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 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.
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.
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 finally turned. A mistake. His eyes were the color of a storm at midnight, and they pinned her in place with an intensity that stole her breath. Every logical thought she'd carefully assembled scattered like leaves in a hurricane.
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 city lights blurred through the window as tears she refused to acknowledge gathered in her eyes. Tomorrow, she would be strong. Tomorrow, she would remember why this had to end.
