But plans, she was learning, had a habit of crumbling when your heart decided to mutiny against your brain.
"Looking at me like that," she managed, her voice barely above a breath. "Like you own me."
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.
Tonight, she let herself feel everything.
The corner of his mouth curved — not quite a smile, but something far more devastating. "Maybe I do." He reached out, his fingers ghosting along her jaw with a gentleness that contradicted every sharp angle of his features.
"You can't keep doing this," she whispered, not turning around. Her voice was steadier than she felt, which was something, at least. Her heart hammered so loudly she was certain he could hear it.
His phone buzzed on the marble counter. They both flinched. The spell shattered like glass, and reality rushed back in with all its sharp, unforgiving edges. He stepped back, his expression closing like a vault.
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.
