Instead I lean in.
Her breath brushes my mouth, a warm stutter against the cold restraint I’m trying and failing to maintain. She’s lookingup at me, eyes dark with challenge, with heat, with everything I swore I buried the night I left her in the cold.
Her pulse thrums at the base of her throat. I want to bite it.
Instead, I force my voice out, low and lethal.
“Stop looking through the vault.”
“Stop pretending you control what I see.”
“You’re playing with fire,” I warn.
She smiles, provocation wrapped in ice.
“So are you.”
I don’t realize I’ve moved until my hand is braced beside her on the desk, trapping her between my body and the cold edge of the workstation.
“You think I won’t find out what’s in there,” she says quietly.
“You won’t,” I lie.
“You can’t stop me.”
I don’t respond, because speaking would undo me.
She leans forward, just enough for her chest to brush my stomach. Heat blooms through the fabric of my shirt, crawling up my throat.
“Tell me what you’re hiding,” she whispers.
I inhale sharply.
She makes me feel too much.
“No,” I say, almost a growl.
Her eyes darken. “Then I’ll find it myself.”
She looks at my mouth.
I don’t remember who moves first.
Our foreheads nearly collide, our lips separated by a breath, a heartbeat. Her fingers lift slightly, curling as if she’s about to touch my chest.
The world narrows to heat and proximity and the quiet, devastating truth that if she tilts her chin an inch higher, I will lose the last of my restraint.
Her voice comes out like a secret meant to destroy. “Damian…”
It’s her whisper that jerks me away from her. I pull away, trying to conceal the rapid rise and fall of my chest.This woman will get me killed.
Those seductive eyes of hers blink rapidly, her lips parted sensuously. She shakes her head slightly, like a tremor passing through her, and gets up, murmuring something about “going to the washroom.”
Harper’s scent still lingers in the room after she leaves. It clings to my skin, my collar, the inside of my throat. I stand exactly where she left me, jaw locked, hands braced on the table as if force alone could steady the pulse hammering under my ribs.
The moment between us still simmers in the air, a ghost I can’t confront without feeling its heat.
I should be focused on her insubordination. Instead, what I remember is the shape of her mouth when she refused to back down.
