“I don’t know what you’re doing,” I said, the words squeezing out between my teeth. “Is this you trying to prove you’re not scared of me?”
“No,” she said. “Iamscared of you.”
The honesty hit harder than any lie would have.
“But right now,” she went on, “I think I’m more scared of how much I like the way you’re breathing.”
She had no idea what that did to me. Or maybe she did, and that was the point.
I shifted my grip on the phone, fingers slick against the cheap plastic, and somewhere in the mess of heat and shame and want was a thin, bright line of realization: she was steering the situation. At least a little. Testing how far I’d let her push.
She was not just some helpless civilian in my care. She was a person with teeth and a dangerous curiosity, and I was letting her sink it in.
She made a quiet sound on the line: not a moan, but a soft sigh that almost made me double over. I grunted softly, the sound slipping out unguarded. My hand pumped tighter now, thumb grazing the head of my cock, wrist flexing. Tension gripped every inch of me, a knot of violence, lust, guilt.
“What if I was up there? With you?” She mused out loud.
On her knees. The thought hit so fast it felt involuntary, like a reflex. I hated how easy it was to see, how badly I wanted it.
“Don’t,” I managed, word lilting in pitch.
Heat crested, sharp and urgent. I tried to pull back from it, to breathe through it, to regain even an inch of the control I prided myself in having. My fingers dug into the cold concrete at my side, trying to anchor myself to the rooftop, to the job, to anything other than her voice and the pictures it painted.
On the line, she made another sound. Not loud. A small, bitten-off little noise that might have been a sigh, might have been the start of my name, and then a breathy laugh. “You’re close.”
“Yes.”
“Because of me?”
“Yes.”
Another pause. Then, very softly, like a secret she wanted me to keep: “So am I.”
That was it.
It shredded what was left of my restraint.
The tension snapped in a blinding rush, control tearing loose in a way I hadn’t felt in years. My body locked, an involuntary sound I didn’t manage to smother in time, breath shuddering out of me in short, stuttering pulls. Every nerve sang hot and electric, then frayed, then went slack by painful degrees. I came into my hand with a quiet groan, head tilted back, jaw locked. I forced myself to breathe. In. Out. Again. My hand trembled. My stomach muscles ached from holding so much back, from trying not to make a sound she could weaponize later. My pulse thundered in my ears, drowning out the quiet city. I felt stripped clean and filthy at the same time, like I had just traded in a piece of my discipline and she had taken it without even asking my price.
She was quiet too, for a moment.
“You’re dangerous when you’re quiet,” she whispered.
I swallowed. My throat felt raw. I wiped my hand on my pants and then dragged the back of my wrist across my mouth like that would scrub the moment away.
“And you’re reckless when youthinkyou’re safe,” I said. The words came out hoarse, scraped clean of anything but truth.
There was a heartbeat of nothing. Then the line clicked, dead. She’d hung up.
I sat there, pants still undone, skin cold and nerves rattled, wondering what the fuck I was doing anymore and what the hell she’d done to me. I didn’t know what to think about her and these two opposite facets of her personality. All I knew was that it was getting harder and harder to look at her like someone I could leave behind.
Chapter fifteen
Eden
“Biting Off More Than I Can Chew”
Ilayinthedark with my eyes closed, pretending it might happen if I was still enough, but my brain kept circling back, skipping over the last twenty-four hours like a scratched record. Every time I thought I was about to drift off, I landed on the same places: the alley, the blood, the rooftop, the moment I stepped in front of the window and felt that sharp, electric thrill when I imagined him watching.
