"You can't keep doing this," she whispered, not turning around. Her voice was steadier than she felt, which was something, at least. Her heart hammered so loudly she was certain he could hear it.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
