She meets my gaze.
“What now?” she whispers.
I kiss her once. “Now,” I murmur against her lips, “I’m taking you inside.”
Chapter Fifteen - Eden
The hours after it happen feel unreal—like I walked out of myself and left some shaken, breathless version behind in that elevator. I scrub my hands over my face. I pace the living room. I replay every second and try—really try—to reshape it into something that makes sense.
It meant nothing. Ithadto mean nothing.
He cornered me. He manipulated the moment. He confused me with adrenaline and tension and that impossible stare of his. Anyone would’ve cracked under that kind of pressure. Anyone would’ve slipped.
The problem is… I remember too much. His mouth. His hands. The way he touched me like I was a question he needed to solve with his fingers. The way my body reacted before my mind caught up.
I keep trying to swallow the guilt, the panic, the heat curling traitorously in my stomach, but the memory won’t fade. It sits under my skin, pulsing.
By the time he approaches me again—hours later, just as the city’s glow bleeds into the apartment windows—I’m already a mess inside.
He doesn’t crowd me. He doesn’t touch me. He just stands in the doorway of the living room, arms loose at his sides, gaze steady. Waiting.
The worst part is how my body reacts before anything else. A shiver, and a catch in my breath. Every instinct I have warns me to step back.
So I do.
He notices; of course he does. His eyes track every retreating inch of me.
“Running?” he asks quietly.
“No,” I say, except my voice isn’t convincing.
He steps closer, slow enough that I could move away again if I wanted to. Slow enough that I hate how my heartbeat jumps.
“Eden,” he says, and the sound of my name in his voice goes straight through me. “If you didn’t want last night, you would’ve stopped me.”
“I should’ve,” I whisper.
“But you didn’t.”
He’s right. God, I hate that he’s right.
I wrap my arms around myself. “It didn’t mean anything.”
His head tilts slightly—just enough to make something hot curl low in my stomach. “Then why are you shaking?”
“I’m not—”
Except I am. A tremor runs down my spine as if my body remembers him too clearly, too intimately, and refuses to let go.
Simon moves closer until the heat from him brushes my skin. “Look at me.”
I do, and it’s a mistake. The tension between us snaps the instant our eyes meet.
He raises a hand slowly, giving me every chance to pull away. His fingers trace my cheek, light as a whisper. The touch sets off a tremble in me I can’t hide. My lips part on instinct—shock, breathlessness, want—and his thumb brushes the corner of my mouth.
“I manipulated a lot of things,” he murmurs. “Not that.”
I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. My body betrays me in tiny ways—the way I lean into his touch, theway my breath catches, the way my knees soften when his hand slides behind my neck.
