No performance.
No smug confidence that I’ll say yes because he’s him.
Just sincerity.
Heat.
And something unexpectedly vulnerable beneath both.
I search his face.
The dark want there is obvious.
Impossible to miss.
But so is the care.
That matters more than I’m ready to admit.
“Should I be scared?” I ask.
His expression shifts.
Softens at the edges without losing any of the danger in it.
“Not of me.”
That answer gets me in places I am not prepared to discuss.
I glance away before he can see too much.
My room suddenly feels very small. The white sheets very obvious.
The fact that I prepared for one version of tonight and got this one instead somehow even more intimate. When I look back, he’s watching me like he knows exactly what I thought was going to happen here.
Maybe he does.
The corner of his mouth lifts.
“You expected me to come in here like a hurricane, didn’t you?”
I say nothing.
Which is answer enough.
His eyes flick once toward the bed.
Fresh sheets.
Fluffed pillows.
Me in tiny shorts and soft skin and way too much anticipation.
Then he looks back at me, amusement and hunger tangling together in a way that is frankly not survivable.
“Baby.”
I want to die.
