"Looking at me like that," she managed, her voice barely above a breath. "Like you own me."
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
But plans, she was learning, had a habit of crumbling when your heart decided to mutiny against your brain.
