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Lollipops.
The round, flat kind, in a rainbow of colors, the universal currency of pediatric bribery that Rowan stocked because every kid who got a shot deserved a reward and she'd fight the ADA about sugar content when she was dead.
Sage reached into the jar with a quick, mischievous smile and pulled out several — cherry red, purple grape, and a few others.
She handed the grape one to Bear.
He looked at it. He looked at it the way a man looked at an object he had not expected to be handed and was not entirely certain how to classify — with the brief, intense focus of someone running the item through several threat-assessment protocols simultaneously before arriving at the conclusion that it was, in fact, candy.
"It's called a lollipop," Sage said, unwrapping her own with a crinkle of cellophane. She popped it in her mouth. Slowly. With an expression of wide-eyed innocence so perfectly constructed it was practically perfect. She pulled it out with a soft, deliberate pop, her lips closing around it in a way that was — technically — just a person eating candy, and — in every other measurable way — absolutely not.
"You suck on it," she said. Helpfully. "Like this."
She demonstrated again. Slowly. Looking up at him through her lashes with the sweetness of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing and was enjoying every second of his discomfort.
Cal’s ears went red.
Not the slight coloring Sage had caught glimpses of — full, crimson, the unmistakable physiological betrayal of a man whose body was responding to a stimulus his discipline could not entirely override. His jaw tightened. His hand closed around the lollipop with a grip that suggested it might not survive the experience.
"I know what a lollipop is," he said. His voice was even. Mostly.
"Do you, though?" Sage popped it back in, hollowed her cheeks slightly, and made a sound — small, appreciative, mmm — that landed somewhere between innocent and felonious.
Cal looked at the ceiling. Then at the wall. Then at a point in the middle distance that appeared to require his absolute, undivided attention.
Rowan watched.
She watched this girl — this damaged, beautiful, impossible girl with her belt scars and her broken ribs and her careful signature — stand in the hallway of a pediatric clinic and reduce the most dangerous man Rowan had ever met to a state of visible, crimson-eared, lollipop-clutching distress, and the thought that passed through Rowan's mind was so clear and so specific that it felt like a diagnosis.
Oh. She's going to destroy him. And he's going to let her. And I have to watch.
Rowan waved goodbye as they left as she walked back into her office and closed the door behind her. Leaned against it. Pressed both hands flat against the wood.
She had charts to finish. Blood to send to the lab. A follow-up to schedule.
She opened Mrs. Nguyen's chart. Picked up her pen.
The clinic was quiet. The afternoon light came through the window and caught the paper snowflake mobile, turning it slowly, casting small, moving shadows across the wall like something delicate trying to stay airborne.
CAL
This girl is going to kill me. With candy. Cal thought with resignation.
Not quickly. Not mercifully. With the slow, wicked meticulousness of someone who’d found a weapon and was happily testing its range — sliding the cherry lollipop in and out of her mouth as they walked down the clinic hallway, her plush lips closing around it with wide-eyed innocence that was about as innocent as a loaded gun.
Cal paused and glanced at her, exasperated.
She’s skipping. She’s actually fucking skipping.
Cal Meridian — who had survived twenty years of combat, three assassination attempts, and a Siberian winter in a canvas tent — was losing a tactical engagement to a curvy little goth girl with a sucker and a mischievous initial streak a mile wide.
She was doing it on purpose.
He knew because he’d spent a long time reading people who tried their hardest to hide everything, and Sage Thompson wasn’t hiding a damn thing. She was broadcasting. The slow pull. The soft, wet pop when the candy left her lips. The way she glanced up at him through those thick lashes, blue eyes all guileless and sparkling, while the tiny curl at the corner of her mouth said she knew exactly what she was doing and was loving every second of it.
He kept his eyes forward. Kept walking. Kept breathing. His jaw tight.
She hollowed her cheeks around it again.
