From Broke Technician to Luna novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Fever

He was there in nine minutes.

I heard the elevator, then footsteps, and then the broken door swung inward on its single hinge.

Tiernan stood in my hallway in a dark coat with his hair half out of its tie, breathing hard.

He had run the whole way.

He took one look at the scorched paint, the dead chain and me on the floor, and his face changed.

"Stevie."

"My rule," I said, because it was the only thing I could think of. "I don't sleep with the boss."

"I know."

"I'm not asking you to."

"I know that too." He crouched in front of me and didn't touch me. "I'll sit here and talk until it passes. It might take a night."

"Ansel says it gets worse every hour."

His jaw locked. "He's right."

"Are you burning?"

"Yes."

The word came out of him hoarse.

I looked at his hands.

They were shaking, and the knuckles had gone white.

"Section four of the contract," I said. "I quit any day I want."

His eyes lifted to mine.

"Consider this my resignation," I told him. "Effective now. You keep the work, I keep the money, and I don't have a boss."

"Stevie..."

"Tell me to stop," I said. "Go on."

He didn't.

He took my face in both hands, and the world went quiet.

His palms were cooler than my skin, or I was hotter than his, and the relief of it made me gasp before he had even kissed me.

Then he kissed me.

It was not careful.

It was nineteen hours of wanting and a lifetime of never asking for anything, and I opened my mouth under his and heard him make a sound I felt at the base of my spine.

He lifted me off the floor with one arm.

I was five feet tall, and he carried me with no effort at all, kicked my bedroom door open, and set me down on the edge of the mattress.

I pulled at his coat. He let me.

I got his shirt open and put both hands flat on his chest.

His skin was scalding, and the muscle under it was hard, and my fever lifted a little everywhere I touched.

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