Too honest… too exposed.The truth that slips out when your guard drops for half a second too long.
Fuck.
I want to take it back.I wish I could shove the words back into my mouth and pretend I never said them.
But it’s too late.
Something shifts on his face.
The smirk disappears, wiped clean as if it never existed.His pupils darken, spreading fast, swallowing the gold in his irises until his gaze turns heavy and intent.
The tension between us grows stronger, transforming the silence into something threatening.
He reaches out.
Just one hand.His fingers brush my hair back from my face, putting it behind my ear with a care that seems lethal.The touch is soft, barely there, but it detonates anyway.His fingertips trail along my cheekbone, lingering just long enough to make my breath hitch.
I freeze.
Every instinct screams to move, to pull away, to remind him he doesn’t get this.But my body is frozen in place.
I don’t move, blink, or breathe.
The room suddenly feels smaller, with the shelves closing in and the quiet pressing tightly around us until it becomes intimate.My body locks up completely, caught between fight and flight, neither one prevailing.
He’s breathtaking in a way that can ruin you if you look too long.
Prominent cheekbones that seem sculpted rather than naturally formed.Messy hair that never stays in place, falling into his eyes as if it knows it belongs there.And that mouth.Filthy, cruel, unforgettable.A mouth that knows how to say all the wrong things just the right way.
The kind of beauty that destroys good girls.
The kind mothers warn you about and leave scars instead of memories.
And I could fall.God, I could fall so easily if I let him in.
If I allow myself to believe that the intensity in his eyes is about me, not conquest.If I let myself pretend this heat curling low in my belly means more than instinct and lust, and a body that doesn’t know how to protect itself.
I despise the part of me that still desires him even though I know better.That envisions what those hands could do if they weren’t so carefully hovering at my face.A part of me wants to surrender.It wants to end this ache.
But I won’t because I understand who he is.
Mainly because I heard what he told Jace.
That fucking bet.
The memory hits me suddenly, catching me off guard.My stomach twists tightly, so sharp I almost gasp.
Is this all part of the act?The way he crowds me in this silent library and wants to destroy me from the inside out.Is he still playing that game?Still chasing the win instead of the girl sitting right in front of him, trying not to fall apart.
Anger slices through the heat, hot and furious, giving me just enough strength to move.
I quickly stand up from the chair before I do something I can’t undo.
My chair loudly scratches the floor.Heads turn.Whispers begin.I don’t care.
I grab my bag, breath coming too fast.
I refuse to be a bet.
