Chapter 10: Ground Rules(Sienna)

I didn’t take a step toward the exit, nor did I lower my gaze. Jaxson turned his back on me, tossing the bloody towel onto a nearby bench with a flick of his wrist as if I had already vanished from his world. He stood there with his shoulders tense, waiting for the sound of my retreating footsteps.

He was used to people cowering before his explosive outbursts. He was used to board members backing down, staff scattering, and adversaries retreating the moment he lowered his voice into that lethal, quiet register.

I clearly forgot who i was dealing with.

Instead of turning toward the frosted glass doors, I unbuttoned my wool coat with slow, methodical precision. I slipped it off my shoulders, draped it neatly over the back of a bench, and unzipped my medical bag.

"Did you suddenly lose your hearing, Sienna?" Jaxson’s voice sounded dangerously low, vibrating through the cold gym. He didn't turn around, but I could see the muscles in his back contracting like coiled steel springs.

"I gave you a directive. Leave."

"You don't get to issue directives to me, Jaxson," I replied, my tone flat, calm, and completely empty with fear. I stepped closer and said, "But what then is my job, why did you bring me up here,if I leave now, I hope my contract and my father’s company is not at risk."

Jaxson turned around and said,"this isn't your office, and you aren't running a hospital ward. You are on my private property. I signed your contract, which means I can terminate it whenever want ."

"Try it," I said, stepping less than three feet from him, meeting his glare eye to eye without a single tremor in my posture. "Go ahead. Pick up your phone and call your legal team right now. But before you do, let me remind you of clause seven, section B of the specialized athletic recovery contract you signed six weeks ago."

His eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.

"In the event of severe physical trauma during an active rehabilitation,

" I recited smoothly,staring directly at him, "the lead medical specialist retains full, absolute clinical authority over the patient's physical regimen until a formal medical discharge is granted.

You haven't been discharged. In fact, you just deliberately ruptured your patellar by stacking three hundred pounds on a joint that hasn't fully recovered."

"It's my leg," he growled, taking an aggressive step into my space, attempting to use his height and formidable physical presence to force me back. "If I want to tear it off and throw it out the window, that's my prerogative."

“It becomes my prerogative the moment you sign my name to your medical charts,"

I shot back, taking a half-step closer to him instead of yielding an inch. "I spent six years in surgical residency and four years in advanced orthopedic rehabilitation. I did not earn my reputation in this industry to let a arrogant, self-destructive billionaire ruin my success rate because he can't handle his own bruised ego."

For a few second, the air between us felt charged with enough raw emotional intense, to set the room on fire. Jaxson glared down at me,his nostrils flaring with every heavy breath. The sheer arrogance radiating off him met my unyielding, stone-cold professional composure, sparking a friction so intense it felt physical. We were two unstoppable forces colliding in a vacuum, neither willing to yield a single inch of ground.

"You have a terrible attitude, Doctor," he sneered, his voice dropping down , thick with warning.

"And you are a terrible patient," I countered without hesitation. "Now sit down before your knee gives out entirely and forces me to call an ambulance up this ice-covered mountain."

He let out an harsh mocking laugh. The adrenaline from his explosive rage was finally beginning to fade, leaving behind the agonizing reality of the fresh trauma he had just inflicted on his body. I saw the subtle shift in his weight, the tiny flinch in his eyes as a sharp spasm rippled up his thigh.

"Sit," I commanded softly, pointing to the low examination table against the far wall.

For a moment, I thought he was going to throw me out the window himself. But with a dark, bitter curse under his breath, Jaxson finally snapped. He turned sharply and dropped heavily onto the edge of the padded bench. A quiet, involuntary groan slipped past his locked teeth as the impact jolted his lower body.

I didn't waste a second. I pulled a pair of sterile nitrile gloves from my bag and snapped them onto my hands with a crisp, sound. I pulled a low wheeled stool over, sitting directly in front of his bent knees.

"Don't touch me," Jaxson warned, his voice tight, his body locked as stiffly as an iron armor.

"I need to perform a drawer test and evaluate the lateral stability of the joint," I said, ignoring his warning completely as I leaned forward. "If you tore the graft completely off the bone, you're going into surgery by tomorrow morning."

"I told you"

Before he could finish his sentence, I reached out and laid my hands on him.

My left hand secured the base of his lower thigh, right above the swollen, inflamed knee joint, while my right hand slid down to anchor his upper calf. The moment my fingers made contact with his skin, through the light layer of nitriles Jaxson visibly flinched.

It wasn't just a physical reaction to the agonizing pressure on his ruined joint.

A sharp, violent shockwave seemed to move through the air between us. The touch was intimate, emotional , and instantly suffocating, shattering the sharp professional boundary I had spent the last ten minutes desperately building. Jaxson’s entire frame went dead quiet, his heavy breathing instantly halting in his throat. His dark eyes snapped down to where my gloved hands gripped his warm, sweat-slicked leg, then rose slowly, dangerously, to lock onto mine.

The temperature in the room spiked. The raw, intense heat radiating off his skin seeped through my gloves, sending a sudden, involuntary shudder straight up my arms and coiling tight in my chest. I felt the powerful, explosive pulse hammering in his leg muscles beneath my palms.

I felt the sudden, dangerous shift in the unusual tension that had been brewing between us for months.

My fingers tightened fractionally on his calf as I prepared to manipulate the joint, but I couldn't pull my eyes away from him.His gaze was no longer just angry; it was dark, focused, and intensely aware of how close I was standing between his knees, my face inches from his chest.

"Sienna," he breathed, his voice thick, raspy, and dangerously soft as he leaned forward, closing the remaining distance until I could feel the heat of his breath against my lips. "If you push that joint... you better be prepared for what happens when I stand back up."