I hold up a hand, palm out. "Stop."
She barely freezes, landing close enough for me to take in the tiny shimmer of gloss on her lips, the flush on her cheeks, and the way her pupils look blown wider than normal.
She's high on this.
On me.
She's beautiful when she's delusional.
My traitorous, ruthless body responds with a slow, heavy pull low in my gut.
I hate it.
I hate myself more.
I force the clinical part of my brain to claw its way back to the surface. "Blue, this is boundary testing. You know that."
She blinks. "I don't know what you mean."
I keep my voice firm. "Yes, you do. You're escalating contact outside of sessions. You're inserting yourself into my personal space. You're watching me. Photographing me."
She breathes out softly. "You're making it sound so ugly."
"It is ugly," I snap, then immediately regret the harshness. I inhale. "It's not healthy. It's not safe. For you or for me."
Her gaze drops to my mouth. "I don't care about healthy. I care about you."
My chest tightens hard enough to hurt. I take a deep breath and state, "That's the problem. You're confusing attachment with intimacy."
Her eyes lift. "Maybe you're the one confused."
The audacity of it almost makes me laugh. Instead, I grit out, "I am not confused about my ethics."
Her lips quirk. "Are you confused about how you kissed me?"
My entire body goes still.
The air turns thick, charged with truth I can't deny.
She steps so close, her warmth brushes mine. She doesn't touch me yet, but she doesn't have to. The closeness is its own touch, pressing into every nerve. She whispers, "I didn't imagine it. You did it."
I swallow hard, keeping my hands at my sides like they're chained. "That was a mistake."
Her gaze flicks down my body, slow, deliberate, then back up. "It didn't look like a mistake. Especially when you said I'm the best damn kisser you ever kissed."
The image of me pulling her onto my lap hits me. I clear my throat. "Blue."
She says my name like it's hers to use, and she owns it now. "Red."
My pulse whips between my ears.
She argues, "You can tell me to stop stalking you, and you can tell me it's unhealthy, and you can put on your therapist voice, but last night… You weren't talking like a therapist."
My jaw flexes. "Don't twist it."
"I'm not twisting anything." She lifts her hand and touches me. Her two fingers brush the front of my shirt, right over my sternum. It's light enough to be dismissible and intimate enough to make my blood pound. She points out, "Your heart's racing. I hear it."
I catch her wrist gently but firmly and pull her hand away. "No. This can't happen between us."
