The shrill sound tore through the quiet, slicing the moment in half. He flinched, shoulders tightening, the spell fracturing between us. I blinked hard, the sound of his phone clawing reality back into the room.
A muscle tightened along his jaw before his hand dropped, and as the distance opened between us, the rush of air that filled thespace felt sharp, intrusive, nothing compared to the heat he left behind. Every inch of me felt raw, my body still thrumming with the ghost of his touch. The phone continued to ring, its sharp tone drilling through the silence, cruel in its timing.
“Fuck,” he muttered, the word dragging rough through his throat. His hand rose, fingers threading through his hair, tugging until the motion looked almost punishing.
I didn’t move. Just watched him, my body still humming from what almost happened.
He reached for the phone, hesitating before turning it over. The screen lit up, and I saw the change hit him like a blow, his expression hardened, cooling from fire to iron in seconds. Whatever name or number glowed there rewired something in him. The heat between us dissolved, replaced by a hollow stretch of distance that settled where his touch had been. He lifted his gaze to me, meeting it for a moment that stretched too long, then looked away.
I gathered my things without a word. My body moved through the motions, but my mind was splintering, replaying every second, every breath, every almost-touch that would haunt me later. My throat ached from holding back what I wanted to say.
I didn’t ask who it was. Didn’t ask why his voice had changed, or why I suddenly felt like a secret. I just turned and walked, each step scraping through the echo of what we’d nearly done. My pulse thundered in my ears, my chest tight, breath shallow, control slipping through my fingers like ash. Behind me, the studio stayed quiet. The air still smelled of paint and something warmer, something human.
He stayed quiet, made no move to follow, and it was that silence, more than his absence, that carved the deepest ache.
Chapter Fourteen
Hayden
Ididn’tgoafterher. Not because I didn’t want to. Christ, I wanted nothing more than to follow, to take those few steps that separated us, to drag her back into the space where the air still trembled with what almost happened, to lock the door and finish what we’d started in that storm of silence and breath. I wanted to push her against the wall until she forgot her name, until the sound of my voice filled the hollow of her throat, until her body gave up pretending it wasn’t already mine.
But I didn’t move. Because if I had, I wouldn’t have stopped. I couldn’t have. I would’ve ruined her in ways neither of us could come back from. So I stayed there, muscles locked, blood pounding, while the echo of her footsteps faded into the hall and something inside me split open under the weight of it.
That fucking phone wouldn’t shut up behind me, a shrill reminder of everything I was supposed to be—responsible, restrained, rational—but it might as well have been a goddamn alarm buried underwater. I couldn’t hear anything beyond the hammer of my pulse, the ghost of her skin burned into my hands, the memory of her breath trembling against my mouth. Every inch of me still carried her, the brush of her cheek, the shape of her wrist, the way her voice shook when she whispered Professor like it meant something it shouldn’t.
My hands were trembling, useless things that didn’t know whether to grab my hair or the nearest wall. Tension crawled through my body, heat pooling low, unbearable. My cock strained against my jeans, heavy and insistent, every second dragging me closer to the edge I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cross. One more heartbeat and I would’ve had her pinned there, her legs tight around my waist, her fingers clawing at my shoulders, the sound of her moans spilling into my mouth until I forgot what restraint ever felt like.
But the phone kept ringing, dragging me back. Reality has sharp teeth, it bit hard. I swore under my breath, reached for the goddamn thing, and froze when the screen lit up. No name, just a number I knew too fucking well. The past always had perfect timing. It never stayed buried, it waited. It stalked. It came crawling back the second I thought I’d learned to breathe again.
I let it ring. Five seconds. Ten. Then nothing.
A message appeared, just a name, unreadable to anyone else, carved into the rot of my memory. I didn’t open it. The words would be poison, same as always.
I tossed the phone onto the bench beside me and stared at the empty space she’d left behind. I could still see her there, those wide, defiant eyes that tried too hard not to beg, the flush on her throat, that mouth I couldn’t stop fucking imagining. She’d wanted me. I’d felt it in the way her breath hitched when Imoved closer, the way her pulse stuttered when I said her name. She’d wanted me as much as I wanted her, and fuck if that didn’t make it worse.
Because I wanted to destroy every ounce of her control. I wanted to see that composure break open under my hands. I wanted to taste her surrender, slow and filthy, until she was trembling from the inside out, realizing no one—no fucking man—could ever touch her the way I would. I wanted to make her lose herself and then crawl back for more.
And I would’ve done it. I would’ve made it art. The kind that burns when you touch it. But not yet. Not when the past was clawing its way out of the dark, not when the symposium was hanging over both our heads, not when one wrong move could destroy everything we were pretending not to want.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, dragging a hand over my face until my palm pressed against the back of my neck. The air still smelled of paint and her perfume, sweet and faint and goddamn lethal. I breathed it in, let it choke me for a moment, then exhaled through my teeth. My control was slipping, splintering by the hour. And Edwina Carter—fuck—she was the match I kept striking, just to see how long it would take before I burned down everything I’d spent years trying to keep intact.
I told myself I’d stay away from her. That I’d draw a line and actually hold it this time. But we both knew the truth, I’d already crossed it. And the next time she looked at me that way, with that quiet fucking defiance that made my hands itch to touch her, I wouldn’t stop. Not even if it meant burning us both to ash.
I didn’t sleep. Couldn’t. Sleep demanded stillness, and there hadn’t been a quiet thought in my head since I walked out of thatfucking studio with her scent tangled in my shirt and the echo of her voice clawing at my chest. Every time I closed my eyes, she was there again, the heat of her skin bleeding into mine, the tremor in her breath when I almost kissed her. I kept telling myself that the phone call had pulled me back from the edge, had saved me from something I shouldn’t have wanted in the first place, but that was bullshit. What haunted me wasn’t the number on the screen. It was her.
Her face. Her voice. The way she’d looked up at me, breathing uneven, mouth parted, eyes wide with something she was too proud to name. The way she’d leaned in, reckless, trembling, begging for something neither of us should’ve been asking for, and I hadn’t stopped it. I’d leaned in too. Close enough to feel the air shift, to taste her breath, to want to drown in the sound of her silence. I didn’t move until reality tore us apart.
Hours later, she was still under my fucking skin. The ghost of her breath clung to me, warm and electric, the kind of thing that burrows deep until it starts to hurt. I dragged a hand through my hair, fingers curling at the base of my neck until the sting grounded me. It didn’t help. She was there anyway, in every corner of my mind, her voice cutting through reason, her trembling hands replaying behind my eyes, that soft sound she made when she lost her composure.
And the goddamn phone call. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to acknowledge the name tied to that number or the history it carried. Years of silence weren’t long enough to bury that part of my life, but I’d done my best to keep it dead. So why now? Why fucking now, when I was already slipping toward something that could destroy me?
The clock glared from across the room, its hands slicing through another hour I hadn’t earned. The symposium loomed closer, bringing with it the endless meetings, the departmental chaos, the constant eyes watching every move I made. Andbeneath all of it, threaded through the noise and obligation, was Edwina. Always there. Too near to ignore, too silent to forget, too fucking intoxicating for my sanity to hold. I could already picture her at that podium, composed on the surface, her hands trembling just enough to betray what she was really thinking. She’d part her lips to speak, and I’d remember every sound she made when she forgot how to breathe.
I told myself to pull it together. To fucking focus. But my body ached for her in a way that had nothing to do with logic. Every time I thought I’d mastered it, every time I tried to drown the hunger with cold showers and colder thoughts, it came crawling back, stronger, filthier, more demanding. It wasn’t want anymore. It was need. The kind that scraped bone.
Edwina Carter wasn’t just temptation. She was the line I’d drawn in the sand, the one I kept erasing every time I thought about her mouth, her skin, the sound of my name breaking on her tongue. I was halfway across that fucking line, and I didn’t even remember stepping over it.
The apartment was quiet around me, too quiet. The kind of quiet that lets the wrong thoughts breed. Stale coffee lingered on the desk, the smell of ink and exhaustion hanging heavy in the air. The symposium packet sat open in front of me, annotated to death, useless. My pen rested across the margins, and I couldn’t remember the last sentence I’d actually read. Not the schedule. Not the panel notes. Not the flood of emails waiting to be answered. None of it mattered.
