And when he looked at me then, eyes dark and unreadable, I knew I’d said exactly the thing I shouldn’t have.
It was the drink. The stupid, reckless heat of it loosening the grip I usually kept on my tongue, dissolving the thin line between sense and need. I blamed the vodka, the pulse of the bass, the smoke thick enough to blur judgment. Mostly, I blamed him, standing there in black, every inch of him measured and devastating, temptation carved into structure and breath.
Heat unfurled inside me, until it became impossible to tell where the alcohol ended and his presence began. My body felt too warm, my skin too aware. Every inch of me was drawn toward him as if gravity had finally remembered my name. I hated that it was him doing this to me, his silence, his eyes, the unbearable focus of a man who saw too much.
I looked away, forcing a breath past the tightness in my throat. I hadn’t meant to make it personal, hadn’t meant to let him see what he was doing to me. But with him, everything was already personal. Every word, every pause, every second of withheld restraint.
His eyes darkened. When he spoke, the words cut through the air like the slide of a blade.
“Didn’t take you for the type to stalk records for birthdays,” he said, voice deep and cold, but with something faintly amused curling through it.
I turned toward him, my expression a careful mask. “Didn’t take you for the type to show up in places that breathe.”
A faint smirk threatened to break his composure. His gaze lowered, not for long, just enough to trace the line of my dress, the bare skin beneath the dim light, before finding my eyes again.
“Clearly,” he murmured, “we’ve both been misjudged.”
I raised my glass, pretending that movement was control, that the tremor in my fingers came from the chill of the drink and not from the proximity of his voice. The vodka burned all the way down, sharp enough to keep me conscious. He stepped closer, slow, unhurried, his presence spreading through the air until breathing felt dangerous.
Before I could take another sip, his hand closed over mine, firm and unyielding, the heat of his skin bleeding through my knuckles. He took the glass from my grip, slow enough to make it feel intentional, the faint scrape of his fingers against mine sending a pulse straight through my chest. The glass left my hand, but the tremor stayed.
“You still haven’t answered,” he said, tone soft but too composed to mistake for patience. “Why are you here?”
I let a smile touch my mouth, thin and defensive. “To forget.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just slightly. “Forget what, Edwina?”
I hesitated, because I could feel the trap in the question, the truth waiting at its center. He took another step forward, close enough now that his breath brushed against my jaw, his voice dropping to a rough whisper meant only for me.
“Tell me,” he murmured. “What exactly is it you’re trying to erase tonight?”
Something in me broke. The noise of the club receded, fading into the hollow space between heartbeats. I could still smell him, smoke and winter, restraint and ruin, and my control slipped.
“You,” I said.
The word came out small at first, barely more than breath, but once it escaped, the rest followed, unstoppable. My throat burned, but I kept going. “You’re in my head,” I whispered, the words shaking loose from somewhere I’d buried deep. “Every damn day. Every time I close my eyes. You don’t leave. I wake up, and you’re there. In my thoughts, in the way I breathe, in the spaces I’m supposed to keep for myself.”
My voice cracked. “And I hate it. I hate that I can’t stop. That I don’t even want to anymore.”
His expression didn’t soften, didn’t waver, but something changed in the air between us, an invisible pull, sharp as a heartbeat. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was alive.
Then, quietly, his voice found me again. “That won’t work,” he said, each word landing deep and husked. He didn’t mean the forgetting. He meant resistance. And standing there, with his breath still close to my skin, I finally understood that neither of us believed the lie anymore.
Chapter Nine
Hayden
Thatwon’twork.
The words slipped out lower than I meant, rougher than I should have allowed, quiet but carrying enough heat to set the air between us on fire. And I saw the way they hit her. They didn’t just land, they ignited, flaring across the small distance we kept pretending was safety.
Her mouth parted, slow and uncertain, somewhere between defiance and shock, and my self-control fractured a little more. That mouth. Fuck. That perfect, taunting mouth that looked built for sin and apology in the same breath. I should have looked away. Should have reminded myself of the rules I swore to live by, the distance I fought to keep. But she stood there, breathing hard, cheeks flushed, pupils blown wide, her lipsshining under the dim light, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing in me capable of restraint.
That dress didn’t help. Black. Short. The kind of fabric that didn’t cling so much as obey, tracing every curve like it had been painted over her skin just to ruin me. Her legs, bare, endless, fucking lethal, caught what little light the room offered, and I was gone. My cock throbbed against the inside of my zipper, the ache sharp and insistent, a brutal reminder of everything I couldn’t have and everything I still wanted anyway.
I wanted her wrecked. Not sweetly. Not carefully. I wanted her trembling under my hands, her body pressed against the wall, and make her forget the name of every man who ever touched her wrong. I wanted to hear her break apart under my voice, wanted to taste her gasps against my tongue, wanted to fuck the composure out of her until she forgot every rule she ever obeyed. I wanted her ruined in every way a man shouldn’t want his student. I wanted to slide my hand between her thighs and feel just how fucking wet she got from nothing but my voice.
And I didn’t move. Didn’t touch. Because I couldn’t. Not yet.
