"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."
She couldn't. God help her, she couldn't. Because the truth — the terrifying, exhilarating truth — was that she didn't want him to stop. She wanted to burn.
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.
The rain hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse. She pressed her forehead against the cold glass, watching the city below blur into rivers of light. Behind her, she could feel his presence like a physical force — dark, magnetic, impossible to ignore.
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.
"Looking at me like that," she managed, her voice barely above a breath. "Like you own me."
