Tonight, she let herself feel everything.
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.
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.
"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 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.