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 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.
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.
"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.
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.
"Looking at me like that," she managed, her voice barely above a breath. "Like you own me."
"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.
