"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 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."
But plans, she was learning, had a habit of crumbling when your heart decided to mutiny against your brain.
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.
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.
Tonight, she let herself feel everything.
