So I stop.
I step back.
I smooth my dress like nothing happened and hope the fabric hides the fact that everything did.
It might be the hardest thing I’ve done in years. My hands tremble, and I lock my elbows to keep from reaching again.
The ring on my finger—hisring, a cold star—catches a lick of firelight and throws it in my eyes. I blink away the sting and pull my spine straight.
“Goodnight,” I say sweetly, too sweetly, and pivot toward the hall like the higher ground is located somewhere near the nearest door with a lock.
“Naomi—”
I pause, look back over my shoulder because I can’t help myself, because he says my name like a pulled thread. He’s still standing where I left him: shirt unbuttoned at the throat, belt loose, chest rising like he ran the length of the terrace.
He looks wrecked. He looks like he’d wreck me. His gaze drags up my body with deliberate insolence and settles on my mouth, and I feel naked despite the silk.
I swallow and lace my sweetness with steel. “Here’s a tip for your next rehearsal,” I say, voice soft enough to carry a blade. “If you plan on devouring me in public, try not to look so hungry in private. It ruins the surprise.”
The line lands. A muscle jumps in his cheek; his eyes darken, not with shame but with promise. I remember, a beat too late, that lines like this are gasoline to his particular engine. He thrives on dares. I just handed him one with a bow.
He takes one step, only one. It’s enough to light my nerves like fuses.
“That so?” he asks, silk-skinned danger. “We’ll see who ruins what.”
My heart stumbles, then sprints.
I should bite my tongue and walk away. Instead I tilt my chin, because I have never known how to back down once I’m in the ring. “Try me.”
There it is, the gleam I feared and craved, building in his eyes like heat lightning on the horizon. A storm setting up shop.
I turn before I do something catastrophic, like close the space and learn how he tastes when he’s this close to losing control. My heels click a steady rhythm across the marble, one-two, one-two, the sound of someone who knows exactly where she’s going and not at all what she’ll do when she gets there.
I reach the door with my pulse in my mouth.
I look back one last time because self-preservation and I are not currently on speaking terms.
He hasn’t moved.
He’s watching me like a problem set he cannot wait to solve, lips parted, hands loose at his sides as if he’s reminding himself not to use them. The lighthouse’s slow blink rolls across the windows behind him and crowns him for a heartbeat like a king.
“Sleep well, Mr. Dillinger,” I say. “You’ll need your rest.” A softer woman would leave it there. I don’t. “I expect a better performance tomorrow.”
I shut the door before I can see his reaction, and the latch catches with a clean, final click.
Inside, I lean against the wood and breathe like I’ve been underwater too long. My hands are shaking. My mouth is swollen. My body is a chorus of wants I refuse to name. I slip the bolt, because pretenses aside, I don’t trust myself, and when I cross the room the floor seems to tilt as if the island is reminding me that nothing here is stable, least of all me.
Only when I’m alone, when my reflection stares back from the dark window like a woman I half recognize, do I let the smile come. Not victory but something wilder, something reckless and edged with dread.
Because I can still feel his breath against my neck and his pulse under my fingers, and I can still see the way his eyes heated when I told him to try me.
Because for a breathless, fatal moment in the living room I forgot why I need to hate him.
The upper hand doesn’t feel like an upper hand anymore. It feels like the lip of a cliff, the wind rising, the rocks below insisting that falling is not the worst part.
Behind the door, somewhere in the house that doesn’t know what to do with the two of us, I swear I can hear his low laugh—one note, unamused, aroused, promising more.
Game on, I told him.
