Chapter 5: Pulse

I stepped back and let him in.

He shut the door behind him without asking.

The room got smaller. He took up all of it.

"Sit," I said.

He sat on the edge of my bed.

I pulled the desk chair around and sat facing him, so close my knees were between his.

"Wrist," I said.

He held it out, palm up.

I laid two fingers on the inside of it and looked at my watch.

His pulse was slow and heavy. Sixty.

"You're very calm," I said.

"I'm a soldier."

"Soldiers lie."

"So do doctors." He turned his hand over and caught my wrist instead. "My turn."

His thumb found my pulse on the first try.

It jumped under his thumb.

He felt it. I saw him feel it.

"Ninety," he said. "Ninety-four."

"That's a bad reading. The wrist is inaccurate."

"Is it?"

"Everyone knows that."

He let go of my wrist.

Then he put his palm flat on my chest, over my heart, above the neck of my sleep shirt.

His hand was big and warm and so steady it made me shake.

"Better?" he said.

"Better."

"Count."

I couldn't count. I could only feel it hammering against his palm.

"A hundred and ten," he said quietly. "Twelve. Fifteen."

"You're counting wrong."

"I'm counting very right."

He leaned in.

So did I.

His breath touched my mouth. He smelled like rain on stone and something darker under it, something that made my teeth ache.

An inch.

Less.

Under my breastbone, the thing that had flickered in the kitchen didn't flicker.

It rose.

Heat went up through my chest and into my face and behind my eyes.

Hadrian went still.

"Romilly," he said. "Your eyes."

I turned my head.

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