"Get off me before I add resisting to the file." Levi's voice comes out ground down, wrecked at the edges, and it doesn't match the iron still locked in his jaw.
"You put your hand on my wrist first." I've got my forearm across his collarbone, my knee driving into the gurney rail beside his hip, and his pulse is slamming so hard against my palm I can count it without trying. Too fast. Way too fast for a guy who's supposedly just standing around bleeding.
"Move."
"Hold still and it won't tear worse." I peel the gauze back an inch, just enough, and press the test strip flat against the wet edge of the cut. Bone against bone where my forearm meets his sternum, no give in either of us.
He goes rigid. Not from pain. From knowing.
"You son of a bitch."
"There it is." I tape the strip down before he can get a hand free, smoothing it under the wrap like I'm just doing my job, like this is any other cutman patch on any other Tuesday. The camera in the corner keeps its red eye open, steady, recording every inch of it. "Camera's already got the timestamp. Panel's already sealed to the wound. You want to explain to the board why your dressing came back dirty the same night you signed my ban?"
"That's not — you planted that."
"Planted it on your own blood? Try selling that to a federal panel." I lean my weight harder into his chest, feel his ribs give a half inch under me, feel the breath slam out of him in one hot burst against my jaw. "Restore my license by Friday or this footage goes to the commission with the panel attached. Your call, Grant."
His hand finds my wrist again, and this time he doesn't grab, he twists, wrenching my arm sideways with a strength that shouldn't be sitting in a guy who's been leaking blood for twenty minutes. The gurney rail bites into my hip. My knee slips.
"Careful," he says, low, right against my ear, and for one second the whole room flips — his shoulder drives into my chest, my back hits the rail he was just pinned against, and I'm the one with a hand locked at my throat, thumb pressed flat against the side of my neck where the skin's thinnest.
Right over the gland.
He feels me go still. He feels it and his mouth curls, ugly and satisfied. "Didn't think so."
"Get your hand off me."
"You put a dirty panel on federal evidence," he says, and his thumb drags, slow, testing, right along the ridge of it, and something hot and stupid rockets down my spine before I can stop it. "I could have you charged tonight. Tampering. Coercion. Assault on an officer of the commission."
"Do it." My voice doesn't sound steady and I hate that. "Tape's already rolling. You want the board to see your hand on my throat too?"
That lands. His grip loosens half a degree — just enough.
"You wouldn't," he says, but it's not a question, it's him listening to his own pulse and not liking what it's telling him.
"Try me."
I take it.
I get a leg behind his knee and drop my whole weight forward, and we go down together, hard, the gurney frame screaming against the tile, and this time I land on top with both his wrists crossed and pinned above his head, my hip grinding his down flat, and his breath is sawing in and out against my collarbone like he's been running.
"You done?" I say.
"Not even close."
But he doesn't move. Can't, with my knee wedged where it is and my forearm laid across his throat, not choking, just there, just weight, just enough that every swallow he takes drags against my skin. His pulse is still doing that thing — too fast, too hot, chemical-fast — and up close, this close, I can smell it under the antiseptic. Not adrenaline. Something older. Something that's been in his blood longer than tonight.
"What are you on, Grant."
"Wouldn't you like to know."
"I will know. It's on the panel now."
His jaw ticks. First real crack I've seen in him all night. "Restore the license and the panel disappears. That's the offer. Same one it always was."
"No." I drop lower, close enough that my mouth is at the curve of his throat, close enough to feel the gland under his skin jump when I breathe against it. "The offer's mine now. I've got the tape. I've got the panel. I've got you pinned on a hold camera with your own dirty blood taped to my wrap."
"Ortega —"
"You want this to stop being about a ban," I say, and I let my teeth graze — just graze, just enough that he feels exactly what I mean — right over that spot where the skin's thinnest, where a mark would take if I meant it, "you sign restore tonight. Or I finish what you started when you locked us in here."
His chest heaves under my forearm. He doesn't say yield.
He doesn't say no, either.
"You don't get to mark a commissioner," he says, but his voice has gone somewhere else, somewhere rougher, and his wrists have stopped fighting the hold, just resting there under my hand, pulse hammering against my palm like it's asking a different question than his mouth is.
"You're not a commissioner in here." I press closer, feel the exact second his breath catches and holds. "In here you're a body on a gurney with a dirty panel and my teeth an inch off your throat."
"Ortega, if you—"
"If I what." I let the words land right against the gland, warm, deliberate. "Finish that sentence, Grant."
The red light in the corner hasn't blinked once. Five seconds. That's all I need and we both know it — one more inch and there's no walking either of us back out of this room the same.
"Last chance," I tell him, teeth still resting there, feeling his pulse slam against my mouth. "Sign it. Or take the mark right now."