The Coldest Man in the Room Melted Only for Me novel Chapter 235

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He was sitting on the edge of the bed. His black dress shirt was entirely unbuttoned, exposing the harsh, sculpted lines of his chest and the deeply cut ridges of his abdomen, tapering down into a black leather belt.

His long legs were spread apart in a casual, aggressively dominant posture.

A fully stocked first-aid kit was open beside him. He held a cotton swab soaked in iodine. Jagged, bloody scratch marks tracked aggressively from his collarbone all the way up his throat. He was trying to clean his own wounds.

Riley had never expected to walk in on something this intimate. Utterly paralyzed by shock, she froze perfectly still in the doorway.

Hearing the door creak, Sebastian assumed his assistant had returned. "Come finish this. I can't see the ones on my neck."

When two seconds passed in dead silence, he looked up. Seeing Riley standing frozen in the doorway, genuine surprise flickered in his dark eyes. "Riley?"

Snapping out of her trance, she violently spun around, facing the hallway. "Mr. Finch said you were having a bad day. I just wanted to check on you."

Sebastian dropped the swab and began slowly buttoning his shirt, working his way up. However, he stopped at his sternum to avoid dragging fabric across the open cuts. "Come in."

Riley turned back around. His shirt was still open halfway down his chest, putting the raw scratches and the edge of his sharply defined pecs on full display. The half-dressed, disheveled look was devastatingly magnetic.

She permitted herself exactly one glance before dropping her eyes to the floor. She stopped a safe five feet away from him. "Do you need help with that?"

He had clearly been expecting Franklin to finish the job. Now that Franklin was gone, she couldn't exactly leave him bleeding.

Watching the bright crimson flush crawling up her neck as she refused to look at him, the suffocating dark clouds in Sebastian's mind began to scatter. "If you don't mind."

Riley walked over, grabbed a fresh swab, and dipped it in the iodine. Standing directly in front of him, she was forced to look at his flawlessly carved, impossibly handsome face. Her heart immediately betrayed her, accelerating into a chaotic sprint.

She dragged her eyes away from his face, aggressively locking her focus onto the lacerations on his neck. "Tilt... tilt your head up."

Sebastian obeyed, exposing the long line of his throat.

Riley leaned in, meticulously cleaning the gouges. The scratches were brutal; they had torn cleanly through the skin, leaving raw, weeping lines. One particularly vicious swipe had dragged right over his Adam's apple. As she applied the antiseptic there, her hand froze entirely.