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"Christ," he says into my thigh. "I've been so careful with you, and this is what does it."

"Shut up."

"I'm not judging you. I'm thrilled." Two fingers now, pushing into me, and I try to stay still and stay quiet and fail at both. I arch off the counter, moaning. He curls them and I lose myself in his touch. The kitchen, the counter, the argument, none of it exists anymore. There's just his hand, and he slows right down, like he has all night and knows exactly what that does to me. The heat builds low and tight and I'm climbing toward it fast, too fast, right up to the edge, and I can hear my own breathing come apart. "I couldn't wait to find out what you're actually like," he says against my ear, "and it turns out I only had to describe a homicide."

Then he stops.

He just takes his hand away, right at the edge, right when one more second would have done it, and the loss of him is so sudden it's almost pain. Everything in me that was climbing drops at once. I hear myself make a sound, high and wrecked and openly begging, and I don't even have it in me to be ashamed of it.

He stands, unhurried, and wipes his fingers on the cloth like he's finished washing a glass.

He pulls my bag over and starts setting things on the granite one at a time. Pens. Throat lozenges. A pair of loupes in a scuffed case. My stethoscope, which he moves aside.

"Everything a woman such as you needs in her bag."

"Give it back."

"I'm not taking anything." He looks at me. "I'm just curious."

He looks for another second, then leaves the bag where it is and walks to the drawer under my kettle. He opens it and takes out the small zipped case that's been in that drawer since I moved in. A manual blood-pressure cuff.

I freeze, realizing what he's just about to do.

I've never told anyone I keep it there. It doesn't live in a bathroom or a bedside table. It rests in a kitchen drawer under my kettle, and Laszlo Novak has just walked to it like he was fetching a spoon.

"How do you know that's there?"

"Manon."

"How do you know?"

He doesn't answer that. He unzips the case, lifts the cuff out, and holds it up by the tube so it hangs between us, the bulb swinging gently at the end. He looks at it, then at me.

"No," I say. My voice is firm, not trembling at all.

"You know exactly what this does."

"Better than you."

"Then you know what a hundred and eighty feels like." He unrolls it. "Lift."

The Velcro pull seems very loud in my kitchen. He fits it high on my left thigh, over the muscle, snug—correctly, which is somehow the filthiest thing that's happened tonight. Then he picks up the bulb.

"Tell me what's safe."

"Fuck off."

"I know what's safe." He squeezes. "I only wanted to see whether you'd tell me."

It tightens in pulls, feeling heavy as it grips my flesh above the knee. All the blood in my body has already gone one way and now I feel it rush between my legs like a slap. Damn it, I want him to slap my pussy. If he does, I'll be done for.

"Look at me," he says against my mouth, and pushes two fingers into me, deep, curling them so my whole body jerks off the counter. My heel catches the cabinet below and I press into it just to have something to brace against. "Look at me while I tell you."

I do as he says, breathing like an asthmatic, so close to the edge.

"He'd be awake for all of it." Squeeze. "I'd let him talk for the first hour, because they always want to. He'd offer me money. Then his family's money. Then he'd start on you—he'd tell me you were leaving me. And I'd let him get all the way to the end."

"Please—"