What he’d noticed.What he’d remembered.
There was a beat of silence.A soft breeze tugged at a loose curl near her cheek.She looked…unsettled.Not panicked.Not offended.Just pulled inward, as though weighing his words more heavily than she meant to.
A good sign.
“You’re right,” she said finally, her voice low and even.
Nicholas’s pulse kicked.It was time to press…just a bit further.“And…” He paused for effect.“I don’t believe that you didn’t like it.”He stepped even closer.Still not touching, but close enough that he felt her breath hitch.It was faint, but he caught it.She tried to mask it, but he’d been watching her reactions too long not to notice.
“Oh,” she murmured, her voice dropping to a low purr.
That landed.God, it landed beautifully.
Her posture changed.
Not much, a shift of her shoulders, a tightening of her fingers at her side, but he saw it.Felt it.
He leaned in.Slowly.Deliberately.He angled his mouth toward her ear with all the care of a man navigating a minefield.“And I guarantee youwilllike it.”
Her pulse fluttered at her throat.A tremor—small, exquisite—ran through her.She thought he wouldn’t notice.She was wrong.
She smelled faintly of rosewater and the salt of warm skin, hinting at a heat that had nothing to do with the evening.
She was trying so very hard not to be affected.
He smiled inwardly.
He was winning.
And he knew the exact moment she realized it—her breath caught, her lashes lowered, and for a brief, devastating moment, she swayed imperceptibly toward him.And the fact that he’d apparently rendered her speechless was quite a feat, considering.
He exhaled a barely there breath along the curve of her jaw and felt her shiver.
A thrill went through him—raw, intoxicating.
He’d never been more grateful for his height, his shoulders, his looks, his voice—the tools he normally wielded with political precision.But here, with her, they mattered differently.Dangerously.Deliciously.
“Indeed, I’m counting on the fact,” he whispered, velvet-dark, “that you’re going to like every single second of it.”
She exhaled, shallow, shaky, betraying far more than she intended.
Nicholas went still.
He’d been playing a dangerous game since the moment he decided to pursue her.A woman who claimed to dislike him.A woman who hid her true nature behind barbs and wit and stubborn walls.
But she wasn’t pushing him away.She wasn’t protesting.She wasn’t running.
And in her eyes—in the flicker she tried so hard to suppress—he saw something he’d never expected.Not this soon, at least.
Want.
Real, unmistakable want.
He was winning.
And God help him, he’d never wanted victory more.
