Arden’s lips parted, the breath she drew shallow, unsteady.
And still, she didn’t move.
Neither did he.
They stood on the precipice, suspended in want and restraint, surrounded by city noise but locked in a silence that screamed.
Gideon inhaled sharply, the scent of her unraveling something deep and dangerously tethered.
It wrapped around him like silk and sin—intoxicating and inescapable.
Every instinct screamed to close the distance. To touch. To take.
His hands fisted at his sides, the tension threading through him like a live current. One wrong move, and he’d lose control.
Then her breath caught. Shallow. Unsteady.
A crack in the composure she always wore like armor.
His fists tightened, breath faltered—brutal and unfinished. One more second, and he wouldn't hold.
It leveled him.
When he spoke, his voice was unrecognizable, low, rough, a velvet rasp of restraint fraying at the edges.
“Are you getting in…”
A long pause.
“…or do I get to kiss you first?”
A question only in structure.
A promise in everything else.
The words hung there, thick and loaded, curling between them like smoke.
She smiled—slow, dangerous, deliberate.
It wasn’t flirtation. It was surrender laced with fire.
“I’m not going to stop you, Gideon.”
The storm in his eyes went still. Not calm, but focused.
Every thread of tension between them pulled taut, the moment stretching, daring either of them to make the first move.
And that was it.
His hands were on her before conscious thought caught up.
A hand gripped her jaw, tilting her face upward with a tenderness that stole her breath. The other slid into her hair, fingers threading through the waves until they found the nape of her neck and held: firm enough to make her gasp, soft enough to undo her.
The first brush of his mouth was gentle. Disarmingly slow and deliberate.
A tease.
A promise.
