I spin around to face him, anger blazing.“This isn’t real,” I snap.“This is you being a smug fuck boy who thinks he can get whatever he wants because you smile and girls forget their names.”
His thumb shifts, brushing the inside of my wrist where my pulse is racing wildly.My heart betrays me instantly, pounding harder, faster, making my blood roar in my ears.Every nerve sparks under that single point of contact, my body reacting before I can control it.
“You’re shaking, Red?”he whispers, circling until he’s in front of me, watching me way too closely.“Or is that just me?”
I rip my hand free and stumble back a step, the floor feeling hot beneath my feet.My cheeks burn.My skin hums everywhere he touched, as if it’s still happening.
“Stop it.”
He stays still, watching silently with dark eyes fixed on mine, breathing slow and steady while mine comes out uneven and hurried.
“Make me.”
The words land heavily.Loaded.They sit between us and drain all the oxygen from the room.
I should leave.I know that.Every rational thought I have is screaming at me to grab the door and run before I do something I can’t undo.
Instead, I stay there, my heart pounding, anger and desire so tightly knotted I can’t tell which one’s holding me in place.
He steps into my space again.
“You hate me,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Good.”His mouth curves.“Means you feel something.”
A laugh slips out of me.“You’re unbelievable.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, lingers there.“You have no idea.”
“I wasn’t talking about sex, asshole.”
His eyes flick back up, as if I handed him something dangerous without realizing it.
“Oh,” he says softly, “I know.”
The words settle into me, causing my thoughts to scatter.I notice it happening, that familiar unraveling—the way my carefully arranged rules begin slipping away the moment he’s this close.
My body betrays me first.It leans forward before my brain can catch up and pull it back.
I hate how every sensible thought I have when I walk into this room gets pushed out the door the moment he looks at me like that.
And worse than all of it?I don’t want to stop him.
Not when his hand lifts to my cheek, when his touch is gentle, careful, nothing like the guy I’ve been fighting for weeks.
His voice drops lower.“You always run?”
I force a swallow, buying myself another second.
“Maybe it’s because today you were staring at me the whole time and not doing the work.”
A corner of his mouth lifts.“Maybe you were worth staring at.”
“You’re not funny.”My throat goes tight.
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
