He shrugs.Lazy.Loose.Like he’s still riding a song no one else can hear.“A handful of times, yeah.”
And I hate how good he looks.His shirt is just rumpled enough to make you imagine sliding your hands under it.How calm he seems—serene, even.Like the world rolls off his skin and takes mine with it.
I shouldn’t be looking at his mouth.
Or imagining how it would feel against my neck, my thighs, dragging moans from me like a fucking hymn.
I shouldn’t want to know what he’d do if I shoved him against that bin of old vinyl and told him I wasn’t careful anymore.
But I do.
I imagine his hand curling around my wrist, backing me into the wall with a growl in his throat and tension in his jaw.I imagine his mouth finding that spot behind my ear—the one he knows makes me forget how to speak.I imagine the moment before everything snaps, before he wrecks me again, and I let him.
And still—I say nothing.
Because bad boys don’t get to come back and pick up where they left off.
Even if my whole body is begging for one more song.
“What are you doing here?”I ask, nailing the breezy tone like it’s part of my job description.My arms stay at my sides, back straight, as if I’m not seconds away from leaning into him.Like I’m not already wondering what his mouth tastes like now.
Keep it professional, Kit.
Professional.
He shrugs, slow and easy, that fucking half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as if he knows it ruins me.“Started my day earlier than usual.Figured I’d swing by after dropping groceries at my place.”
I blink.“You live around here?”
No.
Absolutely not.
This is bad.This is very bad.
He tilts his head, studying me as if he can see straight through the layers I’ve spent years building.“Well, aren’t we curious today, Dempsey?”
His tone is dry, almost clipped, but there’s something coiled beneath it—like a guitar string pulled too tight, one breath away from snapping, vibrating with everything he’s not saying.
And then he moves.
Not a step exactly, more like a shift.A recalibration.One second, he’s standing near the bin marked Jazz, 70s, the next he’s suddenly too close.Close enough that the warm, late-spring air thickens between us.Close enough that I can smell the woodsy and clean linen fragrance on his shirt, feel the press of heat radiating off him like temptation in human form.Close enough that my knees remember what it felt like to lock around his hips in the back of a car.
He doesn’t touch me.
But I feel him.
Like static crawling over skin.Like heat rising under denim.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”he murmurs.
My breath hitches.Just enough to give me away.
“That charge,” he adds, voice lower now, rougher.“Still running through you like it used to.Right here.”
He leans in, lips near my ear, and I swear to God my spine melts.
“It’s humming off your skin.You’ve always run hot, but now ...”His voice dips, and I feel it in my stomach.“Now it’s fucking dangerous.”
