My jaw clenched. “Sienna.”
Her voice dipped into something low and dangerously honest. “Carson… I can feel how hard you’re trying not to touch me.”
That hit like a punch to the chest because it was true.
Every part of my body was straining not to react to her.
Not to pull her closer. Not to kiss the hell out of her right here in this tent.
“We can’t,” I forced out. “Not on this trip. Not tonight. Not when they think we’re—”
“Married?” she teased.
“Exactly.”
She turned in the sleeping bag slowly and deliberately, rolling from her side to face me. The movement brought her nose to mine, her breath warm against my lips. Her legs tangled lightly with mine in the narrow space. Her hand found my chest, resting there, soft but undeniably bold.
And I was gone.
Every thought, every rule, every warning I’d been repeating all night dissolved beneath the look in her eyes—low-lidded, warm, impossibly inviting.
She whispered, “Carson…?”
I froze as my heart slammed.
She leaned in, just a fraction, just enough that her lips brushed mine without fully touching.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” she whispered.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t think.
Because I absolutely could not tell her that.
Not when she was inches away.
Not when I could taste the ghost of her breath on my mouth.
Not when every cell in my body was begging to close the distance.
“Sienna,” I whispered, voice shredded, “don’t do this unless you mean it.”
She smiled softly, the kind of smile that promised trouble, heat, and every rule breaking itself in a quiet explosion.
She tilted her head up…
Closer.
And her lips almost touched mine as the world narrowed to a single moment that was about to change.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sienna
Carson didn’t move, and he didn’t breathe.
