He was.
Behind the door, each beat of her pulse pounded louder than the last. Not nerves.
Not fear.
Anticipation, thick and molten, settled deep in her belly.
Every movement—peeling off her layers, sliding into his shirt, adjusting the hem—felt like a choice. A line crossed. Not for him. For her.
When she stepped out,the air changed.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t move.
Just stared—utterly still, jaw tight, like she’d shattered control itself.
His shirt clung to her like a secret he wasn’t supposed to know. The hem grazed the tops of her thighs. The thin fabric did nothing to hide the swell of her breasts, the hard peaks betraying her need.
And now, she looked like a reckoning.
His reckoning.
Like she didn’t know she’d set him on fire.
Or maybe she did.
And that destroyed him even more.
When she walked toward him, slow and sure, it was a fucking death sentence.
He didn’t reach for her.
She reached for him.
And the second her hands found him, the surrounding air detonated.
The kiss wasn’t patient. Wasn’t polite. It was filthy with want—wild, greedy, a collision of mouths that held nothing back.
His hands found her hips and lifted her into him, grinding her up against the hard line of him with a desperation that shattered his restraint. The heat of her—through cotton, of soft meeting steel—was goddamn lethal.
She wrapped her legs around him and moved against him with slow, dangerous rolls of her hips, dragging the thick length of him along the ache between her thighs. His hand slid higher, curled around the back of her thighs, dragging the shirt up until his palm found bare skin.
Hot. Smooth. Dangerous.
“Jesus, Arden,” his voice was ragged. “You’re going to fucking destroy me.”
She didn’t answer.
She kissed him again—deeper, darker, needier. Like a woman possessed.
Like the past was ash and she was the flame.
Her fingers speared into his hair, a sharp tug dragging a guttural sound from deep in his chest—feral, helpless.
He kissed her like he was starving. Like she was air. Like if he didn’t have her now, he wouldn’t survive the next breath.
When she pulled back, it wasn’t distance, it was survival. Their foreheads pressed together, breath tangled, pulses crashing in the hush between them.
