Arden blinked, caught in the aftershocks.
“What question?”
He didn’t rush. Just let his gaze wander, slow and unapologetic, before it settled on hers with a weight that made it hard to swallow.
“Which one of us you decided was sexier.”
Her lips parted, then curved.
She didn’t hurry.
Didn’t need to.
With her chin tilted slightly, she murmured, “Still deliberating.”
His chuckle was velvet and smoke. “Take your time.”
She almost did, if only to spite him. But before she could fire back, his hands were at her waist again. Gentler now. No less sure. And when he lifted her from the car, her whole body remembered how it felt to be underneath him.
Her boots hit pavement.
Her balance didn’t.
Then with that maddening confidence she couldn’t stand but kept craving, he swung open the passenger door and gave a half-bow, mock formality thick in the air.
“After you.”
She rolled her eyes, but her mouth betrayed her, forming a smile she tried and failed to kill.
“So chivalrous.”
His brow lifted.
“Only when it gets me what I want.”
She gave him a look, sharp-edged and amused, but her legs carried her into the car anyway. She sank into the seat, his scent wrapping around her like a trap she’d stopped trying to escape. Leather. Spice. Him.
The door shut behind her with a soft click.
A second later, he was there. Close. Composed. Every inch of him unreadable and infuriating and unfairly attractive.
He reached for the ignition, then stilled.
“You forgot something,” he said.
She blinked. “What?”
He didn’t answer.
He just leaned in.
Not fast. Not showy. Just… there with the kind of quiet confidence that made her stomach flip and her pulse stumble.
His arm brushed hers as he reached across her chest. The seatbelt slid against her collarbone, warm from his touch. The buckle clicked into place, but it wasn’t the sound that made her breath hitch.
It was the way he didn’t move.
The way he hovered.
