This was slow, deep, a promise spelled out with every pass of my mouth over hers.
She melted into me, her fingers curling into my shirt, and I swore I felt the last of her resistance crack.
When I pulled back, our foreheads touching, I asked again.
“Come to dinner with me.”
She hesitated. Her lips trembled.
And then, softly—almost like it hurt—
“Okay.”
My heart flipped. I didn’t show it. Not all of it.
But damn if I didn’t want to pick her up right there and tell my mom to set an extra placetonight.Instead, I took her hand. I walked her to my bike so I could take her home. When we got to my bike, I went to let her hand go but she didn’t let go. I smiled and kissed her forehead and put the helmet on her. We rode back to her home, and I felt her tightening her grip on me the entire ride back.
When we reached her door, she turned to me with that look, the one that made it hard to breathe. That mix of strength and vulnerability, danger and desire. I go tokiss her again, but she stops me. Putting her hand on my lips.
“Don’t kiss me again,” she said softly, teasing. “I might not let you leave.”
I smiled.
“It wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
Then I leaned in anyway and kissed her goodnight—slow, lingering, my hand cradling the side of her neck like she might vanish if I didn’t hold her just right.
When she stepped inside, she looked back at me one last time. I caught the glint in her eye—something like hope. Or fear. Maybe both. And then she was gone.
I stood there for a moment, staring at her closed door.
Smiling.
But the second the grin touched my lips, the guilt followed.
The bet.
The goddamnbet.
Liam. Adonis. Me.
Get Liz to fall. That was the deal.
Back then, it was a joke. A challenge. A way to make things interesting.
Now?
Now she wasn’t a mission.
She waseverything.
And if I didn’t tell her soon, I was going to lose the one thing I hadn’t known I needed—
Until it was almost too late.
Elizabeth
The moment I stepped inside, a familiar certainty washed over me—he was there. I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t see him. But the atmosphere shifted. It felt heavier, colder, as if every shadow had sprouted fangs. My heels clicked on the tile as I made my way into the living room, and there he stood.
