model must differ,” Zayne comments. “Now, be a good patient and hold out your hands, or I’ll have you on desk duty for a month.”
Good patient. So good for him. If your mind were any further in the gutter, you would be drowning where you sit. But you are powerless to do anything other than follow his command, so you offer him your hands and brace yourself. He stands and comes toward you, chest level with your eyes. Those bare fingers—that were inside you mere minutes ago—reach for your hands. Intertwine with you. Palm to palm, fingers woven with yours.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he murmurs.
In response, you close your eyes. It’s second nature, the way you command your Evol. Especially when resonating with someone who welcomes your reach, your hold. For the exam, of course. The feeling, like a thread that you follow into a forest. A path that winds and turns, but the way to go is second nature. You know exactly where to go, as though you have a map in hand. As though you have traversed this same path a thousand times before. So you follow the path down to his energy core. His Evol. Not too much, just enough to pinch between your fingers. A loop around your pinky. Gently, you tug. And then—
Cold.
Your eyes fly open, and the last thing you’re expecting is to meet Zayne’s wide ones. Pupils blown out. There’s something wild in his gaze, almost desperate. Something you’ve never seen before.
Further down, and your hands are frozen together. Evident that Zayne was trying to isolate the cold to his own skin—still thinking of you, still protecting you, still never losing control entirely—but he didn’t succeed entirely, and there’s frost blooming all over your hands. And him, his hands, wrists, arms, disappearing under his doctor coat. As though the cold is trying to freeze them together.
“What… what happened?” you ask. By the time you look back up at him, whatever emotion you saw, or thought you saw in his gaze, it’s nowhere to be found. “Did I do that? My Evol… is it... “
You can’t say it out loud. Even the idea—of testing and labs and everything that Grandma tried so hard to keep you safe from—is enough to have you shaking. But he understands. He always does.
“No,” Zayne says, firm. “No, no, don’t worry. You didn’t do anything. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
His free hand comes around to cradle the back of your head, guiding you forward until your forehead is pressing against his chest. Letting you hide the tears that they both know are building up in your eyes.
When you finally pull away, he cups your cheek, wipes your tears away as you lean into the cold.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper.
“Please, don’t apologize. This had nothing to do with you,” he insists. “This was my fault entirely.”
The realization that you’re still holding hands, frozen together as you are, comes too suddenly. That the position you are in now—him standing between your spread legs, your clasped hands pressed to both of your hearts, your head still in his hand—is not one that a doctor and his patient would usually find themselves in. You’re still dressed in that thin paper gown. It’s riding up dangerously high.
“Sorry,” you say, “sorry, sorry, I can melt it—”
“I thought I told you not to apologize,” he says. “What happened to being my model patient?”
You’ve been around him enough to pick up a few things. You know he’s trying to put you at ease, but it’s not enough, for either of you. His voice is still hard, tense. Ice, ready to snap at the slightest pressure or friction.
Zayne melts the ice on your skin first. Always, always thinking of you first. He must have been holding it back from you, you realize. Barely any on her, but so much on him. So much more under his sleeves that you can’t see.
Your imagination, surely, the way his hands linger around your wrist, cradling your jaw. The way it takes him a few seconds to let go. But no, you know he’s just trying not to hurt you, to make sure that there’s no ice ripping at your skin as you separate from him.
When he turns back to his computer, it’s as though nothing had happened at all.
“No abnormalities detected in your Evol,” he announces. “That should be it for today. Go ahead and get dressed, and Yvonne will help you schedule your next appointment.”
He hasn’t melted his own ice, not even as he begins to walk toward the door. Appointment over, despite the way you’re still frozen in place.
“Zayne, your arms… is your Evol… are you—”
“I’m fine,” he says, and you’re a kid again, iced over and bleeding and still, all you can see is the way he’s running.
“No,” you say, voice hard. “No, don’t do this. Don’t push me away. Not again.”
At that, he looks over his shoulder. Something softens, the ice of him melting—shattering, yes, but into smaller pieces. More manageable.
“I won’t,” Zayne says softly. “Not this time. But I mean it. This isn’t something for you to concern yourself with.”
“If it’s about you, it is my concern,” you say, a moment of courage.
A rare smile courses over his face. Small, barely there. You wouldn’t have noticed unless you were looking. You’re looking. You’re never not looking.
“I’m working a double shift tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll text you during my break.”
He will. You know that for a fact, because he’s said so, and he always stands by his words. If he ends up texting you even a minute late, he’ll find some way to make it up to you. He’s just so good.
“I’ll look forward to it, Dr. Li,” you say, and then he’s gone. You, sitting in that fucking paper gown, on his examination table. Your frozen hands finally move and reach up to your face. The tips of your fingers trace the corners of your mouth. Lifted in a smile so wide it almost hurts.
“Maybe I’m crazy,” you say.
Tara snorts. “No surprise there.”
“No, hear me out. Maybe he’s, like, actually ugly.”
“Ugly,” she repeats. “Dr. Sexy. Do you have eyes? Do you know how many people are so jealous that he’s your PCP? Should have told him something was wrong with your brain instead of your heart.”
“Okay, fine.” You take a vicious bite of your noodles, chewing with vigor. “Then maybe he’s not actually that nice. Or, like, a good guy, you know?”
Tara, like the good friend she is, considers this. She also reaches over to steal a piece of your bok choy, wielding her chopsticks the same way she would her firearm; you, like the good friend you are, let that slide.
“Hmm,” she says. “Okay. I’m following. Continue. So what, you think he’s like, leading you on?”
Even before she finishes her sentence, you’re already shaking your head. “No. No, he would never do that. He would… I don’t know. The opposite, I guess. Talk about it, set boundaries. Make sure that nothing would affect our friendship.”
“Sounds like a good guy to me.”
You groan loudly, letting your head fall forward until your forehead thunks down on your desk painfully. Impossible not to think of how firm his chest was. “Okay. So I’m just an idiot. And I am totally, absolutely, wholly fucked.”
“Now that, I don’t know about,” says Tara. “I thought the whole problem was that you weren’t getting fucked.”
Scratch that. You take back everything you said about her being a good friend. She’s the worst. The next time she swoops in to snag something off your tray, you stab at her with your chopsticks. She retaliates with a squeal, and you’re full on in the midst of what’s turning out to be the fourth greatest chopstick fight the Hunter Agency has ever seen when Simone finds you.
She's carrying a cardboard box nearly five times the size of her head, and she drops it down on your desk without any preamble—or the slightest concern for the battle that she's just interrupted. When you look up at her, you have to do a double-take. It's rare that you see her looking anything less than impeccable, but now, her ponytail's slipping halfway down, strands escaping, and the corners of her lipstick are smudged. She blows her bangs out of her face with a heavy sigh.
"Who do we have to kill?" you ask immediately.
Simone falls back into an empty chair between you, only your quick reflexes stopping her from wheeling backward with the momentum. "I swear," she says, leaning down to rest her chin on the table, "Armament Tech is the worst. C'mon, Tara, switch with me. I can handle Data Analysis, right?"
Tara laughs. "Sorry, babe, but signs point to no." She pokes Simone's cheek with the end of one chopstick. "What's up, you're still holding up the team on your shoulders?"
"Something like that." Simone waves a tired hand at the box she'd brought with her. "New shipment of one hundred and twenty-eight firearms. All have to be modified before tomorrow. And, wouldn't you know, I'm the only one who can do it."
Reaching out, you pat her head, giggling at the way she leans greedily into your touch.
"The curse of Evol," you say. "Your Micromodification really is amazing, though."
"I wish it were less amazing," she grumbles. "Then I wouldn't be the only one they come to."
"Well, hey, why don't I help? It'll go faster with two of us. Or, I guess, one and a half?"
"Please," Tara cuts in. "I've seen your Evol, girl, you're, like, worth ten people on your own."
“Okay, then it’ll definitely go faster with eleven of us.”
“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” says Simone. “Unless—hey, not a bad plan. Murdering my boss will for sure get me out of this, right?”
She laughs, expecting you to join her. You don’t.
“What are you talking about?” you ask instead.
Her smile falls. “Sorry, I don’t mean I’m not grateful or anything! It's just that I'm already not in a great headspace, and I don't wanna make it worse—and then take it out on you or anyone else.”
“What does that have to do with Evol?” asks Tara.
Simone looks at you—for backup, you realize—but her eyes widen when it quickly becomes evident that you have no idea what she’s talking about.
“I don’t really know how to explain it,” she says, “but when you use your Evol on me, it's not just my Evol that you enhance. It's almost like… my emotions are amplified, too. So if I’m annoyed now, then after you touch me, I’m gonna be, like…”
“A major fucking bitch?” Tara cuts in, smirking. “No different from usual, then.”
“You know what,” Simone says. “Scratch that. C’mon, hold my hand. Let's see how much of Tara's face I can modify.”
Simone lunges for her, Tara squeals and rolls her chair away out of reach, and they take over the battle from where you left off. But you, you’re a world away as you stare down at your palm, and you wonder.
Knowing what you know now, it's impossible, then, to not think of what happened at your last appointment. Impossible to not to think of Zayne, either, with the way he's been texting you. As promised, and so much more. You didn't reply. Guilty for not, of course. It's okay, you told yourself, because you weren't the one who promised to text him. Besides, it's not like it means much. It's just a text.
One that you told him you would look forward to, though, and you did. Staring down at your phone when he texted you during his break. About the patients he had for the day—always balancing not giving away too much. He can't tell you about the patients, nor about the specifics. Instead, he tells you other parts of his day, enough to make it feel as though you're by his side for the whole thing.
What they had in the hospital for lunch that day. The kind of flowers in the vase at reception that morning. The number of birds that flew up to his office window. Guilty, guilty. He's so, so cruel. It's so easy to imagine: you, by his side, seeing all that he does. Laughing and looking over to meet his eyes. He'll have that little smirk pulling at his mouth, the one that feels private—just for you, you would say. Or, you want it to be just for you. Yours, yours, yours.
Greedy.
You don’t mean to ignore his messages for a few days. You’re just…taking some time. Thinking about it. You were too mortified after what Simone said about your Evol to ask any questions. Namely, does it work both ways? You, pushing your emotions into him. Can he feel everything that you can? Does he know what you think of him?
The ice that had covered everything. What must he have been thinking to incite such a strong response? You think again of his fingers in you, your hospital gown gaping at the top, his eyes stubbornly averted, and your face heats up. It can't have been. Not you, certainly. Zayne may be a robot, a snowman, a professional, but he is still a man.
This isn't something for you to concern yourself with, he'd said.
You think, briefly, of him. Concerning himself with his problem.
It takes you a while to build up the courage. Reply to him, first, and say that you were just busy. Hey, how about I pick you up after your shift and we can go to that cafe you like? You watch the little text bubbles pop up. Disappear. Pop up again. Unlike him, you think, to be thinking so hard—and the message he sends doesn't betray any sort of internal turmoil. My shift ends at five, he replies. Characteristically brusque, an implicit acceptance folded into his words. Something that had taken you a while to get used to, after you'd reconnected with him as adults. Always wondering and worrying if he didn't actually want to meet up, if he felt obligated to. But eventually you realized that that isn't the kind of guy he is, that if he didn't want to, he wouldn't.
The opposite, then, must serve as well, surely. If he wanted to, he would. In Zayne's case, though, there seems to be more of a gap between those two states. The insurmountable barrier between thinking and doing. He wants to. Why does that mean he has to? The only thing you can do, you think, is run an experiment of sorts. Time to test your hypothesis.
First up on the list: you pick him up on your motorcycle the next day. He's already waiting outside the hospital for you, and the tiniest crease between his brows appears as you pull up in front of him.
“When you said you would pick me up,” he says, “I should have specified that it wouldn't be on this... death trap.”
“Maybe,” you agree. “But you didn't! So you're stuck with me and this death trap. Hop on, Dr. Li!”
You hand him your extra helmet, mourning the loss of that beautiful face disappearing behind the visor.
“You're certainly energetic today,” Zayne comments.
“Following my doctor's orders,” you say. “Taking it easy. And why wouldn't I be energetic when I get to see my favorite doctor?”
He's silent for a moment, and you wonder what kind of face he's making under that helmet. If you were to take his hand in yours, how cold he would be. How long it would take him to cool you down, overheated as you are—
“Doesn't count,” he says finally. “I’m your only doctor, am I not?”
“Ah, but a win by default is still a win in my book.” You gesture to the back of your bike.
“In mine as well,” Zayne admits, before he slings a leg over in a movement so smooth that it's hard to ignore the way it makes your throat dry. Hard to ignore those thighs, strong, hard, bracketing yours. Chest so solid against your back. He murmurs in your ear, then. “And as long as we're talking about favorites, you're mine.”
“I’m your what?” you ask, nearly choking on the words.
“My favorite patient.”
Your turn to fall silent. You turn your attention to checking your mirrors, adjusting your visor, until you can calm down enough to answer him. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you say that to all the girls who take you out for macarons,” you say flippantly.
He might have said something then, but all you hear is the revving of the engine.
“Here we go,” you say. “Hold on tight!”
A command that he takes to the utmost seriousness. His arms wrap around your waist—tight, tight, so tight—until it's nearly constricting. Until you doubt your own ability to break free from him—not that you could, not that you'd ever want to. But hey, fun to picture. Him, holding so tight he'd never let you go. Nothing separating you. And even now—there's hardly any space between the two of you.
And if you swerve a little bit more than necessary, ignore the speed limits on a couple of roads, then can anyone really blame you? Fate must be smiling down upon you, you think as you arrive at the cafe. Only one free table, and it’s tucked away in the corner. Small. Intimate. Two chairs pushed together. Zayne leads you toward the table with a hand against the small of your back. Cruel, cruel Dr. Li.
“I’ll order for you,” he says. “The usual?”
“Thanks,” you say, and you give him your prettiest smile, the one that has Tara rolling her eyes at you and Simone muttering something about pretty privilege. To no avail; his attention is already stolen by the desserts trapped in the glass case at the counter, just begging for him to come free them. Rows of brightly colored macarons, plump sponge cakes oozing with cream, perfectly sliced fruit.
A lesser woman, finding herself alone, would sag in disappointment. You, with your plan and your feelings and your emotion-amplifying Evol, keep your spine straight.
You catch the cafe employees watching Zayne as he makes his way toward you, arms laden with plates. They must think you’re on a date. Would he correct them, if they asked? What would he call you instead—patient? Friend? Or what if he leaned into it? An extra piece of cake, please, he would say, for my girlfriend.
It’s not like there’s some kind of manual out there on how to seduce your childhood friend turned doctor turned literal heartthrob, you reason—except that’s really not right, there are most definitely thousands of them out there that you could have looked up if you weren’t such a coward. If you weren’t sure that somehow, Zayne would be able to see your entire search history written out on your face. Your innermost thoughts, all scrawled out for him to see. Every stray thought you’ve had about gloves and stethoscopes and the numerous uses that a CT scanning table could have.
You feel foolish, every stereotype of a girl in love mashed into one. Twirling your hair around your finger. Licking whipped cream off your fingertips. Moaning as though each new macaron you bite into is the best thing you’ve ever eaten. The table is so small that his knees brush against yours over and over. An accident on his part, surely; something far more purposeful on yours.
Despite it all, nothing. He doesn’t sweep the plates off the table and lean down to ravish you on it, in front of everyone. Well, that one was a bit of a stretch, you have to admit. But still, he doesn’t react. At least he’s not shutting you down, part of you reasons. But he’s not acknowledging it either. Maybe he truly doesn’t notice. Maybe it’s so far out of the realm of belief for him to even see you as a sexual being, as someone who could incite desire in him.
Maybe you’re pathetic. You grab your drink, lips wrapping around your straw, your eyes flick up to him, and—
He’s staring at your mouth. Throat bobbing as he swallows, hard.
Maybe you’re not pathetic.
“Let’s go back to my place,” you say.
There’s the slightest sheen over the surface of his drink, which is no longer steaming. Frozen over. An apt term, one that applies to him as well. He’s still. Statue. You think, idly, about how cold the tips of his fingers must be.
“Excuse me?” he says quietly.
“Come on, Zayne. You’re free, I’m free, it’s the weekend, you know what that means.” You wiggle your eyebrows.
“I must have forgotten,” he says, voice rough. “Enlighten me.”
It’s not hard to lean closer, with how little distance there is between your chairs. Just a bit more and your lips would brush up against his ear. You wonder if he’s thinking about that—teeth scraping against his earlobe, tongue tracing the shell. You certainly are; you can be cruel, too.
“Movie night!” you tell him.
A soft exhale escapes him. Amusement, maybe. Disappointment, maybe.
“Movie night,” he repeats. In one fluid motion, he drains the rest of his tea—a stand in for something stronger. “Let’s go, then. And I would advise you to drive slower this time, or else you might be sharing movie night with a corpse.”
“Are you saying I could stop your heart?” You wink, remembering only too late that the motion isn’t nearly as practiced as it could be, that you probably look more like you have something in your eye. It really is a full-time job, trying to be sexy. You wonder how he does it.
“You, that death trap of yours,” he says, what’s the difference?
And then he winks at you, cruel, cruel, and it takes you a full minute to remember how to breathe.
Despite the dark promise that the cafe held, your apartment is, to your chagrin, far less sexually charged. If only the bra you’d left strewn over the back of the couch was sexier, something silky and lacy, not the one with frayed straps and the underwire poking out that you’d been meaning to throw out for years.
“Sorry, sorry,” you say breezily, “I’ve been working nonstop this week, didn’t have time to clean. Make yourself at home, you want something to eat or drink or anything? I’ll just be right back!”
You’re gone before he even has a chance to take his shoes off, locking yourself in the bathroom and splashing as much cold water on your face as your overheated skin can handle.
Movie night. It’s been a while, but what’s that thing about muscle memory? Like riding a bike, right? Or shooting a gun. Instinct. You’ve done this before. You and him on opposite sides of the couch, so much space between you that it’s almost easy enough to ignore his presence. Almost. Lights off, some cheesy romance movie playing that you’ll pretend to laugh at while actually wondering why it seems to come so easy to them. After a while, when you’ve gathered your courage, you’ll stretch your feet out, ghost them against the side of his leg. Inch closer to him on the couch, blanket strewn across both your laps. And then, right when you think that yes, tonight will definitely be the night you make a move, tell him about your feelings, ruin your friendship—his pager will go off. Or he’ll glance over at the clock and say, It’s late. I should go. I’ll text you in the morning.
And he does. He always does.
A knock from the other side of the door, then; hesitant, unsure. Words you would never associate with the man in your apartment.
“Is everything okay?”
“Fine!” you reply, voice too high-pitched. Allow yourself one more glance in the mirror—no saving your lipstick, but your hair isn’t so bad, really—before you unlock the door. “Sorry, I was just—”
“What did I say,” Zayne says in a low voice, “about apologizing?”
That dark promise from earlier rears its head once again, so much bigger than you remember it being. It would be easy to write his tone off as nothing—certainly nothing even close to what you want it to be—were you at the hospital or even the cafe. A quip tossed, an afterthought, nothing more. But here in your apartment, caging you in, Zayne is harder to ignore than he has ever been.
Deliberately, you meet his eyes. Let your voice go all high and breathy when you say, “I’m sorry, Dr. Li, I’m so sor—”
It takes you a moment, then, to realize what’s happening, why you can’t talk. To wonder if you’ve woken up in some kind of alternate universe, hit by a Wanderer, anything to explain why Zayne fucking Li has just stuck his tongue in your mouth. Why he’s backed you up against the bathroom counter, why his hands—the same hands you’ve dreamed about—are on your waist, your chin, holding you like he’s afraid you’ll leave.
It’s laughably easy to toss your inhibitions out the window, to kiss him back like you’re afraid he’ll leave; a possibility that feels more and more unlikely as his lips, as though magnetized to you, travel the length of your jaw.
“What,” he says, sounding absolutely wrecked, “are you doing to me?”
Your hands fist in his shirt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?”
He pulls back, then—no, no—but only to flip you around so you’re facing the mirror. The counter’s digging into your waist, now. If it truly hurt, you have no doubt that he would move you before you could even begin to feel it, but as you are now, the bite of pain only adds to the feeling of overwhelm.
“Look,” he says, “and you’re powerless not to.”
It takes you a moment to recognize yourself: lips kiss-swollen, eyes fluttering, the floaty look on your face. And behind you, Zayne. That firm, firm chest against your back. Hair mussed—had you done that? Raked your fingers through it, leaving him in such disarray?
“You’ve been teasing me, haven’t you?” he asks, and now it’s him with your ear between his teeth. Soothing the bite with his tongue. Cruel, then less so.
“I—ah! I always tease you.”
No chance of him believing the lie—him, never not looking.
“Not like this,” says Zayne. He grips your chin in his hand, nosing at your throat. “The cafe, the texts. Your appointment.”
You think, again, of snowflakes on skin.
“You don’t know what you do to me, do you?” he asks, and the next press of his lips to your skin is impossibly sweet. You watch the way his hand slides across your body. Traces his fingertips across your forearms like he’s mapping out his scars on your body. Lower, then, lower, lower, until he’s hovering at the button of your jeans. Hesitating. Waiting for your next words.
If you asked him to, you know, without a doubt, that he would stop. Let you collect yourself, and when you left the bathroom, he would be on your couch—hair fixed, shirt smoothed—like nothing had happened. And he wouldn’t treat you differently at all. Make sure that nothing would affect your friendship. A good guy. The best.
“Show me,” you say instead, and he undoes the button with a flick of his fingers.
You’re wet. Of course you are, but he has the audacity to inhale sharply as his fingers dip between your folds. As though he’s surprised that you could possibly want this as much as he does.
“I guess you don’t know what you do to me, Dr. Li,” you say, and a genuine laugh escapes him. Open, unguarded. The grip on your chin turns into what is unmistakably a caress; you take the opportunity to turn your head, meet his lips again. Kiss him slow, sweet, syrupy. As though you’ve done it a thousand times before.
When he pulls away, his thumb brushes, almost reverently, against your spit-slick bottom lip. You don’t hesitate, wrapping your lips around it the same way you had your straw. Swirling your tongue along his cold skin. Meeting his eyes.
“Your appointment,” he murmurs. “Do you know what I did when I left the examination room that day?”
You’re caught, in more ways than one; eyes flicking between his face and his reflection, where the way his hand moves between your legs, deft, sure, has you sucking harder on his finger. Scraping your teeth along his skin, if only to hear him hiss. But turnabout, he must decide, is fair play. He turns you until you’re facing the mirror again, and his lips find the back of your neck, a particularly sensitive spot at the top of your spine that has you whining. You can feel the way his mouth curves into a smirk.
Cruel.
Only emphasized by the way he bypasses your clit entirely to slide one long finger into you. Something you’ve felt before, through latex gloves and paper gowns. But never like this.
“I walked to the bathroom,” Zayne continues. “More like ran, actually. Several nurses gave me concerned looks in the hallway.”
Another finger. They press deeper, thumb bumping up against your clit in the process. A parody of your appointment—but this time, you’re drooling around his fingers. No distracting yourself from the sensations, even if you wanted to. He won’t let you.
His fingers slide out of your mouth. Disappear underneath your shirt. A stray thought finds its way into your head, that he might use this as an excuse to give you a breast exam—the key is early detection, he so often says—but then he rolls your nipple between two fingers, and it becomes so very hard to think.
“Can you guess what I did then?” he asks.
“Something of the utmost professionalism, of course,” you say, voice high and breathy. You feel, more than see, the way his jaw clenches at the sound. Teeth grinding, as though trying to stop himself from sinking them into you. Another macaron trapped behind a glass case, begging for him.
Zayne huffs out a laugh, rough. “You may be a model patient, but I never claimed to be a model doctor.”
“Really? Akso Hospital’s Moments page would disagree, Dr. Heartthrob!”
His cock—impossibly hard, so big you wonder just what you’ve gotten yourself into—grinds into the small of your back, a rhythm that stutters and speeds up with each passing second. A punishment, though it feels like exactly the opposite.
“I ran into a stall,” Zayne says, “and slammed the door. Didn’t even check if anyone else was in there. And then”—his fingers scissor inside you, stretching and rubbing against your walls in a way that makes your head loll back onto his shoulder—“I shoved my pants down.”
“I—I bet you say that to all your patients—” you say, but his thumb finds your clit again, no accident about it, and the words catch in your throat.
“I told you that you were my favorite, didn’t I?” He sounds angry, now. “You think anyone else could do that to me? You think, while I had my lab coat between my teeth and my cock in my hand, that I could possibly be thinking of anyone else?”
Your eyes flutter open, stare at your reflection, at the way his hands move underneath your clothes. Impossibly lewd. The way his eyes don’t leave your face, watching the way your expression twists at every single one of his ministrations.
“What were you thinking about?”
“All the things I wanted to do to you. What I would have done right there in the hospital, if I had less self-control.”
“And what do you call this?”
“Even I have my limits,” Zayne admits, pressing his lips to your neck. His fingers release your nipple in favor of trailing upward, tracing across your collarbone. “When you wear the hospital’s gown, it gapes right here, did you know that? Right over your clavicle. Your sternocleidomastoid muscle poking through. So many times I’ve thought about tracing it with my tongue.” At the last words, he meets your eyes in the mirror, his pupils blown out so wide you can hardly see any green.
“Zayne,” you say, “if you don’t fuck me right now, then I swear, I’m gonna—”
What you’re gonna do, neither of you find out. Because then he’s spinning you around, lifting you onto the bathroom counter, nearly ripping both your clothes in his haste to get them off. And through it all, a flash of his fingers—the same ones that were inside you—in his mouth.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck.”
It’s that, of all things, the sound of Zayne swearing, that makes the last vestige of whatever flimsy control you were hanging onto snap. You’re tugging him toward you, kissing him, wet, messy, your nails digging into his back, legs wrapping around his waist, and he’s pressing forward, cock sliding so very slowly into you. Hard, unyielding. Letting you adjust, you know, but you’re wet and stretched and eager and all you want is to feel him inside you, so deep and so hard that there would be no separating you.
When he’s fully seated, he presses his chin against your collarbone. “Give me a moment,” he says, and you can tell he’s trying to get that control back. So you clench down on him experimentally, relishing in the way it draws a broken groan from him.
“Stop,” he says, voice hard. “Be patient—”
“That’s me,” you say, “your patient.”
One hand slides itself into his hair, threading through the soft strands, and you pull. His hips stutter; fingers grab your waist, squeezing so hard that you wonder if you’ll have bruises there tomorrow. Finger-shaped imprints. Proof that this actually happened.
“You… “ Zayne says, “you’re so—”
“Beautiful? Amazing? Perfect? The best fuck you’ve ever had?”
That laugh again, unguarded. “All of the above,” he says, “and more,” and then he’s moving, heavy thrusts that have you wrapping your arms around his neck, scrabbling for purchase. His shirt, unbuttoned now, is loose enough for your hands to eagerly map the expanse of lean muscle that you’ve spent far too long thinking about; his chest, his shoulders, the line of his spine. You can feel the tension in his body, the way he’s fighting himself. Every spot that he mapped out with his fingers, he aims for with his cock. Each movement of his hips against yours is devastating, too rhythmic, perfectly designed to have you fall apart around him in every way.
But you don’t want that. You want him as overwhelmed as you are. You want him falling apart, too.
“Zayne— resonate with me.”
Abruptly, he freezes. There’s something wild in his gaze, almost desperate. Something you’ve seen before.
“What?”
In response, you offer him your hand. Fingers outstretched.
“I’ll hurt you.”
“I know you won’t,” you say, and you’ve never meant anything more. “Please.”
He hesitates for so long that you wonder if he’ll refuse. But then his fingers thread with yours, palms pressed together, woven together, and you’re making your way through that forest again, following the map that leads to him. Another loop around your pinky, you tug, and then—
Cold.
Zayne’s hips slam forward, burying himself in you up to the hilt. There’s a sudden sharp pain on the side of your neck—teeth—and then he’s pounding into you, hard and fast, freezing you together. Each of his thrust forces a gasp out of your mouth, and there’s something on your clit—his hand fitted between your bodies, his icy fingers pinching and rubbing and driving you insane—making you flinch away—
Or you would, if he didn’t hold you even tighter. If his arm wasn’t frozen around your waist. If there weren’t snowflakes blooming everywhere his lips, tongue, teeth graze your skin. If you could say anything that wasn’t Zayne or please or more. If your orgasm, sweeping up on you like a sudden snowstorm, didn’t make you clench down on him so hard that a growl tears its way out of his throat, animalistic. If the way he chases his own pleasure, each thrust rocking you backward into the mirror, didn’t make you full of such warmth.
By the time your ears stop ringing and your head stops spinning and you finally, finally open your eyes, it’s to find yourself in the midst of a blizzard. There’s a thick layer of frost on the counter, the walls, the door; your breath comes out in a cloud of fog. The sweat on your skin has chilled considerably, making you shiver.
“I apologize,” Zayne says carefully. “I… went a bit overboard.”
“Next time,” you say, “we’re doing this under a blanket.”
He frowns. “The potential of frostbite is nothing to make light of,” he says, as though he isn’t the reason strands of your hair are frozen together.
“You’re right,” you say instead. “Then why don’t you warm me up, Dr. Li?”
And there it is again, that look in his eye that you’re quickly growing used to. “Blanket,” he repeats, with rapidly growing interest. “The couch?”
“Or my room.”
“Hmm,” he says, nosing at your throat until you turn your head, meeting his lips with yours. Soft, the sound of snow falling. “In Dr. Heartthrob’s professional opinion, it’s difficult to tell which location would be more suitable.”
“Is that right?” you ask, smiling into the kiss. “Then what should we do, Doctor?”
“Try both, of course,” says Zayne, and he’s lifting you off the counter, strong and firm and still seated comfortably inside you. “You’re free, I’m free, it’s the weekend. You know what that means?”
“I expect I’m about to be enlightened,” you tell him—and you are. You try the couch and the bed. And the shower. The kitchen table, too. The bed again.
His pager does not go off. He does not glance over at the clock. And there’s no need for him to text you in the morning, not when you’re waking up beside him and his fingers are intertwined with yours and you’re leaning into the cold until it’s all you can feel.