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