“You don’t,” I replied, breathless.
His lips moved to the curve of my jaw.
“You walked toward me.”
The words settled into my chest like a pulse.
It was true.
Every time he had paused, I had closed the distance. Every time he had given me space, I had filled it.
He wasn’t dragging me into this.
I was stepping forward.
His hand slipped beneath the hem of my sweater, palm warm against the bare skin of my waist. The contact made my breath hitch, and he felt it.
“You want to feel powerful here,” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
“You are.”
I shook my head slightly, frustrated. “That’s not what I mean.”
He pulled back just enough to look at me.
“You want to see me react.”
The bluntness of it made heat flood my face.
“Yes.”
His gaze held mine steadily, and something flickered there—not surrender, not vulnerability, but acknowledgment.
“You do,” he said.
My pulse thudded against his hand as he slid it upward along my ribs. The touch was unhurried, deliberate, and the anticipation of where it might go made my thoughts blur.
“I don’t lose control,” he said softly. “I choose when to move.”
The distinction sent a rush of awareness through me.
He wasn’t resisting me. He was absorbing me.
Allowing the tension to build, to sharpen, to become something we both felt.
His fingers brushed the underside of my breast, and my breath caught sharply. He didn’t grip. He didn’t claim.
He waited.
For me.
The realization hit hard.
This wasn’t about flipping anything.
It was about stepping into the space he created and deciding whether to stay there.
