“I can see you,” I murmur, my lips so close to hers I can taste her exhale. “And I know you can see me, too. You may have walked into the wrong room tonight, Callie. But I walked straight into my fucking downfall.”
Her eyes open and lock on mine, wide and searching.
One more breath. One more second. One more slip of control.
I bend my head, our mouths inches apart. I feel her tremble. Wanting. Afraid. I stay in the moment, relishing the way my pulse has increased, my heart galloping in my chest. Nothing has made me feel this way in the longest time.
“Tell me not to,” I whisper.
She doesn’t. Or can’t.
Her lips part, and I’m right there, my restraint unravelling thread by thread.
Callie
His breath is warm against my lips. That’s the only part of me that isn’t shaking. The thin layer of skin where we’re almost touching. My mind is a screaming mess. Don’t do this. Don’t want this. Run. Stay. He’s danger. He’s safety. None of it makes sense. None of it fits into any world I’ve known.
But when he says tell me not to… I can’t.
I don’t want to.
If these are the last moments of my life, if sunrise is a finish line I’ll never reach, then I want to feel something before I go. Something that isn’t fear or exhaustion or hopelessness.
Something that’s mine.
“You said you’ll decide what happens to me,” I breathe, the words ghosting over his mouth. “Maybe this time it’s my turn to decide.”
He stills. Completely. Like a predator sensing the shift when prey finally stops running.
My fingers move before I register the decision, sliding up his chest, curling into the fabric of his shirt, tugging him that last dangerous inch closer. His answering inhale is sharp, ragged, a crack in his armor I never considered I’d see.
His thumb traces my jaw in an intentional sweep that feels so solid and final that I know my life has just changed. The world narrows to that single line of contact, to the way my pulsesurges beneath his touch. I tilt my chin, closing the final sliver of distance, and I kiss him.
Just a brush of lips, testing and terrified, but the effect is instant and catastrophic. He releases a sound deep in his chest, low and hungry, like he finally has permission to destroy every rule he’s ever lived by and he intends to do it in the most devastatingly starving manner possible.
His mouth claims mine back without hesitation, his hand sliding to the back of my neck as though he’s been waiting an entire lifetime to anchor me there. Heat punches through me, a shockwave of want that blinds out the fear and replaces it with something so fierce I nearly gasp.
This shouldn’t feel like salvation.
His other hand grips my hip, pulling me flush against him, and now I understand what he’d warned me about.
What I want… you can’t handle.
Only I want it too.
My fingers climb to the back of his neck, clutching and desperate. Only my desperation doesn’t scare him. He drinks it in. Answers it with his own. The kiss deepens, staking a claim I’m already too far gone to deny.
When he finally tears his mouth from mine, it’s only far enough to rest his forehead against mine, his breath shuddering like he’s been starved of air until now.
“Dangerous,” he whispers, and I don’t know if he means me or him or what is about to happen between us.
My heart is pounding so hard my ribs ache. I don’t know where fear ends and desire begins. I don’t think he cares, his thumb is still stroking my lower lip like he’s memorizing every detail of the kiss we just shared.
He looks into my eyes, and I swear the ground shifts beneath me.
“You need to understand what this means before we go too far,” he says, but the words come out almost as grunts. Like it pains him to hold back from kissing me again.
“I don’t care,” I say, and it feels like a weight is lifted from me. “Whatever this means, I accept. Just don’t stop. Please.”
