Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Sophia
Laura caught me after breakfast. I had just stepped into the courtyard, coffee in hand, when she called my name in that tone she uses when she’s pretending something is offhand but it absolutely isn’t.
“Had a conversation with Flavius this morning,” she said, leaning against the railing as if she wasn’t watching me for reactions. “About the healing work you two are documenting together.”
My stomach did a small flip. We’d agreed he’d teach me Philos’s techniques, and I’d document them for preservation. But something in Laura’s tone suggested this had expanded beyond our original plan.
“He’s thinking bigger now,” Laura continued. “Wants to actually use it—help people here at the sanctuary. The trauma support program. Staff. Maybe even some of the other gladiators.”
My pulse quickened. That was more than documentation. That was… real. Active. A living practice, not just preserved history.
“He’s nervous about it,” Laura added, her voice softening. “Worried he’ll disappoint you. That he won’t be good enough. But he kept coming back to you—how you understand both the history and the healing. How you could help him bridge the gap between what he knows and how to teach it properly.”
Heat shot up my neck. He’d been thinking about me. About us working together on something that mattered.
“He didn’t use the word ‘partner,’” Laura said with a knowing smile. “But that’s what he meant.”
Partner. The word landed deep, heavier than I expected.
I heard myself answer with a calm I absolutely didn’t feel. “If he wants to expand this into active practice, I’d be honored. I’m absolutely in. We can develop a proper framework. Make it sustainable.”
Honored. It came out measured. Appropriate.
In my head, everything was screaming. My chest was doing strange, uncooperative things. I barely slept last night.
And he trusted me so much that the effect was seismic.
Laura smiled as if she could read my mind, though I didn’t say a word.
“So tell him. Just be honest,” she said. “He can feel when people aren’t.”
Then she left me there in the courtyard with my coffee cooling in my hand, my pulse racing with more possibility than I knew how to handle.
When I got to our conference room, I followed my normal routine: reviewing my files, straightening my desk, reorganizing my note tabs—but my mind kept circling the same things: He wants to teach—really teach.
Build something that lives beyond us. He chose me.
He trusted me enough to say it out loud—to Laura.
I sat with that a moment—this unexpected pull, this new shape his trust was taking inside me—trying to slot it into some familiar category. I couldn’t.
So my mind moved to the next unfinished task on its list.
I expected the familiar click of closure—the tidy mental seal I rely on to keep things manageable.
Instead, nothing settled. I spent the rest of the morning doing what I always do when my mind won’t cooperate—I worked. Filed notes. Reorganized my bibliography. Made lists. Kept my hands busy and waited for my brain to catch up. It didn’t.
Two hours later, sitting beside Flavius in Conference Room B, I can feel the failure of that system—something left open, humming faintly beneath everything else, impossible to fully shut down.
Flavius and I have been working together for three hours, documenting his healing techniques, and every moment has been an exercise in exquisite torture.
My laptop sits open beside us, filled with detailed notes on pressure points, treatment sequences, and philosophical frameworks. But right now, none of that matters. Right now, there’s only the warmth of his presence and the impossible awareness thrumming between us.
Flavius is dressed simply as always—a soft charcoal Henley that clings to his shoulders and forearms in ways I try very hard not to notice. The top button is undone, giving me a distracting glimpse of the strong lines of his throat.
I tug at the hem of my blouse, suddenly hyperaware of how casual and intimate this all feels for a research session.
He’s sitting close enough that I can smell his scent—clean soap and something masculine that makes my stomach flutter. His red hair catches the sunlight as he demonstrates pressure points on his own palm, and I find myself mesmerized by the careful precision of his scarred hands.
“Here,” he says, pointing to a spot at the base of his thumb. “This point is for calming mind when thoughts go too fast. Very gentle pressure, like this.”
I lean forward to see better, and our shoulders brush. The contact sends electricity racing up my arm and down my spine, and from the way his breath catches, he feels it too.
“Show me,” I say, my voice coming out slightly breathless.
“Give me your hand.” His voice drops, low and intense, and my pulse stutters. “Palm up. Yes, like that.”
He reaches for my hand, and the moment his fingers close around mine, the air between us shifts. What started as a professional demonstration becomes something else entirely—intimate, charged, dangerous.
His thumb finds the pressure point he described, and the gentle circular motion sends a slow bloom of heat through my chest, loosening something tight inside me.
But it’s not just the physical sensation—it’s the way he’s looking at me, focused and intent, like touching me is the most important thing he’s ever done.
“Feel this?” he asks, his accent thickening the way it does when he’s concentrating.
“I feel it,” I whisper, though what I’m feeling has less to do with pressure points and more to do with the way his green eyes have gone emerald with something that isn’t professional interest.
“Good. Now, when mind is racing, when thoughts will not slow…” His other hand comes up to rest against my wrist, my pulse hammering against his fingers. “Breathe in the pressure. In when I press, out when I release.”
I try to follow his instructions, but it’s impossible to focus on breathing techniques when every nerve ending in my body is achingly aware of his touch.
His hands are so warm, so gentle despite their size and the scars that speak of violence.
The contrast between the tenderness of his touch and the strength I know he possesses is intoxicating.
“Your pulse,” he says, and there’s wonder in his voice. “Is very fast.”
“I know.” Stepping back would be sensible. Breathing. Resetting the boundary we keep pretending is real. But his hands feel like a promise, and for once I don’t want to be the cautious one. I want to tell the truth. “You affect me.”
The admission hangs between us like a challenge. His hands become still against mine, and when I look up, his eyes are searching my face with an intensity that makes my breath catch.
“Sophia,” he says, my name a rough whisper on his lips. “I should not… we should not…”
“Should not what?” I lean even closer, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his green eyes, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his skin. Close enough that if I just tilted my head, if I just leaned forward another inch…
“Should not want this much,” he admits, his voice strained. “Should not think about you every moment we are not together. Should not…” He swallows, and I watch his throat work. “Should not dream about holding you when is not for healing.”
His honesty hits me like a physical force. The world narrows to the space between us—his breath against my mouth, his hands around mine, the trembling sincerity in his voice.
A bright, overwhelming rush floods through me… and then my brain catches up.
Wait.
The word echoes through my mind with devastating clarity, cutting through the haze of want like a blade.
I freeze, pulling back just slightly. Not far, but far enough that I can think.
Enough that the intoxicating nearness of him doesn’t completely overwhelm my ability to reason.
My body screams in protest. Every cell wants to close that distance again, to press my mouth to his, to find out what he tastes like, to feel those strong hands slide into my hair.
But I can’t.
He’s my research subject.
The thought lands like ice water. I’m documenting his life, his experiences, his trauma. Power comes with that. Control over how his story gets told. I control the narrative. I have institutional backing, academic credentials, and professional authority that he doesn’t have in this world.
And he’s sitting here, vulnerable, telling me he dreams about me.
If I kiss him right now—if we cross this line while I’m still interviewing him, still extracting information from him, still in a position of power over him—I become everything I’ve spent my career arguing against. I become the researcher who exploits her subject.
The academic who uses intimacy to get better access.
Even if that’s not my intention, that’s what it would look like. That’s what it could be, even subconsciously.
My brain fires through the implications in rapid succession:
Power differential. Check.
Vulnerable population. Check.
Potential for coercion, even unintentional. Check.
Compromised consent because of institutional authority. Check.
All my ethics training is screaming at me.
But underneath the panic, there’s something else. A solution. Clear and simple and obvious.
This is fixable. I could restructure. I could change how we work together.
And then…
I could kiss him with a clear conscience. Let my hands slide up his chest the way they’re aching to do right now. Lean into him without guilt. Taste his mouth. Find out whether the rough stubble along his jaw feels as good against my palm as I’ve been imagining.
Let him pull me close and discover what it feels like to be held by someone who makes my entire nervous system light up like a circuit board.
Then.
Not now.