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."
Tonight, she let herself feel everything.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
She sank onto the sofa, pressing her hands to her face. What was she doing? This wasn't part of the plan. None of this — his intensity, his vulnerability, the way her body responded to his like a compass finding north — was part of the plan.
