I meet her halfway—my hand sliding behind her neck, fingers threading into her hair. I tilt her face up just enough to let her know if this happens, it’s on my terms, too.
Her deep sea-blue eyes burn with a “try me” glare, and that raw fight makes my cock twitch, ready to break her.
Then she kisses me—soft at first, then not.
I taste lime andcarnitasand something raw underneath it all. Her hand finds my chest, curling into the front of my shirt like she’s hanging on.
People pass. A truck honks. But none of it registers.
It’s just her mouth. Her breath. The way her body presses close like we’ve been doing this forever.
She exhales into me, and I breathe her in like a man starving. Our mouths open, slow at first, then deeper. Her tongue brushes mine—tentative, then bolder—and I answer without thinking, like my body knew her rhythm before I did.
She kisses like she fights: all heart, all heat, no backup plan.
I slide my hand from her neck to her jaw, thumb tracing the edge of her cheek as her fingers tug at my shirt like she can’t get close enough. She bites my lower lip—just enough to make me groan—and then softens it with a kiss so sweet it knocks something loose in my chest.
She pulls back for a breath, and I chase her mouth before I can stop myself, stealing one more taste like it’ll fix the ache.
And I let it happen.
I let myself want it. Wanther.
Until she pulls back, breath hitching, her lips swollen and kiss-bitten, eyes still half-closed like she’s not fully back in her body yet.
And that’s when the wall slams back up.
My jaw tightens. I shift just enough to put air between us. “Don’t read into that.”
She blinks.
I don’t let her respond.
“This thing between us—whatever it is—it doesn’t change the terms. You’re here because of…business. That’s it.”
Her expression falls, slow and silent.
A pang hits me, sharp and unexpected. It’s a flash of something foreign—like a string snapping tight in my chest. I don’t like seeing her like this. The way her eyes drop, lashes veiling whatever she won’t say. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. But it does. And I hate that it does.
But I keep going. “When this ends, you go back to your world. I go back to mine. That was the deal.”
I hate how cold my voice sounds.
I hate even more that I need it to be.
Because if I let myself want what that kiss felt like… I won’t be able to let her go.
And that was never the plan.
59
Bella
The car ride back is silent.
Not the good kind. Not the comfortable, we’re-on-the-same-wavelength kind. This is the kind of quiet that scratches at your skin. That reminds you how long the drive really is when you’re sitting next to someone who just tasted your mouth and then told you not toread into it.
Viktor’s at the wheel. Eyes on the road. Hands at ten and two like he’s chauffeuring the corpses of two people who used to be something.
