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His forehead furrows and he turns back to the table. “What is it?”

“I’ve been experiencing this strange… ache.” I touch my inner thigh, letting my knees unfold like a flower. “Right about here.”

His gaze darts to my exposed center, jaw tensing with a tic. “An ache?”

Nodding, I plead, “Can you check to make sure nothing’s wrong?”

He crosses the distance between us with a sure but unhurried stride, eyes never once leaving the apex of my thighs. Much like when he used to sleepwalk, it feels like I’m being stalked by a predatory animal, that spark of feral heat never far from the rippling surface of his control.

It’s dangerous, tinged with the promise of violence.

I’ve never felt safer.

He comes to a rest at the end of the exam table. The light reflects off of his glasses, but I still feel the heat of his gaze on me as those muscles in his forearms flex, lifting blunt fingers to graze the sensitive inside of my knee.

“Show me.” His voice is gruff in a way I’m not fully expecting. We’ve been doing these exams for two weeks—ever since I was released from the hospital—and he’s always been infuriatingly impeccable. “Show me where it aches.”

I don’t have to look to know he’s already hard. I see the strain in the hard set of his jaw, the ball of tension that only gets tighter when I reach down to brush against the hard bud of my clit. “It’s right around here.”

“Verity,” he says, his tone full of warning. “This is risky…”

“I can get off with doctor supervision, can’t I?” I take his hand off my thigh and move it between my legs. The instant his bare fingers meet the wet heat of me, a low, rough groan escapeshis throat. “Or I can do it by myself. That, or we could always call one of your brothers in here and let them?—”

He lurches downward, capturing my lips with his, cutting off the threat with his mouth. His palm cups my breast, while the fingers on his other hand make delicious circles over my clit. It’s beenweekssince I’ve felt anyone touch me like this. It won’t take long.

“Fuck me,” I whisper into his mouth. “Please?”

He jolts back, eyes flashing. “Absolutely fucking not.”

Dr. Lex is holding on by a thread, and I reach for him again, this time grabbing the tie in the back of his hair and letting it fall.

Lagan.

This is what he keeps from me at night. It’s the reason he gives me to Wicker or Pace in the hallway every evening before bed, leaving me with a slow, searing kiss before he goes to lock himself up tight in his room. Protecting me and our son from himself.

Lex growls, mouth dropping down to my nipple. The sensitivity is unreal, and fuck, even I’m turned on by how big they’re getting. “Every night, I think about these,” he mumbles mindlessly. “Wanting to bury my face in them—my cock. See my cum dripping down your pretty skin.”

His words are so constricted with longing that it sends an explosion of heat to my belly. I think about it—Lex, at night, leaving me with one of those deep, tongue-fucking kisses, only to retreat to his room and bring himself off to the thought of it.

Jesus.

“Wick is going to lose his fucking mind with these.” He grabs one in a big palm, pushing them together, and bows his head, again, breath hot on a peak. “So big and full, getting ready for the baby.”

Whitaker Ashby has already lost his mind, but I’m not worried about him right now. I just want to feel— “Oh, god, do that again.”

He obliges, swirling his tongue on my breast at the same time he flicks my clit. The sensation runs through me like a live wire. “Again,” I cry, my orgasm close.

He suckles me, tongue lathing against my nipple, and I fall, the rush of release so good, so excruciatingly intense, that it almost hurts.

Releasing my breast, I continue to ride his fingers, only half-aware as he unzips his pants. His cock is thick—erect—a bead of cum seeping from the tip.

“You finished?” he asks, watching me writhe against his hand.

I nod, too spent to talk. He takes the fingers sticky with my release and grips his length, those muscles in his forearm shifting as he moves his fist up and down. Filled with endorphins, I look up at him as he brings himself to the edge, the muscles in his neck tensing with every stroke. I’m still not used to seeing him like this outside of those feral nights from before. This man isn’t desperate. He’s taken back control of his mind and body. He’s clean. Healthy. The flush on his cheeks isn’t new, but the sight of it is different. The smolder in his stare as he watches me. The way a wild lock of his hair billows in the breath being forced through his flared nostrils.

He looks like a column of flame, the edges of him licking out, gathering fuel. The sound he makes is deep enough to feel in my gut, the growl reverberating like a punch. He seizes, snapping forward to rest a hand on the table, right between my legs. The orgasm is swift, cum spilling from the tip of his cock in thick, ropey spurts that meet my flesh hot as fire.

I watch, hypnotized as he milks himself onto the slick crevice of my pussy, fist flexing with every squeeze. I can see the sensereturning to his eyes, that line between patient and doctor, and the thing is, there’s pain in it.