“It’s driving me insane,” I muttered. “He’s hot and cold. Fire and ice. One second he’s looking at me like he wants to fuck me into a wall and the next he’s acting like I’m a bad PR headline.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Rude.”
“Honest,” she corrected. “Look, I know the type. Hell, I dated the type. Theo’s built his whole world on keeping himself under lock and key. And you…” She gave me a pointed look. “You’re a crowbar. Hell, a sledgehammer trying to smash his walls down.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
“Not a compliment. Be careful, Sin. You keep pushing, and he’s going to break. And it might not be the kind of break you can fix.”
“With my magical dick?”
“Be serious for once. You can’t mess with people like it’s a sport.”
I didn’t answer—because reflected in the mirror behind her, through the glass wall that faced the terrace, I saw him.
Theo was moving with purpose, suit sharp, shoulders stiff, mouth in a grim line. But I noticed the cracks. The tension in his jaw. The way his hands curled into fists at his sides.
He was coming undone.
I slipped away from the bar before I could talk myself out of it, following the echo of his footsteps—clipped and sharp, like he was slicing through his own nerves as he headed toward the spa.
He turned the corner and froze. Our eyes met in a glass display. He didn’t speak. Didn’t scowl or command the space like he usually did. He just stood there. Pale. Tight-jawed. Like he didn’t know if he was about to bolt or collapse.
I stepped up behind him, slowly inching my hand down his arm until my fingers teased the back of his hand with the lightest touch.
His brow furrowed, his mask beginning to slip. “What are you doing?”
“You know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“You never do,” I said softly. “Yet here you are.”
“You think this is a game?—”
“No,” I cut in. “I think you’re lying. To yourself. To me.”
He flinched.
“Tell me, Theo,” I whispered, stepping closer, melding my front to his back. “What do you want?”
“I want you to move.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
He spun around, breaking the electrifying contact. His gaze snapped to mine—furious, conflicted, lost. I smiled.
“Say it.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Say.It.”
