The city lights blurred through the window as tears she refused to acknowledge gathered in her eyes. Tomorrow, she would be strong. Tomorrow, she would remember why this had to end.
She should have pulled away. Should have remembered why this was dangerous, why she'd built those walls in the first place. But his touch was fire, and she'd been cold for so long.
She finally turned. A mistake. His eyes were the color of a storm at midnight, and they pinned her in place with an intensity that stole her breath. Every logical thought she'd carefully assembled scattered like leaves in a hurricane.
"This conversation isn't over," he said, and it sounded like both a promise and a threat. Then he was gone, leaving her standing in the dark with a racing heart and the ghost of his touch still burning on her skin.
The silence between them was charged, electric, a living thing that thrummed with everything they weren't saying. Outside, thunder rolled across the sky like a warning neither of them intended to heed.
But plans, she was learning, had a habit of crumbling when your heart decided to mutiny against your brain.
"Tell me to stop," he said, his thumb tracing her lower lip with agonizing slowness. His eyes searched hers, and for the first time, she saw something beneath the control — something raw and desperate. "Tell me, and I will."
He closed the distance between them in three measured steps. His cologne — sandalwood and something darker, something that was purely him — wrapped around her like smoke. "Doing what, exactly?" His voice was low, dangerous, a velvet threat.
