A sound almost escapes me. I stop it with effort. The shiver is beyond stopping—and he feels it. His arm tightens around me.
“If the man’s strong enough to earn it?” I tip my chin up and let the pause sit. “I’m game for whatever you want.”
The stillness that moves through him is absolute. One second. Two. Then his grip tightens at my back—deliberate, possessive—and his eyes drop to my mouth before returning to mine with an expression that makes my knees genuinely unreliable.
Before I can speak, his hand fists in my hair at the nape of my neck—no warning, no preamble—and his mouth comes down on mine hard. Not a question. Not an introduction.
A statement.
His lips are rough and certain, and he kisses me the way he does everything else: with complete, unhurried control that somehow still feels like being devoured. He angles my head back, taking what he wants. His other hand slides from my lower back to my hip, fingers digging in through the thin fabric, gripping hard enough that I’ll feel it tomorrow.
The thought alone sends a fresh wave of heat crashing through me. I feel exactly how much he wants this—the heavy press of him against my hip, nothing subtle about it, nothing apologetic.
When I gasp, he uses it—deepens the kiss, teeth grazing my bottom lip with a sharp sting that pulls a sound from me I’ve never made standing upright on a public street before.
He breaks it as deliberately as he started it. Pulls back just enough to look at me. Takes in the wreckage.
I am breathing hard. My fingers are knotted in his Henley. I have no memory of putting them there. The night air hits the flushed skin above my neckline and does absolutely nothing to cool it.
“Still want me to walk you home?” His voice is rough now, scraped raw at the edges, and the satisfaction layered underneath it is absolutely insufferable.
“Very much.” The words come out wrecked. I don’t care. “Faster. Walk faster.”
The smirk that breaks across his face is slow and dark and devastating—the expression of a man who has just gotten exactly the answer he intended to get and is already thinking about what comes next.
He laces his fingers through mine, turns, and walks.
We move toward the exit. I track every detail—the rough texture of his palm, the automatic way bodies shift out of his path before he reaches them, the warm solid presence just behind my shoulder like a shield I didn’t ask for and already don’t want to give back.
We hit the front doors, and the night air meets us hard, sharp and cold, mountain-clean after the swampy heat of the bar.
A shudder moves through me. He’s already shedding his jacket, draping it over my shoulders before the second one can form. It falls to mid-thigh, swallowing the dress entirely, and something about being wrapped in his clothes while my blood still runs hot from his kiss makes my stomach flip.
“Which way?” he asks.
I point, and watch his posture change—subtle, immediate. A sharpening. His eyes do a single, efficient sweep of the parking lot.
“What is it?”
“Maybe nothing.” He repositions me against his side, angling himself between me and the road. “Let’s say your friend inside wasn’t the only one who noticed you tonight.”
“Someone’s following us?”
“Probably nothing.” He sets a pace that makes me stretch my stride. “Black sedan, far corner of the lot. Been there since before you arrived. Engine’s still running.”
I keep my eyes forward. “How do you know when I arrived?”
"Told you I've been watching." Zero apology. "Part of the job."
"What job?"
No answer. Just streetlights and his grip and the quiet sound of our footsteps.
I should be scared. I am scared. But underneath the fear is something else entirely—the memory of his mouth on mine, his hands, the absolute certainty in the way he moves through the world like it was built to accommodate him. My pulse hasn't settled since he kissed me and I'm not sure it's going to.
He glances down. "Changed your mind?"
"Definitely not."
