Drop the act.
Speak with my back to her. “You’ve got five minutes to look around, butterfly. After that, I’m walking you out of this room.”
A beat.
Then her voice—quiet, confused, already addicted.
“And if I don’t want to leave?”
I stare at myself in the glass.
At the man I’ve tried to bury.
I almost turn around.
Almost.
Instead, I whisper the cruelest truth I’ve got.
“Then run.”
I don’t hear footsteps.
I don’t hear anything.
Just her breath—soft, shaky—and then the creak of the floorboard as she moves.
Towards me.
Fuck.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and inhale through my nose like it’ll do anything to stop the war going off inside me.
And then—she’s behind me.
Too close.
Close enough that her heat slides against my back like a second skin, and all the rules I tried to keep between us crumble like ash under the weight of her being near me.
I feel her hand before I see it—soft fingers brushing against my lower back, light enough to make my skin tense, my muscles coil, my control fracture.
“You didn’t tell me to,” she whispers.
I glance at her reflection.
Her eyes aren’t wide anymore.
They’re dark. Heavy. Starved.
“You didn’t tell me to run.”
Her fingers trail higher.
Up my spine.
Slow. Barely there.
And then she’s right up against me, her chest against my back, her breath near my neck, and I swear to God I could come from that alone.
